The Activist: Jay Feldman

Pesticides have come a long way, however.
Chemicals on the surface have gotten less toxic as a general rule. We've gone to fewer bioaccumulative materials. When pesticides were first introduced, the presumption was that there would be no secondary effects. The theory was that we could eliminate pests, increase food production, fight diseases, and that after they had performed their positive function the pesticides would dissipate and degrade in the environment. But these assumptions proved false. It became obvious that the chemicals could bioaccumulate. They showed up in the food supply, they can be responsible for long-term chronic disease, they impact endangered species, and so on. The chemicals were not tested for these effects prior to their marketing. And that's been the pattern ever since. Every time a new chemical is introduced, we say, "Oh my God, we're finding residues of this stuff in the environment; it's showing up in mothers' milk -- we didn't expect that." And then we move on to the next chemical family. So the heavy metals were replaced by the organochlorines, which were replaced by the organ-ophosphates, and every time the same claim is made: These are even better, they won't show up anywhere, they don't bioaccumulate in the environ-ment. But lo and behold, these chemicals are showing up in water. All the assumptions once again turn out not to be true. We're constantly playing catch-up. So here we are now in this realm of having newer and newer chemicals, and as new studies come out, we realize that we've introduced new levels of danger, new complexities, and a whole host of effects that the EPA isn't even looking for.

If you don't know what the danger is, you can't test for it before you approve it.
Right.

You have no confidence in the EPA's regulation of pesticide use?
None at all. You can go to the Government Accountability Office website (gao.gov) and type in "pesticides," and you can see the history of the failure of the EPA. It's all very well documented. Their program is poorly thought through, and it's also politicized. The agency might be told, for instance, "We need an outcome that allows Dursban to be used on golf courses, so work backward from that." Even William Ruckelshaus, the first head of the EPA, said risk assessment is like a captured spy: You can get it to say whatever you want it to say.

Has it become worse under the current administration?
Yes. The EPA could use its discretion to improve protection, but at every turn, under this administration, it has used its discretion to implement the minimum amount of protection.

Why is that?
Because there's tremendous pressure from chemical companies to maintain the registrations of these products. It's a very costly proposition to develop these chemicals. After a company has invested in the development of a product, it's going to invest a tremendous amount of money in lobbying for the allowance of that product. A while back we tracked the number of former EPA officials now working for the industry and its consulting firms in this town, and it's fascinating. If you look at any chemical that's being used on a golf course, and you look back to see who's lobbying that chemical for its registration and its re-registration, you'll find it's some former EPA official. It's so lucrative -- it's like the brain drain where people leave Third World countries to go to work in the West. The EPA's pesticide program is like a Third World country. They all jump to the chemical companies. And when a chemical company sits across the table from the EPA, it's a body of knowledge that so far surpasses what is known within the agency that there is a fear on the part of the agency that it will be sued and will be incapable of defending itself against a lawsuit. So there's a tremendous avoidance behavior going on here, and in so doing the agency is compromising public health and safety. It's a horrible phenomenon. It's just set up for failure.

[Note: Debra Edwards, Ph.D., director of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, wrote in an e-mail to say that after reading Feldman's comments, she was "dismayed to find so many inaccuracies and misleading statements." She provided a lengthy rebuttal to his various criticisms: click here to read her comments.]

If the status quo is as dire as you portray it, how will things change?
What we're seeing now, what's driving decision-making, is public concern. People are concerned about the environment, public health, global warming. They're saying, "Look, we don't want just strict compliance with the law. We want to go beyond that." And that's what they're doing with their homes and their lawns, that's what's happening in school buildings and playing fields where their children are going to school. People are going down to their golf course and saying, "Hey, what are we doing here?" If we're asking golf-course superintendents to drive this process in golf, we're putting them in an unfair position. I find a lot of golf-course superintendents are extremely receptive to these issues and want to be creative in solving these problems and want to adopt better practices. But if the greens committee is putting a lot of pressure on the superintendent to create an Augusta-like look, what's he going to do? He's an employee. His job is always on the line. Until we get the golfers themselves to engage on this issue, we cannot expect the right thing to happen. We have to start talking about this. We have to start realizing what the trade-offs are. Do people want to eliminate this unknown hazard, for their health, their kids, their family, their community? The answer is yes. The general organic movement is very large and growing, and it's going to be more and more consumer-driven. The marketplace is shifting so much more quickly than the regulatory side. This is where the optimism comes in.