The U.S. still exports questionable pesticides, but treaties are starting to protect those at risk.

Decades ago, U.S. gardeners nonchalantly sprayed pesticides like DDT on lawns across the country as readily as they used common fertilizers. Today, DDT and a host of other highly toxic pesticides have been banned from use in the United States. However, the U.S. manufacture and export of such dangerous pesticides to most countries is still perfectly legal, albeit uncommon.

One new international convention provides for alerting the importing countries to a potential shipment. But unfortunately, until U.S. legislation catches up with the intent of such international treaties, there is still a strong potential for the U.S. export of these hot-listed materials. As long as that is true, American Foreign Service officers should be aware that there is a potential conflict between U.S. commercial interests and the possible health and environmental risks posed by the use of restricted pesticides in their host countries.

The ultimate danger of the export of these chemicals is human death and damage to the environment. In one case in Cairo, a U.S. aid worker died of poisoning in 1993 when pesticides were misapplied at her home. In a much more extensive case, some 25,000 workers from 12 developing countries sued several U.S. pesticide makers and fruit companies in 1995 when it was found that dibromochloropropine, or DBCP - allegedly exported from the United States - caused sterility.

While most of the truly hazardous pesticides - "the worst of the worst" - are no longer manufactured in the United States, the strengthening of U.S. law would increase the likelihood that U.S. exports will meet the spirit of international agreements controlling these substances.

PIC and POPs: New Tools
One new tool that should slow the flow of dangerous pesticides from manufacturing countries to user countries is the Rotterdam Convention for Prior Informed Consent for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Signed in late 1998 and involving a voluntary scheme with some 150 countries participating, the treaty is commonly referred to as PIC, which stands for the convention's "prior informed consent" mechanism. This agreement requires that exporters of banned or severely restricted pesticides that have been placed on an internationally-designated list - which now stands at 27 pesticides - must notify the importing country. Then, a U.N.-designated authority within the country must approve the import.

Without that required notification requesting prior informed consent, the export of the substance is illegal for exporters in those countries which ratify the agreement. U.S. enabling legislation is expected by the end of this year, says a U.S. EPA spokesperson. More than 80 countries have signed the convention thus far.

Another treaty, still under negotiation, involves the banning of the use of persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. This negotiation, also under the auspices of the U.N., involves some 100 nations and seeks to phase out the use of 12 chlorinated pesticides. The PIC and POPs lists overlap somewhat; while the POPs list is expected to grow slowly, there is a less complicated mechanism for adding more chemicals to the PIC list, so it should grow more quickly; four more chemicals are currently being considered for addition to the PIC list.

A number of U.S. agencies have been involved in developing these treaties, and will monitor U.S. compliance. The State Department negotiates these treaties for the United States with the support of other agencies, and the EPA provides practical oversight of U.S. exporters' adherence to the rules.

U.S. laws may be tougher than the international treaties require. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, requires an export notification filing with the EPA which shows that the importer has been alerted that the chemical is either on the official PIC list or on the U.S. nomination list. No other nation requires such notification, an EPA source says. The Clinton administration has proposed legislation that would make U.S. safeguards even stronger: it would not only require prior informed consent for chemicals on the official list, but also for those that the United States has recommended for PIC controls; the U.S. candidate list of such pesticides stood at 37 as of 1998.

Are Pesticide Exports Rising?
Velsicol, perhaps the last U.S. company to manufacture a pesticide that has been banned for use in the United States, voluntarily ceased production of chlordane at the end of 1997, officials say. The sale of any company's existing stocks is still legal, though, and the potential export traffic of these materials could prove to be surprising to some Foreign Service officers in countries where the pesticides still are being used.

For a pesticide to be used legally in the United States, it must be registered with the EPA for a particular use, for example, a certain crop. In 1998, the EPA determined that out of 2,719 export shipments of chemicals not registered in the United States, 132 were either on the Rotterdam Convention PIC list or on the longer U.S. PIC nomination list, says Cathleen Barnes, an EPA spokeswoman in Washington. While the volumes of these PIC-listed pesticide shipments were not available, the greatest number of shipments - 15 - went to Ecuador, followed by 10 to Costa Rica, six to the Netherlands, and five or less to another 48 countries ranging from Australia to Ghana.

There are also indications that U.S. exports of chemicals not registered for U.S. use, including restricted pesticides (those which have special U.S. or international rules regulating their use), are increasing. The 1998 total of 2,719 shipments was an increase from 2,576 export shipments the year before, Barnes says. One basic reason that pesticides may not be registered in the United States is that the U.S. market is too small to justify the cost of registration for a specific application - e.g., for bananas as opposed to melons.

U.S. Customs Service export volume data from prior years also suggests that there still may be a continuing, though relatively small, flow of these goods today. In 1996, U.S. exports of "restricted" pesticides increased to 94.6 million pounds from 91.1 million pounds the year before, according to research published in the April issue of the International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health, based in Philadelphia. The 1996 statistics show that 5.1 million pounds of these exported pesticides were products that have been banned for use in the United States; another 5.8 million pounds were severely restricted under U.S. law, and 79.1 million pounds carried some U.S. use restrictions, according to Carl Smith, the director of the Pesticide Project of the Foundation For Advancements in Science And Education in Los Angeles.

While the Rotterdam Convention is a relatively recent achievement of international diplomacy, much of the U.S. industry has been cooperating with the principles of prior informed consent since 1986, says John McCarthy, the vice president for science and regulatory affairs at the American Crop Protection Association, or ACPA, in Washington. Nonetheless, of the 150 active ingredients which ACPA members produce in the United States, about 10 percent are not registered for use in this country, he says. "The United States has 37 or 40 pesticides that have been banned for use here, and the 15 (active ingredients) we are talking about exporting are not on that list," adds Chris Klose, an ACPA spokesperson.

Whether these exported pesticides are on a watch list or not, the export of those non-registered products represents only a small fraction - 4 percent - of the members' export revenues, McCarthy says. ACPA members account for about 95 percent of all pesticides manufactured in the United States.

Strong Laws, Weak Enforcement
The willingness to export these pesticides is matched by the willingness of foreign users - or vendors - to import them, even if legislation in the importing country prohibits the transaction. "The biggest problem is getting something controlled under law in developing countries; it's a political process in which there are really tough issues, but at every stage of the process things have to work," says a U.S. official in Washington, who asked not to be further identified. "You can have a very good (environmental) regulatory structure, but if you have a land-owner that doesn't care about his workers and if you don't have good enforcement infrastructure, what can you do about it?" he asks.

Although an importing country may have a special agency responsible for reviewing dangerous pesticide imports, will it necessarily have the staffing to do its job? Some environmentalists say no. "PIC is a powerful tool, but it puts a burden on a developing country to review incoming materials and respond appropriately," says Jack Weinberg, a Greenpeace official in Washington, who is actively consulting with negotiators of the POPs pesticide treaty. "In many countries they have one or two people with responsibilities that would require a staff of 200 to carry out. If the ministry of agriculture is overwhelmed with the task of feeding people, you might question their ability to handle the influx of toxic chemicals," he says.

The "Circle of Poison"
How do U.S. Foreign Commercial Service officers react to the news that their host country is a top market for PIC-listed or PIC-nominated pesticides?

In Ecuador, the country receiving the highest number of such U.S. shipments in 1998, the reaction was one of definite concern. "Ecuador imports a lot of pesticide products because we are the number one exporter of bananas in the world, and probably the number two exporter of shrimp," says Rodrigo Morales, an assistant commercial officer at the U.S. consulate in Guayaquil. "But we have had problems on the shrimp and banana plantations because the rivers have been polluted with fertilizers and other kinds of polluting agents, which has created sicknesses for the shrimp," he says.

"Environmental controls here are not very efficient or are not being [handled] carefully, and I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a lot of hazardous pesticides used here which are causing problems," he says. "The [Ecuadorian environmental control] legislation is not necessarily respected," he opines. "I would be concerned because many of these bananas and shrimp are exported to the United States," he adds.

Morales is not alone in his concern about possible hazardous pesticide residues in foods exported to the United States. "Nobody here wants to eat food with pesticides on it that is coming in as imports, especially if that pesticide is banned in the United States," says a senior Foreign Commercial Service official in Washington, who asked not to be named. The use of U.S.-restricted pesticides on food that finds its way back into the United States is referred to by some regulators as the "circle of poison."

In 1989, the seizure of a single imported box of contaminated grapes at Philadelphia brought Chile's fruit export industry to a grinding halt. Today, Chilean produce exporters are extremely vigilant in their use of pesticides, says Jim Foster, the commercial attaché at the U.S. embassy in Santiago. "Everybody here in the industry follows EPA guidelines because the industry is very export-oriented," he says. "There are good (Chilean) regulations, there are good people in the government, and there is a good exporters association, so (the importation of questionable pesticides) doesn't seem to be much of an issue."

In Costa Rica, the country with the second-highest incidence of importing U.S.-made pesticides on the PIC list, there was also less concern about food contamination voiced than in Ecuador. "Agricultural products are the main export product for the country, so companies are careful about what is allowed or is not allowed - and at what levels - in the United States," says Victor Gonzalez, an agriculture specialist at the U.S. embassy in San José. "There may be a few cases (of questionable pesticide imports), but it hasn't been a public issue," he says. Noting that the EPA has conducted a series of seminars in Costa Rica, Gonzalez says that it has been several years since his office has received reports about Costa Rican agricultural products that might have been detained in the United States because of pesticide residues. Costa Rica is considered an environmental information hub for the entire Central American region, one Washington source said.

There seems to be even less concern about importing questionable U.S. pesticides in the Netherlands, the country with the third-highest number of U.S.-made PIC-listed pesticide imports in 1998. "Any company that wants to export pesticides to the Netherlands has to comply with regulations here, which means they have to go to the authorities asking for a license ... for it to be used here," says Abraham Groen, a chemicals specialist in the commercial section of the U.S. embassy in The Hague.

"The license registration is a long procedure and costs a lot of money; the government wants to reduce use of pesticides drastically," Groen explains. "We have a very large greenhouse industry here and are using natural enemies of insects in place of pesticides," he says. On the other hand, insofar as the Netherlands is a European hub for trans-Atlantic transshipments, "it may be possible that pesticides which are not allowed for use here could [enter the country and] go [on] to a country where they are permitted to be used," he notes.

At consulates and embassies in many countries, pesticide exporters typically bypass the commercial office, since the multinational manufacturers long have had direct links to the importing purchasers, several FCS officers say."I've never had a request for assistance from a U.S. exporter of pesticides in the three years that I've been here," says Julia Rauner, the commercial consul in São Paulo, Brazil, the country which is the largest and fastest-growing importer of pesticides in Latin America.

One Foreign Service officer says that in the only instance of a pesticide company seeking promotion assistance in his country during his tenure, the company went "straight to the ambassador." Several FSOs said that pesticide companies "don't need us," given their strong, direct market connections.

Misapplication - A Constant Danger
If a country's regulating agency determines that a PIC-listed pesticide is acceptable for a specific use, it may still be difficult for that agency or another government entity to follow up on the way in which the chemical is applied. This is where the best intentions of international safeguards can fall flat. "There are pesticide products that may not be banned, but if you know how they really are going to be used, they are worse than things that are banned," says Carl Smith of the Pesticide Project. "For a pesticide with a high acute toxicity, you might wear a full-body moon suit in the United States, but it might be going to areas of the world where people don't wear anything but shorts in the fields," he says.

The terms of the PIC convention require that material safety data sheets - as required in the United States by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration - be sent to the importer for banned and severely restricted chemicals and PIC-listed chemicals. But the farmers and field workers applying the pesticides must be capable of understanding the warnings and have access to protective clothing and equipment.

The industry agrees that the proper application of pesticides in importing countries is a great challenge. "When it comes down to how to use things properly, there is no amount of information exchange that's really going to do the job," says the ACPA's McCarthy. "Our product stewardship message is that when things leave this country, they've got to be properly labeled so that the customs people know what it is, and that the people who open the package have proper instructions on how to use it," he says. "But it can get complicated in this world. ... You really need on-the-ground training," he explains. "We've been fostering safe-use programs in developing countries including Guatemala, Kenya and Thailand," he notes. "These first pilot programs have spawned progeny of their own in neighboring countries, by governments, NGOs, and farm organizations, in countries like Brazil. ... We're the only industry in the world allowed to release poisons into the environment, so we have a responsibility to the public; we take it as a franchise that we have to renew every day," McCarthy says.

As the PIC list evolves, the United States could find itself in a position of disagreeing with particular listings, the U.S. official in Washington notes. "So far the PIC list is focused on the worst of the worst pesticides, which most OECD countries have banned," he says. "But a couple of countries can take a control action (adding a pesticide) and the PIC list could become fairly long. It is not inconceivable that substances will make it onto the list that we think can be safe for a specific application," he points out. "The principles involved in most regulatory decisions made in the United States are not only whether or not the pesticide is dangerous, but also how a person might be exposed or how it might be released into the environment," he says.

Another way that dangerous U.S.-made pesticide exports are limited is through the environmental policies of U.S. bilateral agencies, which preclude the support of projects involving the toxic substances. The Overseas Private Investment Corp., for example, has just decided on such a policy, following the U.S. Export-Import Bank's earlier adoption of a broad environmental policy.

"Our policy is very cut and dried; we won't fund or get involved in a project involving POPs pesticides," says Jeremy Butler, an OPIC spokesman in Washington. "For PIC chemicals, we have a standard criterion that if an exporter in an OPIC-sponsored project wants to use the pesticide, he has to obtain approval from the importing countries," he adds.

Such policies are a relatively recent phenomenon around the world, says one environmentalist. "Ex-Im and OPIC are the first bilaterals to adopt environmental standards in the United States, and the Europeans and the Japanese don't have them at all," observes Andrea Durbin, an official at Friends Of The Earth, in Washington, which was one of the advisers to OPIC during its environmental policy formation.

With a stronger international monitoring regime, exemplified by the 1998 Rotterdam convention, and growing awareness of potential pesticide problems among government agencies, NGOs and consumers, it may just be that this is one environmental hazard for which increased scrutiny is starting to produce real benefits.

Charles W. Thurston is a Willow, N.Y.-based journalist specializing in international trade affairs.