Tag: exposure

Consumers Stocking Up on Banned Pesticide

  • The pesticide diazinon is being phazed out by the EPA for being hazardous. Some gardeners are still buying it despite health warnings. (Photo by Scott Schopieray)

A powerful pesticide that’s popular with gardeners
and homeowners will no longer be sold starting in January, but that
hasn’t stopped people from stocking up on the chemical before it’s
pulled from shelves. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

A powerful pesticide that’s popular with gardners and homeowners will no longer be
sold starting in January. But that hasn’t stopped people from stocking up on the
chemical before it’s pulled from the shelves. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chris Lehman reports:


Diazinon, at one time, was the most widely used pesticide on lawns. It can
still be sold through the end of the year. But there’s no deadline for homeowners
to use up their supplies. So that’s led some people to stockpile the product. The
decision to ban diazinon was made during the final weeks of the Clinton Administration.
But the Environmental Protection Agency gave diazinon producers four years to phase it out.


Jay Feldman is director of the environmental group Beyond Pesticides. He says the EPA
should have banned diazinon outright instead of phasing it out gradually.


“When the agency identifies a hazard such as this, one that is particularly problematic
to children, it ought to institute a recall, get the product out of commerce, make sure
that people do not continue to use the product unwittngly.”


Officials at the EPA say over-exposure to diazinon can affect the nervous system. They
also say it poses a risk to birds.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

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Epa Takes Heat on New Chemical Exposure Study

  • The Environmental Protection Agency is getting some criticism from environmental groups for their partnership with the American Chemistry Council. (Photo courtesy of epa.gov)

The Environmental Protection Agency is drawing fire from some environmental groups for accepting money from the chemical industry for a study on children’s exposure to pesticides. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is drawing fire from some environmental
groups for accepting money from the chemical industry for a study on
children’s exposure to pesticides. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams has more:


The EPA has accepted a two million dollar contribution from the American
Chemistry Council to help fund the exposure study.


Some environmental groups are saying the partnership is a conflict of
interest for the agency. Tim Kropp is a senior scientist with the
Environmental Working Group.


“It doesn’t make sense for them to say that there’s no influence, and that it’s
all right for the regulated industries to be involved in a study that’s
going to affect policy, or may affect policy.”


EPA officials counter that the study design has been independently reviewed.
And that the American Chemistry Council won’t be able to affect the outcome
of the study. Linda Sheldon is with the EPA’s human exposure and
atmospheric sciences division.


“The American Chemistry Council is independent of the individual companies
that produced these particular chemicals. We feel that we have complete
control over the study and control over the research findings.”


Sheldon says the information from the study will be used for future EPA risk
assessments of chemicals.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Semen Quality Harmed by Farm Chemicals?

A new study shows that fertile men in more rural areas have lower sperm counts and less vigorous sperm than men in urban centers. It’s the first study that shows that semen quality differs significantly between regions of the United States. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, agricultural chemicals may be to blame:

Transcript

A new study shows that fertile men in more rural areas have lower sperm
counts and less vigorous sperm than men in urban centers. It’s the first
study that shows that semen quality differs significantly between
regions of the United States. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie
MacDowell reports, agricultural chemicals may be to blame:


Researchers studied couples at prenatal care clinics in Missouri, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York.


Men from the rural area of Missouri had counts and quality that were up to 58 percent lower than men from any of the urban centers.


Dr. Shanna Swan, the researcher who headed the project, says the results were
unexpected.


“I would have hypothesized that the larger, denser, probably more polluted
urban centers would have lower semen quality, so, this was a surprise.”


Swan says it’s highly unlikely the differences in the findings are due to experimental error or chance, due to strict controls.


She says environmental factors, such as agricultural chemical exposures, are the best explanation for the inconsistencies.


But she adds that right now, it’s only a hypothesis.


The team is now testing subjects’ urine for pesticide levels and comparing them with semen quality.


The researchers hope to be out with this study in the next six months.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.

Feds Criticized for Lead Strategy

The U-S-E-P-A is working on a new set of standards for lead content indust and soil in and around homes. Those standards will be mandatory forall federally-owned or assisted housing and voluntary for other homes.Lead is of concern for the E-P-A because studies have found that one outof every 20 children in the U-S suffer from elevated blood-lead levels.But in a September issue of the journal "Science", one physician iscriticizing the way federal authorities are developing those newstandards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Hirschberg hasmore:

A Mother’s Crusade

Lead poisoning has been called the number one environmental health hazard for children. While low-income families are most affected, lead poisoning can happen to anyone. And the damage it does is permanent. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson recently met a family that’s been forever changed because of lead:

Federal Policy Spurs Clean-Up

A new batch of federal funding intended to get the lead out of homes is expected to bring big benefits to several Midwestern cities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a plan late last year to dole out fifty-million dollars nationally to better educate the public on lead’s dangers and provide cleanup funds for individual homes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert has more:

Getting the Lead Out of Home Renovations

Buying a house is part of the American dream. But after the papers are signed, most homeowners discover that the maintenance and remodeling that go with owning a home are expensive. So to save money, many go the do-it-yourself route. But sometimes even the simplest projects are more complicated than they first appear. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: