What Wasn't Said About EDB

• Published in: The Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
• Main Author: By William R. Havender
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 04.09.1984
• Edition: Eastern edition
• Subjects: Appeals; Bans; Cancer; Food contamination & poisoning; Public hearings
• ISSN: 0099-9660

Jim Sibbison left the EPA in 1981, but events surrounding the recent ethylene dibromide episode suggest that little has changed in this regard. In September 1983, the EPA announced that it intended to ban EDB for grain and spot (milling machinery) fumigation, but that EDB could continue to be used as it had in the past (i.e. with no governmentally set tolerance limits) for these purposes during the roughly two years it would take for public hearings and appeals. The reasoning behind this judgment was set forth in a document the EPA issued at that time called "Position Document 4" (PD 4). PD 4 is the source of the famous number, "three extra cases of cancer per 1,000 persons," which the EPA calculated to be the risk over a lifetime of exposure to EDB in food at the contamination levels then believed typical of the nation's food supply. This was based, of course, not on actual cases of EDB-caused human cancer but on animal cancer tests. The EPA explained that it judged this lifetime figure to be intolerably high, but the added risk from EDB's use in the interim period not sufficient to justify an immediate ban. On Feb. 3, Mr. Ruckelshaus changed his mind about the seriousness of the hazard posed to consumers from the interim use of EDB and announced that there would be an immediate ban on EDB's use in grain and spot fumigation after all. The justification for this change was spelled out in a 118-page document the EPA released five days later. In the text of this document, it was claimed that new information not available at the time PD 4 was issued the previous fall made an immediate ban on the grain and spot uses of EDB imperative. The new information consisted of analyses of thousands of retail-food samples for EDB contamination that had been carried out by state health agencies, food companies and others. These new findings, said EPA, led it to conclude, in contrast to its judgment last September, that "the additional risks to human health which would be expected to result" if EDB use continued during the hearings and appeals process was "unacceptable," and hence, an "immediate emergency suspension" was necessary. The EPA's original estimate had been based on a single 1983 study by EPA scientists on flour samples procured, not from supermarkets, but from the government's school-lunch program. These samples, hardly a representative, broad-based collection of typical retail foods in all their variety, had indicated that EDB was present at an average level of 34 parts per billion, and this number, in turn, was used to generate the 3-per-1,000 estimate for excess cancer deaths from "typical" EDB levels in food. Later analysis of the 2,800 samples of grain-based consumer foods revealed an average level of contamination of only 2.4 parts per billion, more than 14 times less. (The vast majority of the samples had no detectable EDB. A few showed excessively high contamination, of the sort that tolerance limits could effectively control. Mr. Ruckelshaus in February imposed such limits on grain already in the system, but elected not to rely on them in the future, banning new EDB use outright.)