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Donald Sutherland

Policy: The Child Toxic Pesticide Health Crisis, the EPA, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health 

 By Donald Sutherland 


One day, at the farmers market in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a mother of two boys approached my wife at our farm table and asked if it was safe for her children to play on grass treated with a pesticide application. She pointed to the familiar sign landscapers must post on lawns and grounds after treating them with toxic pesticides. It was a good question which often isn’t asked. After a deep dive into researching the safety of toxic pesticide registration in the US and the Commonwealth, my answer is pesticide registration and use are unsafe. My wife Laura and I have been USDA-certified organic vegetable farmers for over 12 years, and most of our customers express their well-justified fears of toxic chemical exposure in the environment and conventional food. 


The public and the agricultural, food, and lawn/garden industries rely on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and government health departments to ensure exposure to thousands of toxic synthetic pesticides is safe for humans and the environment. Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used yearly in the US to control insects and weeds. The health risks of dietary exposure to agrochemical synthetic pesticides designed to kill weeds and neurologically impair insect pests can’t be washed off because the chemicals enter the cell structure in food crops and meats. Decades of epidemiological science research studies of pesticides in children reveal low-level pesticide exposure in food and the environment harms a developing infant’s brain, nervous system, organ development, and critical protein and enzyme synthesis. Medical science and doctors warn that low levels of toxic pesticide exposure in food are harming children. 


Infants and children are more vulnerable to toxins than adults  

Infants are more vulnerable to pesticides because their immature livers and kidneys cannot remove pesticides as well as adults, and children eat and drink more relative to their body weight than adults, leading to a higher dose of pesticide residue per pound of body weight. Pesticide damage to prenatal, infant, and child-vulnerable biological development contributes to cancer, permanent changes in brain chemistry leading to behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, autism, ADHD, and disorders to the endocrine and immune systems. 


Federal and State Food Pesticide Laws, Congressman Jim McGovern’s Legislation and Maura Healey’s Lawsuit 

Children are under attack by the chemical industries' control of government pesticide and health agencies, putting industry interests over health science protecting the most vulnerable population.


The child health crisis from dietary and environmental exposure to pesticides is mainly due to the current federal and state agricultural legislation permitting multinational pesticide manufacturers and the food industry to bypass child epidemiological safety testing. Pesticide laws rely on corporate agrochemical laboratory data to register pesticides, often without toxicity safety studies. 


Since the passage on Nov. 1, 2000, of the Commonwealth’s legislation, the Protection of Children and Families from Harmful Pesticides, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and Massachusetts Pesticide Subcommittee have approved over 600 toxic chemicals and 34,000 pesticide products that the EPA has registered in the US. The legislative action was enacted to empower the Massachusetts government to enact stricter prenatal, infant, and child protections than the existing EPA pesticide regulations under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide (FIFRA), Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDC), and the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). Instead, the state Pesticide Subcommittee has approved 85 pesticides that the European Union, Brazil and China all ban.


This year, Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern (HR 5085) and Senator Cory Booker (S.269), with co-sponsor Senator Elizabeth Warren, have submitted national legislation (Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act) to close the current federal loopholes permitting the chemical industry to bypass infant pesticide safety review. Their legislation also calls for banning the existing child neurological harming pesticides organophosphates, neonicotinoids, and paraquat. Environmental science studies of these pesticides show they contribute to the ongoing biocide of insects, birds, and soil life worldwide. The 25,000-member Medical Society, Greater Boston Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the NOFA Massachusetts chapter, the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and Massachusetts Medical Society charge that registering neurologically, endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic toxic pesticides without consideration of the epidemiological vulnerabilities of children’s low-level exposure in food and the environment is contributing to the endangerment of the most vulnerable populations health. 


Cohort child epidemiological studies have shown that low levels of the nation’s most popular organophosphate pesticide, Chlorpyrifos, is associated with contributing to child autism/ADHD and learning disabilities. Between 1992 and 2017, over 450 million pounds of Chlorpyrifos were applied to US food crops and landscape turf. In the same period,  the US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expanded its scope of neurological spectrum research. They reported an increase in autism rate in children from 1 in 150 to 1 in 36. The CDC also reports that 1 in 6 (17%) children aged 3–17 years were diagnosed with a developmental disability, as reported by parents. These included autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, blindness, and cerebral palsy, among others. A 2022 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) states that the CDC autism testing fails to account for girls' symptoms accurately and underrepresents their statistics. 


When the prenatal/child neurologically harming organophosphate Chlorpyrifos was re-registered by the EPA over the objections of science and medical bodies, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health representatives on the state Pesticide Subcommittee approved its re-registration. It took the lawsuit of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (now governor) and six other state attorney generals, along with a coalition led by Earthjustice, NRDC, Center for Food Safety and PAN, and farmworker organizations to ban Chlorpyrifos, overriding EPA registration. In the Spring of 2021, the federal Ninth Circuit Court ruled the EPA had failed to prove any residue tolerance level was safe and in February 2022, the EPA banned Chlorpyrifos on crops. However, in November 2023, a federal appeals court ruled against that ban. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court banned all current human and environmental safety tolerances of the most commonly used toxic herbicide, Glyphosate, but the EPA has yet to comply. 


The pesticide residue health crisis to prenatal, infant, and children was addressed in the 12/14/2021 Massachusetts state legislative Environmental, Natural Resources and Agriculture (ENRA) Committee virtual hearing to support proposed legislation to curtail Massachusetts pesticide use.


The testimony included the health warnings from multiple physicians and renowned medical schools, such as Chair of the Board of Greater Boston Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (GBPSR) and Carmen Messerlian, professor of environmental reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology, Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health.  


Following one more public hearing about this issue on May 10, 2023, the policy goals of Massachusetts law MGL 132B Sec.5A promoting the use of biological, sustainable, alternative pest controls to reduce or eliminate human or environmental exposure to chemical pesticides were ignored by MDAR and the MDPH.


An organic food diet reduces pesticides in families tested in the US.  The study, Organic Diet Intervention Significantly Reduces Urinary Pesticide Levels in U.S. Children and Adults, found significant pesticide reductions associated with increased risk of autism, cancers, autoimmune disorders, infertility, hormone disruption, learning disability, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. 


NOFA MASS is pursuing its pesticide reform campaign in coalition with physician groups and environmental organizations to restructure the current registration and use of toxic pesticides to abide by the Protection of Children and Families From Harmful Pesticides Act and to promote biological, sustainable, alternative pest controls to reduce or eliminate human or environmental exposure to toxic chemicals. Massachusetts consumers can join the NOFA campaign to promote more access to organic food by asking their supermarkets and farm suppliers to transition to USDA Organic farming with support from the $100 million offered in the federal Transitional and Organic Grower Assistance Program (TOPP). 


Actions to Take: 

  • Participate and share in your social media the NOFA Mass Action Network campaign to send messages to legislators to support the high-priority pesticide reform bills, actionnetwork.org/letters/mass-pesticides-reform/ 

  • Call your Senators to endorse Senator Cory Booker’s 2023 Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act 

  • Transition to an organic diet, and ask your local farms, farm suppliers and supermarkets to transition to USDA organic certification. 


Donald Sutherland and his wife, Laura Davis, run a USDA-certified organic vegetable farm in Hopkinton, MA. He is on the town of Hopkinton's Sustainable Green Committee, a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association Massachusetts Policy Planning Committee


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