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Friday, February 8, 2019 CapitalPress.com 7 Specialist: Glyphosate link to cancer unfounded By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press TWIN FALLS, Idaho – While glyphosate has lower toxicity than many pesti- cides — it’s rated zero risk for homeowner use — the news and social media are laden with its purported health risks to humans, espe- cially cancer. But those claims are out of step with scientific risk assessments related to expo- sure, Ronda Hirnyck, Uni- versity of Idaho pesticide coordinator, said during a pesticide seminar at this year’s Agri-Action. Part of the issue with gly- phosate or Roundup —a Monsanto product used to treat weeds in some GMO crops — is that everybody’s heard about it. And there are a lot of people who don’t like GMOs or Monsanto, she said. “A lot of it is emotional,” she said. There are also a lot of cancer campaigns and other health-related concerns and environmental concerns. Revisions to pesticide safety requirements still fresh By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press TWIN FALLS, Idaho — It won’t be long until farmers are back in their fields pre- paring for the next growing season, and it’s a good time to get up to speed on changes to Environmental Protection Agency’s Worker Protection Standard for pesticides. A lot of concerns and mis- understandings about WPS led EPA to revise the entire program in 2015 to reduce the risk of exposure or injury to workers, Luis Urias, pro- gram specialist with Idaho State Department of Agricul- ture, said during this year’s Agri-Action. “There are so many changes now, the biggest one is recordkeeping,” he said. Agricultural employers must display pesticide safety, application and hazard infor- mation in a central location for 30 days after the restrict- ed-entry interval at an appli- cation site expires and keep them on records for two years, he said. That information includes an EPA WPS poster, a safety data sheet and application information — including the product name, EPA registra- tion number and active ingre- dient; crop or site treated, location and description of treated area; and date, start and end times of the appli- cation and duration of the restricted-entry interval. In addition, workers and pesticide handlers must be trained in pesticide safety and those records must also be maintained for two years, he said. Workers must be trained at least once every 12 months and receive additional train- ing if they enter a restricted area before the restricted interval expires. Handlers must have been trained within the last 30 days before any handling tasks. Anyone who cleans or repairs pesticide applica- tion equipment, including mechanics, and anyone who transports an open pesticide container are considered a handler, he said. He recommended employers train all their employees as handlers. Employers must also pro- vide accessible decontamina- tion supplies within a quarter mile of the application. Those supplies must include at least 1 gallon of water for workers and 3 gallons of water for han- dlers. Additional water for eye flushing must be provided when a prod- uct requires protective eye- wear or when handlers are using a closed, pressurized system. Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press Ronda Hirnyck, University of Idaho Extension pesticide coordinator, says glyphosate poses no threat to human health. The use of glyphosate, tied to some GMO crops, has shot up over the last few years, and it’s an easy item to pick on, she said. “It’s just kind of on every- body’s radar,” she said. But the public doesn’t understand how it functions or its benefits, she said. Glyphosate binds tightly to soil, and it’s not volatile in the environment. It doesn’t percolate in soil to get into groundwater. It inhibits an enzyme that builds proteins a plant needs, and animals and humans don’t produce that enzyme, she said. “So it doesn’t affect us,” she said. Studies have shown there’s little to no absorption through the skin, no inhala- tion risk and no neurotoxic- ity, she said. “It does not get into our bodies and accumulate,” she said. Studies in animals and extrapolated to humans show very, very low toxicity to either, she said. The level of acute oral toxicity in mice is 10,000 parts per million. In rabbits, the only animal to show any reaction, that level was 2,000 ppm, she said. “Baking soda has a higher toxicity than glypho- sate, all things being equal,” she said. But cancer is an emo- tional topic, she said. Assessments by the Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and Health Canada found no cancer risks with glyphosate. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer labeled it a “probable carcinogen,” aligning the risk level with its assessment of red meat as a probable carcinogen, she said. One of IARC’s board members, however, “fessed up” that the board didn’t review all the studies avail- able and should have gone back and looked at newer studies, she said. “This is what’s con- fusing people. This is the dilemma. It’s not black and white because these (orga- nizations) are disagreeing,” she said. The problem with most studies on a link between glyphosate and non-Hod- gkin’s lymphoma, the can- cer of interest with glypho- sate, is that they were small, case-controlled studies with somewhat of a bias, she said. They only assessed people with the disease and whether they had been exposed to glyphosate and didn’t con- sider any other life factors, she said. Those studies had vari- able results among small groups of people, she said. The National Institutes of Health did a more com- prehensive cohort study, the Agricultural Health Study, of more than 54,000 licensed pesticide appli- cators beginning in 1993 and found no connection between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she said. But the stories of a link are out there, and agriculture needs help people under- stand the risks and benefits, she said. Rep. Barreto proposes $1.4M for agricultural education By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN EO Media Group Rep. Greg Barreto intro- duced a bill to the Oregon House this week that aims to pour more funding into FFA programs around the state. If passed, it would allot more money for students to attend statewide and national events to build their FFA resumes and develop their skills. House Bill 2444 would allot $1.4 million to send FFA students to events like competitions, statewide training programs, leader- ship courses and state, local and national conventions. It would require the Ore- gon Department of Edu- cation to coordinate with FFA to make sure students can use their FFA educa- tions for college and career opportuni- ties. It would also secure $600,000 in grant m o n e y Rep. Greg from the Ore- Barreto gon Depart- ment of Education to fund extra-duty contracts for agricultural science and technology teachers, and for FFA teachers. The bill had a hearing in the Educa- tion Committee on Wednes- day. It was scheduled for a work session Monday. “Instructors should be compensated for the inor- dinate amount of time com- mitment, and this program should be supported as part of our education sys- tem,” Barreto said in a press release. Garrett Wiggins, a senior in Echo High School’s Leah Smith FFA pro- gram, said the funds would give him and his peers some opportuni- ties they might not otherwise get. “This summer, three of us and our advisor went to Washington, D.C., for a leadership conference,” he said. “We had to raise all the money for that, and it prevented a couple of peo- ple from going because they couldn’t raise the funds.” Leah Smith, advisor for Hermiston High School’s FFA program, said her pro- gram would welcome the assistance. “Any time there’s finan- cial support, a program is going to thrive,” she said. “One of the most incapac- itating factors is a lack of funding.” The cost of events is pro- hibitive for many students. “Families are financially strapped,” Smith said. “The Oregon FFA state conven- tion used to be $20 per kid. Now it’s $50 per kid. Costs never go down, and they get passed on to students.” But the bill would also allot money for FFA advi- sors and agriculture teach- ers, something Smith said may be hard to do from a state level, given the differ- ences in each program. Smith said the fund- ing streams for FFA vary between school districts, but in general, most receive some state funding in the form of stipends for FFA teachers and extended duty contracts. “It’s separate financial allotments. The FFA stipend is supposed to be for what- ever it takes for you to be an FFA advisor,” Smith said. “And the extended con- tract is supposed to be what you would call a summer contract.” But Smith said the level of involvement for advisors varies widely by school. “There are some pro- grams where the advisors spend a lot of time,” she said. “And some, they may not have the expectation in the community. When you look at funds, it’s hard for the state to say, ‘each ag teacher should get this much money for extra duty or FFA.’” Hermiston’s program is thriving, and Smith said she and other agricultural sci- ence teachers spend a lot of their own time with the students.
