Food and children's environmental health
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What You Can Do to Reduce Pesticides in Our Food

In addition to reducing your family’s personal exposure to pesticides and other toxins, you can help reduce chemicals in foods for the sake of other parents and children.

Government policies are only as good as the level of effort put into them. Often, the government does not act as aggressively as it should, sometimes because of lack of staff or budgets, but often because of pressure from interest groups, such as agribusinesses lobbyists and pesticide manufacturers. Well, we as citizens can put on some pressure as well. And we should. Please make your feelings known to people in decision-making positions in your state and at the federal level.

We’ve been able to effect change before. The phase-outs of the dangerous organophosphate pesticides Diazinon and Dursban, announced in 2000, resulted in no small part from the vocal activities of people like you. Generation Green alone collected 1,500 signatures and more 2,000 letters from members and other concerned citizens to pressure the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect children by taking action on those pesticides.

To get you started, we provide on this page the address of EPA Director Christine Todd Whitman and a sample letter you might send to her regarding the Food Quality Protection Act and carbamates. We also encourage you to contact your representatives and senators in the U.S. Congress to make sure they understand the need to ensure that the EPA and other agencies have adequate funding to research and eliminate chemicals that threaten our families’ well-being.

Send To:

Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1101A, USEPA Headquarters
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

e-mail: whitman.christine@epamail.epa.gov

Sample Letter:

Dear Administrator Whitman:

Under the Food Quality Protection Act, the EPA has responsibility for reviewing all pesticides to ensure that children are protected from harmful exposure. While the EPA has made encouraging progress on organophosphates, such as with the phase-out of Dursban and Diazinon, there is still much more work to do.

There is a close cousin to organophosphates, the carbamates, which have at least one common mechanism of action on the body. Carbamate residues are frequently detected on foods commonly eaten by children, making them one of the pesticide groups that create the most dietary risk for kids. Under the rules of the FQPA, that means such pesticides should be a top priority for your agency.

Carbamates, like organophosphates, are toxic to the nervous systems of developing kids. We urge you to act now to protect children by immediately considering the cumulative and aggregate risks of carbamates and organophosphates, finalizing the process and procedures for assessing such cumulative risks, and phasing out the use of these dangerous chemicals soon.

Sincerely,