Cancellation of Last Agricultural Registrations for DDT Use

On April 16, 1973, the EPA Administrator adopted two recommended decisions by his Chief Administrative Law Judge which cancelled the last remaining registrations of DDT for domestic agricultural use. He also denied a request for a new registration for use on stored sweet potatoes.The two recommended decisions and the Administrator's orders adopting them bring to an end an important phase of the long-standing effort to bring about effective federal administrative control of pesticides.¹

Most domestic agricultural uses of DDT pesticide were ended by an EPA order which was issued on June 14, 1972, after lengthy cancellation hearings, and which became effective January 1, 1973. This order is now being challenged as unwarranted by the DDT industry in a suit pending in the District of Columbia Circuit, while environmentalists argue that the order is insufficient in that it does not ban all (including nonagricultural) domestic DDT uses.²

EPA's recent action is the culmination of the extended controversy over agricultural DDT pesticide use and its effects on the environment. DDT was one of the first widely used agricultural chemical agents whose nonbiodegradable nature eventually caused manifold environmental damage. But the route from recognition of DDT's potential for environmental damage to the cancellation of all agricultural uses has been long and arduous. DDT use in recent years had declined sharply as alternative pesticides became available but even with the ban on agricultural uses, contamination of the environment continued through nonagricultural applications.

EPA holds firm on agricultural ban: Tussock Moth decision

In a more recent development, EPA held firm to the ban on agricultural use by denying (April 20, 1973) a request from the Department of Agriculture to use DDT to control a Tussock Moth infestation in the Douglas fir forests of Oregon and Washington.³ The EPA Administrator judged that the benefits of possible reduced lumber loss did not outweigh risks of environmental harm in the form of contamination of watersheds and high DDT residue levels in animals. It was generally agreed by all interested parties that the Tussock Moth population will collapse later this year as part of its normal three-year cycle, and EPA noted that the worst damage estimates were for the loss of only one-tenth of one percent of the nation's total fir reserves.

Use of DDT to protect the tree crop in a forest is considered an agricultural use and thus falls under the ban imposed by the June 14, 1972 order. Apparently a cost/benefit approach was relied on in this instance to determine whether an exception to the ban should be made to deal with an emergency. If so, a pattern could be set for dealing with future requests for temporary or emergency DDT agricultural use registrations. Informal cost/benefit determinations might ultimately lead to increased DDT use. To prevent this eventuality, a rigorous and carefully applied cost/benefit analysis which adequately considers and values the diverse environmental harms involved may have to be developed by EPA. Such an approach would appear to be the only acceptable method for deciding on other emergency requests for exceptions in the absence of a complete and inflexible ban on DDT's use in agriculture.

1. The recommended decisions and orders are available from the ELI Digest Facsimile Service (ELR Dig. [1-A] 59 pp. $5.90)

2. Coahoma Chemical Co. v. Ruckelshaus, No. 2142 (D.C. Cir., filed Nov. 30, 1972).

3. EPA's letter to the department of Agriculture is available from the ELI Digest Facsimile Service (ELR Dig. [2-A] 2 pp. $0.20).