We must get rid of pesticides in the food supply: exposure to these deadly chemicals can cause cancer, birth defects, and neurological damage.

• Author: Meyerhoff, Al

JOSE CAMPOS MARTINEZ never really had a chance. He had been wearing a "space suit"--goggles, gloves, boots, and a breathing apparatus. Yet, when working in the fields of California in 1991, exposure to a minute amount of the pesticide parathion brought nearly instantaneous paralysis. His brother put him in the back of a pickup truck and rushed him to the county fire station. However, Martinez went into convulsions and died on the way, leaving a widow and eight-month-old daughter.

Martinez's death is no aberration. The hazards of parathion, initially developed by the Nazis as a chemical warfare agent during World War II, repeatedly have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which found that "under the most stringent protected conditions, and during use when in accordance with label directions, little or no margin of safety exists." During the years that the EPA kept records, 560 people were reported poisoned by parathion; 461 were hospitalized and 99 died. Yet, typical of the failure of the Federal pesticide regulatory regime, this powerful neurotoxin remains on the market 50 years after it was developed.

Americans are told that pesticides are safe. So each year more than 2,000,000 pounds of these poisons are added to the environment. If put in 100-pound sacks and laid end to end, they would encircle the planet. Where do they go?

* The EPA estimates that one out of every 10 public drinking water wells in the U.S. contains pesticides, as well as more than 440,000 rural private wells. At a minimum, over 1,300,000 people drink water contaminated with one or more of these dangerous chemicals.

* Pesticides have been found in thousands of lakes, rivers, and waterways throughout the nation. Agriculture is the number-one source of surface water pollution in the U.S.

* According to the Food and Drug Administration's national market basket survey, at least 38% of the food supply contains pesticide residues. This probably underestimates the actual amount because routine laboratory tests can detect fewer than one-half of the pesticides applied to food. Many items sampled had more than one pesticide; some as many as 12.

* The bugs are winning. When Silent Spring was published in 1962, sounding the alarm about pesticides, 137 species of insects were resistant to these chemicals. Now, it is closer to 500 species.

In June, 1993, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its long-awaited report on the health hazards posed to infants and young children from exposure to pesticides in the food supply. The Academy stated that "[M] any pesticides are harmful to the environment and are known or suspected to be toxic to humans. They can produce a wide range of adverse effects on human health that include acute neurologic toxicity, cancer, reproductive dysfunction, and possible dysfunction of the immune and endocrine systems." It...