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EPA to end use of Lindane! Click HERE!

Online Medical Survey at AKValley.org
Click Here to Open Allegheny-Kiski Valley Survey

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Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)

See PANUPS updates service, for complete information.

EPA Revises Views on Dangerous Pesticide Lindane
April 4, 2006

When an Alaskan Inuit mother prepares dinner she worries that the salmon, halibut and muktuk (whale meat) that her family will share might be contaminated by the dangerous pesticide lindane. She's not the only one who should be concerned. More than half of us living in the U.S. have lindane or its by-products in our bodies from eating lindane-contaminated food or using lindane lice shampoo. Chances are that you have lindane or its by-products in your body. This is even more likely if you are a woman, an agricultural worker or live in northern latitudes like Alaska. Your children could also be contaminated with lindane.

Policy makers got a taste of the concerns of Arctic Indigenous people and other U.S. folk when environmental activists served a "Lindane Lunch" to them last year in San Diego. On the menu were wheat bread, chocolate chip cookies, mixed nuts, pickles, salmon, halibut and whale meat. Human breastmilk, a precious substance known to be contaminated by lindane around the world, was on display. Colorful cocktail napkins with "Five Reasons to Ban Lindane" reminded the policymakers that lindane is one of the most toxic and persistent pesticides used in North America today.

Lindane is used in the U.S. as a seed treatment for wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley and sorghum. Its pharmaceutical uses include shampoos and lotions for lice and scabies treatment. Lindane and its by-products (isomers of the parent chemical hexachlorocyclohexane, or "HCH") are suspected carcinogens and hormone disruptors. A suspected neurotoxin, lindane can cause seizures and damage to the nervous system, and can weaken the immune system. Research has shown a significant association between brain tumors in children and the use of lindane-containing lice shampoos.

High concentrations of lindane and HCH isomers in the bodies of U.S. women of childbearing age put future generations at risk.  Infants can be exposed to lindane and its by-products through human breastmilk and lindane is passed onto fetuses through the placenta. Incidents of fatal poisoning by lindane illustrate its toxicity: in 2000, an eight year old girl died in the UK after accidentally eating less then a teaspoon of lindane ant powder. Agricultural workers who are exposed to lindane suffer acute symptoms like agitation, vomiting, abdominal pain, convulsions and violent seizures. Highly persistent in the environment, lindane and its by-products contaminate air, water and soil for months past lindane's use in agriculture. Air and ocean currents transport the toxic chemical far from where it was initially used as a pesticide.

In February 2006 U.S. EPA released a draft risk assessment of the agricultural uses of lindane for public comment. EPA's 2006 revised risk assessment is a significant improvement over the agency's flawed 2002 risk assessment, in which the agency restricted itself to health effects of only lindane, ignoring the dangerous by-products created by lindane production and use. In contrast, the EPA's current risk assessment considers health effects of all HCH isomers. "EPA is finally looking at the combined effects of lindane and its by-products," explains Kristin Schafer, Program Coordinator for PANNA.

EPA's new risk assessment also acknowledges and accepts the harmful affects of lindane and other HCH isomers on the health of indigenous Arctic populations in Alaska. Lindane is neither used nor produced in Arctic regions of Alaska or Canada, but is transported there through air and ocean currents. In 1997, the Northern Contaminants Program estimated 15 to 20 percent of Inuit (Eskimo) women on Canada's southern Baffin Island were exposed to dangerous levels of lindane in their daily diet. The 2006 assessment is significant also because unlike past risk assessments, EPA has considered endocrine disrupting effects of lindane and other HCH isomers among the ecological effects it has assessed. In addition, EPA's current risk assessment discounts as unviable and impractical pesticide industry's claims that waste from lindane production can be effectively converted into other "useful" chemicals . PANNA's Kristin Schafer adds, "We applaud this more realistic assessment, which makes the case for an immediate ban of this old pesticide even stronger."

Lindane is currently banned in 52 countries and the international community has shown strong support for restrictions on lindane. It is listed on the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC) list, which requires countries that are party to the treaty to notify importers of any exports of pesticides or other chemicals banned or severely restricted by the treaty in other countries. Lindane is being considered for a global ban through the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty. In North America, efforts to address the risks of lindane continue through the work of the NAFTA's Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC). Under the CEC's North American Regional Action Plan (NARAP) on Lindane and HCH isomers, in 2005 the government of Mexico agreed to phase-out all uses of lindane and the Canadian government agreed to promote safer alternatives to pharmaceutical uses of lindane. Agricultural uses of lindane were already banned in Canada. However, the U.S. government's inaction and industry influence have prevented an outright ban on lindane in the United States. "In developing the NARAP for lindane, it became clear that the U.S. was an obstacle to progress in the region," says Pam Miller, NGO representative to CEC's Lindane Task Force and Director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics.

EPA has requested public comment on its 2006 revised risk assessment by April 10th. EPA has solicited comments on lindane's cancer classification, specific health effects such as its effects on the liver, data on exposure of infants to lindane through breastmilk, the safety factor that should be considered for lindane and the pesticide's impacts on subsistence populations in the Arctic. Despite the progress made by EPA in its 2006 risk assessment, it has neglected to consider the cumulative effects of multiple routes of exposure to lindane by people and the environment. For example the agency does not consider the negative health effects for an average North American individual exposed to lindane from contaminated food, water and air simultaneously.  Lindane and its by-products are toxic to humans, animals and the environment. Viable alternatives exist for agricultural as well as pharmaceutical uses of this unnecessary chemical. The U.S. government must join Mexico and Canada in protecting North American populations and the environment from this dirty pesticide. EPA's 2006 revised risk assessment is a step in the right direction towards ultimately banning all agricultural uses of lindane in the United States. Join us in urging EPA to BAN LINDANE NOW!

Resources:
Ban Lindane Now! Campaign
http://panna.org/campaigns/lindane.html

U.S. POPs watch
www.uspopswatch.org
Contact: PANNA

 

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Date:20/11/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/11/20/stories/2005112007451000.htm

Moves on to ban use of lindane

It could be listed as Persistent Organic Pollutants under Stockholm Convention

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Lindane widely used in India has adverse impact on health, environment

"India does not have reliable facilities to test harmful chemicals"

Workshop to discuss safer alternatives

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NEW DELHI: With the last Conference of Parties under the Stockholm Convention proposing to include lindane, a highly toxic chemical, in the list of 12 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), its use could be banned in the next two to three years. The POP Review Committee is studying this pesticide along with four other chemicals recommended to be included in the POP list. Lindane is widely produced and used in India and has been proved to have an adverse impact on the health and environment.

The proposal for listing lindane under POP was mooted by Mexico at the Uruguay Conference of Parties held in Uruguay in May 2005. The review committee will study the profile of the chemical, its harmful effects and its presence in the human body, following which the social and economic cost of the elimination of the chemical and its possible alternatives would be looked into. "This process will take about three years but then countries can take exemption on various grounds like India has done for the use of DDT, used for malaria prevention," Ravi Agarwal of Toxics Links, a non-governmental organisation working in the field of environment, said.

Meanwhile, hot on the heels of India deciding to ratify the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Stockholm Convention, which aims to reduce and eliminate 12 of the most toxic chemicals known to man, civil society groups from five South Asian countries have gathered here to identify actions urgently needed to protect human health and environment from the adverse effects of POP.

Of immediate concern are chemicals such as DDT, widely used for malaria control, and dioxins and furans — unintended by-products of industrial processes and medical and municipal wastes, Mr. Agarwal said. Such chemicals enter the human body through the food chain, and transmit from generation-to-generation, causing severe health problems such as endocrine disruption, reproductive disorders and cancer. Often referred to as the `dirty dozen,' POPs include DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, chlordane, heptachlor, mirex, toxaphene, hexachlorobenzene, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins and furans.

"India or the region does not even have any reliable facilities to monitor or measure them. There is little data on stockpiles of such chemicals, despite studies showing environmental and food chain contamination in many places," he said. Indians have the highest levels of DDT in their bodies in the world. Data shows that POPs' widespread use for the past 100 years have led to serious environmental damage.

Recognising the existing gap, the workshop seeks to increase levels of awareness, understanding, and knowledge among various stakeholders, especially public interest organisations, concerning the status of POPs and their impact besides discussing sustainable and safer alternatives.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

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Commission to test first-time mothers´ blood for environmental chemicals
 
Oct. 12, 2005 -- The Commission for Environmental Cooperation will conduct a North America-wide testing program to analyze the blood of first-time mothers for selected environmental chemicals.

Blood samples from 500 mothers will be tested for chemicals including dioxins and furans, PCBs, DDT, chlordane and lindane, as well as several toxic metals.

Sampling will take place in 15 sites in Canada and Mexico, and the United States will submit pre-existing data.

"The project will allow, for the first time, a basic comparison of the population of all three North American countries using data that were collected in a scientifically consistent manner," said Luke Trip, program manager for the CEC.

Persistent organic pollutants can adversely affect the kidneys, liver and other organs.

Courtesy of Wastenews.com

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Association of Pesticide Exposure
With Neurological Dysfunction and Disease
Click link above for full report

Freya Kamel and Jane A. Hoppin,
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
National Institutes of Health

Abstract and Introduction

Abstract

Poisoning by acute high-level exposure to certain pesticides has well-known neurotoxic effects, but whether chronic exposure to moderate levels of pesticides is also neurotoxic is more controversial. Most studies of moderate pesticide exposure have found increased prevalence of neurologic symptoms and changes in neurobehavioral performance, reflecting cognitive and psychomotor dysfunction. There is less evidence that moderate exposure is related to deficits in sensory or motor function or peripheral nerve conduction, but fewer studies have considered these outcomes. It is possible that the most sensitive manifestation of pesticide neurotoxicity is a general malaise lacking in specificity and related to mild cognitive dysfunction, similar to that described for Gulf War syndrome. Most studies have focused on organophosphate insecticides, but some found neurotoxic effects from other pesticides, including fungicides, fumigants, and organochlorine and carbamate insecticides. Pesticide exposure may also be associated with increased risk of Parkinson disease; several classes of pesticides, including insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, have been implicated. Studies of other neurodegenerative diseases are limited and inconclusive. Future studies will need to improve assessment of pesticide exposure in individuals and consider the role of genetic susceptibility. More studies of pesticides other than organophosphates are needed. Major unresolved issues include the relative importance of acute and chronic exposure, the effect of moderate exposure in the absence of poisoning, and the relationship of pesticide-related neurotoxicity to neurodegenerative disease.

Click for entire report

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02/09/04 - New York Follows California to Ban Prescription Pesticide Lindane for Lice and Scabies
www.emiediawire.com -

Bill A008628 proposes to amend the public health law to ban the sale, use, and prescription of any product containing the substance commonly known as lindane. Filed for the state of New York, the Bill is written to prohibit any product used for the treatment of lice or scabies in humans from containing the pesticide.

09/10/03 - Head Lice Treatments Can Be Toxic
Parents Should Consult Doctor Before Treating Child's Lice
www.newsnet5.com -

Lice are a common problem in schools, but parents shouldn't trust just any head lice treatment.

03/29/03 - FDA Warns of Dangerous Lice Drug
AP - LAURAN NEERGAARD

Using too much Lindane to treat lice infestations can cause deadly brain or nerve damage, federal health officials warned Friday, urging strict limits on its use.

03/28/03 - FDA Issues Health Advisory Regarding Labeling Changes for Lindane Products
www.fda.org -

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a Public Health Advisory concerning the use of topical formulations of Lindane Lotion and Lindane Shampoo for the treatment of scabies and lice. The advisory announces significant updates to the labeling of these products. These labeling changes include additional warnings and the addition of a Medication Guide to be distributed directly to patients.

03/28/03 - FDA Places New Warnings on Scabies, Lice Therapies
Reuters -

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) announced on Friday the addition of significant new warnings on topical formulations of two products commonly used to treat scabies and lice in school-age children.

03/28/03 - New Warnings Added To Lice Treatments In U.S.
Reuters - Lisa Richwine

New warnings will appear with prescription topical lice treatments containing the ingredient lindane to highlight risks of seizures or death, U.S. health officials said Friday.

ATSDR Strategic Plan Findings Registration Eligibility Decision (RED) for Lindane Case 315

(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Court: Patients must get warning
The Oregon high court says pharmacists must tell patients of side effects.
Staff, news services

August 16, 2002

PORTLAND — Pharmacists are responsible for making sure patients are warned about the potential side effects of drugs even when a doctor does not include it in his prescription, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The case, however, dates from 1993 and the decision merely reflects the current standard of practice, officials say.

“The standard of practice has changed an awful lot since the time of the incident that started this whole case,” said Tom Holt, executive director of the Oregon State Pharmacists Association.

Pharmacists now routinely counsel patients about prescription drugs, both orally and with written instructions, to make sure warnings are clear, Holt said.

“Pharmacists have always assumed they have that kind of responsibility but they haven’t been held to that standard by the courts until fairly recently,” added Gary Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon State Board of Pharmacy, the regulatory agency that licenses pharmacists.

Doctors increasingly have relied on pharmacists to give detailed instructions for routine prescriptions, Schnabel said.

Some physicians have even moved to electronic prescription forms that can be typed or even selected with the click of a computer mouse, sometimes leading to click errors that route the wrong drugs to a patient unless a pharmacist spots the error.

The state Supreme Court ruling just adds “another reason for pharmacists to be doing a doublecheck,” Schnabel said.

Pharmacist Nancy Gray, who owns the Dallas Pill Box, said the ruling won’t affect her business practices much because she already offers her customers verbal counseling, which includes information about the common side effects.

For those who refuse it, she’ll still give them a brief reminder.

“Most agree to counseling when offered it,” Gray said. “The only time they don’t is when they’re transferring from another pharmacy or had the drug in the past. It may be a new prescription to me, but it’s not new to them.”

The ruling overturned the lower courts, which ruled that pharmacist William Stout was not responsible because he was only following a doctor’s instructions when he filled a prescription for a skin lotion called Lindane.

The prescription directed the pharmacist to type “As directed” on the label, and Stout added it to a bottle that also had the generic warning labels “For external use only” and “Shake well.”

But Patricia Griffith, who filed the lawsuit, said she later suffered toxic side effects, including convulsions, dizziness, weight loss, hair loss and lack of sleep because she was not warned that Lindane lotion should be applied no more than twice a day and should be washed off within 12 hours of any application.

Griffith sued Stout, her physician, Dr. Philip Blatt and Rugby Laboratories Inc., the manufacturer of Lindane.

The Supreme Court ruled that Stout could not rely on a legal doctrine called the “learned intermediary” rule that holds doctors responsible for passing along warnings about side effects from the drug manufacturer.

The court ruled that pharmacists also bear responsibility under Oregon product liability laws that say “a seller of a drug may be required to give an adequate warning of the product’s danger.”

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that rejected the claim against Rugby Laboratories because it was not filed before a two-year deadline.

Copyright 2002 Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon

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Albanians cling to their poisoned land More joining thousands who set up home on chemical site Marlise Simons in Durres Monday July 29, 2002 The Guardian Five years ago Flutorime Jani and her extended family settled in the grounds of an abandoned chemical plant in Albania. Fleeing the barren lawless mountains, they found a spot a few miles from Durres, the main Albanian port. At first they thought they were lucky. "The land was free," she said. The men took bricks from the old buildings to make shacks. Word spread, and today the plant is a shanty town with more than 3,000 inhabitants. But its people are being poisoned. Last year, the UN Environment Programme designated this site of the former Porto Romano chemical plant an environmental disaster area which posed "grave risks to human health, groundwater and the marine habitat". The report said the area should be closed, the settlers removed, and the health of the 10,000 people living on the fringes of the plant monitored. Until 1990 the factory made a range of hazardous chemicals, including chromium-6, which is used in leather tanning, and lindane, a pesticide which many countries ban. Mrs Jani is among those who complain of stomach aches and nausea. "The pains come often, like the clouds," she said. The government's only reaction to the UNEP report was to build a wall across the access road. The residents pulled it down, and new settlers keep coming. "We have no money to fence it off," the mayor of Durres Miri Hoti, said. "These people come here voluntarily, though it's banned. There is no other housing." About 400 tonnes of chemicals - chromium salt, methanol, lindane, methylamine - are still stored on the 300-hectare (750-acre) site, leaking from corroded barrels and spilling from torn bags. The smell of lindane fills the air. Some residents have vegetable patches. Cows and goats rummage among the rusting vats. Children play on the contaminated grounds and roll in the dust. New homes are going up along the plant's open dump site, which holds 20,000 tonnes of hazardous waste. The crisis here is the result of the anarchy that began a decade ago with the end of the communist regime. It was compounded when vast pyramid investment schemes collapsed in 1997, ruining countless Albanians. The Janis, from the mountains near Macedonia, were among the losers. Mrs Jani, looking worn at 53, said the vegetables she grows here and the milk from her cow taste different. On hot days she has to leave her house because of the overwhelming vapours coming off the walls, which were once part of the lindane warehouse. "Where do we go?" she asked. "The authorities are doing nothing for us." Lushi Bajrami, 33, a supermarket worker and one of the first settlers, said he had developed kidney and lung problems. The first time he heard of the danger was when UN investigators arrived. Samples taken by the experts help explain why things here taste different. Milk from Mrs Jani's cow contained 100 times the EU safety level of lindane. Vegetables had lindane concentrations more than 600 times what the Dutch would consider hazardous waste. Long term exposure to the chemical can lead to lung, liver and kidney damage. Visiting the site, Besnik Baraj, a chemistry professor at the University of Tirana, compared the toxic residues to a huge and lethal inkblot spreading into groundwater, people's bodies, and the plants and animals they eat. The residues seep into the bay, he said, where children swim. Fishermen haul up fish and crabs that are eaten in Durres and Tirana, the capital. Lorries come and cart away soil to build roads and houses. Tatjana Hema, an official at the environment ministry, said that by some estimates it would take $10m to make the area secure and provide storage for its waste and that from a plant near Vlore, where mercury is seeping away. "We know it's a public health hazard, but settlers here and in Vlore don't believe our warnings," Ms Hema said. "They think it's just a ploy to get them off the land." -New York Times

Refugees 'will get cancer' in waste tip homes

Paul Brown in Durres
The Guardian

Saturday June 8, 2002

Thousand of refugees living on a chemical waste dump outside the main Albanian port, Durres, are condemned to liver disease and cancer by the chromium VI on the tip, a visiting expert said yesterday.

Many thousands more are in danger from eating fish from the Adriatic contaminated with lindane, another carcinogen, washed from the site.

The Albanian government was warned a year ago when the UN Environment Program identified the dump as the worst environment hot-spot in the Balkans, but yesterday President Rexhep Meidani said he had no money to deal with it.

He spoke after an international group of 250 scientists, religious leaders and politicians visited Durres for a symposium on the pollution problems of the Adriatic, sponsored by the EU and the Eastern Orthodox Archbishop of Constantinople, Patriarch Bartholomew, who is taking part.

At the Durres dump experts were visibly shocked by the extent of the contamination.

They included Besnik Baraj, an Albanian chemistry professor, head of department at the University of Tirana, and expert on chromium VI and its effects, who was visiting the site for the first time.

"These children are bound to have kidney failure and liver cancer. It will take years, but it will come to all the people living here," he said.

"When the samples come into the lab we have to dilute them with water to measure them on the machines, because our calibrations do not go high enough.

"So I knew it was bad, but it hurts me to see this. The children are innocent of what is happening to them.

"If they wash in this water the chemicals will be absorbed through the skin, if they eat a fallen apple they will be in mortal danger."

Children played around the dump yesterday. Three thousand people live in the contaminated area, and 10,000 use the water supply.

"This stuff is absorbed through the skin. In the lab we would always wear gloves to handle samples, but to see children here is frightening," Prof Baraj said.

The chromium VI could easily be neutralized by treatment with iron, he added. "We could probably cure the dump with £700,000. It seems so little."

A yellow stain, the sure sign of chromium VI, spreads across the valley, where local wells are sunk to draw water for drinking and washing.

There are 20,000 tonnes of potentially dangerous chemicals on the site, including thousands of tons of lindane, a banned carcinogenic pesticide, from a store at a disused factory. The chemicals were dumped near the shore and families converted the store into homes.

The groundwater, the local river and fish from a wide area of the Adriatic, sold in large quantities in the capital Tirana, are heavily contaminated with lindane There are no consumer warnings.

Saboli Lame, who lives on the site with his wife and two small children, said: "We have been told it is dangerous, but we have nowhere else to go."

The mayor of Durres, Miri Hoti, said he hoped to sell 23 hectares of the site to foreign investors for an oil refinery. The money could be used to clean up the rest of the tip.

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Increased pesticides in food Felicity Lawrence The Guardian Friday December 14, 2001 Kiwi fruit, lemons, milk and cereal bars from the big supermarkets tested by the government show an increase in pesticide residues, according to data released yesterday. All lemons tested contained residues, and 90% had residues of more than one pesticide. The worst example contained traces of nine pesticides. Residues included nerve poisoning organophosphates. Sixty three per cent of kiwi fruit tested contained residues, and nearly half contained vinclozolin which has been linked with reduced sperm counts. Milk was found with residues of lindane, a pesticide which is to be banned across the EU in 2002. It is suspected of disrupting hormones and has been linked with cancer. Cereal bars were tested because they are so popular with children whose immature systems are thought to be particularly vulnerable to pesticide residues. Sixty four per cent contained residues, and 13% of these showed multiple residues, including the presence of an organophosphate. The figures, released by the pesticide residues committee, show "there is an urgent need to address the problem of multiple residues".   Older News 10/2001 and older Page II