Scholars argue that regulators have failed to protect child health under pesticide control law.
Over sixty years ago, environmental activist Rachel Carson called pesticides used on food crops “elixirs of death.” Experts have linked exposure to pesticides to severe health conditions, including cancer and diabetes, and have warned that children are especially vulnerable to these consequences.
The U.S. Congress sought to protect children from pesticides by enacting the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), which directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit children’s exposure to pesticides found in foods.
In a recent article, Valerie Watnick and Sarah Beaumont argue that EPA has failed to safeguard children’s health in enforcing the FQPA. Watnick and Beaumont propose reforms that the agency can adopt to protect children.
Under the FQPA, EPA must establish a “tolerance,” or a maximum permissible level of pesticide residue on a food, before authorizing a manufacturer to register a pesticide for food use. EPA must set the tolerance to establish “reasonable certainty” that consumers will not be harmed. EPA must also perform periodic review of past tolerance decisions and update tolerance levels to align with current research. If EPA determines that data about the child health risks of exposure to a particular pesticide are incomplete or indicate potential harm to youth, the FQPA requires the agency to apply a tenfold child safety factor, decreasing allowable pesticide residues by 90 percent. EPA, however, does not need to introduce the tenfold factor if the agency has reliable evidence that a smaller margin will keep children safe.
Despite these safeguards, Watnick and Beaumont claim that EPA rarely uses the tenfold safety factor. Through a review of over 700 tolerance decisions between 2006 and 2024, they find that EPA applied the tenfold safety factor only 15 percent of the time and often reduced the factor when it updated tolerance thresholds.
Watnick and Beaumont connect EPA’s leniency in part to strong judicial deference. They find that in most cases challenging EPA’s failure to apply the tenfold child safety factor, federal courts have upheld EPA’s technical judgments. Watnick and Beaumont argue, however, that since the U.S. Supreme Court recently eliminated Chevron deference, courts may no longer defer to EPA’s technical judgments on the application of a lower child safety factor.
Watnick and Beaumont also attribute EPA’s child safety decisions to its limited reliance on experts when setting pesticide limits. The authors emphasize that EPA has established expert bodies to integrate child-health researchers into regulatory decision-making. They claim, however, that EPA’s pesticide tracking system does not notify the expert bodies about tolerance decisions that result from registration petitions submitted by industry. As such, Watnick and Beaumont contend, EPA makes many tolerance decisions without crucial expert input.
Minimal transparency in tolerance decisions contributes to EPA’s scant application of the tenfold factor, Watnick and Beaumont argue. Although EPA publishes tolerance decisions online, Watnick and Beaumont maintain that the decisions can be difficult to find, written in inaccessible language, and lack clarity as to why the agency picked the child safety factor that it did. EPA has also failed to outline for the public a framework that it applies to tolerance setting decisions, Watnick and Beaumont claim. They argue that, without a clear picture of how EPA establishes pesticide tolerances, the public may lack the information needed to hold EPA accountable through litigation or advocacy.
To improve FQPA enforcement and protect children, Watnick and Beaumont propose three reforms to EPA’s tolerance-setting process.
They argue that EPA should establish routine consultation with internal child health experts on tolerance decisions. They suggest that to do so, EPA should update its tracking system to notify experts of all decisions related to child health or at least send experts upcoming tolerance decisions that involve the child safety factor. Regular notice about proposed child safety decisions would allow experts to weigh in on tolerance decisions, which Watnick and Beaumont explain may encourage EPA to apply the tenfold safety factor more frequently.
EPA should also broaden the scientific evidence that it reviews when making tolerance decisions, Watnick and Beaumont urge. They call on EPA to incorporate more independent toxicology studies into its tolerance decisions, which they claim are more objective than the industry-sponsored studies that the agency relies on today. Watnick and Beaumont also argue that EPA should review population studies that examine associations between human exposure to pesticides and health outcomes, in addition to the animal studies that the agency currently prioritizes.
Watnick and Beaumont further recommend that EPA provides the public with greater insight into how it makes tolerance decisions. The authors argue that EPA should release an overarching policy on tolerance decisions, which would provide the public with greater insight into the process EPA follows to set child safety factors. They also propose that EPA publish a running list of tolerance decisions in which the agency applied a child safety factor. With greater transparency about the tolerance setting process, the public will be better able to challenge EPA decisions in court and advocate stronger child health protections, Watnick and Beaumont maintain.
Watnick and Beaumont argue that now is the time for more protective regulatory action. They suggest that if EPA adopts their proposed reforms to FQPA enforcement, the agency will move closer to fulfilling Congress’s original vision to protect vulnerable children.
