Written by Steve Savage
The pesticides that farmers use to protect their crops have changed a great deal over the last few decades. While improvement is something we expect from technologies as diverse as pharmaceuticals, electronics or plant breeding, few people are aware of the positive developments in the chemicals used for crop protection. I find that many plant molecular biologists and other defenders of biotechnology have a similarly out-dated view of pesticides.
Dramatic change began with the establishment of the EPA in 1970 which led to the elimination of many problematic, old pesticides. Also, there has been a steady stream of new product introductions with both safety and efficacy advantages.
To document how pesticides have changed, I decided to download historical information for one of my favorite crops – premium wine grapes. California has had mandatory pesticide use-reporting in place since 1990. The resulting data can provide a window on at least 22 years of this evolution. I chose 5 counties that would represent much of the premium acreage in both the North Coast (Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino – 121,700 acres in 2011) and the Central Coast (Monterey, Santa Barbara – 62,288 acres in 2011).
Grapes have a wide range of pests, including several kinds of insects, mites, nematodes, fungal diseases, and viruses, the vectors of which require control. Weeds are also an issue. Because traditional varieties are highly valued, conventional plant breeding is not an alternative to get around these pest problems. As with other crops, the management of these pests involves much more than just pesticides. Even so, pesticides will always be necessary tools. Pest control in grapes is important for both yield and quality, and in some cases for the long-term survival of plantings that are very expensive to establish. As with other crops, control of grape pests also preserves efficient use of other resources such as uniquely suitable land and scarce water, as well as expensive nutrients, fuel and labor.
Fortunately, for reasons I will describe in a subsequent post, the pesticides available to farmers today are both effective and relatively safe – much safer than what they were a few decades ago, and much safer than most people imagine.
The Overall Use-Trend
As you can see in the graph above, overall, pesticide use on grapes (in terms of pounds of active ingredient) has been declining since 1995. The numbers; however, are rather large compared to other crops – 40 to 100 pounds of active ingredient per acre per year (The recent controversy about pesticide use on Maize nurseries in Kauai was over a 1.9 lb/acre/year use pattern). There is one simple reason that these numbers are so large – sulfur.
There is a fungal disease called Grape Powdery Mildew which infects even under California’s dry summer conditions. Elemental sulfur, applied either as a dust or as a wettable spray, has been the mainstay for control of that disease for centuries. As you can see in the graph above, sulfur accounts for most of the very high pesticide load, particularly in the 90s. Sulfur is considered a “natural product” and is thus approved for organic. In fact it is almost all that an organic grower can use for this disease. It has to be applied frequently and at very high rates. Sulfur is considered relatively safe, but it is a skin and eye irritant which is problematic for vineyard workers. I’ve spent lots of time working in vineyards and the sulfur makes that unpleasant. The tendency of the dust to drift is annoying for neighbors of vineyards.
Notice that after 2000, the amount of “other foliar applied” pesticide increases. Much of this represents modern options for mildew control that have allowed growers to dramatically reduce their overall use of sulfur.
The Non-Sulfur Trends
The EPA classifies pesticides into four categories based on their toxicity (see an explanation of how this is measured at the end of the post). Their acute oral toxicity is a major part of that classification:
- Category I, “highly toxic” materials, Oral ALD50 less than 50 mg/kg
- Category II, “moderately toxic” materials, Oral ALD50 50 to 500 mg/kg
- Category III, “slightly toxic” materials, Oral ALD50 500 to 5000 mg/kg
- Category IV, “practically non-toxic” materials, Oral ALD50 greater than 5000 mg/kg
What About Most People’s Image of Pesticides?
When most people hear “pesticide” their mental image is something like the old, highly toxic, organophosphate (OP) insecticides. The graph above looks specifically at what percent of all the pesticide applications (sprays, not pounds) were made with these sorts of products. Note that the classic, Category I OPs were never more than 6% of the sprays and have been under 1% for the last 10 years of data. Even the moderately toxic category II OPs have never represented much of the total spray load. In the last few years they have declined to an all time low. These products make up an even smaller fraction of the total pounds of pesticides applied (under one percent for all 22 years). Thus, what most people imagine when they hear “pesticide” is actually a very rare type of product in terms of actual use.
The Changing Product Mix Used on Grapes By EPA Category
The graph above tracks the proportion of non-sulfur pesticides used on these grapes by EPA category. Even when all the Category I pesticides are included, they have never made up more than a tiny percentage of what is sprayed on grapes. If we had data like this going back to the 60s or 70s there might have been more – but highly toxic products have not been used much in this or most other crops for a long time.
Category II pesticides were a reasonably good part of the mix until recently. The EPA calls these “Moderately Toxic.” That may sound scary, but many familiar food and beverage chemicals fall into this toxicity range including capsaicin in hot peppers (140mg/kg) and caffeine in coffee (161mg/kg). Several products used on organic grapes also fall into this category. Even so, this has been a declining category over time.
The EPA category III products are called “slightly toxic.” Very familiar natural products like citric acid, acetic acid, vanillin or even table salt fall in this range. There has been some increase in the use of products in this category.
The category IV products are classified as “practically non-toxic” and this has been the area of most rapid growth since the mid 1990s. Many of the products that have displaced sulfur use fall into this category. Many of the products that have replaced the old OPs fall into this category. These relatively benign materials are really the face of modern pesticides – not what most people imagine.
The category II, III and IV products include a mix of synthetic products and natural products which could qualify for organic. The total area of organic grapes is small, but in this and other crops there is a substantial overlap between the pesticides used in conventional and organic.
Another Way To Look At The Data
The EPA categories are rather broad, so another way to look at this is to “weight” the amounts based on their relative oral toxicity. In the graph to the right I have taken the foliar, non-sulfur numbers and multiplied them all by the value 500/Oral ALD50. 500mg/kg is the dividing line between “slightly” and “moderately” toxic in the EPA categories. Thus a product with a toxicity of 4000 mg/kg is counted as 1/8th of its weight in pounds. A product with a toxicity of 40mg/kg is counted as 12.5 times its weight in pounds.
From this approach we see that even though almost three times as many pounds of foliar applied, non-sulfur pesticides are being used on grapes in recent years, there has really been no increase in the overall “toxic load” involved.
In the 22 years covered by this data set, there have been some dramatic changes in the nature of pesticides used. The crop and product in this case may be quite special (and delicious), but the trend is not unique to wine grapes. We would see a similar change in most crops. This sort of change didn’t happen by accident. It represents a great deal of work by a diverse collection of players in the public and private sphere. I’ll go into that in detail in the next post in this series.
You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com
All graphs are mine and based on CalPIP data correlated with acreage data from California County Ag Commissioners Reports
Primer on the Measurement of Acute Toxicity
There are many dimensions of toxicity, but the most basic is how toxic something is when consumed. This is what would be of concern for pesticide residues. This is called Acute Oral Toxicity and it is determined by feeding different amounts of a chemical to a population of rats or mice. The dose relative to the animal’s body weight that kills 50% of the subjects getting that dose is called the LD50. It is expressed as milligrams of chemical per kilogram of body weight. For these numbers the larger the value, the less toxic the compound. For reference, table salt has an oral ALD50 of 3,000 mg/kg. For a 120 pound (54 kg) person that would mean a toxic dose of 163 grams which is about 1/4 of a normal, 1 pound canister of salt. For that same person, the toxic dose of caffeine (oral ALD50 191 mg/kg) would be 10.4 grams – what one would get from 32 servings of nice coffee at Starbucks. In both cases, the salt or coffee would need to be consumed very quickly to achieve that dose. Some of the most toxic insecticides ever used had oral ALD50s in the range of 5-10 mg/kg. Most pesticides today have oral ALD50s of more than 5,000 mg/kg (Category IV) and are less toxic than table salt, vinegar, citric acid, vanillin and many other familiar food ingredients.
Written by Guest Expert
Steve Savage has worked with various aspects of agricultural technology for more than 35 years. He has a PhD in plant pathology and his varied career included Colorado State University, DuPont, and the bio-control start-up, Mycogen. He is an independent consultant working with a wide variety of clients on topics including biological control, biotechnology, crop protection chemicals, and more. Steve writes and speaks on food and agriculture topics (Applied Mythology blog) and does a bi-weekly podcast called POPAgriculture for the CropLife Foundation.
Great information. Thank you
I have a few questions I hope you can answer:
1. Is there data from PUR that shows what is foliar versus soil applied? I have not seen this type of analysis from County Ag Commissioners county data. Are you inferring which is which from working as a PCA?
2. I am unclear as to how you are weighting toxicity by pound. Are you using data from the IPM PRIME group? Toxicity can’t really be correlated by pound, can it?
3. While it’s true that OPs are less used than they once were, they are still significant in wine grapes in many California counties.
4. Are you using pre plant fumigation chemicals in your analysis?
Thanks much.
Pam,
No, PUR does not tell whether it is foliar or soil-applied. I just looked at the products in question and made an educated guess. This is why I chose to do it with grapes because I have more direct experience with that crop as a researcher – not a CPA. I’m open to showing folks my classification to see if they agree.
I’m familiar with the PRiME group and generally like their approach, but what I did here was to take the Oral ALD50 from the MSDS for each product. Those are not perfectly uniform (e.g. male vs female, rat vs mouse…). I used the more conservative value when there were differences. So toxicity is only proportional to pounds if you correct for the vast differences in intrinsic toxicity. That is what I did.
As for OPs, the ones that are still being used are the moderately toxic examples like chlorpyrifos – not the old, highly toxic ones like parathion. Perhaps someday soon no one will need any of those.
I focused on the foliar, non-sulfur chemicals because that was a good way to look at the change over time. There was a period of massive replanting after Phylloxera overcame the AXR1 rootstock. There was a good bit of fumigation for that, but my goal was to look at trends that were about what happened with the available chemicals for the range of pest issues that have been more of a constant for the industry over time. Also, the fumigants are certainly not a residue issue on the harvested grapes in the same way that the foliar sprays could be.
I hope that helps. You can also email me if you need more info savage.sd@gmail.com
In your article “Pesticides: Probably Less Scary Than You Imagine”. Based on LD50 values for acute oral toxicity you make the following statement: “97% of pesticides used in California, for instance, are less toxic than caffeine or aspirin.” http://appliedmythology.blogspot.com/2012/09/pesticides-probably-less-scary-than-you.html
It sounds logical until you actually break the numbers down into facts:
Pure caffeine has an LD50 of 127mg/kg. So a 100 kg person would have to ingest 12.7 grams of pure caffeine for acute toxicity. An average cup of brewed coffee contains about 150 mg of caffeine per cup. In order to get to acute toxic levels a person would have to drink about 85 cups of coffee in one go!
Pure aspirin has an LD50 of 200 mg/kg. So a 100 kg person would have to ingest 20 grams of pure aspirin for acute toxicity. An average aspirin tablet contains between 75-81 mg of aspirin. In order to get to acute toxic levels a person would have to drink about 247-267 aspirin tablets in one go!
Pure glyphosate has an LD50 of 5000 mg/kg. So a 100 kg person would have to ingest 500 grams of pure glyphosate for acute toxicity. The average commercial formulation of glyphosate contains about 360 grams/L of glyphosate. In order to get to acute toxic levels a person would have to drink about 1.4 L of glyphosate formulation.
Makes sense right! Well not quite because in a study by Roberts et al (2010) they found that ingesting just 200 mL of glyphosate formulation (containing about 72 grams of glyphosate) – was in their own words “fatal” (resulting in death) (Monsanto participated in the Roberts study). They also found that 19 grams of glyphosate resulted in “moderate to severe effects (“Poisoning requiring intervention, for example, hypotension, respiratory failure requiring intubation, ventricular dysrhythmias or cardiac arrest, marked sedation or coma, seizures, or oliguria”). http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/15563650903476491
So this means that:
1. The real LD50 of glyphosate is actually lower than that reported.
2. If glyphosate has a fatal effect at one order of magnitude below the reported LD50, what effect is it having at lower doses that appear to be absorbed by the body?
You state: “To reiterate, pesticide use or its increase are not automatically undesirable things.” Really? It seems as if you are an industry apologist!
David,
The difference here is that the cup of coffee is designed to be consumed as is. No one would normally be drinking formulated glyphosate – it is intended first for dilution and then by the time anyone would be consuming the crops the residue levels are very low – with a safety margin far greater than for the cup of coffee. The toxicity of any material has to be put into the context of actual exposure. That is the fundamental difference between hazard and risk. Electricity is extremely hazardous, but we take steps to avoid exposure, so the risk is small. Also, I don’t mind being an “apologist” in the classic meaning of that word – someone who makes the reasoned case for something.
Formulated glyphosate also contains surfactants (basically detergents), which is what causes the toxic effects when ingested. If you dissolve pure glyphosate in water, you will get the stated LD50 value.
David, as others have said, there is a difference between the toxicity of the active ingredient glyphosate and the formulated products. This is due to the addition of a surfactant (detergent) to the formulated herbicide. Imagine the consequences of drinking 200 mL of dish washing detergent.
The only way anyone will be exposed to potentially toxic amount of the surfactant in the formulated product is to drink it. The surfactant stays on the outside of leaves when the product is sprayed and so none will get into your diet.
If you want to evaluate whether pesticide use is undesirable, you need to compare it with the alternatives. In such a case, an increase in pesticide use (on a poundage basis) may be significantly better than the alternatives.
“Formulated glyphosate also contains surfactants (basically detergents), which is what causes the toxic effects when ingested. If you dissolve pure glyphosate in water, you will get the stated LD50 value”.
I agree – but that is exactly the problem! The adjuvants used in glyphosate formulations are used to improve the uptake of glyphosate into the cell – so its tox profile in the formulation will be different compared to pure glyphosate. Basically, without the adjuvants glyphosate is not readily taken up by the cell at all – which may explain why studies on the safety of pure glyphosate show no adverse effects while studies using formulation do!
Sorry David, but you don’t really understand how this works. The surfactants are actually in the product to ensure the spray droplets stay on the leaf of the plant rather than bouncing off. They also help the droplets to spread across the surface of the plant leaf and aid in the absorption of the active ingredient through the waxy cuticle on the surface of the plant leaf. They don’t influence uptake into cells, because they never get near cells. Glyphosate is taken up by plant cells through a transporter in the cell membrane.