CHO's Submission with respect to Bill 64: Legislative Amendments to the Pesticides Act to ban the use and sale of pesticides for cosmetic purposes
June 8, 2008
About the Coalition for a Healthy Ottawa
The Coalition for a Healthy Ottawa (CHO) is a coalition of individuals, health care professionals, scientists, and health and environmental organizations. The CHO supports healthy, sustainable landscapes by encouraging organic non-toxic pest management strategies, and seeking laws restricting the use of pesticides for lawn care and gardening.
Support for the Pesticides Ban Act
The CHO enthusiastically supports a province-wide cosmetic pesticide ban in Ontario. Our members, including health care researchers and clinicians, are convinced this will improve the health of Ontario citizens. However, Bill 64 as currently worded falls short of the goal to protect people from this “unnecessary” use of pesticides.
Summary Recommendations:
1) Delete Section 7.1 (5), the provision that would render inoperative all municipal bylaws. Province-wide pesticide legislation should not pre-empt any existing municipal by-laws; this amounts to stripping municipalities of their rights and responsibilities to protect public health and the environment.
2) Delete the exemption for "other prescribed uses" of pesticides. Explicit exemptions are sufficient to cover emergencies. This large loophole could easily be used to undermine the intent of Bill 64. In addition, exemptions for golf courses should be changed to ban, with a slightly longer phase-in.
3) Define “unnecessary uses” as uses for goals that could be achieved using a less-toxic or more environmentally sustainable alternative strategy or product, or that do not engender a countervailing health benefit.
4) Focus on best practices and products that will be allowed rather than lists of prohibited active ingredients and products. Reversing the focus, i.e. listing what is allowed rather than what is banned, is currently done in Ontario’s best pesticide bylaws. Advantages to this approach include:
- “best practices” are easy to understand and to support;
- implementation is easier (a shorter list of active ingredients would have to be checked);
- the economic incentives would be clearer to develop better products and methods that could take a coveted place on the “best practices” list. Ontario’s leadership in progressive landscaping would strengthen both the landscaping industry and tourism; and
- this approach is known and accepted, in the Scandinavian countries. Called the “Substitution Principle,” it arose in order to put into practice the Precautionary Principle.
Discussion of Best-Practices Approach
The Quebec Pesticide Code was remarkable, progressive legislation in its time, with a list of pesticide ingredients that cannot be used. The Quebec list, however, does not contain several toxic pesticides that are on the Ontario list. This is in most cases because the pesticide was not used significantly for lawns when the list was drawn up. A few examples include:
Imidacloprid, an insecticide used for grubs that was not used when the Quebec list was drawn up. Many other similar chemicals are registered or under evaluation. There are serious concerns since several of this family of chemicals are implicated in colony collapse of bees, and extremely persistent and toxic breakdown products;
Racemic mecoprop (that is on the Quebec list) is being replaced by mecoprop-p, and is considered a new pesticide. The only difference is that the product is purer, containing more of the biologically active form; and
Dicamba (chemically similar to the banned 2,4-D), that is now used in large quantities in Quebec. There are serious health and environmental concerns associated with all of these chemicals. The proposed Ontario "banned" list will be cumbersome to justify and enforce, and already misses at least a couple of important products, namely Roundup/glyphosate and glufosinate. On the other hand, ferrous sulphate is a simple salt of relatively non-toxic elements, and there is no reason that we are aware of for it to be banned. The CHO has not had the time and resources to thoroughly investigate the hundreds of products and chemicals on the lists. Generally, we believe that products approved for organic agriculture would be appropriate for an “approved” or “best practices” list, and everything not on that should be banned.
Any list that is contained in a regulation should withstand the test of time, and not require frequent updating as new related products are registered and marketed. Revising such a list is politically charged, time consuming and therefore costly.
Should the province proceed with the current model of a banned list, health and scientific professionals who are independent of the industry should have a majority, funded representation on any committee to determine such a list.
The Ministries of Environment and Health should take advantage of the unique research opportunity afforded by this legislation, to study the effects of pesticides on human and ecosystem health. Such research would require urgent collection of current baseline data.
Finally, the CHO strongly disagrees with the PMRA's May 16, 2008 reassessment of 2,4-D.
We also draw the Committee’s attention to a commentary by Dr. Neil Arya, published in the Ottawa Citizen.
If you have any questions, or should the CHO be able to assist the government of Ontario in this matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
June 14, 2008 Update: an objection has been submitted to the PMRA, based upon scientific errors, and information that was overlooked or lacking in the PMRA assessment of 2,4-D. Please
click here for more information.
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