By Haider Rizvi
WASHINGTON, May 4 1996 (IPS)

The U.S.-based chemical company Uniroyal Corp. will continue selling a hazardous pesticide to farmers overseas even though the product has been withdrawn from domestic markets for “health and safety reasons.”

In a recent agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the company canceled nearly a dozen uses of the pesticide propargite in the United States. But, the accord does not affect sales of the suspected carcinogen in other countries.

“It depends on the environmental laws and policies of other countries,” said Uniroyal spokesman Robert Petrausch when asked if the company has any plans to withdraw its product from foreign markets.

Seeking to promote its image as an environmentally conscious manufacturer, Uniroyal told U.S. farmers it was “acting now to assure consumers that their food supply is healthy and safe.”

Propargite is a widely used pesticide for control of mites on a range of fruit, grain, vegetable, nut and fibre crops.

Currently, millions of farmers in more than 30 countries are using what Uniroyal officials said has become a top-selling miticide in the world. A company spokesman declined to specifically identify client countries — or sales figures for propargite — but he hinted that most are in Asia and Latin America.

Environmental groups campaigning here against the export of hazardous pesticides are concerned about the EPA’s delay in implementing its policy of notifying other countries about the risks involved in the use of pesticides it has banned in the United States.

The policy was adopted last year in response to pressure from environmental activists, who say the ban on the sale and use of hazardous pesticides will prove to be meaningless if the EPA does not impose export restrictions.

“The health of American consumers will remain at risk because 99 percent of food that is imported by the U.S. remain untested,” says Sandra Marquardt, a former environmental researcher at Greenpeace International.

U.S. laws do not restrict shipment of hazardous pesticides to other countries. Customs records obtained by the Foundation for Advancement in Science and Education, a Los-Angeles-based independent environmental research group, indicate that from 1991- 94, the U.S. chemical companies had shipped 52 million tons of hazardous pesticides to about a dozen of Third World countries.

Its recent agreement with EPA prohibits Uniroyal from selling propargite for use on nearly a dozen crops — including apricots, apples, peaches, pears, plums, figs, strawberries, and green beans — because of its cancer-causing potential.

After a decade of research, the EPA concluded that certain uses of propargite pose “clearly unacceptable dietary cancer risk to consumers.”

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