Agricultural Respiratory Hazards

Mr. HUGHES. Gentlemen, we are glad to have you with us today. We have your statements, which will be made a part of the record in full, without objection. We hope that you can summarize. Why don't we begin with you, first, Mr. Foell.

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD H. FOELL, NATIONAL PRODUCT MANAGER, HERBICIDES, CHEVRON CHEMICAL CO.; AND RICHARD D. CAVALLI, TOXICOLOGIST, CHEVRON CHEMICAL CO.

Mr. FOELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this opportunity for our company and myself.

I am sure that brevity at this particular point is important. However, I would like to summarize the testimony that we have submitted. I think that it is extremely important and many of the questions that have been addressed to this point can be answered afterward regarding food crops and the application of paraquat in American agriculture.

It is important to recognize that my company is vitally concerned, not only with the environment, but with its own employees, its neighbors and the agricultural community. We have a responsibility to those people that we complete the tests, we measure the risks and the benefits, and we proceed from there, assuming that the risks and benefits can be borne out scientifically. I am speaking primarily of agriculture today.

To give you a brief history of paraquat, it was invented back in 1955 by ICI in England. We made an agreement with ICI that, since they had no marketing arm in the United States, we would assume the marketing responsibilities here in the United States. That occurred in the early 1960's. Since that time, we represented ICI in the United States and have been the sole marketer of Ortho Paraquat CL.

The product is a dichloride salt. I won't go into a great dissertation there. There are scientists here who are far more capable of explaining the molecule than I.

I think it is important to know that it is highly soluble in water, it is very fast acting, it is economical and, for those particular reasons, it becomes a product of choice in American agriculture.

A nonresidual, meaning that there is no carryover in the plant or in the soil that is available; a nonselective, meaning that it kills anything that is green; contact herbicide, meaning that it kills on contact; is the reason that paraquat is so effective.

Paraquat-to make a brief explanation without going into great detail of how it works-interrupts the photosynthetic process. As mentioned earlier, that requires light. It siphons off energy and creates some hydrogen peroxides. It interrupts that process and the plant cell collapses and the plant dies. It is not temperature sensitive like many other herbicides that are on the market today. It works very quickly. It slows down in cold weather, but it still works very quickly in relation to many herbicides that take weeks and months under low temperatures.

Paraquat is basically rain-fast, because it moves into the plant very fast and, within a few minutes after drying, a rain cannot wash the paraquat off, and it is going to have its effect on the plant, whatever that use may be.

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When it hits the soil, as mentioned earlier, it is bound very tightly. It is bound so tightly that you cannot separate it. You have to boil it in sulfuric acid for some 5 hours. What you do is you destroy the clay molecule and you free up the paraquat. It cannot be removed in the environment, it can only be removed in a laboratory. Paraquat has a lot of flexibility. That is also why it is a product of choice in American agriculture. It can be mixed with other herbicides. Since it is a nonresidual, meaning it doesn't carry over, they put residual herbicides with it. Paraquat, being a contact herbicide, kills what is there, and naturally there are things that will come up afterward because it has no residual activity in the soil. So they put a residual herbicide with it so that nothing comes up later.

I think it is extremely important-

Mr. HUGHES. Is that whether the paraquat is applied on the ground or aerial sprayed, the same impact, nonresidual?

Mr. FOELL. Yes, sir.

I think it is important to make the point that paraquat is a restricted-use compound in the United States. That means that, in order for someone to use it here in the United States, they must take a test at their local agricultural authorities. Once they pass that test and show that they have a given expertise in that field, then they are given a license and, in order to buy it, they have to show that license. We have tested that program to see if it works, and it works quite well.

Paraquat, as I mentioned, has been used here extensively in the United States-and we will go into some of those figures brieflyfor some 15-odd years at a cost of somewhere between $5 and $10

an acre.

Let's just talk briefly about its uses. We have a use in the United States that is called preplant or preemergent use, meaning that it is applied prior to the planting of the crop or prior to the emergence of the crop. There are weeds that exist there. It could be that the farmer went out and he plowed, he disked, he harrowed. He may have made five or six trips across the field. And then we had a rain come along and some weeds sprouted.

Now he could go back and he could complete those same operations at a great expense to him and great time, after he waited for the ground to dry up. It is much easier to send in an airplane or a ground-sprayer-everything is ready-and just spray those weeds off and plant. I think it is important to recognize that small weeds compete with small crops for nutrients and for moisture, and if we want to continue the production that we have here in America, to have American agriculture be as bountiful as it has been, we must control those weeds or our production is going to go down significantly. That is the preplant application on crops such as asparagus, barley, cotton, corn, lettuce, melons, peppers, potatoes, rhubarb, soybeans, sorghum, wheat, et cetera.

One of paraquat's major markets, and probably the most significant one, is conservation tillage. I know that you are all aware of conservation in this country. Some 6 billion tons of soil washes off our land and down our rivers and out to the sea. That can be reduced by as much as 90 to 100 percent under a conservation tillage program called "No-till." We eliminate the plowing, we eliminate

the disking, we eliminate the harrowing. Generally, there is a cover crop planted or there is cover from the previous crop or residues left over. Weeds come up through that, they are sprayed off with paraquat, the farmer makes one pass over the field and plants his crop. He has that residue barrier that protects from wind and rain. He then comes back and he harvests it. The savings are astronomical in this area, and I will go into those briefly later.

A directed spray, as mentioned in Mr. Shaw's area, vegetables in Florida-the climate is so conducive to growing crops down there. It is also conducive to growing weeds. A directed spray means that they shield the crop and they spray the weeds. Instead of having to go in with mechanical equipment or hoes and people, they literally can spray those weeds out and reduce that competition for soil moisture and nutrients.

Many crops, incidentally, have a directed spray label for paraquat, for example tree crops such as fruit, pine and many trees that grow in the forest.

A harvest aid use that was referred to by Mr. Sawyer, is the spraying of paraquat on soybeans, cotton, potatoes, sugarcane. Many times the crop grows and many green weeds grow with the crop, and those green weeds don't dry out like the crop does and they get tangled in the combines. It shuts the farmer down and it takes a long time to harvest it. By using paraquat, just as was mentioned with the marijuana, you dry those up, you make them brittle, and they go through the combine quite rapidly.

It is important to recognize that a soybean has a sheath over the bean. The sheath is the one that gets the paraquat. We don't eat the sheath, we eat the bean.

There are other noncrop uses which are many, which was mentioned, around buildings, along roadways, around farms, commercial operations, railroads where you have the possibility of dry weeds that could cause fire. That is another major use.

And one final one, of course, is the application directly to pine trees to cause them to produce resin which is used in many commercial uses. It is applied directly to the tree.

Briefly, approximately 50 percent of the sales in the United States are used on no-till crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. About 90 percent of those applications are by ground and about 10 percent by air.

The balance of our sales are between directed spray, which is trees, vines, vegetables, soybeans, harvest aid on those crops that I mentioned, the noncrop areas, and the miscellaneous uses such as resin soaking, reseeding range, pasture, et cetera. Those are listed as to how much is put on by ground and how much is put on by air. If you were to take it across the United States, you could probably say 65 percent of all paraquat is applied by ground and about 35 percent is applied by air.

Let's get into some acreage figures. Approximately 10 to 12 million acres of land in the United States, agricultural-wise, is treated every year with paraquat in those various forms that I mentioned earlier, some 5 million acres of corn and soybean and wheat. Approximately 21⁄2 percent of all U.S. farmland in the United States is treated with paraquat annually. Some 60,000 farms use paraquat each year. Paraquat has been in existence for some 18 years, so we

are looking at some 350,000 to 400,000 farmers have used paraquat safely over the past 18 years.

Going into the conservation tillage thing, I think there are some points that I will just briefly mention that are significant.

The savings of fuel alone under conservation tillage with the use of paraquat amounts to some 180 million gallons of gasoline each year, and millions of hours of labor. Depending on the price you want to put on that, those are significant figures. If that is $5 an hour, that is $50 million; at $10 an hour, it is $100 million.

But I think one that is more significant-the other day I called up the local nursery and I asked, "How much does a ton of topsoil cost if I want it brought out to my home?" He said, "Oh, about $20 to $25." Well, if 6 billion tons of topsoil have been washed away in this Nation today, we are looking at $120 billion. That is a significant figure. Paraquat plays a very important part in this Nation of saving soil, toil, and oil.

Throughout that whole time, in that 18-year history, there are no recorded deaths or injuries through the normal agricultural use of Ortho Paraquat.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HUGHES. Thank you.

[The statement of Mr. Foell follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF R. H. FOELL, PRODUCT MANAGER, HERBICIDES, WORLDWIDE, CHEVRON CHEMICAL COMPANY

Protection of man and the environment is a major concern of Chevron Chemical Company. Chevron has a long and respected record of producing agricultural pesticides which are environmentally sound. Chevron has applied considerable resources ... both human and financial . . . to protecting man and the environment during scientific product research, development and marketing, and at our manufacturing and processing locations in this country.

Our record reflects responsibility-responsibility to our employees, to our neighbors, to our agricultural community and to the various government regulatory agencies to whom we must answer.

The information presented in this testimony has been prepared to provide factual information, to the best of my knowledge, about Ortho Paraquat Plus use in the United States.

HISTORY

Paraquat herbicide discovered and developed in 1955 by the Plant Protection Division of Imperial Chemical Industries PLC of London, England.

Paraquat has been sold in the United States by Chevron Chemical Company through an exclusive license agreement between ICI and Chevron entered into during the early 1960's. Chevron first marketed its Ortho Paraquat CL in 1965.

WHAT IS ORTHO PARAQUAT + PLUS

Typical composition by weight:

Paraquat dichloride (1,1'-demethyl-4-4'-bipyridinium dichloride) 29.1 percent.
Inert ingredients 70.9 percent.

Solubility: soluble in water; slightly soluble in alcohol; insoluble in most organic solvents.

Appearance: Dark brown liquid; no significant odor.

Molecular weight: (dichloride salt) 257.

Percent volatile: essentially non-volatile.

Show molecule (in chemical handbook).

'Contains two pounds Paraquat cation per gallon.