Seattle Times
Sunday, April 22, 2007
California company a place old pesticides go to find new
sales, not die
By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times
From its factory in Los Angeles' industrial sprawl, Amvac Chemical does
a booming business selling some of the world's most dangerous
pesticides.
Amvac has fueled double-digit revenue growth through an unusual
business practice: It has bought from larger companies the rights to
older pesticides, many of them at risk of being banned or restricted
because of safety concerns.
The company has fought to keep those chemicals on the market as long as
possible, hiring scientists and lawyers to do battle with regulatory
agencies.
Amvac's focus on older pesticides has come at a cost to human health
and the environment, according to federal Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and state records, regulatory investigations and a string
of lawsuits.
Accidents involving the company's pesticides have led to the evacuation
of neighborhoods and the poisoning of scores of field workers in
California and elsewhere.
Amvac is a leading maker of organophosphates, a class of older, highly
toxic pesticides that has been under regulatory scrutiny since the late
1980s. As larger companies stopped manufacturing some of their
organophosphates, Amvac bought the rights to make or sell 10 of them
since 1989, according to company records and interviews.
One, mevinphos, was banned in the United States in 1994 after
poisonings in Washington state and after an EPA study found it
responsible for poisoning more field workers in California than any
other agricultural chemical. Amvac still sells the product overseas,
according to company officials.
Amvac is not the largest producer of pesticides that have attracted
regulatory scrutiny, but it stands out for its willingness to embrace
chemicals abandoned by other companies.
Getting a good deal
"There's something here rather unique, which is a company that
basically goes intentionally after chemicals that are in trouble
because of health and safety concerns," said Steve Schatzow, a former
director of the EPA's pesticide program and now an attorney for
pesticide companies.
Amvac "buys them up at a discount price from the major chemical
companies who no longer want to be associated" with them, he said.
Amvac, a former client, fired Schatzow in 1994 after his negotiations
with the EPA ended in the ban on mevinphos.
Eric Wintemute, Amvac's chief executive, defended the company's record.
He said Amvac's chemicals give farmers the tools to protect crops.
Wintemute, son of one of Amvac's founders, acknowledged that its
products carry risks but said the company had spent more than $150
million conducting tests required by regulatory agencies and training
pesticide applicators to reduce that risk.
He said that, in most poisoning cases involving Amvac products,
regulators found that the pesticides were used improperly. Amvac's
products are safe if they are used according to the EPA's safety
guidelines, he said.
"We focus on how to keep our products in the marketplace," Wintemute
said. "If we have incidents, we lose an asset. We have to put safety
first in order for the company to survive."
Industry analysts said Amvac has shown a commitment to improving the
safety of its chemicals.
"The largest crop-protection companies are less interested in trying to
make a lot of money out of the organophosphates because they know
they're a class of chemistry on the way out," said Philip Jarvis,
publisher of the trade magazine Agrow World Crop Protection News. "If
Amvac is selling these older products, at least they are older products
in a safe pair of hands."
Environmental groups contend Amvac has stalled and used legal threats
to blunt EPA efforts to restrict its pesticides. They cite the case of
DDVP, an ingredient in home pest strips.
An EPA review of the product's safety has dragged on for 19 years,
while the strips have remained on store shelves and in homes.
EPA officials disputed the contention that they were cowed by Amvac,
saying the agency has clamped down on the company's products when they
were a proven threat to the public. With DDVP, officials said, the risk
was less clear-cut. The agency ultimately required Amvac to reduce the
size of pest strips used in homes.
"There are outside groups who consistently tell us, or imply, that we
do what Amvac wants," said Jim Jones, the top EPA deputy for the Office
of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. "The record is so
filled with documentation of us disagreeing with Amvac, it's kind of
amazing that that's how people interpret it."
Glenn Wintemute was an entrepreneur with chemistry and biology degrees
from the University of Southern California when he bought a small
pesticide company in 1963 called Durham Chemical. He later joined with
a partner to run American Vanguard, the Newport Beach, Calif.-based
holding company that owns Amvac.
Wintemute had big plans, aiming to take on pesticide giants such as Dow
Chemical. But his company was deeply in debt by the late 1970s.
A pesticide scandal then broke in California's Central Valley in 1977.
Nearly 36 workers at an Occidental Petroleum factory in Lathrop were
found to have low or zero sperm counts.
Suspicion focused on one of the factory's primary products:
dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a pesticide used to wipe out worms in
soil. Tests dating to the 1950s had shown the product could cause
testicular atrophy in lab animals.
The EPA suspended most uses of DBCP within months of the Lathrop
sterility findings. Dow Chemical and Shell Chemicals, the primary
makers, said they were ceasing production.
Where others saw danger, Wintemute saw opportunity. Amvac, which had
ceased making DBCP years earlier, renewed production after the EPA
suspension, according to Amvac board minutes and state records. Amvac
quickly became the primary U.S. manufacturer of the chemical, according
to the EPA.
With domestic sales down because of the EPA scrutiny, Amvac turned to
foreign markets, supplying DBCP to Standard Fruit (later Dole Fruit) in
1978 and 1979 for use on Latin American plantations, company records
show.
In 1979, the EPA proposed banning the chemical permanently in this
country. During hearings, Wintemute defended the product, disputing
government tests.
Amvac persuaded the EPA to allow continued use of DBCP for pineapple
crops in Hawaii. In exchange, Amvac agreed to produce a safety guide
for users and closely monitor levels of DBCP in groundwater. After
wells in Hawaii showed signs of contamination, the pesticide was banned
in the United States in 1985.
In late March, Amvac agreed to pay a total of $300,000 to 13 Nicaraguan
workers who charged in a lawsuit that they became sterile after being
exposed to DBCP. In court papers, the company denied wrongdoing. Dow
and Dole remain defendants in the case, scheduled to be tried in Los
Angeles next month.
In a recent deposition, Glenn Wintemute said Amvac had issued stringent
safety recommendations before selling DBCP.
Leadership stays in family
In 1994, weeks after Amvac agreed to withdraw mevinphos in the United
States after the Washington state poisonings involving apple-orchard
workers, Glenn Wintemute stepped down as president. Now 82, he
continues to serve as co-chairman of the board and is a major
stockholder. He was replaced by his son, Eric, who has spent most of
his career at the company.
During the 1990s, organophosphates came under intense scrutiny. In
1993, a National Academy of Sciences report raised concerns that the
compounds might affect children's neurological development. A few years
later, the EPA began a 10-year review that ultimately imposed bans and
tighter restrictions on the compounds.
Bigger companies also were developing pesticides that were less toxic
to the environment and targeted specific pests. Major companies such as
Monsanto were introducing genetically modified seeds that resisted
attacks by insects and fungus.
Amvac saw a business opportunity in the regulatory pressure and the
willingness of big companies to sell the rights to manufacture or
market organophosphates, especially those with low sales.
Since Eric Wintemute took over, the company has acquired
organophosphates at a rapid pace. Today, the company makes or sells 10
of about 30 such pesticides still on the market. Of 25 chemicals Amvac
has acquired since 1989, the Pesticide Action Network, a nonprofit
anti-pesticide group, lists 17 as "bad actors," compounds deemed
especially dangerous to human health or the environment.
In its current literature, Amvac says it aims to acquire "niche product
lines from basic research companies that divest mature products in
order to focus on" new chemicals. Amvac boasts of increasing sales
through a "diligent commitment to regulatory challenges" and through
marketing campaigns designed to "breathe new life" into old chemicals.
The strategy has turned Amvac into one of the most profitable and
fastest-growing pesticide companies in the nation. Although its
revenues are a fraction of those of the biggest pesticide companies
such as Monsanto and Dow, its profits increased by an average 24
percent a year over the past five years, although last year the company
experienced a slowdown.
Eric Wintemute said the company improves on the safety of the chemicals
it acquires, providing training for users, improving labeling and
investing in technology such as the SmartBox. The system allows farmers
to load pesticides into an enclosed applicator towed behind a tractor,
limiting chances for accidental exposure.
"If we believe a product has a problem, we would not sell it," he said.
Larger companies said they sold their chemicals to Amvac because they
thought it was a responsible steward. For instance, Dow licensed the
organophosphate chlorpyrifos to Amvac in 2006 because it was impressed
with SmartBox.
Environmentalists are skeptical of Amvac's efforts to mitigate the
health risks of its products. They say consumers and farmers often
ignore labels or misuse equipment.
Agriculture experts and scientists also say that there often are
less-toxic alternatives to Amvac's products, although the other options
are often costlier.
Keeping old chemicals on the market, said Charles Benbrook, chief
scientist for the Organic Center, a Rhode Island nonprofit that
promotes organic farming, has "perpetuated completely unnecessary,
high-risk exposures for both farmworkers and the environment."
Amvac's latest battle is over one of its biggest sellers: metam sodium,
the third-most-widely-used pesticide in the country. Farmers inject
metam sodium into the ground or sprinkle it on fields before planting
crops such as carrots, potatoes and strawberries. Once in the soil, the
compound gives off a gas that kills bugs and bacteria.
Since the late 1980s, the chemical has been linked to several mass
poisonings.
Many incidents have resulted from mistakes by applicators. Applied
incorrectly, the gas can waft off fields and into nearby neighborhoods.
The result is similar to a tear-gas attack: victims suffer watery eyes,
constricted throats and difficulty breathing, then vomiting and
dizziness.
In 1991, a train carrying metam sodium made by Amvac overturned in the
Sacramento River near Dunsmuir. A toxic cloud sickened more than 700
people, and the chemical wiped out virtually all wildlife along a
42-mile stretch of river.
A study found that several victims developed long-term asthma from the
high-level exposure. Amvac paid $2 million as part of a settlement in a
lawsuit filed by California but admitted no wrongdoing.
The accident did little to slow Amvac's interest in metam sodium.
During the late 1990s, Amvac acquired the rights to the chemical from
two competitors. Marketing efforts resulted in a 13-fold rise in sales,
according to a corporate presentation. Amvac now controls 60 percent of
the metam-sodium market.
In 1999, metam sodium manufactured by an Amvac competitor was linked to
an accidental poisoning of more than 170 people in Earlimart, Calif.,
according to court files and state records. Three years later, more
than 250 people were sickened around nearby Arvin in an accident
involving Amvac's metam-sodium product, according to state records.
Regulatory concern
The incidents attracted the attention of California and the EPA, which
long had been concerned about the effects of pesticides drifting off
farms.
In 2003, the EPA reported that metam sodium played a role in one-fifth
of all poisoning incidents in California affecting 10 or more people.
A preliminary EPA analysis in 2004 suggested the safe use of metam
sodium required buffer zones as large as a mile between fields and
population centers.
Amvac, worried farmers would stop buying metam sodium if such large
buffers were required, hired a consultant whose computer model
indicated smaller buffer zones — as little as a few hundred feet in
ideal conditions — would protect public health.
The EPA and California are expected to announce new restrictions on the
use of metam sodium and other soil fumigants this year.
Wintemute said metam sodium is safe under current restrictions so long
as it is used properly. He said that he was confident the industry had
learned from the "poorly handled" incidents in California, and that the
risk of an accident had decreased.
Michael O'Malley, a doctor at the University of California, Davis, who
has studied metam-sodium incidents, disagreed. "You have a big volume,
close to a community. You're rolling the dice," he said.
A poisoning is no mere possibility for the people of Edmundson Acres,
the neighborhood evacuated during the 2002 incident near Arvin.
One minute, families were sitting outside enjoying a summer night. The
next, adults and children began screaming, choking and vomiting.
An investigation determined that the farming company that applied
Amvac's product erred by not quickly spraying water over a nearby field
to prevent gas from escaping.
Locals say it is only a matter of time before somebody else makes a
similar error. "We can't just pack up our stuff and leave. I think it
should be safe," said Janette Serna, who was sickened in the incident.
"We're not guinea pigs."
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
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