Eco-groups Pressure EPA to Ban Antibiotic Spraying on Crops

The Center for Biological Diversity and a host of allied activist organizations have filed a petition requesting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cancel registrations for all pesticides that contain medically important antibiotics and antifungals. The argument is that these types of crop protection products are fueling the growth of resistant pathogens (often referred to as “superbugs”) and likely impacting the health of farm workers.

Because of the challenges associated with managing invisible disease-causing microbes, the EPA requires specialized types of measurements and models to determine human and ecological risks from exposure to antimicrobial pesticides — far different than the ones needed for pesticides more commonly applied to crops and other plants.

The petition specifically addresses streptomycin and streptomycin sulfate, oxytetracycline hydrochloride and calcium oxytetracycline, kasugamycin hydrochloride, gentamicin sulfate, ipflufenoquin, and triazole fungicides. 

Triazoles, for example, are antifungals that are built to stop active diseases that may have occurred before the application on crops like corn or soybeans. Oxytetracycline, as another example, had long been part of the National Organic Program for use on grapefruits, oranges, and tangerines.

The petition claims that about 8 million pounds of these kinds of products are applied to U.S. food crops annually. Many of them have been used more frequently in recent years, particularly on citrus operations in Florida.

“Each year Americans are at greater risk from dangerous bacteria and diseases because human medicines are sprayed on crops,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Guardian, a British publication that has long been a platform for pro-organic advocacy. “This kind of recklessness and preventable suffering is what happens when the industry has a stranglehold on the EPA’s pesticide-approval process.”

He said the concern is that spraying sub-therapeutic levels of these antibiotics as pesticides across tens of thousands of acres could spur the development of resistant bacteria on crops and in the soil that could ultimately find their way into people and cause drug-resistant infections.

According to the petition, roughly two dozen pesticides registered by the EPA use streptomycin sulfate, 20 use oxytetracycline hydrochloride, and eight use calcium oxytetracycline.

The EPA does not appear to have released a public response to the petition.