Exemptions Put Children at Risk FQPA was supposed to increase children's health protections in part by tightening restrictions governing emergency and crisis exemptions from pesticide safeguards. Instead, exemptions for pesticides used on children's food increased steadily since the passage of the Act. This profligate use of the Section 18 program puts children at risk. In the equivalent three-year period after the passage of FQPA, EPA granted 241 exemptions per year for these same foods, an increase of nearly 50 percent. By definition, none of these Section 18 exemptions are fully evaluated for their health risks to children.
Many pesticides granted exemptions are extremely toxic.
Some are considered probable human carcinogens by the U.S. EPA, others are potent neurotoxicants that can damage the fragile developing nervous systems of children. Our analysis of EPA records revealed 90 situations where states requested Section 18 exemptions to use the same pesticide on the same crop in at least five of the last seven years. The enactment of FQPA accelerated this trend. States have applied 144 times for the same exemption during the three years since FQPA was passed. Since 1993 the number of crisis exemptions issued per year has risen by 160 percent, from 51 to 133.