Toxic Chemicals Toxic Chemicals EDF recently merged its environmental health and pest control programs into a comprehensive program aimed at reducing or eliminating human exposure to toxic chemicals, particularly those which cause cancer. Death from cancer in the United States is now increasing more rapidly than is the population.
Scientists believe that environmental quality and the incidence of cancer are inseparably linked.
This knowledge is frightening, but it also indicates that most human cancers are preventable if the causative agents can be identified and human exposure to them minimized or eliminated. In October, four years of scientific and legal work by EDF resulted in an important victory for the regulation of environmental carcinogens when the Environmental Protection Agency suspended the production of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin. Four years later, following 13 months of testimony, EPA adopted EDF's position and ordered an immediate suspension of production of the pesticides. This action represents the second major victory in EDF's campaign to end the use of carcinogenic pesticides. The DDT ban was upheld in December 1973 by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia On February 26, however, EPA granted an exemption to the ban, allowing DDT to be sprayed in an attempt to control tussock moths in the Northwest.