Bill Proposes Holistic Protection of Children from Contaminated School Lunches, Advances Organic

(Beyond Pesticides, October 28, 2024) STARTS WEDNESDAY—NATIONAL FORUM: IMPERATIVES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE. As scientific articles and regulatory reviews by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) focus on individual pesticides or families of pesticides and specific health outcomes associated with exposure, legislation introduced by U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), S. 5084, Safe School Meals Act (SSMA), proposes a holistic response to the protection of children by banning pesticides in school lunches. While focused on the elimination of certain individual pesticides and other chemicals of known concern, the bill unilaterally allows children to be served food from certified organic farms.

The overwhelmingly large body of scientific findings on the adverse effects of pesticides in the food that children eat in schools and generally. For example, last week Beyond Pesticides commented on EPA’s Draft Human Health and/or Ecological Risk Assessments for Several Pesticides, citing scientific findings that, “Neonicotinoids . . .have been found to affect mammalian nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) [which] are of critical importance to human brain function, especially during development and for memory, cognition, and behavior.” (See more here.) This month, Jennifer Sass, PhD, et al., in Frontiers in Toxicology, published a review of  unpublished rodent developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) studies on five neonicotinoid insecticides—submitted to EPA by their manufacturers to support the chemicals’ registration—that exhibit evidence of developmental neurotoxicity. The authors report that in reviewing this data, “EPA dismissed statistically significant adverse effects, accepted substandard DNT studies despite lack of valid positive control data, and allowed neonicotinoid registrants to unduly influence agency decision-making.” The range of adverse health outcomes associated with pesticide exposure extends well beyond neurotoxic effects to cancer, immune system and respiratory effects, diabetes, endocrine disrupting effects that affect organ function, and more. For a catalog of the range of adverse effects, see Pesticide-Induced Disease Database.