The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - A Critique of Canada's Pesticide Oversight

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In the summer of 2023, Bruce Lanphear, Professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, resigned his position as co-chair of a recently formed Science Advisory Committee of the PMRA, which regulates pesticide use in Canada. Dr. Lanphear felt he could no longer lend his credibility to the agency following disagreement about the Terms of Reference provided to Lanphear and seven other scientists comprising the committee. Lanphear has been critical of aspects of Canada's pesticide oversight regime. I invited him on the show to discuss the topic. You can read about Bruce's resignation here and here, or check out this google search.

I'm Jordan Marr, and this is The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca or email me, editor at theruminant.ca. All right, let's do a show. Hey everyone, it's Jordan. You haven't heard from me in a while, but I'm still farming and still raising two young children, and I still have a partner called Vanessa who will sing you out at the end of this episode. And I still wish I was 10 pounds lighter, and I still struggle with procrastination and feelings of inadequacy. I'm still podcasting too, despite the radio silence on this podcast of late. I've been producing a regular radio column about food and agriculture for my region's morning radio show on the CBC, and I've been podcasting on and off for

the Organic BC podcast. So there. What else am I still? I am still trying to figure out how to become profitable now that I exclusively grow dry beans and milling corn on a small scale, but I also still think I'll figure it out eventually. I still yell at my kids more than I should. I still love cycling after all these years. And I still possess a joie de vivre, only it's buried under a few more layers of anxiety and cynicism than it used to be. Unfortunately, and related to the sentence that just came before this one, I still seem to focus too much on the trade-offs of the life I've chosen, the low income, the unpredictability, rather than what makes it wonderful. Great food and great friends, a schedule all my own, and a story the sun tells in pigment on skin of long days spent coaxing promise and surprise and, yeah, disappointment from a few

patches of earth up and down the valley I live in. And also my kids, the ones I yell at too much. Those guys are the best. Anyway, I still have things to share with you all from time to time. This time it's a conversation with Bruce Lanphier. Hello, my name is Bruce Lanphier. I'm a professor at Simon Fraser University and I'm a public health physician that has spent most of his career focused on how lead and other toxic chemicals impact children's learning abilities, their overall health, and in general, how chemicals impact the health of populations like Canadians.

Bruce generated a good deal of mainstream news coverage this past summer when he resigned his position as co-chair of a scientific advisory committee of Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency. I've got a link to some of those news stories in the show notes for this episode. When I learned about Bruce's story, I was already primed to be thinking about pesticide regulations. Earlier this year, I produced two columns about the use of sprays in agriculture for CBC Radio, during which I affirmed the safety of the pesticides approved for use in Canada. Here's a couple of excerpts from those segments. Okay, but to be clear, can herbicides be harmful to humans and the environment?

Yes, they can be, which is why you see farmers wearing chemical spray suits and masks when they're operating sprayers. But Sarah emphasized, like really emphasized, that pesticides and herbicides are highly regulated in Canada. The regulatory body in question is the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, or PMRA, which is run by Health Canada. There's constantly a review around the safety of these products. And if there ends up being a problem, products will be pulled off the shelf. Sarah told me that most growers are very responsible and careful when using herbicides, and that when they're applied in the right amount, at the right time of day, in the right weather conditions, these regulated products are safe for humans and the environment.

Instead, I think it's important to understand that not all sprays are harmful, and that most farmers are using sprays in a way that is safe for eaters and limits undesirable impacts on the environment. I felt a bit uneasy making those statements, but I'm also someone who places a large degree of trust in our public institutions. Anyway, when I learned about Bruce's resignation from the Pest Management Agency's Scientific Advisory Committee, I invited him to join me on the phone to talk about pesticide oversight in Canada. He accepted, and you're about to hear our conversation. I hope you enjoy it, and I'll talk to you at the end. Dr. Bruce Lanphier, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. You're welcome. Glad to be here. Bruce, oversight of pesticide use in Canada is tasked to Health Canada. And they've got a body called the Pest Management Regulatory Agency that is in charge of this.

And I'm wondering if we could start by my asking you to tell me what is the agency under Health Canada that was set up to make sure that Canadians are protected from pesticides. Okay. And so before the development of the committee that you were invited to participate in, that we're going to talk about in a moment, what was the general structure? Like who was involved with that agency? And so in a very brief and general sense, how did it work? Well, besides the staff and the leadership within PMRA, there was also an advisory council that's composed of scientists, advocates, and industry representatives. The new committee that I was on and I co-chaired was called the Science Advisory Committee. And that was there to help enhance transparency of what PMRA does and to have greater confidence that the regulations are protecting Canadians from pesticides. Okay. So, and I want to ask you about the development of that committee in a moment. I want to just go back to the PMRA for a moment.

So is it fair to say that this this body is tasked with continually monitoring pesticides that are already approved for use to ensure that we still have a consensus that they're safe for use, as well as reviewing new pesticides that are brought that are that are wanted to be brought to market and again, to ensure their safety for I guess, for humans and the environment in Canada. That's correct. Okay. So you made reference to the Science Advisory Committee that was formed just over a year ago in June, July of 2022.

I wanted to ask you, they formed this committee, I think that they invited eight scientists from across the country to form the committee to provide more rigor and more transparency. But that is kind of funny in and of itself to me that that's happening in 2022. We have a body that's been around for decades, already has an advisory body with scientists on it. Do you know much about the conditions that led to the decision to form this committee? I think there's a number of things. I think there's growing concern of things. I think there's growing concern by the public about the toxicity of pesticides. These things are in the news all

the time, whether it's glyphosate, herbicide used in Roundup or chlorpyrifos. So I think there's some backdrop of increasing concern. More specifically, PMRA was planning to increase the allowable levels of pesticides in residue, in foods. And that raised some questions. Why, for example, would you want to allow more glyphosate in foods when we've heard that there's massive lawsuits going on, it's associated with cancer? And so I think that sparked some concern more specifically. And so the PMRA paused allowing those increases until they could bring together this, quote, independent science advisory committee that I was on. Right. And I think I know the issue, some of the specifics of the issue you're referring to. So first of all, I mean, in this conversation, the idea of pesticide residues on food is likely to come up, and most people are familiar with that, the concept that we use pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides

in our food production, and that that can cause the harvested food to have some levels of residues. And so one of the jobs of the PMRA is to ensure those residues don't exceed a certain level. I think they call them maximum permitted residues or something like that. In this case, was it not that there was an application by members of industry to increase the permissible residue limits specifically on some legumes and specifically with glyphosate? That's what I thought. I think I've read online. state that's what i thought i think i've read online um yeah that that was one of the um residues that they wanted to increase the allowable levels and uh pmra was basically saying well that's still within the allowable levels that we think is safe so from their perspective they were saying well this is not a big deal but there was a public outcry there was a public outcry right absolutely yeah okay and outcry, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And so, so, cause I read about this when I was researching for this interview. So that leads them to decide, you know, we want to, we definitely want to reassure the

public that we are rigorous and we want to show transparency. So we're forming this new committee, eminent scientists from across the country with relevant background knowledge. And that's, that's when you were invited to sit on the committee. And so I guess my next question is, why? Could you give us a little bit of an idea of your background as it pertains to being invited to sit on this committee? Well, first, you were nominated. And so Bill Jeffries reached out to me. He's a lawyer that works on trying to ensure that food is safe in Canada, safe in terms of pesticides. And he asked if I was willing to have him nominate me for this committee. And I agreed. My background is really in studying how toxic chemicals impact human health. Most of the work I've done is on lead, but I've also looked at

pesticides and PFAS chemicals and other metals. So we've really looked at a whole host of different chemicals. And one of the things I think it's important to know for your listeners to know is that we find dozens, if not hundreds of these chemicals, many of which are known to be toxic in the blood or the urine of children, pregnant women, all of us, really. I mean, we're all kind of a cocktail of these chemicals. And many of them, as I said, we know are toxic or poisons. And it really comes down to is at what level are they poisonous? So pesticides, for example, synthetic pesticides, they're designed to be poisons. That's how they work. Some of them, like OP pesticides, were actually designed specifically for chemical warfare to kill people. So we know they're

poisons. That's not a debate. That's not open for question. The question is, at what level do we start to see evidence of harm? There's two types of harm we can think about, broad types of harm. First is acute poisonings. Sometimes the levels of acute poisonings are severe enough, people die. So around the world, every year, there's about 200,000 people that die just from acute poisoning. So that's sort of the, in one sense, that's the tip of the iceberg. Severe outcome can't get much graver than that death.

There's another type of poisoning that we're concerned about, and that is the cumulative day after day after day exposures to less than toxic levels that would put you into the hospital, let's say. Now, on one level, of course, that seems subtle, much less severe, of course, than dying acutely from poisoning, severe poisoning. But on the other hand, it can impact millions and millions of people, maybe even billions of people, because we're all exposed. of people, maybe even billions of people, because we're all exposed. So for example, if we look at Canadians, we can find 99% of Canadians have pyrethroids measurable or detectable in their urine. About 80% of us have organophosphate pesticides detectable in our

urine. That's children, pregnant women, farmers, non-farmers. OP pesticides are actually coming down because the concerns about toxicity. And because of that, they're being replaced with pyrethroids and neonicotinoids. We don't have evidence as much as good for neonicotinoids, what's the extent of exposure.

But we do know that over 80% of people in Canada are regularly exposed to glyphosate. It's detectable in our urine. And so that's one of the most important things to recognize is that these chemicals are found in us. And in some cases, the concentrations that are found in us are equivalent to the levels found in us when we take a chemical used as a drug. So these aren't necessarily low or inconsequential exposures that we're having. And yet somehow those are deemed to be safe. Okay, so we're going to come back around to getting into the meat of what you just described in a few minutes. But thank you for that.

So essentially, you've got a long background in the study of toxins in the human body, including some of the toxins that we have to consider at the PMRA. You were nominated to be on a committee. You joined the committee and you became the co-chair of the committee. I should note that as well. And sat on that committee for a year, I believe, roughly, and roughly eight meetings, I think it was. So I'm going to share a couple of quotes now, Bruce, and then ask you, I guess, to react. So the first one is just from a web page associated with the government and the PMRA. Pesticides are stringently regulated in Canada to ensure they pose minimal risk to human health and the environment. Then, specifically in relation

to the formation of this committee, I've got a quote from Jean-Yves Duclos, who was then a year ago the Minister of Health for the federal government. Our government is committed to ensuring pesticides used across the country are safe for the well-being of Canadians and for our environment. With this new advisory body, we are further strengthening the rigorous science-based regulation of pesticides, And it goes on. So my question for you, I guess, is after serving on this committee, do you agree that our pesticide regulations are rigorous and science-based and that the risk their use poses to Canadians is minimal?

So the way that the pesticides are regulated is science-based. That is, the MRA staff, who are very professional, nothing I should say should take away from that. I think they're trying to do their job as best they can within the mandate that they have. They're using a regulatory framework that's used around the world. So in that sense, absolutely, it's science based. So why should that worry us? Well, first of all, it should worry us because they're saying that it's based upon minimal risk. Another way of saying that is these are acceptable levels. Now, the way that those acceptable levels are derived is oftentimes based on laboratory studies, studies of rats or mice, oftentimes just a few of them.

Sometimes they've been grandfathered in to some extent. And then based on those relatively few numbers of studies, pesticides are put on the market. And then after they're put on the market, people like me will try to figure out, well, what level of exposures do we have in the population? And we'll start to look at studies. One of the studies we did was in Cincinnati, Ohio, and over 90% of pregnant women were exposed to organophosphate pesticides. We could detect it in their urine. And we found that a tenfold increase with risk in that population led to an increase in preterm birth in children. So at levels that would be considered safe by our regulatory agencies. So this idea of what is a safe level

and how it's defined is really important. Oftentimes, if not most of the times, what happens is you try to guesstimate how much exposure we'll have. You'll guesstimate what the risk is. And then over time, people like me, epidemiologists, will go out and study it and say, do we see any evidence of harm when people are exposed to these pesticides that are used in commerce? And just over the past 20 years, for example, that are used in commerce. And just over the past 20 years, for example, when this regulatory system was in place, we now have evidence that opiate pesticides increase the risk of preterm birth, of IQ deficits in children, of increased rates of childhood leukemia. There's been evidence that paraquats associated with Parkinson's disease, glyphosate with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So these have all come about.

These studies have shown that these pesticides increase the risk for these diseases under this current regulatory framework. framework. So either the framework isn't working, or the guesses that were made early on weren't accurate, or we can no longer trust the system as it's been set up. In a sense, what's happened is the regulatory agencies do their best, and I'm confident they do the best they can, given the information they have and the mandate they have. The mandate was set up more to protect commerce and industry than it was to protect public health. So given the mandate they have, I think they do a fine job, but clearly even when they do the best they can, we are identifying that pesticides that have been regulated are putting people at increased risk for cancer, for learning problems, for poor pregnancy outcomes, for thyroid

cancer, all under this current regulatory framework. So what was your hope or intention in joining the committee? I mean, clearly to me, that reflects that you must have had some hope or optimism that you could make a contribution to change. Like I sense that you already had some of this knowledge or belief heading into being nominated and accepted. So when you joined, what were your hopes for the work you might do and how you and your colleagues might contribute to some change? Yeah. Well, first, I think it's important to note that there are some of us who do this type of work. We call ourselves epidemiologists or public health physicians. We do this work with the hopes that the science is actually used to protect the public.

And often it isn't. Often it takes years for our science to be translated. So the first study I did as a young investigator was to identify what levels of lead and house dust are dangerous for children, will poison children. 25 years later now, after two federal court cases, I can finally say that that research was used to protect the public. Now, it was used before. It was used in 2001 to set standards, but it was misrepresented. And so for those of us that do this research, many of us feel an obligation not only to do the research that can protect the public, but to make sure that it's used to protect the public, that it's not just published

and languishes somewhere on a library shelf. So that's sort of as a context for why would I be willing to do this when I'm not paid, it's a volunteer gig, it takes me away from my other duties. Then I also feel some obligation, right? I'm a citizen of Canada. I have information that could protect Canadians. So I feel an obligation to serve on the committee. Finally, I really can't bitch about it if I don't step up and try to do something. Right. I mean, if I don't try to translate the evidence to help protect Canadians, then I don't have any.

I can't even deserve to complain about it. So when I was nominated, I initially agreed and we had our first meeting and they presented the terms of reference to us. The first problem was the terms of reference were very restrictive. We were only able to answer questions that they asked of us. We could not ask questions and expect them to be answered because that was not part of the terms of reference. ask questions and expect them to be answered because that was not part of the terms of reference. So I raised questions about that. And I said, I don't think I can help you become more transparent or help you be confident that you're protecting Canadians if I can't ask you tough questions. So after a couple weeks or even a month that we went back and forth on this and I finally said, look, I appreciate the nomination. I appreciate what you're trying to do, that your commitment to transparency.

I just don't believe it, given this restrictive terms of reference. So I, at that point, said that I was going to step down, even though I hadn't fully been approved yet, because I didn't, I wasn't comfortable with those terms of reference. One of the PMRA staff and I had a separate conversation and she said, look, would you agree to stay on as co-chair while we revise the terms of reference? And I agreed and said, yes, I would serve for a year while that was being done i got the revised terms of reference in about april maybe it was may of this year so nine months later ten months later no nine months later and um there really wasn't anything changed appreciably i was told that if i had a question that i wanted to put to the committee that I could present it. And then after several months of review by the leadership, that might be approved.

And so once again, I just felt like I did not have the kind of independence I needed, both to increase transparency or ensure that Canadians were being protected from pesticides. And so after several months of really struggling with should I stay on and try to make a difference or not, I at that point chose to resign. And the final decision for me was that I was troubled that as a quote independent scientist serving on this committee, I gave the impression that there was greater transparency and that Canadians were being protected. And I just, I didn't have any confidence in that. I didn't trust that that was true. Okay. So just to back up a little bit, an example, perhaps I'm just want to like clarify. So the terms of reference you were hoping for or expecting an example of the type of terms of reference you would have been more happy about would be the ability for the committee to identify, for example, hypothetically, a currently in use pesticide and we would like, potentially we'd like to make a recommendation to the,

to the PMRA that this be put back under review or considered to be removed. Something like that. The terms of reference you encountered would not have allowed for that because you were only there to answer questions from the main advisory body. From the staff. From the staff. That's correct. That's right.

We could only answer questions. And in fact, there were several occasions, From the staff. It's supposed to be this year. But there was evidence as early as 2003 that it was toxic. There was some evidence that internal scientists within PMRA said, look, we should not allow this to happen. We should not continue to use chlorpyrifos. In the States, this was very transparent, but they were going through the same process. I say it was transparent because this was the past design, chlorpyrifos, that the US EPA was planning to ban in 2015, I believe it was. And then Trump was elected. The CEO of Dow Chemical gave him a million dollars for his inauguration ceremonies. Dow Chemical makes chlorpyrifos, and he reversed it. And then they took away the decision to ban chlorpyrifos, right? So this has been a very contentious and well-studied pesticide. And it seems to me that unless we look at those pesticides that have been previously approved, well studied in laboratory

and human studies, we can't really learn about whether the regulatory process is working, is protecting us. And so we said, look, let's look at chlorpyrifos. Let's look at the registration processes. Look at the review process so we can learn something. They said, no, no, no. We want to look at this other one. This is a simple one, which, by the way, there's very little human data. We want to look at how this one was registered and re-reviewed. And you just really can't learn that much from studying something when there's no data. One way to help understand that is that, as I said earlier, many of the studies that are used to approve a pesticide are small laboratory studies. And yet, those small laboratory studies, the findings which indicate, quote, this pesticide is acceptable or safe, are upended by the human

studies, the type of studies I do. That come later because the thing gets approved, the pesticide gets approved, and then we get years or decades of study of what it's doing in human populations. And millions, if not billions of people who are exposed year after year after year. So in a way, this is like being exposed to a chemical that's not sufficiently tested for safety, right? It had some safety testing for sure. But the fact that we keep finding these pesticides that have been approved and told that they are safe and only later find out, whoops, that one's not safe either. Now, this is something we call regrettable substitution. So 100 years ago, lead arsenate was used as an insecticide. It was used on orchards and cotton fields and in other crops.

And then that was found to be a poison. To humans, you mean? A poison to humans? Humans, eagles, wildlife, absolutely. People were smoking it, actually, because you could find elevated levels of arsenic in your tobacco. And so you would smoke your cigarette and you'd get the carcinogens from the tobacco,

but you'd also get arsenic, which magnified the carcinogenicity or toxicity. You mean because the tobacco had been sprayed with lead arsenic? Yeah. That's right. That's right. Right. Well, not to worry.

We can use this new pesticide, this new insecticide, DDT. Well, we know where that went. And in fact, just in the past 10 years, a new study showed that women who were exposed to higher levels of DDT in utero, that is during fetal development, 40 years later were four times more likely to develop breast cancer. Now, DDT we now know is an estrogenic chemical. And estrogenic chemicals also oftentimes are found to increase the risk of breast cancer. So we went from lead arsenate to DDT. DDT was found to be a poison. Not to worry, we can shift to organophosphate pesticides. And there was some theoretical

benefit to that because DDT is a persistent pollutant, has a long half-life. Organophosphate pesticides have a short half-life. And at least in theory, that should be less toxic if the chemical doesn't stay around as long. Unfortunately, if OP pesticides are used widely in agriculture or in other uses, gardens and so on, we can be chronically exposed day after day after day. And so even though it has a shorter half-life, you can still have chronic exposure, which is that second problem we have to think about, because chronic low-level exposures can accumulate over time and lead to big problems. And so now there are scientists calling to ban organophosphate pesticides, not only chlorpyrifos, but also other organophosphate pesticides. Not to worry, industry says, we've got pyrethroids and neonicotinoids, but already there's some

evidence that those too may be toxic. So we keep making this mistake, which is called regrettable substitution. This is this is an age old problem. And we've seen it time and time again. And the solution has often been, let's find a new pesticide rather than can we find alternatives to these synthetic pesticides as a way to control pests that would be less toxic. Okay, so I want to, I think I'll be able to get out of you then, based on what you've told me, an assertion that it sounds like you believe that there are pesticides in use in Canada that should not be. That's true. Now, having said that, some of these that we now have definitive proof are toxic, paraquat, chlorpyrifos. These are the ones being phased

out or banned, right? And yet there are still organophosphate pesticides. There's still big questions about some of the neonicotinoids, not only for bees and colony collapse, that are still being used. I think the big point here is that we have to recognize that even when you approve a pesticide in the existing regulatory system that allow these chemicals that are now being banned in 2021, 2023, that we continue to find evidence of toxicity. So just on the face of it, it's clear that these are not protecting us. It's too little, too late. And we're doing it over and over, which is the regrettable substitution that you stated. So I want to bring that idea. Part of the reason I just asked you that question is back to your statement that we've relied a lot in oversight and management of these pesticides on lab studies, which I take to

also be synonymous with toxicological data, right? You're in a lab and I guess you're testing on rats or something like that. You can correct me if I'm not quite right, but you're saying that, because I want to bring this back to the PMRA specifically, right? And what I understand is one of the arguments you're making is the PMRA is relying too much on those types of studies

and then taking too long to embrace the subsequent human data that I think I've read you've called biomonitoring or epidemiological data that comes later. That it's just, it's too slow to embrace that science. And therefore we end up with changing our minds about pesticides way too late than is acceptable to you. There's a number of problems. Number one is the existing framework isn't

protecting Canadians. And that is just evidence in the fact that we keep finding some of the existing pesticides are toxic in human populations. And in many cases, they're also found subsequently to be found toxic in laboratory studies. And so it's not just in human studies. Chlorpyrifos, for example, there's evidence from at least 10 years ago from a colleague down at Duke who found that chlorpyrifos was toxic. So you can still find it. It's just that oftentimes the studies that are done at the time of approval are too small and not enough to really give us a good sense of what's going on. Now, one way to think about this is to compare it to the drug evaluation process. So for drugs, which are basically chemicals used in pharmaceutical purposes,

and pesticides are chemicals used for pesticide purposes, right? And in the environment, you don't ingest it as a pill, but basically they're chemicals. They're both chemicals. If you were evaluating a chemical for a drug, you have to undergo much more rigorous testing, preclinical studies, that's in laboratory studies and non-humans. But then you also have to go through a process where you evaluate it more carefully in humans, But then you also have to go through a process where you evaluate it more carefully in humans looking for subtle effects. Larger studies than typically is required for pesticides in laboratory animals. Now, this raises some really important questions. If we can't rely entirely on laboratory studies, for example, rats can detoxify chemicals better in general than humans can.

And if we can't rely on animal studies, what do we do? Well, we could do randomized controlled trials of pesticides in human volunteers. Now, we certainly, if we were going to do that, we wouldn't want to use pregnant women. We wouldn't want to use children. People should get paid. They should have full informed consent if they're going to participate in those studies to help us find out whether pesticides are safe. So I've got, you know, I'm not sure I want to propose that, but short of doing that, we are making a lot of guesses or assumptions about whether some of these chemicals used as pesticides are really safe and human populations. So the default Dr. David Artesani, is that you have a few studies. It's deemed to be sufficient to say these are safe or there's acceptable risks and then they're put out in commerce.

So this is basically the way it's been done. So now you might have chlorpyrifos or glyphosate. At the time it was approved, we had no idea how much would be found in our urine, in our bodies. So in a sense, we are all being part of a massive experiment where there's this pesticide being widely used. We now know it's in many of us. You can find it in many of our urine samples, so we know we're being exposed to it. Are there effects at very low levels from chronic exposure? That's part of the experiment. But none of us were asked to participate in this experiment. None of us were given a consent form saying, here's the possible risks. So that's not something I could actually do as a researcher. I could not

expose people to glyphosate at the levels people are being exposed to in the community today without an ethical review, without an informed consent saying that they know I'm giving it to them. And yet it's okay if we're being exposed to these pesticides in our diet, that farmers might be exposed to even higher levels when they're applying it. And so at some point, it's very possible, there's already evidence that Roundup is carcinogenic. There's some studies that show it increases the risk of pregnant women giving birth prematurely. It may take another five or 10 years, another 10 or 20 studies to prove that one way or the other. So what are the alternatives? Well, first,

we should step back and ask whether the regulatory system is serving us or is it serving industry? Can I stop you there, though? Because this is going to be one of my – I wanted to tease that apart because it is serving – that is a very important question. By serving industry, I can argue that it's serving everyone. Because I wanted to ask you about trade-offs, right? I wanted to ask you where you sit on the idea of, okay, we're talking about the potential harms of these pesticides, which are serious, but there's also the reason we use them,

farmers use them. And yes, the companies, the corporations that produce them have a financial incentive to like increase their use, but farmers aren't stupid and they use them and we use them in our food system for a reason. I don't need to explain that to you. I'm wondering how you, Bruce Lanphier, navigate or think about the trade-offs there. I'd love to get a sense of where you sit on the continuum of like, I have moderate views on the trade-off or radical ones, and there's nothing wrong with having radical ones, but I assume you

must have thought about this. So where do you sit on an idea of trade-offs and the reason we use all of these herbicides, fungicides, pesticides? Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. First of all, let me just declare a bias. I have a bias to protect the public. That's my job, in fact. As a public health physician, I committed my research to do things to protect the public. I'm not interested in protecting a pharmaceutical company or a pesticide company. Other people will do that.

So is there tradeoffs potentially? But the other thing we have to recognize is, are there alternatives? And do we fully understand the risks and the benefits? Now, I might, if I lived in a malaria endemic country, I might be using DDT around my home. That's allowed still, right? There's also risks with DDT. And so I would much prefer to use screens that are impregnated with DDT rather than spraying it, reducing the exposure. I would rather, in fact, use screen doors, mosquito nets to try to minimize or maybe even not use DDT at all. mosquito nets to try to minimize or maybe even not use DDT at all. So I think part of the question is, are there alternatives?

Now, I've got to be careful, and I just want to say, when I start to get out of my expertise, I'll either reference other people. And in this case, in 2013, UNICEF did point out that we do not need pesticides to feed the world. That's something that I believe for many years. There are alternatives. Now, it might take us some time to get there, but we've clearly been overusing pesticides. Up until a few years ago, most of us were using pesticides in and around our house for cosmetic purposes to make our gardens pretty.

Those have been banned now in five provinces and many parts of British Columbia. We just did it on Bowen Island. It's as Rachel Carson would have said, indiscriminately and without any consideration of the harms that are potential or even known. And so there are alternatives. Number one, we can start to focus more on organic when possible. Now, in some cases, it may not be possible to farm in some communities, in some areas, without using pesticides. And so there's going to have to be some tough questions asked. For example, on Bowen and our community garden, we can't grow some things. We have to either not eat those or get them from elsewhere. And this is going to take some time. And so part of it is just beginning to ask the questions and recognize that we can no longer make this assumption that pesticides are safe.

We should assume that they have the potential, just like with the drugs we take, to be toxic. So that's the first part. Then you're absolutely right. Let's look at the tradeoffs. But if we can't understand the risks, how can we understand the tradeoffs, the risks and the benefits? And that's where the transparency is so important to understand oftentimes how little we know about a pesticide when it's first approved and how we only understand the risks after it's been used in commerce for 10, 20, 30 years. That doesn't make a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you, my impression is that you're the only one of the eight-member science advisory committee that resigned. Why is that? It's a good question. And I don't know that I fully understand because I'd have to interview each of the other scientists. I can tell you that I'm probably among the more senior, maybe the most senior.

And I don't mean just older, but had more. I've been doing this for 25 plus years now, not just with pesticides, but lead, pesticides, tobacco. I looked at how many of these chemicals that we've been told are fine for years now, either we've known lead poison, of course, for centuries as a poison, but we were told that not at these levels. But some of my work that was dismissed for 15 years showed that there were no safe levels. Set down to the lowest measurable level, we can find increases in preterm birth and childhood learning problems and ADHD, right? So I was told this for 15 years about lead, something I studied, and I knew it was not true. I've had several of my studies be used to set policy in Canada,

in the United States, around the world. I know how science gets watered down, and it's not protective. Government has two sometimes competing or conflicting goals. The first one, protected citizens. And I'm convinced that people on PMRA, they wanna protected citizens. I have no doubt about that. They're professionals, they're good people.

But there's this other conflicting goal which is to make its citizens feel protected and there's also this tendency to try to maintain the status quo we don't want to upset the economy and and this idea for example whether you have lead service lines in 10 of homes or whether it could be that we're being exposed to a pesticide that is toxic. That's really overwhelming for people to get their head around. A medical historian was talking to me when I was in England, and he said, you know what happens when officials, government officials, become aware of a problem, a hazard or a risk that's overwhelming. What? I said, they cover it up. Let's say, for example, we said that there is no safe level of

air pollution. Actually, that's true. There is no safe level. Down to the lowest measurable level, Actually, that's true. There is no safe level. Down to the lowest measurable level, we can find evidence of risk, increased risk of mortality. What do we do? We're all being exposed to some amount of air pollution. And, you know, of course, our government officials, they don't want to scare people, particularly if they can't do anything about it tomorrow. So that's OK. We're going to come up with acceptable levels. Now, in the short term, that's probably very reasonable, whether we're talking about pesticides or air pollution. We can't change the system overnight. But what we can do is something we did with leaded gasoline or petrol. We said, okay, lead and petrol is unsafe. Right now, 30% of cars rely on it, but we're going to phase it out for the next over the next five to 10 years. But isn't that essentially what happens in Canada with the PMRA?

You describing like we're going to set an acceptable exposure limit and then keep an eye on it. And if we get more data, phase it out over the next five or 10 years. Absolutely. That's what happens. And time and time again, we found that those pesticides that we were told were safe weren't. And so at some point you have to step back and say, is the system working for us? Is it protecting Canadians as much as we hope? system working for us? Is it protecting Canadians as much as we hope? There's two other points here that I like to bring out. First of all, most of the things that kill us today are man-made. Most of the things that kill us today are because of things we've done to the environment. Pesticides are one of those things. Air pollution is another. Lead is another.

pesticides are one of those things. Air pollution is another. Lead is another. Heavily processed foods are another. When we treat most cancers, either we use radiation or chemotherapy. And chemotherapy is just another type of poison. The hope with chemotherapy for cancer patients is that the poisons are picked up by the fast-growing cells, the cancer cells. Yeah. And that's why the cancer cells die. Well, here's one of the problems when we're exposing children to pesticides and other toxic chemicals, even at very low concentrations. What's happening to a child during pregnancy?

Rapid-growing cells over those first nine months as their bodies and brains are being formed, those poisons can derail the process of a child developing. And in fact, with some pesticides, pesticide exposures that occur in utero, we know that those are one risk factor for a child developing leukemia. Highway traffic is another one. Benzene is another one. Father smoking is a third. Paints and solvents is another one. One out of four cases of childhood leukemia can be attributed back to those exposures, those sources. And yet,

here's the finale of this whole process. I don't know what CIHR spends on invest in cancer research versus cure versus prevention. In the United States, it's probably comparable. In the United States, the National Cancer Institute, out of the billions of dollars they invest in cancer research, only 1% for childhood cancer goes to prevention. Prevention, all the rest for cure. Absolutely. So there's a real problem. And so I don't think most Canadians are aware that we spend so little on prevention. I don't think most Canadians want to stop and think about the fact that much of the death disease and disability we experience is manmade. It's not mostly genetic, where we put a lot of our research dollars into genetics. When you have something like coronary heart disease that goes from being a rare condition, peaking in the 1960s, and then coming down by 70% since then, our genes haven't changed much over that time. What's changed? Environmental triggers, air pollution, lead, smoking.

Oftentimes, we blame people for heart disease and other problems. So I think it's time for us to open up a dialogue about how do we regulate pesticides and other toxic chemicals? Do we want to invest more in prevention? These are questions that the public deserves to have a voice in, to be part of that kind of a dialogue. So Bruce, you just mentioned the public has a right to be engaged with this and to have a say given everything that affects them. We haven't yet talked about, I'm going to take us back to the PMRA maybe for the last time, but we haven't even touched on something else you're concerned about, which is conflict of interest at the PMRA. Because there's this larger advisory council, the Pest Management Advisory Council is the larger group that, as you mentioned earlier, has scientists, it has advocates,

environmental groups, it has members of industry. And I read in at least one article about your resignation that you expressed concern about conflict of interest when it comes to regulating pesticide use in Canada. So can you expand on that? Is that a great concern of yours? Absolutely. It's a big concern. It's not only with pesticides. We shouldn't have people who have conflicts of interest representing advisory councils for drugs, pharmaceutical agents, for pesticides, for recommendations on what we put, what we eat, our diets. What we've seen from studies over the past 20 or 30 years is that when an industry funds a study, the results are much more likely, significantly more likely to favor the industry than when those same studies are done by government or an independent source of funding. We've seen time and again, whether it's with lead, with pesticides, that the first thing that the industry will say is absolutely our chemicals are safe. Lead is safe. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong. They're misrepresenting the data. They've created this playbook of manufacturing doubt, creating uncertainty. They hire advertising agencies with that specific goal

in mind. So we can look at it from the history of chemicals used in the environment, whether it's pesticides or lead. We can look at the responses. And when litigation finally opens up the memos and emails of industry, we can see that decades before something was banned, they knew it was toxic. So no way can we today justify allowing people who have a financial conflict of interest to serve on regulatory agencies or health agencies. It doesn't make any sense. Bruce, at the very start of our interview, you kind of started with some examples about the presence of certain toxins in our urine at very high levels of penetration in the population, right? You were using 80% for this and 90% for this and 100% for this. So I kind of have a two-part question. First is, and this might bewilder you to even hear this from me, but like the fact that

something is being detected regularly in our urine to that level in the population, just the fact that it's in our urine. I mean, I would guess from your point of view, that's just an alarm, like plain and simple. But for a regular citizen like me, I just want to tease that apart a little bit to what extent I should find that alarming. And I know that apart a little bit to what extent I should find that alarming and I know that's a weird question to ask it's it's I mean you know uh intellectually it's like yeah I don't like the idea that there's you know a glyphosate being or lead being detected in my own kids urine and yet the whole conversation turns around permissible limits right and then

the trade-offs and why, why we allow this stuff in the first place. So I don't know what my question is. Could you contextualize that a bit? Should I be, should I as a regular citizen have a, have a draw, like a hard line, like any presence is unacceptable, you know? Cause I, I sense that that's close to where you're at, that any presence is unacceptable. Yeah. It's, it's a great question. And there's quite a few answers to it, but let me try to start out by saying that, um, you're at, that any presence is unacceptable? Yeah, it's a great question. And there's quite a few answers to it. But let me try to start out by saying that no matter how poisonous a substance is, a chemical is, if nobody's being exposed to it, we probably shouldn't worry, right? If we are

being exposed to it, and if many or most of us are being exposed to it, then we should at least be worried about it. Now, why do I say that? Well, about 50 or 60 years ago, our regulatory agencies made an assumption. And that assumption was that low levels of chemicals in our blood, in our urine, are inconsequential. They're safe. There's a threshold before which they become toxic. All right. So that was an assumption. Move ahead 50 years. And I saw this first, and that was what I was taught. In medical school and environmental health training,

I was taught that there are safe levels. Don't worry about these small amounts that we would find. Now jump ahead 50 years. What we found with lead is that not only are there no safe levels, proportionately, we find greater reductions in children's intellectual abilities, beginning at the very lowest levels of exposure. A new study in Canada, for example, found that what we used to think just a few years ago, even today, was an inconsequential amount of lead in pregnant women's blood, a one microgram per deciliter increase, which is like 10 parts per billion of lead in blood.

We found that an increase of 10 parts per billion was associated with about a 50% increase in preterm birth. That's not trivial, particularly when it's spread across large populations. Among women who were vitamin D deficient, a 10 part per billion increase in lead was associated with a two and a half fold increased risk in preterm birth. There are countries in Europe that have about five or 6% rates of preterm birth. It's about 8% here. There's no reason we shouldn't have a rate that's at least as low as the healthiest country in the world. Let me give you another quick example. We keep diminishing or dismissing these acceptable levels, these low risks. Low risks spread across large populations will dwarf the impact of large risks in small populations. So let me just give you an example of that that's separate from the toxicity.

If I gave you, if it was just a monetary thing, I gave you the option of taking $1 million from the 10 wealthiest Canadians, which one would you take? Oh, well, if I'm maximizing how much money I get, I guess I'll take a dollar from every Canadian. That's right. Small risks, small amounts of money yeah spread across large populations will dwarf what you would get from a high risk from a small and a small group of people right right and it's the same with air pollution for example or lead when you start to look at small risks some of them sometimes it's not small but if you look at risks that might be dismissed as small, but everybody's exposed, 99% of people are exposed to pyrethroids, 80% organophosphate pesticides. Those small risks spread across large groups can have a bigger impact than large risks in small groups of people.

So that's why the exposure is so important. Right. And here's the second part of my question. We have spent almost the entire conversation talking about individual chemicals right and i'm wondering from your science and your background like what you know about chemicals uh accumulating in the body and interacting with each other and what we know about that and in your answer could you relate it back to how and whether the pmra looks at it that way like do we tend to only regulate each chemical on its own? Or to what extent does the PMRA consider, okay, but what is happening with multiple exposures to multiple chemicals?

Over 50 years ago, Rachel Carson warned us about the joint effects of chemicals. That is, two chemicals together could be worse than each by themselves. We call that synergistic effects. And we know that happens with several chemicals. So for example, if you're exposed to lead as a child, higher amounts of lead as a child, and your mother smoked in utero, you're over eight times more likely to have ADHD. But if it was only lead by itself about two and a half times, or tobacco by itself two and a half times. So in some cases, we know these chemicals can interact and lead to a multiplicative or a magnification of effect.

PMRA does not, has not yet of chemicals in every person we study. So we know that we are essentially a cocktail of chemicals, and there's no way for the regulatory agencies, well, they could take it into account. It would all be theoretical because they don't know how to do it any different than that. It'd be guesswork, but they do not try to account for these cocktail of chemicals that we all are. Our time is very limited. You've been very generous with your time, Bruce. And so I guess I just want to end, I don't even know how to word this question, but like this specific story about your participation in and then resignation from this science advisory committee for the PMRA. Let me tell a very quick story. I mean, I go on the radio because I have the privilege of doing a regular radio column for a local CBC radio show about food and agriculture.

for a local CBC radio show about food and agriculture. And I devoted a couple of my recent columns to the theme of sprays. And I went in different directions with that. But, you know, I'm in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. We have a very large tree fruit industry that is very dependent on pesticides and herbicides. And I wanted to, in my columns, I at least once reassured my audience

that Health Canada Overseas has stringent oversight of pesticides in Canada, and people could take some assurance from that. As we've just spent an hour or more talking about, that's not, that's too simple, and not necessarily the case. I am someone who has traditionally put faith in the institutions that are meant to protect us because I believe in trusting the experts that are supposedly there to make the right decisions because I don't know how to move through the world without doing that. So I'm someone who puts faith in authority that way, not blind faith, but in the case of like going to Health Canada's website and being told by them that we have these stringent, the stringent oversight, and we have this decorated panel of

people who are there to make sure Canadians are safe. It's like, okay, well, we have a bunch of scientists who are on the job. Okay. We've just spent some time talking about why, um, the PMRA needs improvement. I, I don't know how to word this next part, but I am just curious to know how you go about, like, I made me think about health Canada also being in charge of the pandemic and providing guidelines for Canadians. Right. And that was very contentious. There's a lot of, or there's like a small, but very strident minority who, you know, fervently believe that we can't trust Health Canada in that regard. So I'm just wondering if you have anything to say about how you go about, what is your

approach to these institutions that are meant to keep us safe and that if we refuse to trust them, it starts getting very uncomfortable because things start to break down. And yet there I was on the radio assuring people that they could feel safe with pesticides. And I feel having talked to you, like I have some, I have, I need to reconsider that point of view. Anyway, I'm done talking. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about any of that. Yeah, it's really important questions. I also for several years, trusted that the government agencies were there protecting us. And absolutely, it's better that they are doing what they do instead of having nothing, right? So there is some comfort we should take in the agencies doing what they're doing today. Now, the question is, are they doing

enough? Are the assumptions that they're making sufficient, given what we've learned over the past 50 years? Because the regulatory system really hasn't changed over the past 50 years. When we've seen problems evolve, for example, we have evidence now that children who are exposed in utero to sprays near fields are at increased risk for autism. So that's one of the possible outcomes. The question, of course, is how much evidence do we need? I think the other thing we should recognize is that if anybody who's looked at history recognizes that there's been multiple improvements in public health, including how we regulate drugs and chemicals over the years. These have all been

incremental. And they've only happened because people stood up and said, wait a minute, we've got new science that says maybe we're not doing enough. And that's basically what I'm saying. Canada, for its size, is actually a very trusting population. People trust the government. And it's one of the things I actually appreciate about it. But it can do better here. And one of the problems or challenges is, in order for it to do better, we have to question it. You can't improve a threat until you first recognize it, right? So in this case, what could we do different? First of all, we recognize that pesticides, synthetic pesticides in particular, but pesticides have the potential to be toxic. That's just true. Next question we have to ask is, should we be

assuming that they're toxic at any level? Based upon evidence that's come out over the past 20 years, my answer is absolutely. So then the next thing we should begin to ask is, what are the alternatives? Are there ways that we can reduce the use of some pesticides? Should Health Canada be helping us to reduce pesticides? Should we be providing incentives for farmers to find ways to reduce pesticides? Absolutely. And that may take 10, 20 years. But we absolutely know pesticides are poisons.

It's only a question at what dose, at what level of exposure. And we know that people are being exposed. So altogether, it seems to me that it's time to step back and reframe this question from we don't think there's any effects at low levels to recognizing that for many of the most well studied and widely disseminated toxic chemicals including pesticides we now know that there are risks and we need to develop different types of strategies and not just continue to rely on these obsolete regulatory frameworks that have failed us time and again. Now, they're better than nothing, absolutely. But yet we've still seen how they failed us. So I'm going to end on sharing this quote again and ask you about it one more time. This is from

the PMRA website. Pesticides are stringently regulated in Canada to ensure they pose minimal risk to human health and the environment. How do you feel about that statement? It seems to me the key word, the tricky word there is minimal. They don't say no risk, they say minimal. Right. What I've learned in my own research and what I've learned from other research that's been done is that too often minimal risk is more than I think most people would choose to have. How much evidence do we need before we act? How much evidence do we need that childhood exposure, in utero exposure to pesticides leads to an increase in childhood leukemia? exposure to pesticides leads to an increase in childhood leukemia. How much evidence do we need before we act? How much funding should we be putting towards prevention? Are we really regulating pesticides stringently enough to be fully confident that we're protecting Canadians? Those are the kind of questions we should be asking ourselves. And those are the kind of questions

we should be asking our elected leaders. And we can do better. We know that there's alternatives and we should be trying to find those alternatives so that we don't have to keep asking people to figure out whether what they do day to day is putting them at risk. They should have that information. And I think the key here, again, is small risks

and large populations add up to a lot of death, disease, and disability. We shouldn't dismiss small risks. Dr. Bruce Lanphier, thank you so much for sharing your time and thoughts and experience with us. I really appreciate it. And I think my listeners will, too. Thank you. Today I learned I don't need anything to live on except for a little of you. Okay, that's it for now i will talk to you hopefully sometime soon although given the sheer volume of various varieties of beans and corn

that are sitting out in the field ready to be harvested but not able to be harvested quite yet it may not be tomorrow or the next day but soon enough thanks for listening i hope you got as much out of that conversation with bruce lamphere as i did and i'll talk to you when i talk to you go check out the organic bc podcast if nothing else i've got lots of stuff over there. Bye everybody. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country, with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching, and here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces.

Ride out into the wilds and graces. We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces. And live next door to the birds and the bees. And live life like it was meant to be. Ba ba ba da da da Ah ah ah ah ah ah Doo doo doo doo doo doo Doo doo doo doo doo Doo doo doo doo doo Mmm