Pyrethrin Steering Committee/Joint Venture Comments on Center For Public
Integrity Report on Pyrethrin Incidents
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- In a report issued yesterday, the
Center for Public Integrity (Perils of the New Pesticides) inappropriately
attacks the safety profile of pyrethrins. Derived from flowers grown in Africa
and Australia, these natural insecticides have been used for centuries to
protect crops and homes from insect infestation. They have the additional
attribute of breaking down quickly in the environment, which makes them
favored in organic agriculture, pest control, and other applications.
"We are concerned that this report was issued without apparent
understanding of how human incident reports are collected and managed and
without a broader understanding of the safety profile of pyrethrins," said Dr.
Thomas Osimitz, a board-certified toxicologist, and internationally-recognized
expert on pyrethrins. He is a consultant to the Pyrethrin Steering
Committee/Joint Venture (PJV), an alliance of pyrethrin growers, formulators,
and refiners. He was interviewed by the reporter.
"While the author of the report spoke at length late in July to me and to
Dr. Richard Kingston, one of the architects of the reporting systems used by
the nation's poison control centers and relied on by the Environmental
Protection Agency, he failed to communicate the limitations in using raw
incident report data in making conclusions about safety profiles," Osimitz
said. "Instead, the author used raw data incorrectly to derive the
conclusions used in his story. So, the basis for his conclusions is flawed
and represents a grossly inaccurate picture of the safety profile of
pyrethrins."
Dr. Kingston, senior clinical toxicologist with the SafetyCall
International Poison Center and clinical professor of pharmacy at the
University of Minnesota, is one of the world's foremost authorities on the
collection and evaluation of adverse event incident data for a wide range of
consumer products. He was instrumental in the development of the reporting
structure for incident data that is provided to the EPA. His organization, a
licensed medical facility, is one of the largest surveillance centers in the
world responsible for collecting, monitoring and reporting adverse incidents
to the EPA involving pyrethrins.
According to Kingston, he cautioned the author in extended conversations
about serious concerns regarding the report's accuracy, if the author
persisted in simply conducting his own statistical analysis. "The basic
premise behind the story is that the EPA's raw database shows an increase in
reports of adverse events. But taking all incident data at face value in its
raw form is a fundamentally flawed approach," Kingston said. He also
explained to the author the difficulties of drawing conclusions regarding this
data without assistance from those who understand how the data was collected,
tabulated and reported and what it means.
"In an effort to conduct responsible product stewardship, companies
encourage consumers to call with any concerns and then must report all
incident allegations to the EPA. But, the incident details are often
incomplete, cannot be confirmed or not valid and the incidents may have no
health implications whatsoever," Kingston said. "In the database, these
incidents are aggregated further with reports of individuals who, for example,
used products to commit or attempt to commit suicide, but both are treated as
being equal. They're not."
According to Drs. Osimitz and Kingston, there are several important
factors to consider in determining if there is a meaningful increase in
reports:
-- Products containing pyrethrins are among the most preferred products
available to consumers for insect management. Because of their quick removal
from the environment by sunlight and because they have an excellent safety
profile, use of pyrethrins has increased. With increased usage, one would
logically anticipate more reports, but the overall percentage of valid reports
versus usage has NOT increased significantly.
-- Reporting requirements for incidents associated with products have
changed dramatically. Previously only reports validated by independent
medical professionals were submitted to the EPA for its database. When EPA
rules changed, ALL reports, no matter how inconsequential, must be submitted
without having gone through appropriate medical analysis and validation. This
rule change, not the products themselves, has contributed to a substantial
increase in the number of reports in the database.
-- The reporter equates an incident report with a poisoning. That is
simply incorrect and inappropriate. Reports are added to the EPA dataset with
no investigation, confirmation or validation. Every reported incident in the
EPA database was taken at face value as factual and was assumed to have been
related to serious exposures. The author of the report based his thesis and
conducted his own analysis using this raw, unaudited data. There was no
evaluation by expert clinical and medical toxicologists to evaluate incidents
that, in many cases, would not have been considered to result from exposure to
pyrethrins. Many, in fact, are without any symptoms. As a result, the
conclusions in the report are seriously misleading and flawed.
"The PJV will continue to reach out to consumers, healthcare
professionals, news media representatives and others to share concerns about
the nature of the story and its many other misrepresentations," according to
Susan Little, executive director of the PJV. "This 'investigative' feature
raises serious questions about editorial integrity," she said, "when the
science is completely ignored and sensationalism becomes the focus.
Additionally, to suggest that the industry and the EPA are not working to
provide sufficient safeguards is simply absurd."
SOURCE Pyrethrin Steering Committee/Joint Venture
Susan Little, for Pyrethrin Steering Committee/Joint Venture, +1-202-833-7315,
or +1-571-437-1832, or +1-800-789-3300
