While regulatory decisions should be, and are to an extent, based on biochemical and epidemiological science, the reality is always more complex. Regulations are the primary political infrastructure through which pesticides manifest, ideally, adapting to reflect a scientifically supported idea of public wellbeing.
Atrazine’s regulations, however, differ greatly across global regions, raising the question of how geopolitical borders could possibly determine atrazine’s toxicity. Why do some regions designate atrazine, and dozens more substances, too harmful while others endorse their use? And how does this figure in South Africa? Regulations are never perfect and subject to an array of complex political, historical, and economic influences. Using atrazine as a case study, this chapter traces its political regulatory journey, attending to two primary questions. How have the vast discrepancies in pesticide regulation formed? And, how does South Africa’s political-economic regulatory landscape affect atrazine’s material flows?
What we learnt from DDT
Atrazine is of course not the first commercial-scale pesticide to have garnered attention for its harmful ecological and health effects. In the early days of WWII, in one of the most influential moments for the pesticide industry, public health responses to insect borne diseases, and ecological health, the insecticidal properties of DDT were discovered (in the same laboratory in which atrazine was later discovered). During WWII, DDT was widely used to prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as the bubonic plague, typhus and malaria among soldiers. South Africa was one of the first countries to take up DDT as an anti- malaria agent in 1946. It was extremely effective at reducing insect borne diseases, reducing malaria cases by millions globally according to some estimates (Mbaso et al., 2004; Bouwman et al., 2011; Berry-Caban, 2011). Carson’s (1962) Silent Spring had a powerful effect in catalysing public awareness and concern over the ecological and human effects of the pesticide. Its low direct toxicity to macrofauna exposed to low doses in the short-term reinforced its popularity at a stage of high demand. Significantly, Carson explained that DDT affected far greater areas and numbers of species than the target-species. It not only kills significantly more species than intended but also has substantial knock-on effects in ecosystems and their food webs. Carson also demonstrated that the scale of DDT use had resulted in many of its intended targets becoming resistant to its effects. One of its most concerning characteristics was its persistence in soil, water and even organic tissue. Turusov, Rakitsky and Tomatis (2002) suggest that no living organisms today can be considered free of DDT or its metabolites. This is an impressive and unsettling feat from only a few decades of common use. DDT’s trajectory from its pesticidal properties being discovered to Silent
32 Spring’s exposition of its toxicity to its ban in the USA and EU a decade later should have been a cautionary tale. 2 Instead, it became an illustration of the vast inadequacy of regulatory structures’ abilities to control the use and spread of toxic chemicals.
After more than 60 years of use, atrazine has had both powerfully backed industrial support and varied forms of resistance to its suspected and proven toxicity. Over this period, it has forged prominent trajectories through some political-economic regulatory systems and travelled conspicuously under the radar in others. Unpacking this chemopolitical path and its network of connections reveals a web of politically and economically driven influences that shape the molecule’s regulation and trajectory in the world. Patterns and changes of pesticide regulations are valuable points of departure for interpreting a region’s political economic influences. Regional comparisons illustrate global trends in the flow of toxic chemicals. The regulatory contrasts reveal concerning disparities in where toxicity is distributed and who is required to face its effects. Corporate involvement in the regulatory sphere backed by political orientations towards development are significant influences in regions with high pesticide use and weak environmental and health protection. This chapter offers a structural analysis of atrazine, situating it within 1) historical trends in pesticide regulation, 2) global flows of toxicity and 3) South Africa’s regulatory landscape. Concluding thoughts are offered on what the most influential current trends in South Africa’s pesticide regulatory environment means for atrazine’s material flow. The following chapter brings the molecular and structural analyses of atrazine together, highlighting the real-world violence that atrazine’s effects cause.
The first successful triazine herbicide discovery by chemical manufacturer, J.R. Geigy was simazine. It showed significant pre-emergent herbicidal activity and a tolerance to corn above required application rates. It was widely considered a success and taken up readily by industry for a broad range of uses (Muller et al., 2008). After atrazine’s superior post-emergent activity and lower water requirement was discovered, it soon took over as J.R. Geigy’s best-selling herbicide3. By the early 1960s, atrazine was being produced by J.R. Geigy in several sites across North and South America, Australia and Switzerland. In 1969,
2 It was only in 1996, around 25 years after regions such as the USA and EU, that South Africa removed DDT from its malaria control program. Four years later it was reintroduced to deal with rising malaria cases (Mbaso et al., 2004)
3 Simazine, despite its ban in the EU, remain in use, largely on grapes, the main contributor to South Africa’s most profitable agricultural export, wine.
33 a production facility in the USA was built which produces J.R. Geigy’s (now Syngenta) atrazine4. By the early 1970s, the company’s patent on atrazine had expired, and numerous other agrochemical companies began production; Sanachem, now owned by chemical megacorporation, Dow, became the first producer of the herbicide in South Africa. While information on pesticide production and use in South Africa is hard to come by (also noted by Dabrowski et al., 2014 in relation to atrazine in particular), there are now multiple companies in South Africa that sell their own mixtures of atrazine.
20
th-century trends in pesticide regulation
Given the scale and economic value of the USA’s agrochemical industry, as the largest producer and consumer of atrazine and second largest of pesticides overall, the development and changes of its regulatory landscape carries global significance.
In 1947, in partial response to the increasing popularity of DDT as an effective insecticide during and post- World War II, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) was passed in the US to control registration and regulation of pesticides.5 While it significantly increased the scope of regulatory requirements, it placed the responsibility of regulation in the Department of Agriculture. In 1958, the Delaney Clause was introduced, effectively allowing regulators to set extremely low levels of permissible pesticide residue in food products (Zander, 2010). While the Delaney Clause, in theory, allowed a zero- risk approach it was not extensively employed to reduce pesticide use. To further explore the political economic influences involved in the regulatory sphere in the USA, Eisner’s (1993) analytical framework of regulatory regimes describing significant patterns of regulatory shifts is useful. The author describes the most prominent influences of the various political administrations in the 20th century, and their effects on regulatory changes.
Eisner (1993) suggests that with the 1960s and ‘70s, a new societal regime emerged in which there was rising public pressure on the government to accept the responsibility of preventing or minimizing environmental hazards, a role that had previously been fulfilled by the private sector. The author proposes three significant shifts observed in environmental regulation during this period. Firstly, the potential long- term effects of invisible substances in minute quantities became necessary to regulate (Rushefky, 1989:
4 J.R. Geigy merged with chemical company Ciba in 1970 and then again with pharmaceutical company Sandoz in 1996 to form Novartis. In 2000, Novartis merged with AstraZeneca, and Syngenta was formed as the agrochemical division, which is now owned by ChemChina.
34 262). This was epitomised by the discovery of the effects and subsequent regulations of DDT. Secondly, there was an increase in the necessary interface between science and administration, often on the basis of incomplete and/or contested data (Eisner, 1993). Uncertainty and conflicting science became important and often controversial points of contestation over appropriate regulation. Thirdly, proposed solutions to the risks posed by chemical industries were through engineering solutions (as opposed to restricting use) which came at significant cost. This caused pushback from industries as stricter regulations meant significantly increased mitigation costs. This period also coincided with a significant overall rise in pesticide use (USDA, 2014). The three characteristic shifts suggested by Eisner (1993) remain relevant and notable points of friction between the pesticide industry and governance in both the USA and South Africa.
Regulatory shifts in the 1970s included an increased focus on pollution as well as air and water quality.
One of the most significant waves of stricter environmental regulations on air and water quality were established in the run up to the 1972 presidential elections, widely considered to be a lobbying tactic (Jones, 1975; Meier, 1985; Eisner, 1993). Post-election, by the late 1970s, polluting industries were given multiple extensions to meet the promised water quality amendments with significant flexibility provided on earlier requirements (Eisner, 1993). The political strategy to attract public support by proposing stricter environment regulations, while later reverting to industry-favoured deregulation, or simply not enforcing the stricter policies remains in use.
Perhaps the most significant environmentally oriented regulatory move from the early 1970s Republican presidency, was the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). This centralised several disparate environmental regulation administrations into one independent agency.
Dealing with new forms of interface with governmental departments and a containing a large number of administrative and scientific staff, it was regularly described as understaffed and highly bureaucratically convoluted (Bosso, 1987; Eisner, 1993). Significantly for the agricultural, and agrochemical industries, the initiation of the USEPA shifted the regulatory responsibility for pesticides from the USDA to the USEPA.
Importantly this meant (theoretically at least) that an independent agency with environmental protection as its primary mandate rather than agricultural output, would determine pesticide registration and regulation (Bosso, 1987). Under these conditions, upon registration of a pesticide, it was the registrant’s responsibility to provide all toxicological information.
The USEPA also had its own Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP), consulted when considering any forms of suspension or cancellation of a chemical. The SAP, however, was not required to be consulted during the
35 registration of a new pesticide (Jassanof, 1998; Zander 2010). Furthermore, the US courts have ruled that the USEPA is not bound by their SAP’s findings and can make contrary decisions ‘if justifiable’ (Zander, 2010). The tension of regulatory officials being required to make decisions on incomplete science has become increasingly complicated as the number of chemicals in use continues to rise. As more compounds find their way into the environment, proving causation, especially for long-term effects becomes exponentially more challenging. By the late 1990s, the Delaney Clause, which had made strict regulation of pesticides legal, was abolished and pesticide regulation by the USEPA was largely based on a cost- benefit approach (Pelaez, 2013). This model reframed risk of harm as another statistic in weighing up a heavily economically-inflected idea of ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’. The workings of a cost-benefit analysis as well as the construction of effects deemed ‘side-effects’ will be expanded upon in the following chapter. The USEPA’s approach was in contrast to a precautionary, risk-based approach employed by Swedish regulators, which was later adopted by the EU (Zander, 2010).
Changes to regulations were and are often slow and bound up in webs of political and economic pressures.
By the end of the 1970s, through a convoluted combination of US congress-mandated pressure for stricter environmental protection policies, lack of funding, arduous bureaucracy, and contradictory judicial decisions, the USEPA had established stricter air and water quality standards. In the 1979 administration, with a new director-general, the USEPA shifted its primary focus from ecological issues to public health, drawing a significantly higher budget from the state (Eisner, 1993). The public health agenda was enacted through a process of financialising pollution by the creation of emission credits. This allowed companies to increase pollution in some areas while reducing in others to meet an acceptable pollution output average (Eisner, 1993). Transforming emissions into data points which can be manipulated to fulfil averages strips the toxicity of its harmful reality. Making companies liable to aggregate values rather than values specific to emission outputs undermines the validity of claims to accountability of those experiencing the effects of emissions. Financialising emissions as items to be bought and sold further removes the polluting effects from their reality. Creating a market for emission credits reflects intentions to make regulations workable for polluting industries rather than having risk of toxicity as a primary focus.
As pollution became abstracted from its environment, the trend of favourable regulations for the agrochemical industry continued.
In the late 1970s, and early 80s, Eisner (1993) notes a strong trend towards deregulation and regulatory reform in the US. Throughout these periods of varied political influence on and involvement with
36 environmental regulations, pesticide use was rising rapidly in the US. From 1960 to 1981, pesticide use had increased three-fold with use quantities peaking in 1981 at 286 670 tonnes for the year. By the early 1980s, atrazine was the most used pesticide in the country, representing 16% of the total use (USDA, 2014). As more data was emerging on the toxicity of many pesticides, the EU had a roughly 10% drop in pesticide use from 1990 to 2017. In the same period, South Africa’s pesticide use increased by 62%, with other larger pesticide users China and Brazil increasing by 659% and 129% respectively (Roser, 2019).
There are of course many influences behind these statistics, such as political upheaval, and periods of fast economic development. However, there are concerning trends, across polluting industries, in which chemicals deemed too toxic for EU populations are exported to developing economies where the chemicals continue to be used and to cause harm. As the narrative of agricultural intensification being the answer to global hunger was espoused by institutions such as the United Nations and the Gates Foundation, pesticide production increased rapidly with its toxicity concentrating in the global south.
Global flows of toxicity
The flow of toxic substances from the EU to Africa when they become too hazardous or dirty for European standards is well illustrated by the example of sulphur levels in diesel. Sulphur occurs naturally in diesel made from oil, and after passing through a vehicle’s internal combustion system, sulphur dioxide is released as one of the exhaust gases. High levels of the highly reactive gas have been shown to cause respiratory tract inflammation, mucus secretion and exacerbates respiratory and cardiac health problems (WHO, 2021). Use of reduced sulphur fuels has been clearly linked to improved air quality and health benefits (Guineat et al., 2016; WHO, 2005). From the mid-1990s, regulations in the EU and the US started requiring lower levels of sulphur in diesel, and by the late-2000s, the two regions had set the limits at 10ppm and 15ppm respectively. While mandating low-sulphur fuel in the US and EU was a success for the hearts and lungs of Americans and Europeans, the sale of high-sulphur diesel continued from EU- based countries to under-regulated regions in global south (Guineat et al., 2016). As recently as 2014, according to the report, several countries across sub-Saharan and West Africa, were regularly receiving fuel with up to 2500ppm sulphur.
A report presented at a UN conference in 2018 showed a visual representation of the regulation of global sulphur levels with an unambiguous contrast of low maximum limits in the global north and up to 100 times those limits in the global south (Stratas, 2018: 8). It is important to note that this is not simply a case of global south governments not doing enough to prevent toxic air pollution, but a result of political economic pressure on developing economies to accept cheaper products to maximise economic growth
37 (Guineat et al., 2016; Geberell and Viret, 2020). Pressure should be put on countries condoning the export of products they deem too harmful for their own population. In the United Nations ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’, it is stated that business have the responsibility to respect human rights
“over and above compliance with national laws and regulations protecting human rights” (United Nations, 2011: 13). The unenforceable guiding principle does little to disrupt the capitalist status quo which requires interventions such as the Public Eye Report or powerful regulatory agencies to challenge.
Maintaining profitable deals with junk fuel products that affect people not protected by necessary strict regulations is allowed and even encouraged by a capitalist market (Zafirakis et al., 2016).6 The systemic nature of uneven regulations and resultant concentration of toxicity is a form of what Nixon (2011) terms
‘slow violence’, a concept explored further in the following chapter.
The Public Eye Report refers to the act of exporting products from strictly regulated regions to less strictly regulated regions as regulatory arbitrage (Guineat et al., 2016: 6). This applies the business practice of arbitrage to the international regulatory landscape. Fleischer (2010: 229) describes regulatory arbitrage as a “perfectly legal planning technique used to avoid taxes, accounting rules, security disclosure, and other regulatory costs”. The nature of the products and the ecological or health effects they may have are framed as irrelevant to the business practice. Companies involved, such as Oryx, defended the allegations of selling junk fuel to African countries by noting that their fuels are designed for particular markets and comply with necessary regulations (Guineat et al., 2016). There is a history of legalised waste dumping in Africa, supported by likes of the World Bank’s chief economist, Lawrence Summers, who famously said in the early 1990s that Africa is ‘under polluted’. US public policy research institute, Cato, called sending waste to Africa an opportunity for developing economies (Hecht, 2019). The practice of regulatory arbitrage and its artificial separation from real world effects highlights the role of global economic institutions and exporting countries in exploiting international regulatory discrepancies for profit. By creating a market for shifting the burden of toxic waste, trade agreements based on relaxed regulations maintain the existence of the regulations by creating an economic incentive to prevent them from becoming stricter. The practice of strictly regulating or banning harmful chemicals in the global north, while selling those same chemicals to regions in the global south is an established yet violent trend reflected in the agrochemical industry.
6 ‘Junk fuel’ is a phrase used in the petroleum industry to refer to bad quality fuel
38
Regulatory arbitrage with pesticides
In 2020, Public Eye and Unearthed investigated the export of pesticides from countries in which they are banned (Gaberell and Viret, 2020; Dowler, 2020 ). In 2018, European nations exported 81 615 tonnes of 41 different pesticides banned for use in their region of production. The majority of importing nations were low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa as one of the top ten importers by volume.
Overall, the UK was the largest exporter by a significant margin, while France exported the most Atrazine.
In 2018, 1425 tonnes of atrazine were exported by the EU, with majority headed for Ukraine, Sudan and Pakistan and 83 of those tonnes to South Africa from France and Italy. That year, a total of 1702 tonnes of pesticides banned in the EU were exported to South Africa from European countries. In addition to the uneven distribution of banned pesticides, the effects of toxic substances have been shown to land unevenly. The UN reported in 2017 that 200 000 acute poisoning deaths occur per year due to pesticide, with a shocking 99% of those occurring in developing countries. Many developing countries do not have the infrastructure and resources for chemical testing and waste disposal that wealthier countries do. The World Bank started a program to address the uneven distribution of essentially expired, or obsolete agrochemical products.
Due to the mounting volume of pesticide waste on the continent, the Africa Stockpiles Program was launch in 2005 to find and appropriately dispose of the estimated 50 000 tonnes of obsolete pesticides.
By 2016, the World Bank review on the program reported that Tanzania and Tunisia were the only countries to have disposed of more than 50% of its publicly held obsolete pesticide stockpiles. Even in Tanzania where the report claims 100% disposal, Balayannis’ (2020) argues, with reference to toxic stockpiles in the country, that these products are never truly ‘disposed of’ and residues do in fact remain.
Furthermore, with the stockpiles including pesticides such as DDT which persist for decades in soil, water and living tissue, the idea of disposal is limited to particular storage locations rather than from surrounding environments in which residues remain. This may be obvious as removing pesticides from groundwater or human livers is impractical, if even possible. It does, however, reiterate the legacy effect of maintaining the business of toxic chemical trade to underregulated regions in favour of protecting ecological and human health.
Influence of Regional Alliances
Despite the double standards set by EU regulations banning toxic pesticide use but effectively supporting their export, there are other notable global influences. The BRICS coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa exerts political influence over trade and regulations. While claiming a sort of emerging