Even though the National Academy of Sciences says that the level of synthetic chemicals in foods is so low as to be "unlikely to pose an appreciable cancer risk, "Congress has passed another law which will even further reduce pesticide levels -- creating even more problems for manufacturers, food processors and farmers. And experts have no doubt that the new law will increase costs to consumers.

• The Food Quality Protection Act will make it more difficult to register and use pesticides.

• Heretofore, the Environmental Protection Agency established a theoretically acceptable daily intake level for each pesticide by totaling a number of factors, which resulted in a level so low that the risks of pesticide residues were negligible.

• The agency then assumed that the pesticide was sprayed on all a farmer's acreage at full strength for all the crops he might use it on, which greatly overestimated the amount of residue on food.

• Not content with these rigorous safeguards, lawmakers -- through the new law -- are forcing the EPA to further lower its acceptable daily intake levels.

It has been predicted that the new law will decrease tolerances on certain classes of pesticides by a factor of ten or more.

• Manufacturers will now have to figure out a way to reduce their residue calculation -- which means canceling usage.

• They are expected to drop usages with high dietary exposure and low acreage -- mostly fruits and vegetables.

• The result will be what one observer called "a sort of triage process" that will increase the cost of food that's already safe.

Also, the law contains language that directs the EPA to determine if a tolerance is "safe," which is defined as "reasonable certainty of (causing) no harm." "No harm" could mean "zero harm," a short step from "zero risk." If EPA were forced by suits from environmental groups to interpret the statute literally -- almost a certainty in today's climate -- it would have to set tolerances for all pesticides at zero.

Source: Jonathan Tolman (Competitive Enterprise Institute), "The Real Pests Aren't in the Food," Wall Street Journal, September 18, 1996.