Most Fertilizers Safe, But Study Identifies Cancer Risk In Some -- Warning Labels Will Be Required In California

The nation's first study of cancer risks in fertilizer has determined that while most commonly used ingredients pose no risk, some are potentially carcinogenic.

The study, done for California's Department of Food and Agriculture, will require that cancer-warning labels be attached to roughly 10 percent of the fertilizers sold in the nation's leading agricultural state.

Scientists found that heavy metals in some phosphate fertilizers and some fertilizers made from recycled industrial wastes exceed the cancer-risk level, said Steve Wong, chief regulator of agricultural commodities in California.

The study, presented yesterday to a fertilizer-industry research group in Sacramento, is expected to be the first of many studies seeking to determine which fertilizers may pose a cancer risk.

A task force appointed by Washington Gov. Gary Locke will discuss the issue in Olympia tomorrow, and the Environmental Protection Agency will take it up when the 300-page study is released next month.

The study was conducted as a response to Proposition 65, an environmental right-to-know initiative adopted overwhelmingly by California voters in 1986.

Also known as the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, it requires a warning on products that can cause more than one excess cancer case in 100,000 people exposed over 70 years.

The warning, already posted in California gas stations and on some fertilizer products in anticipation of the study results, generally says the product contains a substance that may cause cancer or birth defects.

The warning does not have to identify the substance. California, like other states, still has no limit on the amounts of carcinogenic chemicals that can be contained in fertilizers and other farm soil amendments, including recycled industrial wastes, and no program to test for ingredients that aren't advertised on the label.

In the industry-funded study, begun in 1989, 44 types of fertilizer representing a cross-section of the market were tested for cancer-causing arsenic, cadmium and lead. Such metals enter fertilizers from mined ore or from recycled industrial waste.

The study examined the most exposed people, including farm children who play and crawl through the dirt and dust and eat the home-grown food.

California has refused to release test results on specific fertilizers, saying the information is proprietary.

The state does not own the complex formula used to determine the risk factor of each metal. That formula is owned by Foster Wheeler Environmental, the study consultant. If other states want to apply the formula, they'd have to hire Foster Wheeler. The company charged California more than $160,000.

Wong said the fertilizer industry is expected to check its products under a complicated risk matrix after the full report is released.

Lee Shull, a scientist for Foster Wheeler, presented the results at the fifth annual meeting of the California Fertilizer Research and Education Program, an industry-funded group, in Sacramento yesterday. He could not be reached for comment.

The fertilizer industry is pleased the study is finished and accepts its findings, said Steven Beckley, executive vice president of the California Fertilizer Association.

"What it does is give us facts to proceed to make sure we use fertilizer in an agronomically and environmentally safe manner," he said.

The United States has no standards for heavy metals in fertilizer, and toxic chemicals are rarely tested in products because no one knows what level is safe.

Fertilizers have been so poorly regulated that even hazardous wastes can be called a product, registered as a fertilizer and spread around farms without informing buyers of the "toxic tagalongs."

After the issue surfaced in a Seattle Times investigation published in July, the EPA and at least 10 states, including Washington, started to consider regulations.

Everyone, it seems, has been waiting for the California risk assessment to help guide them.

"We're getting calls from all over the world," said John Salmonson, president of Monterey Chemical of Fresno and chairman of a panel advising the state on the study.

In Olympia, Locke has asked the EPA to fund a national risk assessment and Washington State University to study plant uptake of heavy metals into the food chain. The governor's task force is considering a proposal to list all the ingredients on fertilizer labels, but has not considered health warnings, as in the California study.

"There may be something there we can study," said Scott McKinnie, a task-force member and executive director of the Far West Fertilizer and Agrichemical Association, representing businesses in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. "But because it was developed under Proposition 65, we have to understand there are some things that may not be applicable to us."

While the study found that nitrogen and potassium fertilizers posed no cancer risk, it found problems in the phosphates and a couple of so-called micronutrients, zinc and iron.

About 24 million tons of phosphate nutrients were consumed by agriculture globally in 1996, compared with 90 million tons of nitrogen and 25 million tons of potassium, according to industry analyst David Silver of Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. The United States consumes about 15 percent of fertilizer worldwide.

The nitrogen and potash, which got a clean bill of health, are the "N" and "K" of the "N-P-K" formulas on most fertilizer bags, while phosphate is the "P" ingredient.

Phosphorous is found in all living cells. In fertilizer, it stimulates early growth, root formation, grain and seed production, especially in plants with fast top growth such as lettuce, alfalfa and beans.

Idaho phosphate is high in cadmium, and phosphate producers there have been studying ways to reduce that level.

Cadmium also occurs naturally in soil at about one part per million and is easily absorbed by plants. Some experts say cadmium poses no problem as long as there is enough zinc to counteract it in the fertilizers, plants or animal tissue.

Others say cadmium is even more pernicious than lead or mercury, accumulative and subtly toxic to virtually every body system.

At high enough doses, scientists think it might cause lung damage, hypertension and heart ailments, kidney disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer's, reproductive problems and cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe have set limits on the amount of cadmium in fertilizer.

The level of cadmium in our diet has held level, neither rising nor falling, the past 20 years, according to Mike Bolger and Ellis Gunderson of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "It's found a little more frequently in terms of the number of foods," Bolger added.

Cadmium is concentrated in leaves, roots, grain and fleshy fruits of plants. Most human intake of cadmium is through food, tobacco and job exposure.

A World Health Organization report said, "There is only a relatively small safety margin between exposure in the normal diet and exposure that produces deleterious results."

The report added, "Cadmium is normally present in low concentrations in soil, but is increased from emissions from smelting and refining of ores, waste disposal of cadmium-containing metal products, and application of cadmium-containing fertilizers to agricultural land."

Duff Wilson's phone message number is 206-464-2288. His e-mail address is: dwil-new@seatimes.com