EPA to Curb Fungicide Use on Fruits, Vegetables : Health: Industry groups predict the expected ban will raise food prices and reduce crop yields. But environmentalists cite EBDC link to cancer.

WASHINGTON —  After months of debate, the Environmental Protection Agency will move next week to sharply restrict a controversial class of fungicides used on many fruits and vegetables and linked in recent years to cancer in laboratory animals.

Informed sources in the food industry and the environmental movement said EPA officials will seek to prohibit use of ethylene bisdithiocarbamates, or EBDCs, on tomatoes, potatoes and bananas, three of the crops on which they are most heavily used.

The action is expected to be announced on Monday by EPA Administrator William K. Reilly.

EBDCs are used widely in California and throughout the world to protect produce crops from fungus, particularly in humid areas, and to extend shelf life after harvest. The compounds currently are used on about a third of all fruits and vegetables produced in the United States.

The chemical and produce industries contend the proposed restrictions would increase food prices by reducing crop yields, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, in Florida, and in other Southeastern states where the growing season is accompanied by high humidity.

Environmentalists, however, said the EPA’s proposed action would be inadequate, ineffective and impossible to enforce thoroughly.

The move to withdraw approval for EBDC use on tomatoes, potatoes and bananas comes three months after manufacturers of the fungicides voluntarily withdrew 60 of the 73 food crops listed for approved use.

In spite of the sharp reduction, consumer exposure was not drastically lowered by the voluntary action, the EPA has concluded, because the remaining 13 crops include such staples as tomatoes and potatoes and account for much of EBDC use.

In an effort to hold off mandatory restrictions, the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Assn. and more than a dozen other trade groups asked the EPA last week to delay its decision until a $17-million industry study of consumer exposure to EBDCs is completed.

The organizations had received no answer by Friday, when the agency announced that Reilly would disclose the decision on Monday.

Because Monday’s actions will be subject to comment from industry and environmental interests, it is expected that a year or more will pass before the new restrictions would take effect.

Critics predicted the EPA action would not be effective even when implemented.

Since EBDCs would remain on the market and approved for use on at least 11 crops, there is no assurance they would not continue to be used on fruits and vegetables no longer on the approved list, said Rick Hind of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Hind and representatives of other environmental groups concerned with pesticide use insisted that EBDCs should be banned outright.

“If we have learned any lesson over the last decade, it is that we cannot trust the federal government to assure a safe food supply. . . ,” said Al Meyerhoff, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The EPA is seeking to manage the cancer risk here, not prohibit it, and they are continuing to close their eyes to the special risks that pesticides present to children.”

Meyerhoff said California growers use EBDCs on such crops as tomatoes, potatoes, grapes, lettuce, sugar beets and asparagus. Under an environmental initiative now being circulated for the November, 1990, ballot, the compounds would be banned for use by growers, and foods containing their residues could not be sold in the state.

“The EPA has set out to establish an ‘acceptable risk’ for public exposure to one carcinogen on a food commodity, while failing to calculate the aggregate risks from other cancer-causing pesticides used in the production of the very same commodity,” said Jay Feldman of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides.

A dozen carcinogenic pesticides are still approved for use on apples, Feldman said, while 13 are approved for use on potatoes, 10 on tomatoes, and 11 on citrus fruits.

EBDCs were first used in the 1940s. Sold under the trade names Zineb and Maneb, they represent about half of all fungicides used on fruits and vegetables in the world.

Laboratory studies have suggested that EBDC residue levels commonly found on food crops could produce a cancer risk as high as 20 cases out of every 1 million people--20 times the accepted risk level.

Two years ago, a study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that EBDCs were among the more dangerous agricultural chemicals currently in use.

Officials of the produce industry maintain there are few alternatives to EBDC use.

“For some crops, such as green peppers, there is no approved alternative,” said John McClung of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Assn. “For celery and some others, there are alternatives which are expensive and ineffective.”

Produce industry representatives accused the EPA of taking precipitous action because it has decided not to wait for results of a national “market basket” study being conducted to determine the level of consumer exposure to the compounds. The study is due to be completed next summer.

Environmental groups, in contrast, insist that the EPA has dragged its feet, even after acquiring new evidence involving the safety of EBDC use.

The decision to be announced Monday, Feldman said, is but “a small piece in a flawed food safety policy puzzle.”

Staff writer Maura Dolan in Los Angeles contributed to this story.