Pesticide Drift: A White-Collar Crime - Essay Example

PESTICIDE DRIFT: A WHITE-COLLAR CRIME PESTICIDE DRIFT: A WHITE COLLAR CRIME White-Collar Crime: An Overview The phrase "white-collar crime" was coined in 1939 during a speech given by Edwin Sutherland to the American Sociological Society. Sutherland defined the term as "crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation." Although there has been some debate as to what qualifies as a white-collar crime, the term today generally encompasses a variety of nonviolent crimes usually committed in commercial situations for financial gain. Many white-collar crimes are especially difficult to prosecute because the perpetrators use sophisticated means to conceal their activities through a series of complex transactions. The most common white-collar offenses include: antitrust violations, computer and internet fraud, credit card fraud, phone and telemarketing fraud, bankruptcy fraud, healthcare fraud, environmental law violations, insurance fraud, mail fraud, government fraud, tax evasion, financial fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bribery, kickbacks, counterfeiting, public corruption, money laundering, embezzlement, economic espionage and trade secret theft. According to the federal bureau of investigation, white-collar crime is estimated to cost the United States more than $300 billion annually. Although typically the government charges individuals white-collar crimes, the government has the power to sanction corporations as well for these offenses. The penalties for white-collar offenses include fines, home detention, and community confinement, paying the cost of prosecution, forfeitures, restitution, supervised release, and imprisonment. Both state and federal legislation enumerate the activities that constitute white-collar criminal offenses. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government the authority to regulate white-collar crime, and a number of federal agencies, including the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, participate in the enforcement of federal white-collar crime legislation. In addition, most states employ their own agencies to enforce white-collar crime laws at the state level. ("White-collar Crime") Pesticide Drift: Violation of Environmental Laws The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines pesticide drift as the physical movement of a pesticide through air at the time of application or soon thereafter, to any site other than that intended for application (often referred to as off-target). This happens after pesticide solutions are sprayed by ground spray equipment or aircraft. After the spray, droplets are produced at the end of the nozzles of the equipment. Many of these droplets can be so small that they can be suspended in air and are carried by air currents until they contact a surface or drop to the ground ("Spray Drift of Pesticides"). Pesticide drift is a fast growing concern in the United States of America. Studies show that exposure to pesticide drifts can cause short-term and long-term health problems. Short-term health problems include difficulty in breathing, eye, nose, skin, or throat irritation, skin rashes, headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Long-term health problems include brain cancer, leukemia, infertility, asthma, sterility, birth defects, miscarriage, and Parkinson's disease ("Health Effects of Drifts"). Pesticide drifts sometimes can be hard to detect because not all pesticides are visible and odorous. Some pesticides are invincible and odorless, which means you can be exposed to them without even knowing it ("About Pesticide Drift"). Health Effects of Pesticide Drift People can be affected with pesticide drift anywhere pesticides are used not only those who live near farms but also those who live in the city or suburbs ("About Pesticide Drift"). But the most affected one are the farm workers, their families, and the communities located next to the agricultural fields. Aside from the short-term and long-term illnesses, pesticide can also cause death through poisoning. As a result of a pesticide drift, pesticide may come in contact with foods that people eats without them knowing it. If they eat this foods raw or without observing proper food consumption, poisoning is possibly will come next. Developing fetuses, infants, and young children are most vulnerable to the health impacts of pesticide poisoning. Children are still growing and developing, and they are less able to detoxify harmful chemicals. Children tend to play on the floor and put their hands and objects into their mouth, both of which may be coated with pesticide - contaminated dust and dirt. Because children breath more air, eat more food, and drink more water per pound of body weight than adults, they are exposed to the relatively greater quantities of pesticides ("Health Effects of Drifts"). The US Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of the Pesticide Programs The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of the Pesticide Programs (OPP) is responsible for regulating the use of pesticides in the United States of America. The Office of the Pesticide Programs has been actively engaged in a number of initiatives to help prevent such problems on pesticides application, like pesticide drift, by conducting researches and studies on how o help pesticide applicators in reducing spray drift. They also require companies to put into their labels instructions how to avoid pesticide drift. The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for a number of important programs that help protect people and the environment from potential adverse effects that can be related to off-target drift from pesticide applications. These programs include restricting how pesticides are used, certification and training of applicators, and enforcement of compliance of pesticide laws ("Spray Drift of Pesticides"). Under Federal Law, EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs is responsible for evaluating pesticides and their uses to ensure that they can be used with reasonable certainty of no harm to human health and not cause unreasonable risks to the environment when properly applied. In fulfilling these duties, they consider the potential impact of spray drift on humans and the environment in their evaluations of proposed pesticides for new registration and older, existing pesticides for re-registration ("Spray Drift of Pesticides"). The Federal and State Laws on Pesticide Drift Despite these problems related to pesticide drifts, the current sate and federal laws and regulations do no put much concern about it ("Laws Governing Drift"). As a matter of fact, there is no law that specifically makes "pesticide drift" as a crime or offense. There are present laws related to pesticides, however, for most part of the laws, pesticide drift is not illegal ("Pesticide Drift"). The Pan North America on its article entitled Laws Governing Drift states that the present and proposed regulatory strategies do not protect public health and the environment. Post application drift, for example, is barely regulated at all and is not acknowledged by the US EPA as a source of exposure except for the case of fumigant pesticides and mosquito fogging agents. Inadequate enforcement of pesticide laws also compounds the problem, making it easy for pesticide applicators to be careless with applications with little threat of punishment for violations. Regulatory definition of drift do ignores 80-95% of total drift for volatile substances. The most obvious flaw in both US EPA and the state regulatory processes for drift control is the failure to define pesticide drift to include all forms of drift. Also, many pesticide labels have no statements prohibiting drifts other than he worker protection statement that prohibit drift form contracting workers. Increasingly, labels on the most drift-prone pesticides-fumigants-carry none of these prohibitions. Even when label language specifies "no drift," the reality is quite different. The experiences of many whose yards, homes, cars, pets, livestocks, and even their own bodies have been contaminated show that there are continuous, serious problems in spray drift. Pesticide Drift: A White-Environmental Crime So exactly what qualifies as white-collar environmental crime According to one legal definition, an environmental crime involves any "willful criminal violation that results in actual and substantial harm to the water, ambient air, soil, or land." The FBI actually investigates white-collar environmental crimes, such as the discharge of toxic substances into the air, water, or soil that pose "a significant threat of harm to people, property, or the environment, including air pollution, water pollution, and illegal dumping, in violation of federal environmental law." ("How Do We Curtail White Collar Environment Crime") Thus, pesticide drift, falls under the definition, and is considered an environmental crime. Collusion Between the (Pesticide) Industry and EPA's on Environmental Crimes Though pesticide drift is a white-collar environmental crime, most people who got ill by pesticide drifts have less protection and recourse under the law than someone whose property is defaced by paint ("Laws Governing Drift"). This is because there is an apparent collusion between the pesticide industry and the government through the EPA. One of the more serious concerns some citizens have about white-collar environmental crimes these days is that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been weakened politically in recent years. The EPA is the watchdog of corporations and other government agencies that pollute the air, water, or soils of the nation. Having a strong EPA, one that is not lenient toward corporate polluters, is in the best interest of the U.S. public. White-collar environmental criminals may be well-connected politically and have major financial resources, but they can do us great harm if they are able to skirt the environmental laws, which we should keep as stringent as ever ("How Do We Curtail White Collar Environment Crime"). A weekly news update of PANNA ("PANNA: EPA chief scolded by Senate") dated February 15, 2007, reported that The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began hearings into allegations of collusion between industry and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) political appointees to roll back health and environmental protections. In the same report, Committee chair Barbara Barbara Boxer cited concerns voiced by EPA scientists, librarians and other staff, including closure of EPA libraries and destruction of documents, and weakening of the Toxics Release Inventory rule that requires polluters to report contamination to communities they impact. Senator Boxer told EPA chief Stephen Johnson, "I want to send a clear signal to EPA and to this administration: We are watching. No longer will EPA rollbacks quietly escape scrutiny." Also in the same report, the Legislators for the state of Washington will have a chance to address pesticide drift in their communities with HB1810. The bill requires the state Health Department to conduct a pilot drift program and to assess policy ideas on notification rules. The agricultural chemical industry is pushing, instead, to have the Department of Agriculture administer the program. Community groups are demanding that the Health Department be in charge. The proposed bill comes on the heels of the release of a report, Poisons on the Wind by Washington's Farm Worker Pesticide Project (FWPP) and Pesticide Action Network. The report detailed higher than safe levels of chlorypyrifos when residents in the Yakima Valley tested the air around their homes. In Florida, PANNA quoted Dr. Susan Kegley gave in St. Augustine to the Environmental Youth Council about the damage pesticides can do to health." Kegley observes: "The problem is both local and national. There are things the community can do immediately to protect the children, such as purchasing land around the school as a buffer zone or asking the owner to grow organically, but the problem will only be fully solved when EPA acknowledges and deals with the problem of post-application drift." But in a weekly update of PANNA on its site dated July 13, 2006 ("Congress Considering Preemption of State Environmental Safeguards"), they reported that some of California's landmark consumer and environmental safeguards are in jeopardy as the federal government moves aggressively to override state laws in favor of more business-friendly national policies. They have quoted Mr. Michael Gardner from the Copley News Service calling the move an "industry-mapped campaign to impose Washington's will". Gardner described "federal supremacy" as a "driving philosophy in Congress." Gardner wrote that "federal pre-emption has overturned, stalled or weakened California's initiatives to clean the air, block unwanted faxes, control e-mail spam, protect personal financial data from being sold and warn consumers of mercury in tuna. Other reports by PANNA that can depict collusion between the industry and the government are the following: 1) Introduction of Gillmor (R-OH) bill, HR 4591, which is aimed to amend federal law so that the U.S. can ratify the Stockholm Convention, the historic international treaty to phase out the entire class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including such infamous pesticides as DDT. However, Gillmor's bill would take away states' authority over public health protections from toxics and would place the EPA political appointees (already accused by EPA scientists and other staff of collusion with the pesticide industry) in a position to undercut the POPs treaty; 2) the EPA's approval of the commercial use of hexavalent chromium -- the active ingredient in a product known as Acid Copper Chromate (ACC) -- for wood treatment. This pesticide, which had gone off the market when its manufacturer canceled its use, Hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen and linked to respiratory illness, kidney and liver damage, and serious allergic reactions. ACC has been shown to contaminate drinking water, soil, and air, and is definitively linked to worker illnesses; and, 3) when all 36 vineyard workers at the Charles Krug-Mondavi winery in Napa Valley were fired after the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board announced it was filing a formal complaint against the winery. The complaint alleges that Krug-Mondavi does not have cause to refuse to bargain with its vineyard workers over renewing their United Farm Workers (UFW) contract. According to the UFW, Krug-Mondavi is not concerned about violating the law ("Congress Considering Preemption of State Environmental Safeguards"). Conclusion Applying the foregoing facts into the case at hand, the farm industry, particularly the employers and/or directors, is committing a crime. It is some sort of white-collar crime for violating the environmental laws. It is an established fact from the researches and studies presented that pesticide drift is an environmental crime as it involved "willful criminal violation that results in actual and substantial harm to the water, ambient air, soil, or land." Much more if it involved in actual and substantial harm to people such as in the case at hand. There was a willful violation of environmental and criminal laws because of the failure of the farm industry to provide necessary protection to their workers after knowing that their operation caused the illness of many of their workers. The government, through the EPA is also liable for the injuries sustained by the workers. Applying the doctrine of parens patriae, the government should be the protector of the people. Therefore, it should have find ways to initiate the prosecution of these pesticides industries that cause pesticide drift by passing relevant laws that making pesticide drifts a crime. But in this case, they even colluded with the pesticide industries in violating the environmental laws by disregarding the hazardous effects of pesticide drift. If pesticide drift cannot be considered as a crime, however, the injured workers can still file criminal and civil complaints to the courts against the farm industry for violation of relevant laws like the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970. The Occupational Safety and Health Act is the primary federal law which governs occupational health and safety in the private sector and federal government in the United States. It was enacted by Congress in 1970 and was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 29, 1970. Its main goal is to ensure that employers provide employees with an environment free from recognized hazards, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, excessive noise levels, mechanical dangers, heat or cold stress, or unsanitary conditions. The Act can be found in the United States Code at title 29, chapter 15. Historically, according to one account, the FBI estimates that white-collar crimes cost U.S. taxpayers more than $300 billion a year. A substantial number of these are for environmental crimes. It is assumed that cost estimates are for the capture and prosecution of the criminals. Unfortunately, the greatest costs to Americans for environmental crimes arise from crimes that are never prosecuted ("How Do We Curtail White Collar Environment Crime"). References "About Pesticide Drift". Pan North America. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at "Criminal Negligence". Economic Expert. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at Gibbons, W. "How do we curtail white-collar environmental crime". Retrieved on March 7, 2009 at "Laws Governing Drift". Pan North America. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at PANNA. "Congress Considering Preemption of State Environmental Safeguards, Another Study Links Pesticides to Parkinson". Pan North America. Retrieved on March 8, 2009 At PANNA. "EPA chief scolded by Senate; Court halts GMO trials; Drift bill in WA; and more...". Pan North America. Retrieved on March 7, 2009 at < http://www.panna.org/legacy/panups/panup_20070215.dv.html> PANNA. "Health Effects of Drift". Pan North America. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at "Pesticide Drift". Orion Magazine (Online). Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at "Pesticide Liability". Extension.org. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at "Spray Drift of Pesticides". US Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved on March 4, 2009 at "White-Collar Crime". Retrieved on March 7, 2009 at < http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/White-collar_crime> Work Place Solutions.com. Retrieved on March 6, 2009 at Read More