Law Commons^™

Silent Spring At 50, Roger Meiners, Pierre Desrochers, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

This introduction from the book Silent Spring at 50 describes the various contributors’ insights into Rachel Carson’s landmark work. The authors come from a variety of disciplines, including conservation biology, English, law, and economics, and offer critical assessments of Silent Spring and its legacy. The first part has three chapters that put the book into the context of its time, examining it in light of Carson’s previous books on the sea (Wallace Kaufman); the larger tradition of authors warning against human hubris in environmental matters (Pierre Desrochers & Hiroko Shimizu); and the contest between “environmental religion” and “economic religion” that …

Agricultural Revolutions And Agency Wars: How The 1950s Laid The Groundwork For "Silent Spring", Roger E. Meiners, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter from the book Silent Spring at 50 analyzes the 1950s struggle over US food policy between USDA and FDA and how that struggle set the stage for the impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Using a public choice/interest group analysis, the chapter examines how the two agencies reacted to the large scale transformation of US agriculture and food production during and following World War II. Just as agriculture underwent a dramatic productivity revolution that changed the face of American farming, marketing, new home appliances, and increased participation in the labor force by women radically changed the kinds of …

The Environmental And Social Injustice Of Farmworker Pesticide Exposure, Joan D. Flocks

UF Law Faculty Publications

Farmworkers in the United States are recognized as an environmental justice community. The farmworker population is low-income and primarily Hispanic, and is at a disproportionate risk from exposure to an environmental contaminant pesticides. Farmworkers face distributional, procedural, corrective, and social challenges with this exposure, as is common with other environmental justice communities. Social challenges include socioeconomic and political inequities that are grounded in the historical domination of the agricultural industry over its labor force. The production and use of pesticides is a function of the economic priorities of industry. Employers profit from pesticide use and are able to maximize their …

The Federalism Of Climex Lectularius: What Bed-Bugs Tell Us About Fifra Preemption In Pesticide Applicator Cases, David Beugelmans

The Appendix

No abstract provided.

Transition Policy In Environmental Law, Bruce R. Huber

Journal Articles

Embedded within the structure of much American environmental regulation is a distinction between the new and the existing. This distinction reflects a recurrent political challenge for environmental policymakers: whether and how to mitigate regulatory burdens when policy change upsets settled expectations and investment commitments. Environmental law often grandfathers existing products and pollution sources or provides them with other kinds of transition relief. This paper presents a survey of transition policies in environmental regulation, which is followed by a pair of short case studies drawn from the trucking and pesticide industries. These examples demonstrate that the form and extent of transition …

Small, Slow, And Local, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

The United States is in the middle of a significant cultural shift. Until very recently, United States citizens and policy-makers were willing to accept, or at least tolerate, what has become our food status quo--a highly subsidized, centralized, industrial food system that is environmentally harmful and unsustainable and encourages unhealthy eating habits. Many citizens and policy-makers are now demanding that we re-evaluate our entire agricultural system from farm to table and look for ways to develop a new food paradigm that is environmentally sound, sustainable, socially equitable, and that makes healthy whole foods available to all.

During the summer of …

Organophosphates, Friend And Foe: The Promise Of Medical Monitoring For Farm Workers And Their Families, Adriane J. Busby, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Millions of farm workers nation-wide who load, mix and/or apply pesticides are exposed to incredible amounts of pesticides on a daily basis. Various inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the regulatory system - including insufficient illness reporting data systems, lack of regulatory compliance and enforcement, and inadequate data and information on the chronic effects of exposure and overexposure to various pesticides - increase the likelihood that these workers will continue to be exposed to dangerous amounts of pesticides.

This Article assesses the existing mechanisms designed to protect farm workers from occupational exposure to pesticides and identifies and analyzes some of the shortcomings …

The Killing Fields: Reducing The Casualties In The Battle Between U.S. Species Protection Law And U.S. Pesticide Law, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

For the past 35 years, the conflicting goals, standards, focuses, and methods of United States species protection laws and United States pesticide law have produced a fierce legal battle. The unwitting casualties of this battle are the millions of birds, fish, and other wildlife that have been killed, and the hundreds of protected species put at risk of extinction. This battle has intensified in recent years, as environmental organizations have sued the United States Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") for its continued failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act ("ESA"). In response, EPA has invoked numerous legal and regulatory strategies, …

Regulating Evolution For Sale: An Evolutionary Biology Model For Regulating The Unnatural Selection Of Genetically Modified Organisms, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the genetic manipulation of living organisms to create commercial products. This genetic manipulation has, in effect, been a directed change in the evolutionary process for the purpose of profit. This deliberate alteration of the path of evolution has brought with it a panoply of novel environmental, human health, and economic risks that could not have been foreseen when U.S. environmental and health protection laws evolved. U.S. environmental law has not evolved to keep pace with these dramatic changes in the evolution of our biological systems. Thus, completely new approaches are needed …

Embracing Uncertainty, Complexity, And Change: An Eco-Pragmatic Reinvention Of A First-Generation Environmental Law, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

Recent scientific reports demonstrate that despite more than thirty years of environmental regulation, bird and wildlife species as well as ecosystem services, are in unprecedented decline. Pesticides are at least in part to blame for these profound declines. U.S. pesticide law has failed to carry out its mission of environmental protection. A number of recently-filed lawsuits assert that the registration of certain pesticides violates the federal Endangered Species Act. One of the great ironies of environmental law is that the ecological consequences of pesticide use, which fueled the environmental movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely have been …

How Many Times Do I Have To Tell You?! Epa's Ongoing Struggle With Data From Third-Party Pesticide Toxicity Studies Using Human Subjects, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article addresses EPA's current and historic policy struggle regarding the position the Agency should take with respect to pesticide toxicity studies done by third parties in their attempts to register pesticides. Chemical companies often conduct these studies, or seek third-parties to do so, and submit the results to EPA in support of applications for pesticide registration. Although EPA had a high level joint Science Advisory Board/FIFRA Science Advisory Panel make recommendations to it on this subject in 1999, last year EPA asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct additional, almost certainly duplicative review. Specifically, EPA has asked the …

Pesticide Toxicity, Human Subjects, And The Environmental Protection Agency's Dilemma, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Samuel Gorovitz

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Should humans be used as subjects in research designed to determine the toxicity of pesticides? If so, under what conditions should they be used? If not, why not, given that human subject testing is common in research studies designed to determine the safety and efficacy of drugs? Should the EPA seek, or even accept, the results of such research in formulating the evidentiary base it uses in making decisions about pesticide registration? This article does not propose to answer these questions, but to illuminate the process by which they are addressed and offer some suggestions about how other such questions …

Applying Pesticides: Toward Reconceptualizing Liability To Neighbors For Crop, Livestock And Personal Damages From Agricultural Chemical Drift, Robert F. Blomquist

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Klein Water Treatment Facility: Model For The New Superfund Management Strategy – Or- The Importance Of Being In The Wrong Place At The Right Time???, David M. Brown

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

12 pages.

The Rocky Mountain Arsenal: Groundwater Contamination And Clean-Up Activities, Connally E. Mears, Elaine H. Heise

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

26 pages (includes illustrations and map).

Soil Erosion, Agrichemicals And Water Quality: A Need For A New Conservation Ethic?, Christine Olsenius

Water Quality Control: Integrating Beneficial Use and Environmental Protection (Summer Conference, June 1-3)

24 pages.

Contains references.

Emerging Policy And Strategy Choices For Protection Of The Groundwater Resource, Richard H. Braun

Water as a Public Resource: Emerging Rights and Obligations (Summer Conference, June 1-3)

22 pages.

Contains 2 pages of references.

Genetically Engineered Plant Pesticides: Recent Developments In The Epa's Regulation Of Biotechnology, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper examines the EPA's new policy regulating plant pesticides and presents the legal, scientific and policy issues surrounding the regulation of genetically engineered plants. Part I introduces the concepts covered in this paper. Part II.A. discusses products that have originated from biotechnology. Part II.B. describes the EPA's legal authority for regulating plant pesticides and other biotechnology products. Part II.C. presents the history of federal regulation of biological pesticides and biotechnology products. Part III examines the controversy surrounding the use of genetically engineered plants, including the potential risks and benefits of genetically engineered plants and the public's perception of these …

Groundwater Management Under The Florida Water Resources Act, Richard Hamann

Groundwater: Allocation, Development and Pollution (Summer Conference, June 6-9)

44 pages (includes maps).

The Persistent Problem Of The Persistent Pesticides: A Lesson In Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

This article will present an interpretation and criticism of the Commission on Pesticides and Their Relationship to Environmental Health's conclusions, with a special emphasis on the treatment and relevance of the DDT issue. Each of the fourteen recommendations will be reviewed where relevant to the four major goals set forth above. The crucial and often decisive role of the law as a lever for reform, as a catalyst for transmitting scientific information to the political decision-maker and as a medium for planning to protect against the effects of pesticides pollution on the environment and the population will be emphasized. Obstacles …