Dr. DUBRIDGE. I would agree. I think maybe the law does not set a time at which the science advisory commission shall be established. Senator HART. No; it does not. It was assumed that it would be established at least with all deliberate speed, and 6 months seems to be undue delay.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. Yes, I agree. With your permission, I would like to ask the Department of Agriculture to provide an explanation of this apparent delay.

(The information follows:)

Dr. LEE A. DUBRIDGE,

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Washington, D. C. July 7, 1970.

Executive Secretary, Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, Washington, D.C.

DEAR DR. DUBRIDGE: In reference to the question raised at the Hart Committee hearing as to why it has taken so long to establish an advisory committee on DDT, we submit the following explanation:

(a) After the announcement of cancellation, the companies involved did not request an advisory committee or public hearing for the four uses of DDT to be cancelled until the latter part of the 30-day period provided for appeals by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

(b) Meetings and discussions were held with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences on makeup of the committee.

(c) Previously we had asked for lists of names of persons to serve on advisory committees for other cancelled products, and they were already in the process of compiling them.

(d) Due to unfavorable publicity related to conflict-of-interest charges regarding authorities that served as consultants to the Department in the past, some experts wre not willing to serve.

(e) Two additional requests to NAS for candidates to serve, besides the original, were necessary in order to complete the committee.

(f) Two of three companies requesting advisory committees withdrew, leaving only one for a tracking powder use.

(9) Getting written position from DHEW as to whether tracking powder was considered an essential use from a public health standpoint.

(h) Contacting and getting approval of proposed candidates to serve on the committee.

(1) Notifying committee members that they were selected to serve on the committee.

(j) Conflict-of-interest review and evaluation within the USDA.

Sincerely,

NED D. BAYLEY, Director, Science and Education.

Senator HART. I would hope in connection with the cancellation proceeding on 2,4,5-T an advisory committee will be formed with less delay.

This next question bears directly on your broad background. One of the difficulties in this 2,4,5-T story was the difficulty experienced in obtaining information which might have been of public health significance.

Under what conditions do you suggest scientific information ought to be kept secret when a question is raised as to the safety of the product?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. If you are talking about scientific information, I do not think it should be kept secret. When you are talking about information having to do with the manufacture of commercial products, that is a very different situation because the costs of development, testing and getting a cominercial product into production are

very high. It is quite proper that the manufacturer or the inventor be protected so that he will have an opportunity to recover his costs. He should have a patent or a protection for his invention or his product so that he can recover the very large costs to develop it. Whereas, if he instantly published all the information about how to make this product so that others would instantly start making it without the expense of development, this would obviously be an unfair kind of competition.

Our whole system is based upon the fact that inventors of new processes and products have protection to regain their investment and recover their costs. Therefore I think the publication and the distribution of information with regard to the manufacture of products and materials is a proper trade secret.

On the other hand, when it is clear that human health is at stake I would assume there should be mechanisms by which Government agencies in proper authority could be told something about the composition of the product so that they would be able to determine whether or not there might be materials in the product which ought to be investigated for their harm.

I do not know exactly what the law is on this, but it would seem sensible.

Senator HART. Your suggestion is that when a question of health is raised with respect to a product, data and information on the product should be made available to the appropriate Government agency for its determination as to a question of health and safety? Dr. DUBRIDGE. Yes, sir.

Senator HART. That excludes, of necessity, the judgment and the comment of perhaps very gifted men and women of science in arriving at the determination of whether public health is or is not in jeopardy. This is not to suggest that the appropriate agency lacks qualified and competent people but surely they do not have a monopoly on that.

Is there some way, notwithstanding the obligation to protect trade secrets and encourage invention and discovery, we can do a better job of permitting the outsider, whether it is the head of the chemistry department at Cal Tech or someplace else, being brought in and having an opportunity to sharpen the judgment of everybody?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. Well, I think that the various advisory mechanisms available to the various Government agencies ought in general to accomplish that objective. A science advisory group can be called in to consult on a particular problem, on the possible dangers of the particular chemicals that happen to be in a particular commercial product.

I am sure that they could tap the rest of the scientific community to find out whether chemical A or chemical B is of a nature that it would likely be harmful. They do not have to reveal the whole conposition of the product in order to say this product happens to contain a certain amount of compound A, is there any evidence or any chance or any reason to believe that this compound A is harmful. I think the knowledge of the scientific community could be obtained.

Senator HART. Should be obtained?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. And should be, of course.

Senator HART. The suggestion has been made that all of us as a people would be better off if we had some centralized clearinghouse or data bank into which could be fed all of the information not subject to trade secrets. Have you given any thought to that suggestion? Dr. DUBRIDGE. I understand that Dr. Steinfeld is going to discuss that question when he appears.

Senator HART. Your reaction would not stop him.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. He knows so much more about it. I do not want to anticipate it. It is this question of the dissemination of scientific information which is one of our most difficult problems.

In past years we always assumed that if you published in scientific journals and books that anybody had access to, anyone would just go to the library and look up what he wanted to know. The volume of scientific information has become great, the urgency of finding pieces of scientific information quickly has become great, and this has led to the question as to whether one can or cannot use modern scientific equipment to store and retrieve scientific information more expeditiously.

The only trouble is it is very expensive, and the development of techniques for putting it in suitable form for data processing, the question of how many agencies should be involved in feeding the information in and how to get it out-these are complex technological problems which together with the expense have not been worked out. I think it is a very urgent problem.

There are people in our office that are working on this and I hope we can find ways to have a storage of needed technical information, particularly in the health field.

Senator HART. I share in that feeling.

My last question, again, is a general one. We had an exchange yesterday with the Department of Agriculture witnesses on the old problem that is created in the minds of some when you have a department that is charged with the promotion of an activity undertaking also to regulate it. In this case, expanding agricultural production is a responsibility of the department, and at the same time we say make sure that herbicides are not permitted that do damage. Do you have any general rule as to whether promotional and regulatory functions should be separated?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. I do not think I would propose a general rule on that. In the particular case of pesticides it is true that Agriculture is involved. But under the interagency agreement, Health, Education, and Welfare and Interior act jointly with Agriculture on these questions. If there is an agricultural product that is in use and HEW has information that there may be health effects from this, they can immediately bring it to the attention of Agriculture and action can be taken then by joint agreement among these three departments. I think this is one purpose of having this interdepartmental arrangement. I am sure that no Department is anxious to promote something that has danger to human health, and as soon as human health aspects are brought out HEW has the obligation and the authority to bring this to the attention of any other Department. In the case of pesticides they meet and take action jointly.

Senator HART. As I understand it, all those other fellows have a voice but only one fellow votes, and that is the Department of Agriculture.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. No, I do not think that is quite correct. I think it has been agreed that the unanimous consent of the three will be sought for specific action. I think this is a private agreement. I do not know whether it has been made public or not.

Senator HART. It is my understanding if there were disagreement the decision would be Agriculture's.

Mr. Bickwit?

Mr. BICKWIT. You have told us that the Department of Agriculture does not believe that they have certain authority that you would like to see them have in terms of temporary suspensions and the like. Have they communicated to you, as they communicated to us yesterday, that they would never have authority to ban the use of a hazardous pesticide on food crops when it was known that the ingestion of food which had been treated by that pesticide, was dangerous to man?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. When there is clear evidence of danger to man they have full authority, of course, to cancel or suspend the use of it. The problem comes when the evidence is not clear or is not conclusive or definitive.

Mr. BICKWIT. That was my impression as well. But they contend that the use of a pesticide on food crops will never create an imminent hazard to the public because it will take several months for that food to arrive on the tables of those people who ingest it, and therefore that the hazard created is not in fact imminent.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. Well, there is a legal determination and interpretation of the word "imminent." Sometimes food reaches your table promptly, sometimes it does not.

Mr. BICKWIT. Can we impute to Congress the intent to leave the public unprotected in such a case? As I understand it, there is no legislative history on the use of the terminology "imminent hazard" in the relevant act, and Congress has not defined that terminology in that act.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. As I understand it, imminent hazard leads to one kind of action but hazard present but not imminent leads to a different kind of action. One can have either suspension or cancellation in either case. Suspension occurs when there is imminent hazard, and suspension, though it sounds more temporary, really is not.

Mr. BICKWIT. It certainly is not, given the cancellation procedures may take as long as 3 years.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. They take time. So, there can be a suspension in the case of imminent hazard, there can be cancellation if there is hazard but not imminent. I do not know how you interpret imminent, whether it is a day, a week or a month or what.

Mr. BICKWIT. They interpreted it so that they would not be allowed to move in the case of known hazards to human health when the hazards result from the use of a hazardous pesticide on food crops. Dr. DUBRIDGE. Then possibly a clarification of the statute would be desirable.

Mr. BICKWIT. I just wonder whether it is needed in view of the fact that it seems perverse to me to assume that Congress would intend to exclude protective action in cases such as that.

Dr. DUBRIDGE. Please do not ask me to understand the views of legal counsels for the various departments, or how they come to the various conclusions as to what their departments can or cannot do under the law.

Mr. BICKWIT. I will not if you do not ask me to understand it. I have just one other question which relates to a legal term, but I would like to hear your reaction to it from a scientific standpoint without legal context attached to it.

Do you have any reasonable doubt about the safety of pesticides such as 2,4-D and Silvex?

Dr. DUBRIDGE. I have reasonable doubt about anything in which the research and testing have not been adequately carried out. The qeustions of substantial dangers in those cases I think have not been proved so I would be much more comfortable about the use of those than I would about 2,4,5-T where the teratogenic effect is now clearly established. For these others, I think imminent or serious hazards have not been found.

Mr. BICKWIT. Thank you very much.

Senator HART. Thank you.

Dr. Burger, is there anything you want to add in light of our exchange?

Dr. BURGER. No, I do not believe so, Senator.

Senator HART. I renew my apologies as I ask Dr. Steinfeld to come up. I know there are many things he would hope to be able to do this morning, which have been delayed.

Dr. Jesse Steinfeld, the Surgeon General.

STATEMENT OF DR. JESSE STEINFELD, SURGEON GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. PAUL KOTIN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENT HEALTH SCIENCE; AND DR. WILLIAM M. UPHOLT, ACTING STAFF DIRECTOR, SECRETARY'S PESTICIDE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Dr. STEINFELD. Thank you, Senator Hart.

With me this morning are Dr. Paul Kotin, who is the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He is on my left. And on my right is Dr. William Upholt, who is the executive secretary of the Secretary's Pesticide Advisory Committee.

Before I begin, I would like to apologize for a number of misspelled words, run-on sentences and so forth in the statement of which you have a copy. It will be somewhat different than it is before you as I read it, if I may be permitted to read it.

Senator HART. You may be almost certain I won't spot the misspellings.

Dr. STEINFELD. I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the actions that have been taken to protect the public health by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare regarding the chlorophenoxyacid herbicides, particularly 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D.