By Wendy Hessler, Environmental Health News
After almost a decade of prodding from environmental groups, a number of missed deadlines and a push from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promises to decide this year if the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos will remain on the market for use on food crops.
The
agency’s proposal to make a final rule by December is a step in the right
direction, but the protracted wait for a final decision is frustrating to many
who support the ban.
The EPA should follow through on its
proposed ruling and cancel all food uses to reduce exposures and prevent more
harm to those who are most vulnerable – pregnant women, developing fetuses,
newborns and children.
The EPA is proposing to ban all
agricultural uses of chlorpyrifos because it cannot determine if combined
exposures from food and water meet safety standards set under the Federal Food,
Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). The EPA registers pesticides for certain uses
and may revoke or ban them if it finds “reasonable certainty” that exposure
from multiple sources may cause harm.
Until a ban is in place, the pesticide
will continue to be used to control insects on a variety of food crops such as
corn, soybeans, fruit trees and broccoli. Its nonfood use on golf courses,
greenhouses and telephone poles will continue even if food uses are revoked.
Pregnant women, children, and farmworkers remain the most vulnerable to health effects from the widely used pesticide. Chlorpyrifos is a well-known developmental neurotoxicant and an endocrine disruptor, as it can alter hormone levels and function. Prenatal and early life exposure interferes with brain and nerve cell development in ways that permanently harm developing brains.
Human and animal studies report
cognitive, motor skill and behavior effects that include reduced birth weights,
delays in motor development, lowered IQs, memory problems and attention deficits.
Chlorpyrifos was first used in 1965.
Through
the years, the EPA has slowly whittled away its registered uses. Since 2000,
the EPA has eliminated residential use of chlorpyrifos and curtailed its
application on some fruits and tree crops.
The EPA became concerned about
combined exposures from food and drinking water in 2006.
Then environmental groups petitioned EPA
through the courts to conduct an overdue human health risk assessment and take
steps to further limit the pesticide’s use.
Nine
years of missed deadlines and judicial back and forths followed before the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in August ordered the agency to respond to
the petition, saying “EPA’s ambiguous plan to possibly issue a proposed rule
nearly nine years after receiving the administrative petition is too little,
too late.
This
delay is egregious and warrants mandamus relief. We order EPA to issue a full
and final response to the petition no later than October 31, 2015.”
Even though the EPA responded and
proposed to make a final decision by the end of 2016, more delays seem
inevitable. The agency is still evaluating the human risk assessment that was
released last year, and it plans to issue a drinking water analysis and a
hazard determination in the next several months.
Given the pesticide's well-documented
health effects and EPA’s own concern over combined food and drinking water
exposures, the time has come for EPA to deem the pesticide unsafe, ban its use
on food crops, and reduce exposures and associated health impacts on children,
farmworkers, rural residents and consumers.
Your support of a ban can make that
happen. Public comments supporting the ban can be submitted until January 5 on
the EPA docket here.
Wendy Hessler is an independent science
communicator, 2015 fellow at Reach the Decision Makers Fellowship and formerly
managed the Science Communication Fellows program for Environmental Health
Sciences, publisher of Environmental Health News.
For questions or feedback about this
piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.