EPA reverses course on safety of pesticide used on crops

The Trump administration won’t ban a common pesticide used on food, reversing efforts by the Obama administration to bar the chemical based on findings it could hinder development of children’s brains. In announcing the decision late Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said that by not banning chlorpyrifos, he was providing “regulatory certainty” to thousands of American farmers that rely on the pesticide.

“By reversing the previous administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making - rather than predetermined results,” Pruitt said Wednesday. In approving the continued use of chlorpyrifos on citrus fruits, apples, cherries and other crops, Pruitt is overriding the scientific findings of his own agency’s experts.

Pruitt, a Republican lawyer who took the lead at EPA last month, gave no indication of what process he used to determine chlorpyrifos is safe. Environmental groups accused Pruitt of putting the profits of big business over public safety. “EPA’s refusal to ban this dangerous pesticide is unconscionable,” said Patti Goldman, an attorney at Earthjustice. “EPA is defying its legal obligation to protect children from unsafe pesticides.” Goldman said her group will seek a court to order to countermand Pruitt’s decision. First developed as a chemical weapon prior to World War II, chlorpyrifos has been sold as a pesticide since 1965 and has been blamed for sickening dozens of farm workers in recent years. Traces have been found in waterways, threatening fish, and experts say overuse could make targeted insects immune to the pesticide. US farms use more than 6 million pounds of the chemical each year - about 25 percent of it in California.

No-spray buffer zones

Under pressure from federal regulators over safety concerns, Dow withdrew chlorpyrifos for use as a home insecticide in 2000. EPA also placed “no-spray” buffer zones around sensitive sites, such as schools, in 2012. But environmental and public health groups said those proposals don’t go far enough and filed a federal lawsuit seeking a national ban on the pesticide. In October 2015, the Obama administration proposed revoking the pesticide’s use in response to a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network North America. EPA’s subsequent findings relied on three, peer-reviewed human health studies indicating that even minuscule amounts of chlorpyrifos, sold by Dow Chemical, can interfere with brain development of fetuses, infants and children. —AP