Chlorpyrifos: Toxic Pesticides Harming Our Environment and Children

0
1548
earthjustice.org

The fight to ban this toxic pesticide continues

By Earthjustice

For half a century, staple food crops in the United States — such as corn, wheat, apples and citrus — have been sprayed with chlorpyrifos, a dangerous pesticide that can damage the developing brains of children, causing reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders.

Earthjustice, among other groups, has for years pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban chlorpyrifos, as it is known to harm health, water and wildlife. The U.S. EPA was expected to make a decision by Mar. 31, 2017, under a court order deadline.



On Mar. 29, 2017, the U.S. EPA refused to ban the pesticide.

A week after the EPA’s announcement, Earthjustice, representing Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to order the EPA to act based on its own scientific conclusions and permanently ban chlorpyrifos.

On Aug. 9, the appeals court ordered EPA to finalize its proposed ban on chlorpyrifos within 60 days, based on undisputed findings that the pesticide is unsafe for public health, and particularly harmful to children and farmworkers. The agency stalled and requested the court to re-hear the case. On Tues., Mar. 26, oral arguments will be presented in court at the re-hearing.

Patti Goldman, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the chlorpyrifos lawsuit, explains the legal issues: video

Here’s what you should know about chlorpyrifos and the ongoing struggle to keep this dangerous chemical away from our food, water, and wildlife.

What is chlorpyrifos?

Chlorpyrifos (pronounced: klawr-pir-uh-fos) is a neurotoxic pesticidewidely used in U.S. agriculture. Generally sprayed on crops, it’s used to kill a variety of agricultural pests.
It has a slightly skunky odor, similar to rotten eggs or garlic, and can be harmful if it is touched, inhaled, or eaten.
Chlorpyrifos is acutely toxic and associated with neurodevelopmental harms in children. Prenatal exposures to chlorpyrifos are associated with lower birth weight, reduced IQ, loss of working memory, attention disorders, and delayed motor development.
Acute poisoning suppresses the enzyme that regulates nerve impulses in the body and can cause convulsions, respiratory paralysis, and, in extreme cases, death. Chlorpyrifos is one of the pesticides most often linked to pesticide poisonings.

How are people exposed to chlorpyrifos?

People are exposed to chlorpyrifos through residues on food, drinking water contamination, and toxic spray drift from pesticide applications.
Farmworkers are exposed to it from mixing, handling, and applying the pesticide; as well as from entering fields where chlorpyrifos was recently sprayed. Residential uses of chlorpyrifos ended in 2000 after EPA found unacceptable risks to kids.
Children often experience greater exposure to chlorpyrifos and other pesticides because they frequently put their hands in their mouths and, relative to adults, they eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink more water and juice for their weight.

Why do we need a ban?

A growing body of evidence shows that prenatal exposure to very low levels of chlorpyrifos—levels far lower than what EPA was previously using to establish safety standards—harms babies permanently.
Peer-reviewed studies that have tracked real-world exposures of mothers and their children to chlorpyrifos have associated the pesticide with similar findings.
In November 2016, EPA released a revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos that confirmed that there are no safe uses for the pesticide. EPA found that:
  • All food exposures exceed safe levels, with children ages 1–2 exposed to levels of chlorpyrifos that are 140 times what EPA deems safe.
  • There is no safe level of chlorpyrifos in drinking water.
  • Pesticide drift reaches unsafe levels at 300 feet from the field’s edge.
  • Chlorpyrifos is found at unsafe levels in the air at schools, homes, and communities in agricultural areas.
  • All workers who mix and apply chlorpyrifos are exposed to unsafe levels of the pesticide even with maximum personal protective equipment and engineering controls.
  • Field workers are allowed to re-enter fields within 1–5 days after pesticide spraying, but unsafe exposures continue on average 18 days after applications.

Farmworkers and people living in agricultural communities, particularly children, are disproportionately affected by this toxic pesticide. In addition to food exposures, they are more likely to have contaminated drinking water, and they are, quite literally, getting hit from all sides by drift exposures at school, daycare, on the playground, at work, and in their homes.

Which crops have chlorpyrifos on them?

Chlorpyrifos is used on a wide variety of crops including apples, oranges, strawberries, corn, wheat, citrus and other foods families and their children eat daily.
In fact, over half of all apples and broccoli in the U.S. are sprayed with chlorpyrifos.
USDA’s Pesticide Data Program found chlorpyrifos residue on citrus and melons even after being washed and peeled. By volume, chlorpyrifos is most used on corn and soybeans, with over a million pounds applied annually to each crop.

What does the law require?

Following the release of a pivotal 1993 report by the National Academy of Sciences, Congress strengthened protections for children from pesticides. The NAS report criticized EPA for treating children like “little adults” by failing to address the unique susceptibility of children to pesticide exposures based on the foods they eat, their play, and sensitive stages of development.
The 1996 Food Quality Protect Act—passed unanimously in Congress—requires EPA to protect children from unsafe exposures to pesticides. The FQPA requires EPA to ensure with reasonable certainty that “no harm will result to infants and children from aggregate exposure” to pesticides. EPA cannot take industry costs into consideration when protecting children from harmful pesticides, because FQPA is a health-based standard.
If EPA cannot ensure that a pesticide won’t harm children, the law requires EPA to ban uses of the pesticide.

What legal actions have been taken?

In 2007, Pesticide Action Network and Natural Resources Defense Council filed a petition with EPA seeking a chlorpyrifos ban based on the growing evidence of risks and harms.
Seven years later, following several lawsuits and delays, EPA had still not acted on the petition. In September 2014, on behalf of PAN and NRDC, Earthjustice filed a petition in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to compel EPA to act on the petition.
The following year, while calling EPA delays “egregious” and noting the agency sent a “litany of partial status reports, missed deadlines, and vague promises of future action,” the court ordered EPA to issue a final response to the petition by October 31, 2015.
That deadline was not met, and in August of 2016, the court said EPA had to take final action on the petition by March 31, 2017. On March 29, 2017, despite the overwhelming evidence that the pesticide harms children, workers and the environment, the EPA issued a decision refusing to ban the pesticide, because the agency wanted to continue studying the science.
On June 6, 2017, Earthjustice filed an administrative appeal to the U.S. EPA, urging the federal government to ban chlorpyrifos. The appeal was filed on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, United Farm Workers, Farmworker Association of Florida, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Farmworker Justice, GreenLatinos, National Hispanic Medical Association, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Learning Disability Association of America, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Pesticide Action Network North America and Natural Resources Defense Council.
The appeal challenges, on its merits, the EPA’s March 2017 action that allows chlorpyrifos to continue to be used on food crops. The attorneys general of New York, California, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland and Vermont filed their own appeal that same day, also calling for a ban.
On Aug. 9, 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that EPA must finalize its proposed ban on chlorpyrifos within 60 days, based on undisputed findings that the pesticide is unsafe for public health, and particularly harmful to children and farmworkers.

What’s happening now?

In response to the order from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to finalize the ban on chlorpyrifos, the agency asked the court to re-hear the case. The 9th Circuit agreed to do so, and arguments will be presented before an 11-judge panel on March 26, 2019.
“EPA’s own scientists have said for more than two years that chlorpyrifos is harmful, particularly to children,” said Patti Goldman, the Earthjustice managing attorney handling the case.
“Any delay to ban this toxic chemical is a tragedy. Chlorpyrifos should be banned based on the agency’s own scientific conclusion, and the law.”

Is there anything I can do?

Urge your elected officials to keep this toxic pesticide out of our food, our water, our schools and yards, and our bodies.
Since the EPA’s refusal on March 29 to ban chlorpyrifos, 47,114 Earthjustice supporters have sent messages to their Congressional representatives, governor and state Attorney General, asking them to hold the EPA accountable. Read just a few of the messages—and send your own message today.
A Timeline of Chlorpyrifos
World War II-era

The Nazis developed organophosphates during World War II as nerve gas agents. (Sarin gas is in this family of chemicals.) After the war, the chemical companies adapted the organophosphates to be used as pesticides, primarily as insecticides.

1965

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide first registered as an insecticide in the U.S. for both agricultural and residential uses, before Silent Spring and adoption of environmental and health standards in U.S. laws governing pesticide use.

1995

EPA orders DowElanco to pay $876,000, the largest fine up to that time, for violating a federal law requiring it to report human health problems from chlorpyrifos.

2000

Dow stops home uses of chlorpyrifos after EPA finds unacceptable risks to children who crawl on treated carpets or hug their pets after a flea bomb. Termiticide uses are also phased out.

2001 & 2006

EPA re-registers chlorpyrifos and the other organophosphates, purporting to bring them into compliance with health and environmental standards put in place after they were initially registered for use in the United States. EPA allowed risks of poisonings to workers to continue, ignored pesticide drift, and dismissed the growing evidence that prenatal exposures damage children’s brains.

2000s

Air monitoring detects chlorpyrifos at levels that exceed what EPA considered safe for children. California Air Resources Board monitoring finds chlorpyrifos at elementary schools and other sites near orange fields in Tulare County, California, at unsafe levels.

2007

On behalf of United Farm Workers and other farmworker advocates, Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice file a lawsuit challenging EPA’s re-registration of chlorpyrifos despite the harm to workers and from toxic drift.

Pesticide Action Network and Natural Resources Defense Council file petition seeking a ban on chlorpyrifos based on evidence of brain damage from prenatal exposures and toxic drift.

2009

On behalf of farmworkers and health advocates, Earthjustice files a petitionasking EPA to protect children from pesticide drift.

2000s to the present

Centers for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research at Columbia, Berkeley, and Mt. Sinai study children exposed to CPR in utero and find statistically significant neurodevelopmental harm including reduced IQ, delayed development, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders. A 2012 study found chlorpyrifos exposure led to changes in the physical structure of the developing brain.

2011

EPA documents toxic drift from chlorpyrifos in its preliminary risk assessment, and EPA acknowledges its legal obligation to protect children from pesticide drift.

2012

EPA reaches an agreement with the chlorpyrifos registrants to put buffer zones around schools, day cares, homes, playfields, and other places occupied by people. The buffer zones vary in size from 10 feet for groundboom applications, 10–50 for airblast applications depending on the amount applied, and 10–100 for aerial spraying depending on the amount applied and the droplet size. In setting the buffer zones, EPA ignored direct drift onto people and inhalation exposures from groundboom and airblast spraying.

December 2014

EPA releases its revised human health risk assessment:

(1) acknowledging the extensive body of peer-reviewed science correlating chlorpyrifos exposure with brain damage to children and that the brain damage occurred at exposures far below EPA’s regulatory endpoint based on acute pesticide poisoning risks;

(2) finding acute poisoning risks of concern to workers from over 200 activities, including mixing and loading various pesticide formulations, airblast, aerial, and groundboom spraying, and re-entering fields after spraying to perform tasks like thinning, irrigating, and hand harvesting.

March–June, 2015

EPA represented that it was going to negotiate with the registrants to agree to mitigation or stopping activities that expose workers to excessive poisoning risks. By June 2015, those negotiations had stalled.

August 2015

Declaring it “necessary to end the EPA’s cycle of incomplete responses, missed deadlines, and unreasonable delay,” the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals orders EPA to act on the 2007 petition to ban chlorpyrifos by Halloween.

October 2015

EPA proposes to revoke all food tolerances based on drinking water contamination, but it holds open the possibility that it might be able to allow some uses to continue. EPA takes no action to stop nonfood uses or to protect workers from unacceptable risks. Publication date was 11/06/2015.

January 2016

More than 80,000 people submit comments on the proposal, urging EPA to ban all uses of chlorpyrifos, not just on food crops, and to start proceedings to stop uses that harm workers. Some of the comments submitted during public comment periods on chlorpyrifos:

August 2016

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gives EPA a deadline of March 31, 2017, to take final action on the 2007 petition to ban chlorpyrifos and its proposed revocation of food tolerances.

September 2016

On behalf of United Farm Workers, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Farmworker Association of Florida, GreenLatinos, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, League of United Latin American Citizens, Learning Disabilities Association of America, Migrant Clinicians Network, National Hispanic Medical Association, and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice petition EPA to immediately suspend all chlorpyrifos uses that pose unacceptable risks to workers, and to cancel all uses of chlorpyrifos.

November 2016

EPA releases a revised human health risk assessment that uses neurodevelopmental effects as its regulatory endpoint. The new risk assessment found that:

  • All food exposures exceed safe levels; children 1–2 years of age are exposed to 140 times the “safe” levels
  • There is no safe level of chlorpyrifos in drinking water
  • Toxic spray drift reached distances of 300 feet or more from the field’s edge
  • All workers who mix and apply chlorpyrifos are exposed to unsafe levels of the pesticide even with maximum personal protective equipment and engineering controls
  • Field workers are allowed to re-enter fields within 1–5 days after pesticide spraying, but unsafe exposures continue on average 18 days after applications
January 2017

Public interest groups submit technical comments on EPA Proposal To Revoke Chlorpyrifos Tolerances.

February 2017

Food safety laws require EPA to revoke food residue tolerances after making the determination that there are no safe food uses of a pesticide. Because EPA’s November 2016 risk assessment found that there are no safe food uses of chlorpyrifos, tolerance revocation must necessarily follow. Therefore, the farmworker and health advocate groups withdrew their September 2016 Chlorpyrifos Suspension Petition as tolerance revocation would end most uses of chlorpyrifos that harm workers.

March 29, 2017

Two days before a court ordered deadline, the EPA refuses to ban chlorpyrifos, despite the overwhelming evidence that the pesticide harms children, workers and the environment.

April 5, 2017

Earthjustice—representing Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council—asked the court to order the EPA to act based on the agency’s own scientific conclusions, which, under the law, would require EPA to ban chlorpyrifos. Read the legal document.

April 28, 2017

EPA opposes the April 5 motion. Read the legal document.

June 6, 2017

A dozen health, labor and civil rights organizations, represented by Earthjustice filed an administrative appeal to the EPA, urging the federal government to ban chlorpyrifos. The attorney generals of New York, California, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland and Vermont filed their own appeal calling for a ban also Monday. It is now up to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to decide the appeal.

June 27, 2017

The Associated Press reveals that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt met briefly with the chief executive of Dow Chemical—the largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States—before reversing EPA’s push to ban the pesticide.

July 18, 2017

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to order EPA to make a new decision on banning chlorpyrifos, leaving the validity of the March EPA order to the administrative appeal and related lawsuit.

July 25, 2017

Senators Tom Udall (D-NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Kamala Harris (D-CA) , Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Edward J. Markey (D-MA) unveiled a first-of-its-kind bill—The Protect Children, Farmers & Farmworkers from Nerve Agent Pesticides Act, S. 1624—that would ban chlorpyrifos. Take action to tell your senators you support S. 1624.

October 10, 2017

The EPA releases a series of documents in response to a FOIA request submitted by Earthjustice for communications between the agency and Dow, as well as certain trade associations. Dow Chemical is the largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States. Read the documents.

December 20, 2017

The court grants a motion to expedite the case and denied EPA’s motion to dismiss Earthjustice’s petition to review the Pruitt order on chlorpyrifos. Several states who have also called for a chlorpyrifos ban were granted permission to intervene in the case. Earthjustice’s opening brief is due on January 23.

Early January 2018

A National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion finds that chlorpyrifos, malathion, and diazinon — all organophosphate pesticides — harm salmon and their habitat to the point that their survival and recovery are at risk. NMFS crafted the report to comply with a 2014 court deadline for the agency to determine whether these pesticides threatened to salmon with extinction. The biological opinion offers three options for protective measures including buffer zones, spray reduction technologies and pesticide stewardship programs. Read more about this case and the report.

July 9, 2018

Final arguments challenging EPA’s refusal to ban chlorpyrifos took place in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, Washington. It was the last hearing where health and labor groups represented by Earthjustice — as well as states — presented their arguments for a ban. A decision could happen in weeks or months.

August 9, 2018

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that EPA finalize its proposed ban on chlorpyrifos within 60 days, based on undisputed findings that the pesticide is unsafe for public health, and particularly harmful to children and farmworkers. “The Court ended EPA’s shameful actions that have exposed children and farmworkers to this poison for decades,” said Earthjustice attorney Marisa Ordonia. “Finally, our fields, fruits, and vegetables will be chlorpyrifos-free.”

September 24, 2018

The U.S. EPA asks the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear the case. Filing the request has the effect of postponing the effectiveness of the court order. “Trump’s EPA is delaying the inevitable and putting people in harm’s way. By keeping this unsafe pesticide in our food and drinking water, EPA is violating the law,” said Patti Goldman, managing attorney at Earthjustice. “Every day we go without a ban, children and farmworkers are needlessly eating, drinking and breathing this dreadful pesticide.”

November 16, 2018

Independent scientists publish in the journal Environmental Health a review of Dow-funded chlorpyrifos studies, finding flaws in design, execution, and statistical analysis. Dow frequently points to the findings of animal studies it has funded to counter the growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating harm to children’s brains from low level exposure to chlorpyrifos.

February 6, 2019

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals grants U.S. EPA’s request to rehear the case in which the court decided that the agency must ban chlorpyrifos within 60 days.

More Resources On The Litigation

ATTENTION READERS

We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.