{"id":1384,"date":"2020-12-07T20:45:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T20:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=134875"},"modified":"2020-12-07T20:45:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T20:45:17","slug":"center-for-food-safety-decries-epa-proposed-interim-decision-on-brain-damaging-pesticide-chlorpyrifos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/07\/center-for-food-safety-decries-epa-proposed-interim-decision-on-brain-damaging-pesticide-chlorpyrifos\/","title":{"rendered":"Center for Food Safety Decries EPA Proposed Interim Decision on Brain-Damaging Pesticide Chlorpyrifos"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON – Last Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposed interim decision<\/a> on the toxic, brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos, effectively continuing its registration in the U.S., despite a proposed ban on the insecticide by the Obama Administration\u2019s EPA in 2015. This decision also comes after several states\u2014including the nation\u2019s largest agricultural producer, California<\/a>\u2014have opted to phase out or immediately ban chlorpyrifos due to its widely-studied human health and environmental harms.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue to form, the Trump Administration has placed corporate dollars over public health. If allowed to stand, its proposal to continue registering this neurotoxic insecticide would cause irreparable harm to farmworkers and future generations,\u201d said George Kimbrell, legal director at Center for Food Safety. \u201cEverything possible must be done to ensure the Biden Administration reverses this proposal and once and for all bans this pesticide,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The interim \u201cdecision\u201d leaves much undecided, including safety thresholds for chlorpyrifos exposure and possible mitigation measures, which EPA is currently negotiating with chlorpyrifos manufacturers. <\/p>\n

Following EPA\u2019s proposed ban on chlorpyrifos in 2015, Dow AgroSciences, the largest chlorpyrifos manufacturer, moved aggressively to get the ban proposal lifted by exploiting the Trump Administration\u2019s hostility to science and EPA regulations that protect public health and the environment. As a result, in 2017, the Trump EPA reneged on the proposed ban. Faced with another court-mandated deadline, the Trump EPA again refused to ban <\/a>chlorpyrifos<\/a> in 2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe evidence is clear. Chlorpyrifos is a neurotoxin, and it damages the developing brains of children. This unconscionable decision must be reversed, to save still another generation of children from the entirely avoidable learning disabilities caused by this brain-damaging pesticide,\u201d said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at Center for Food Safety.<\/p>\n

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Long-term studies have demonstrated conclusively that children exposed to chlorpyrifos in the womb suffer from higher rates of a broad range of developmental disorders, including reduced IQ and memory deficits<\/a>, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)<\/a>. A ban on the pesticide is widely supported by the medical science community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

EPA has long been aware of the pesticide’s toxicity. While most residential uses of chlorpyrifos were banned nearly two decades ago, the agency permitted its continued use in agriculture, creating a double-standard in which rural kids and farmworkers are left unprotected. People are exposed to chlorpyrifos in food and water, but also through inhalation of spray drift and vapor.<\/p>\n

Center for Food Safety (CFS) has highlighted the perils of chlorpyrifos in Hawai\u02bbi<\/a>, where the pesticide was heavily sprayed in the production of genetically engineered seed corn by agrichemical giants Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta. In a victory for children and farmworkers, CFS played a critical role in passage of a law (wrote, lobbied, and passed a bill<\/a>) that banned chlorpyrifos in Hawai\u02bbi\u2014the first state-level chlorpyrifos ban of its kind\u2014and also secured similar bans in California and New York.<\/p>\n

EPA\u2019s proposed interim decision and associated risk assessments are open to public comment<\/a> for 60 days. <\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 Last Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a\u00a0proposed interim decision\u00a0on the toxic, brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos, effectively continuing its registration in the U.S., despite a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}