Advocacy Groups Ask for Ban on Common Pesticide -
By RONI CARYN RABINAPRIL 5, 2017
Advocacy organizations seeking to ban a pesticide linked to developmental disorders in children asked the courts Wednesday to intervene
and order the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the pesticide from food within 30 days and from all uses within 60 days if it cannot prove it is safe.
In a letter to Mr. Pruitt, Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware
and a ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, said he was “troubled” by the E. P.A.’s reversal on chlorpyrifos, absent “any new scientific analysis to support this decision.”
Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, Gene Green of Texas, Diana DeGette of Colorado and Paul D. Tonko of New York, all Democrats, signed a letter saying they were concerned
that the Trump administration is not implementing the Food Quality Protection Act.
“We are asking the court to step in to keep our children safe.”
report issued last November concluded the risks justified a complete ban on chlorpyrifos, citing studies on pregnant women and children done at Columbia University
that found evidence of neurodevelopmental effects in children whose mothers were exposed to chlorpyrifos in pregnancy.
also recently expanded the use of another controversial chemical used in agriculture, glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup weed killer,
and raised concerns about the possibility of political meddling, specifically asking whether “trade associations representing the Trump Organization golf courses or lobbyists who represent the Trump Organization” pressed the E. P.A.
had been under a court order to respond by the end of March to a 10-year-old petition to ban the chemical,
originally filed in 2007 by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network.