Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Reprinted with permission from Earth Justice

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.

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 pesticide widely 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.”