Court Orders EPA To Ban Chlorpyrifos
The EPA on was ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to effectively ban use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos and cancel all registrations within 60 days.
The appellate court nullified a decision by the Trump administration's EPA to overturn a proposed ban on the pesticide, which has been found to pose a health hazard to humans, and criticized the agency for dragging its feet in implementing restrictions on the chemical.
"The time has come to put a stop to this patent evasion," wrote Judge Jed Rakoff, author of the majority opinion.
The decision is poised to have far-reaching effects on the agriculture industry: chlorpyrifos is one of the most commonly used pesticides, though farmers have been applying it less in recent years due to concerns about health risks. The decision was seen as a major victory for environmentalists and health advocates, who have been fighting the Trump EPA's refusal to ban the pesticide.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in March of last year denied a longstanding petition from environmental groups to revoke the tolerances for chlorpyrifos and argued that there was a lack of data on potential adverse health effects — reversing an EPA proposal from 2015 that found the insecticide poses developmental risks to children.
Pruitt, who also delayed a regulatory decision on chlorpyrifos until 2021, held up the EPA's handling of the petition as an early step in carrying out President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda.
"Children, farmworkers, rural families and science are all huge winners today," said Kristin Schafer, executive director of Pesticide Action Network, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit against EPA.
"By requiring the EPA to finally ban chlorpyrifos, the Ninth Circuit is ensuring that the agency puts children's health, strong science and the letter of the law above corporate interests," said Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney for the Environmental Working Group, one of the many environmental groups that opposed Pruitt's handling of the petition.
In the ruling, a panel of appellate judges held that there "was no justification" for EPA's 2017 moves, given existing scientific evidence that chlorpyrifos residue on food can cause neurodevelopmental damage in children.
EPA is reviewing the decision, the agency said in a statement. Agency spokesman Michael Abboud added that research from Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health — data the appellate court relied on in formulating its opinion — "remains inaccessible and has hindered the agency's ongoing process to fully evaluate the pesticide using the best available, transparent science."
USDA in January 2017 agreed with EPA that the Columbia Center's epidemiology study doesn't offer enough credible evidence to justify banning the pesticide.
"USDA has grave concerns that ambiguous response data from a single, inconclusive study are being combined with a mere guess as to dose levels, and the result is being used to underpin a regulatory decision," the department said in a public comment at the time.
