Tag Archive for: EPA

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CLC and Several Members Join 100 Organizations in Asking EPA to Immediately Ban the Pesticide Clorpyrifos which Damages Children’s Neurological Systems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 5, 2021

OPP Docket # EPA-HQ-OPP-2008-0850-0750 Environmental Protection Agency Docket Center (EPA/DC) 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20460-0001

Subject: Letter Urging Expeditious Action to Ban Chlorpyrifos

The undersigned 101 farmworker, public health, environmental, labor, and faith organizations urge the EPA to immediately revoke all food tolerances for chlorpyrifos and initiate the cancellation process to end all uses of this neurotoxic pesticide.

Chlorpyrifos, which belongs to a nerve-agent class of pesticides called organophosphates (OPs), is used on an extensive variety of crops and is acutely toxic and associated with neurodevelopmental harms in children. Yet, in its proposed interim registration review decision, the EPA is proposing to allow 11 food uses of chlorpyrifos to continue at the urging of industry.

Peer-reviewed studies and EPA’s own Scientific Advisory Panel have demonstrated that chlorpyrifos damages children’s brains; prenatal exposure to very low levels of chlorpyrifos — levels far lower than what EPA used to set regulatory limits — harms babies permanently. Studies show that exposure to chlorpyrifos, and other OP pesticides during pregnancy, is associated with lower birth weight, attention deficit disorders, autism spectrum disorder, reduced IQ, and loss of working memory.1 It is also unsafe for workers even with the most protective equipment.

In 2014, EPA released a risk assessment finding unsafe drinking water contamination from chlorpyrifos and it proposed to ban chlorpyrifos from food in 2015. In 2016, EPA released a revised human health risk assessment, which confirmed that exposures to chlorpyrifos are unsafe whether in food, pesticide drift, or drinking water; toddlers were being exposed to levels 140 times what is considered safe in food and all drinking water exposures were found to be unsafe. But in 2020, EPA released a new risk assessment, which abandoned attempts to protect children from the low-level exposures that damage their brains.

Under the law, EPA must find reasonable certainty of no harm to children from pesticides. It cannot make this finding for any use of chlorpyrifos on food. The only outcome that protects our children and complies with the law is to revoke all food tolerances and end all food uses as soon as possible. The 2015 proposed tolerance revocation would have prohibited chlorpyrifos on food six months after the rule became final. EPA should adhere to that timetable. 2

Ending use of chlorpyrifos on food will protect the farmworkers who grow that food. However, chlorpyrifos is also used in other ways that expose workers to extremely dangerous amounts of the pesticide. For example, chlorpyrifos is used in greenhouses on ornamental plants. The greenhouse workers face unconscionable risks. And under EPA’s 2020 risk assessment and proposed decision, the agency finds that the workers who mix and apply chlorpyrifos will face unsafe exposures from more than 100 tasks; workers who re-enter fields sprayed with chlorpyrifos will be at risk as well.

The EPA is proposing to allow these risks to continue because of the economic benefits of using chlorpyrifos compared to other currently available chemical pesticide alternatives. In making this proposal, EPA is ignoring non-chemical methods of pest control as well as the economic costs and hardships caused by pesticide poisonings, learning disabilities, reduced IQ in children, and environmental harm from chlorpyrifos use; this pesticide also contaminates surface water and harms threatened and endangered species, including birds, Pacific salmon, Southern Resident Killer Whales, and other mammals.

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A Toxic Decision — How Protecting Child Farmworkers May Be Pushed Aside by the EPA

By Len Morris

America’s fields, orchards and farms are toxic places for children; and things could get much worse thanks to recent actions by the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency led by Administrator Scott Pruitt, an ideologue willing to put business interests ahead of the health and welfare of migrant families and U.S. citizen children that the EPA. is responsible for protecting.

Len Morris

Over 2 million farm workers work in American agriculture, an estimated half a million of these are children. Their work puts them in daily direct contact with hazardous pesticides that can sicken them, lower their IQ, make them chronically ill or even lead to death. 

Two regulations to protect children from pesticide poisoning, illness and death, The Agriculture Worker Protection Standard of 2015 and The Certification of Pesticide Applicators Rule currently of 2017 make it illegal for children under 18 to handle these chemicals, especially those considered most toxic and lethal. These are the protections Pruitt has proposed revising/eliminating.

For children on farms, pesticide exposure is particularly hazardous. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said there is a clear link between childhood exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive functions and behavioral problems. Young children are especially vulnerable as they metabolize poisons faster than adults. 

An estimated 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied to crops each year in the U.S.  The Environmental Protection Agency has reported 20,000 cases of pesticide poisoning, a low estimate since reporting is spare and migrant families are often afraid to seek medical attention. 

Yesenia, age 12, harvesting onions in South Texas (Photo courtesy of Robin Romano)

It’s one thing to streamline regulations to promote economic growth but quite another when the work of an agency has become so corrupted that it turns its back on children’s health. Today’s EPA. under Pruitt’s stewardship has become a shameful enterprise, weakening the health of all Americans by lowering the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the safety of our food supply while compromising the health and safety of those who harvest our food.

Today, more Americans than ever before are purchasing organic and locally grown food in an effort to minimize their children’s exposure to pesticides. Shouldn’t we have the same basic consideration for those children whose families do the work of bringing that food to our table?

The public comment period for the proposed revisions has not opened yet.

This piece was originally published January 17, 2018 on the Media Voices for Children website. Len Morris is the executive director of Media Voices for Children and a film director who has made several documentaries about child labor, including “Stolen Childhoods.”