UPDATE (April 20, 2017):Apparently the Dow Chemical Company is not content with a win. As I wrote below last month, the EPA under Scott Pruitt made an about-face, opting to override his own agency’s science on the damaging effects of chlorpyrifos on children’s developing brains and continuing to allow Dow to market the pesticide to farmers.
Now, according tonews reports, lawyers representing Dow and two manufacturers of related insecticides have sent letters to Pruitt, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke urging them to “to set aside” the results of anextensive EPA assessmentof these chemicals’ effects on endangered wildlife.
美国环保署、商业(包括自然玛丽ne Fisheries Service), and Interior (which includes the Fish and Wildlife Service) have collective authority to enforce the Endangered Species Act. The EPA’s January 2017 evaluation found that chlorpyrifos is “likely to adversely affect” 1,778 of the 1,835 animals and plants it reviewed, including endangered or threatened species of frogs, fish, birds, and mammals. Dow says the Trump administration should throw out that assessment because its “scientific basis was not reliable.”
What are the chances President Trump and his cabinet officials will resist Dow’s pressure tactics and stand up for EPA science? Given the fact that Dow CEO Andrew Liveris cut the Trump inaugural committee a million-dollar check and now heads aWhite House manufacturing initiative, I’m going to say, not likely.
耗尽你的风险更多的证据f the Trump administration’s contempt for science and the public interest, here’s another assault. After years of study and deliberation by scientists at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and elsewhere, new EPA head Scott Pruitt announced Wednesday night that hewould not ban a pesticidethat poses a clear risk to children, farm workers, and rural drinking water users.
In doing so, the administration made a 180-degree turn, handing a win to the pesticide’s maker, Dow AgroSciences (a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company) and a loss to pretty much everyone else.
An about-face on the science
我们应该清楚,EPA不仅调节化学icals willy-nilly. It usually has to be pushed, sometimes hard. And in this case it was. Tom Philpott at Mother Jones hasan excellent rundownof the years-long saga surrounding the nerve-damaging organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos at the EPA. Under a court order, EPAproposed in November 2015to effectively ban this pesticide by revoking the agency’s“tolerances”(legal limits allowed in or on food) for the chemical:
At this time, the agency is unable to conclude that the risk from aggregate exposure from the use of chlorpyrifos meets the safety standard of section 408(b)(2) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). Accordingly, EPA is proposing to revoke all tolerances for chlorpyrifos.
When the EPA gets that close to banning a pesticide, you can bet the science is solid. So it’s shocking that, under another court-imposed deadline to finalize its decision this month, the agency’s new science-denier-in-chief abruptly backtracked,suggesting in his statementthat the science of chlorpyrifos’s harmful effects isn’t settled.
That claim isdisingenuous.
Chlorpyrifos poses a clear-cut risk to children, farmworkers, and rural residents
Chlorpyrifoshas been studied extensively, and for years. Once the most commonly used pesticide in US homes, it has been increasingly regulated over the last two decades as scientific evidence of its harm has mounted. Almost all residential uses wereeliminated in 2000based on evidence of developmental neurotoxicity—that is, the chemical’s ability to damage the developing brains of fetuses and young children. Since then, many on-farm uses have also been restricted or banned.
But it’s not enough. The pesticide isstill usedon corn, soybeans, fruit and nut trees, certain vegetables including Brussels sprouts and broccoli, and other crops. And it’s still harming kids and workers.
Last year, researchers studying mothers and children living in the agricultural Salinas Valley of Californiadocumentedthat just living within a kilometer of farm fields where chlorpyrifos and other neurotoxic pesticides were used lowered IQs by more than two points in 7-year-old children, with corresponding impairment in verbal comprehension. Other studies have found that exposure in the womb is associated withchanges in brain structure and function. Farm worker exposure is also a concern, as is exposure of rural residents through drinking water.
Which brings us back to the regulatory battle. Last fall, a coalition of environmental, labor, and health organizationspetitioned the EPAto ban all remaining uses of chlorpyrifos, citing unacceptable risks to workers. In November, the EPA inched closer to a ban, revising its human health risk assessment and drinking water exposure assessment for chlorpyrifos. The agency summarized itsconclusionsthis way:
This assessment shows dietary and drinking water risks for the current uses of chlorpyrifos. Based on current labeled uses, the revised analysis indicates thatexpected residues of chlorpyrifos on food crops exceed the safety standardunder the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). In addition, the majority of estimated drinking water exposure from currently registered uses, including water exposure from non-food uses, continues to exceed safe levels, even taking into account more refined drinking water exposure. This assessment also shows risks to workers who mix, load and apply chlorpyrifos pesticide products.(emphasis added)
The proposed ban was supported byindependent scientistsand acoalition of Latino, labor, and health organizationsincluding the United Farm Workers.
Oh yeah, and it was supported by the science and the federal law meant to protect children from toxic pesticides.
EPA is legally required to ban pesticides that threaten health
In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences released a landmark report titledPesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Based on a five-year study, the report recommended major changes in the way EPA regulated pesticides in order to protect children’s health, noting that children are not “little adults.” Three years later, Congress acted on those scientific recommendations, passing theFood Quality Protection Act of 1996unanimously (yes, I saidunanimously, can you imagine?).
This breakthrough law mandated that the EPA go above and beyond what it had ever done before in considering the developmental susceptibility of infants and children, and their dietary habits, when making regulatory decisions about pesticides. The law built in a10-fold “safety factor”to be sure kids would be protected.
Of course, children are only protected if the EPA follows the law and the science. And Dowkept the pressure onto ensure they wouldn’t. For now, Pruitt’s announcement represents “final agency action” on chlorpyrifos, and the EPA won’t be required to revisit the question of the pesticide’s safety until 2022. (Sorry, kids.)
How else might the Trump administration undermine science and children’s health?
This latest decision, along with the proposed slashing of EPA’s budget, leaves me wondering just how far the new administration will go in ignoring science and undoing children’s health protections. While the EPA budget cuts are getting a lot of attention,some health scientists are worriedas well about the fate of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) as well. In partnership with EPA, NIEHS operates anational network of research centersstudying children’s environmental health and educating the public about risks. If funding for those centers is also cut, who will look out for the health of children?
I spent years back in the late 90s and early aughts pressing Congress and the EPA to tighten the rules on toxic chemicals. We’re still not where we need to be, but we’ve made progress. And now it looks like that progress is very much at risk.