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Last month, a coalition of six organizations petitioned the EPA to immediately suspend and cancel all glyphosate registrations. The petition was filed by the Center for Food Safety (CFF), which was joined by Lideres Campesinas, Beyond Pesticides, the Farmworker Association of Florida, Rural Coalition, and Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, Inc. These nonprofits work to protect […]
The recent report “How the EPA’s lax regulation of dangerous pesticides is hurting public health and the US economy” by the Brookings Institution highlights ways the EPA is lagging behind the rest of the world in regulating pesticides to protect human and wildlife health. The report lists approximately 85 agricultural pesticides that are still approved […]
On July 20, 2022, the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report critical of EPA management practices, entitled “The EPA Needs to Improve the Transparency of Its Cancer-Assessment Process for Pesticides.” The controversy uncovered by the report centers around the use of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) pesticide. The report concludes the Trump Administration EPA did […]
On August 18, 2021, the EPA announced it issued a final rule to stop the use of chlorpyrifos pesticide on all food crops in response to an order from the 9th Circuit. The final rule revokes “all ‘tolerances’ for chlorpyrifos, which establish an amount of a pesticide that is allowed on food. In addition, the […]
In a report dated May 24, 2021, the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) determined that the Agency “deviated from typical procedures in its 2018 Dicamba pesticide registration decision.” The watchdog report found required internal peer reviews were not conducted for three dicamba pesticide products. “While division-level management review is part of the typical operating […]
The EPA’s Special Local Needs (SLN) program is at risk of not achieving its program goals, according to a report issued by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) in February 2021.
Chlorpyrifos, a chemical used to prevent insect infestation in crops, has been linked to neurodevelopmental issues, including impaired working memory and lower IQ levels for children who had prenatal exposure to the chemical. Although the chemical has been banned from most household uses, many farmworkers, including pregnant women, still face regular exposure.
Inclusion of first-aid statements on pesticide labels is governed by regulations at 40 CFR 156.68. The fundamental requirement is that all pesticides that have “systemic effects in Category I, II, or III, or skin or eye irritation effects in Category I or II” must bear a first-aid statement. (Category I pesticides have high toxicity; Category […]
On December 22, 2016, The American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (AFBF/NASDA) petitioned the EPA to delay by 1 year the January 1, 2017, compliance date for the Agency’s revised standards to improve protections for farm workers who apply or otherwise handle or are exposed to pesticides (Worker […]
Disputes about environmental preemption usually make news in the context of disagreements over federal versus state statutory and constitutional authority. (Note that preservation of state power was probably the major final obstacle holding up Congressional passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which reformed the federal Toxic Substances Control […]