It's on the cotton; it's in the water; its in the food; its in the air; any questions? ── Chlorpyrifos .
Tell Biden to supervise Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, better. Hold both House and Senate Hearings to find out why EPA is refusing to comply with the 9th Circuit Court(s) order(s) that the Environmental Protection Agency shall ban Chlorpyrifos ── But, as we’ve seen in the past, the pesticide industry is cozying up to EPA staff and aggressively lobbying them to adopt a Trump proposal that would not ban all food uses of Chlorpyrifos ── We need your help again to tell the EPA to ignore the lobbyists and follow through on the court order to ban Chlorpyrifos.
LULAC v. Andrew Wheeler (Docket # 19-71979) ─ Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ─ Appealed From: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA-HQ-OPP-2007-1005) Date Filed: Aug. 7, 2019 ─ Decision, including claims that EPA ignored or misinterpreted data. Petitioners alleged that EPA: (1) “ignored genetic evidence of vulnerable populations”; (2) “needlessly delayed a decision regarding endocrine disrupting effects”; (3) “ignored data regarding cancer risks”; (4) “misrepresented risks and failed to apply FQPA 10X safety factor” in its 2006 cumulative risk assessment; (5) “over-relied on registrant data”; (6) “failed to properly address the exporting hazard in foreign countries from chlorpyrifos”; (7) “failed to quantitatively incorporate data demonstrating long-lasting effects from early life exposure to chlorpyrifos in children”; (8) “disregarded data demonstrating that there is no evidence of a safe level of exposure during pre-birth and early life stages”; (9) “failed to cite or quantitatively incorporate studies and clinical reports suggesting potential adverse effects below 10% cholinesterase inhibition”; and (10) “failed to incorporate inhalation routes of exposure.” see also Chlorpyrifos; Final Order Denying Objections to March 2017 Petition Denial Order Final Order, 84 Fed. Reg. at 35,556
This would be a catastrophic mistake and an utter betrayal of the public’s trust in the EPA. The amount of delay on this common-sense ban is already unacceptable, as the EPA and its scientific advisors have found repeatedly over the past 10years that Chlorpyrifos damages children’s neurological development at exposures far lower than what the EPA is currently allowing. Independent scientific studies show that the toxin is linked to motor delays, reduced IQ, harms to working memory, and autism — and Earthjustice ─ earthjustice.org ─ has been suing the government for a decade to get it banned. Here is a USDA photo demonstrating the trouble this message to you addresses:
USDA photo: A father and son in a cotton field in El Campo, Texas. Chlorpyrifos is widely used on cotton. The EPA has acknowledge its legal obligation to protect children from pesticide drift. More earthjustice.org details are available. https://earthjustice.org/brief/2021/chlorpyrifos-ban-pesticide-industry-pressure-epa
Chlorpyrifos (CPS) is an organophosphate pesticide used on crops, animals, and buildings, and in other settings, to kill a number of pests, including insects and worms. It acts on the nervous systems of insects by inhibiting the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. Chlorpyrifos (pronounced: klawr-pir-uh-fos) was patented in 1966 by Dow Chemical Company … an organic thiophosphate that is O,O-diethyl hydrogen phosphorothioate in which the hydrogen of the hydroxy group has been replaced by a 3,5,6-trichloropyridin-2-yl group making it be chemically 0,0-diethyl 0- (3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinyl)-phosphorothioate.
It has a role as an EC 3.1.1.7 (acetylcholinesterase) inhibitor, an agrochemical, an EC 3.1.1.8 (cholinesterase) inhibitor, an environmental contaminant, a xenobiotic, an acaricide and an insecticide. It’s (pronounced: klawr-pir-uh-fos) made up of white or colorless crystals having a slightly skunky odor, like rotten eggs or garlic, first developed by the Nazis for chemical warfare.
We need your help again. Tell the Committee(s) of jurisdiction in your body of Congress to forthwith hold hearings on EPA processes of its responses to lobbying against obeying court orders about these chemicals and have Congressional hearings with rigorous Congressional Oversight attached to them to learn why-how-when EPA follows instead the pesticide lobbyists that are trying to convince EPA to ignore the science (and a court order) instead enforcing a ban on all food uses of Chlorpyrifos.
Follow through with the 9th Circuit’s order and ban chlorpyrifos now. The Environmental Protection Agency should have taken action to ban all food uses of Chlorpyrifos a long time ago, and the people who have been harmed by it during the last decade of inaction deserved better from (all of) our government.
While states like Hawaii, California, Oregon, and New York have stepped in to end use of Chlorpyrifos, they cannot prevent residues of Chlorpyrifos on their food. Only the EPA can do that. Exposing farmworkers and agricultural communities to these toxic chemicals is a policy choice the chemical and agricultural industries have pushed, not an inevitability.
For half a century, U.S. staple foods 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 and attention deficit disorders. Now, after more than a decade of advocacy and a series of Earthjustice lawsuits, a federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop evading the law and ban all food uses of the neurotoxic pesticide, or prove that it is safe (something the EPA cannot do given the science). Join us in telling the EPA to finish the job and ban Chlorpyrifos now.
This video is worth seeing all the way through ─ I guarantee you’ll learn a lot if you just put up with & invest the 12 minutes it plays.
This might sound familiar — this same court previously ordered the EPA to ban Chlorpyrifos ── But the Trump administration never let the rule of law or public health get in the way of polluter profits, so it refused to take action and continued to allow Chlorpyrifos to be sprayed on our food.
Now, with a new administration and a new court ruling, we have a chance to get the job done for good. Tell EPA Administrator Michael Regan to follow through to protect children and farmworkers and ban all food uses of Chlorpyrifos now.
The fight doesn’t end with Chlorpyrifos— it’s just one member of the organophosphate class of pesticides that were first developed by the Nazis for chemical warfare and are sprayed on our fruits and vegetables. The science is extremely clear on organophosphates: choosing to allow their use is choosing to harm children’s brains and poison the farmworkers who harvest the food everyone eats.
This decades-long fight is an indictment of the systems we have in place to protect public health. We’ve known Chlorpyrifos and organophosphates are deeply harmful for years, but the federal government has been unable or unwilling to act, in large part because of the chemical lobby’s influence. We’ve let an industry that’s more than willing to poison farmworkers and agricultural communities set our public health priorities for too long — which is why it’s time for the Biden administration to be bold and fix this with a ban on organophosphates; It’s time for House & Senate to be bold and fix this with a ban on organophosphates.
How You Can Get involved with the Biden-Harris Administration ─► PHONE NUMBERS Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 TTY/TTD Comments: 202-456-6213 e-mail https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Contact Speaker Nancy Pelosi ─► https://www.speaker.gov/contact e-mail & other forms
Contact Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ─► https://www.schumer.senate.gov/
Contact EPA via Earthjustice ─► https://earthjustice.org/action/ban-this-dangerous-chemical-from-our-food
Chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates are in our bodies, water, air, and food, and it’s not going to get any better without decisive action from the federal government. Our government has a responsibility to protect us — but they’ve let us down for far too long. We must pressure the EPA to follow through with a ban on Chlorpyrifos, and then begin the process to do the same for all organophosphates. Join us, your co-constituents, in telling EPA Administrator Regan that the EPA’s time is now up to follow the law and ban Chlorpyrifos now.
Why indeed.
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