Markets | United States of America |
Organization | Beyond Pesticides News Blog |
Topic | Contaminants, residues and contact materials |
A federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must ban a widely used organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos linked to brain damage in children from being sprayed on food crops, unless the agency can demonstrate safe uses for the chemical. The decision now falls to the Biden Administration’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan, after the previous administration reversed a proposal to ban agricultural uses of chlorpyrifos in 2017 despite appeals by environmental and public health groups. Chlorpyrifos has been used for a half-century on an array of fruits and vegetables. Over time, though, evidence has associated exposure with health issues such as headaches and blurred vision and longer-term risks such as lower birth weight and neurological damage to children, and pressure has grown for a complete ban. Most residential uses of the chemical were banned in 2000.