Senator Mazie Hirono's office issued the following.
August 7, 2019.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Earlier this week,
Senators Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and thirteen of
their U.S. Senate colleagues sent a letter to Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler urging him to reconsider the
decision not to ban chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide linked to brain
damage in children and known to cause serious harm to human health. In
the letter, the Senators ask the EPA to reverse its decision and place a
ban on chlorpyrifos immediately in the interest of protecting public
health.
“The EPA has repeatedly found that
chlorpyrifos harms children’s brains at exposures far lower than what
the EPA allows. Nevertheless, it refuses to ban this pesticide
supposedly because the agency is currently unable to pinpoint the
precise exposures that cause this harm,” the Senators wrote.
“Additionally, the EPA’s rejection of the petition to ban chlorpyrifos
has been accompanied by a new argument in which the EPA contends that
the prohibition on allowing a pesticide to be on our food in the absence
of an affirmative EPA safety finding does not apply to its action on
public petitions. The EPA apparently now seeks to cast aside public
input from its work to protect public health.”
“Additionally, chlorpyrifos threatens
agricultural workers who apply the pesticide. Farm workers are exposed
to chlorpyrifos from mixing, handling, and applying the pesticide, as
well as from entering fields where chlorpyrifos was recently sprayed.
Chlorpyrifos is one of the pesticides most often linked to acute
pesticide poisonings, and in many States that monitor pesticide
poisonings, it is regularly identified among the five pesticides linked
to the highest number of pesticide poisoning incidents. This is
significant given widespread under-reporting of pesticide poisonings due
to such factors as inadequate reporting systems, fear of retaliation
from employers, and reluctance to seek medical treatment,” the Senators continued.
“The EPA’s decision to reject the petition
to ban chlorpyrifos is deeply concerning. It simply makes no sense from
a public health or legal perspective for EPA to continue to resist
taking action that would protect children’s brains. If you fail to
reverse this decision, more children, farmworkers and American families
will be exposed to this pesticide and they will suffer as a result,” the Senators concluded.
In July, despite a petition
to ban chlorpyrifos, the EPA announced it would not ban the chemical,
but rather would monitor the safety of chlorpyrifos through 2020.
Chlorpyrifos, which is a toxic nerve agent, continues to remain a risk
for families across the country who may be exposed to it through
contaminated food. Children, farmers, and farmworkers living in rural
Latino communities face a disproportionately high risk of exposure while
applying the pesticide to food crops. In addition to sending the letter, Senator Hirono is also a cosponsor of S. 921, the Protect Children, Farmers, and Farmworkers from Nerve Agent Pesticides Act of 2019,
which would prohibit the use of chlorpyrifos on food. Also, last year
Hawaii became the first state to pass a law banning the use of
chlorpyrifos.
Joining Senators Hirono and Udall on the letter
are U.S. Senators Cory A. Booker (D-N.J.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.),
Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen
(D-Md.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ben
Cardin (D-Md.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.),
Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Michael F.
Bennet (D-Colo.).
The full text of the letter is available here and below:
The Honorable Andrew Wheeler
Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
William Jefferson Clinton Building
1200 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
Dear Mr. Administrator:
We write to express our alarm with the
recent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement that it
would reject a petition by several states and public health groups to
ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. We believe this decision to be reckless
and dangerous for the health of both children and farmworkers and
contrary to the requirements of federal law. We urge you to reverse
course and remove this pesticide from the marketplace without delay.
The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996
(Public Law 104-170, 110 Stat. 1489) (FQPA) directs the EPA to ensure
with “reasonable certainty” that “no harm” will result from food,
drinking water, and other exposures to a pesticide. If the EPA cannot
make this safety finding, it must prohibit residues and the use of the
pesticide on food. The FQPA mandates that the EPA must consider
children’s special sensitivity and exposure to pesticide chemicals and
must make an explicit determination that the pesticide can be used with a
“reasonable certainty of no harm” to children. In determining
acceptable levels of pesticide residue, the EPA must account for the
potential health harm from pre-and postnatal exposures. The economic
benefits of any particular pesticides cannot be used to override this
health-based standard for children from food and other exposures.
There is no dispute that the EPA has not
been able to make this safety finding. In fact, the EPA has repeatedly
found that chlorpyrifos harms children’s brains at exposures far lower
than what the EPA allows. Nevertheless, it refuses to ban this
pesticide supposedly because the agency is currently unable to pinpoint
the precise exposures that cause this harm. Additionally, the EPA’s
rejection of the petition to ban chlorpyrifos has been accompanied by a
new argument in which the EPA contends that the prohibition on allowing a
pesticide to be on our food in the absence of an affirmative EPA safety
finding does not apply to its action on public petitions. The EPA
apparently now seeks to cast aside public input from its work to protect
public health.
The EPA is now seeking to avoid its
statutory duties by pointing to a regulation it has adopted that
requires petitions to present new scientific evidence to support the
requested action. However, the FQPA explicitly constrains the EPA’s
discretion and prohibits the EPA from retaining tolerances without a
safety finding. And in this case, the EPA’s own scientists have already
found chlorpyrifos harms children’s brains. Therefore, we strongly
oppose the idea that the EPA can unilaterally over-ride this
congressional mandate with an agency regulation.
Rejecting this petition and pushing off
further decision until 2022 leaves the public in harm’s way from a
pesticide that has long been of concern to the EPA for yet many more
years. Residential uses of chlorpyrifos ended in 2000 after the EPA
found unsafe exposures to children. The EPA also discontinued use of
chlorpyrifos on tomatoes and restricted its use on apples and grapes in
2000, and required no-spray buffers around schools, homes, playfields,
day cares, hospitals, and other public places, ranging from 10 to 100
feet. In 2015, the EPA proposed to ban all chlorpyrifos food tolerances,
based on unsafe drinking water contamination, which would have ended
use of chlorpyrifos on food in the United States.
After updating the risk assessment in
November 2016 to account for prenatal exposures associated with brain
impacts, the EPA found that expected residues from use on food crops
exceeded the safety standard. The EPA also found that the majority of
estimated drinking water exposures from currently allowed uses of
chlorpyrifos also exceeded acceptable levels, reinforcing the need to
revoke all food tolerances for the pesticide.
Countless studies, including the EPA’s
Revised Human Health Risk Assessment for Registration Review (2016),
describe the threat of chlorpyrifos to healthy development of children.
From these studies, we know that children experience greater exposure to
chlorpyrifos and other pesticides because, relative to adults, they eat
and drink more proportional to their body weight. A growing body of
evidence shows that prenatal exposure to very low levels of chlorpyrifos
can lead to lasting and possibly permanent neurological impairments,
developmental delay, and attention deficit disorder. In the EPA’s
revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos in November 2016,
the EPA confirmed that there are no acceptable uses for the pesticide
and that all food uses exceed acceptable levels, with children ages 1 to
2 exposed to levels of chlorpyrifos that are 140 times what the EPA
considers acceptable.
Additionally, chlorpyrifos threatens
agricultural workers who apply the pesticide. Farm workers are exposed
to chlorpyrifos from mixing, handling, and applying the pesticide, as
well as from entering fields where chlorpyrifos was recently sprayed.
Chlorpyrifos is one of the pesticides most often linked to acute
pesticide poisonings, and in many States that monitor pesticide
poisonings, it is regularly identified among the 5 pesticides linked to
the highest number of pesticide poisoning incidents. This is significant
given widespread under-reporting of pesticide poisonings due to such
factors as inadequate reporting systems, fear of retaliation from
employers, and reluctance to seek medical treatment.
According to the EPA’s own data, all
workers who mix and apply chlorpyrifos are exposed to unsafe levels of
the pesticide even with maximum personal protective equipment and
engineering controls. Field workers are currently allowed to re-enter
fields within 1 to 5 days after chlorpyrifos is sprayed based on current
restricted entry intervals on the registered chlorpyrifos labels but
unsafe exposures continue on average 18 days after applications.
In 2015, leading scientific and medical
experts, along with children’s health advocates, came together, under
“Project TENDR: Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks,” to
issue a call to action to reduce widespread exposures to chemicals that
interfere with fetal and children’s brain development. Based on the
available and peer-reviewed scientific evidence, the TENDR authors
identified prime examples of neuro-developmentally toxic chemicals “that
can contribute to learning, behavioral, or intellectual impairment, as
well as specific neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD or autism
spectrum disorder,” and listed organophosphate pesticides, among them.
In 2018, leading scientists involved with TENDR published an article in
PLOS Medicine that found that prenatal exposure to organophosphate
pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, even at low levels that were previously
considered safe, are putting children at risk for cognitive and
behavioral deficits and neurodevelopmental disorders. The scientists
recommended phasing out chlorpyrifos.
The EPA’s decision to reject the petition
to ban chlorpyrifos is deeply concerning. It simply makes no sense from
a public health or legal perspective for EPA to continue to resist
taking action that would protect children’s brains. If you fail to
reverse this decision, more children, farmworkers and American families
will be exposed to this pesticide and they will suffer as a result.
Sincerely,
###
