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[...] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide crucial to U.S. agriculture.
[...] In October 2015, under the previous Administration, EPA proposed to revoke all food residue tolerances for chlorpyrifos, an active ingredient in insecticides. This proposal was issued in response to a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network North America. The October 2015 proposal largely relied on certain epidemiological study outcomes, whose application is novel and uncertain, to reach its conclusions.
The public record lays out serious scientific concerns and substantive process gaps in the proposal.
Last month, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, freed up the country to continue using a pesticide called chlorpyrifos on everything from strawberries and almonds to Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
This despite a warning from the National Institutes of Health that chlorpyrifos can cause "adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects" in human beings. This despite scientific studies indicating that chlorpyrifos can interfere with fetal brain development, leading to higher rates of autism and lower intelligence.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Arizona Daily Sun (editorial)
More than 50 farm workers were exposed to a pesticide drift [...] southwest of Bakersfield.
[...] Twelve people reported symptoms of vomiting, nausea and one person fainted.
[...] The active ingredient in the insecticide the workers were exposed is Chlorpyrifos.
[...] It has been banned for residential use for more than 15 years, but can still be used in agriculture.
Chlorpyrifos is manufactured by the AgroSciences division of Dow Chemical Company.
A total of 47 farm workers were harvesting cabbage at the time and subsequently complained of a bad odor, nausea and vomiting. One was taken to hospital with four other workers visiting doctors in the following days.
On Monday [15 May], the agency shelved a proposal, originally scheduled to go into effect on March 6, intended to ensure that such poisons are safely applied.
Currently, anyone who applies pesticides on the restricted-use list has to have safety training. The proposed rule would have required workers who use the pesticides to be re-trained every five years, and to "verify the identity of persons seeking certification." It also established a minimum age for applying these chemicals: 18 years old.
Citing the regulatory freeze the Trump administration issued soon after the inauguration, the EPA announced Monday [15 May] it was putting the new requirements on ice until May 22, 2018. In addition, as Environmental Working Group noted, the agency is accepting comments on the decision only until May 19, "giving the public only a few days to comment on the rule, instead of the customary 30 days."
—Mother Jones (links in original)
Additional coverage:
Related stories:
EPA Dismisses Half of its Scientific Advisers on Key Board, Citing 'Clean Break' With Obama Govt
U.S. EPA Updates Web Sites
The Science March on Washington DC
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:47PM (7 children)
Maybe it will, but even with the government involved it can take decades to force companies to stop using provably deadly chemicals.
But hey, I guess you can't make omelette without breaking a few million kids.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:31PM (3 children)
Indeed, nobody sued Monsanto for the filth they spewed into the air despite the fact that you had to roll the windows up on a hot August day when driving past because the air burned your lungs, and cars weren't air conditioned then. It took the EPA and government regulations to get it to clean up its act and not be a hazard to everyone's health.
My grandfather fell four stories down an elevator shaft because Purina was too cheap to install doors. My grandmother tried to sue, but every lawyer in the area had been retained by Purina. OSHA makes sure stuff like doorless elevators aren't permitted.
The free market does NOT protect citizens, government regulations do.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:44PM
Hey hey hey, government is evil, taxes are theft, OSHA is a front for lizard men. What everrrrrr.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 25 2017, @10:50PM
Monopolizing the lawyer market is done (or at least attempted) more often than you might imagine.
If you need to sue and the first one you consult tells you you're crazy, keep looking - it's not unusual for the bought and paid for trolls to register with the bar association for "convenient, low cost consultations."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday May 26 2017, @04:05AM
If he died on the job like that, it is a workers' comp issue and part of the deal with worker's comp in general, is that your employer is immune from suit for negligence. If that was the case, then it may not have been that lawyers were bought up, just that there was no pathway to get to a non-frivolous lawsuit.
This is what rankles me about businesses whining about worker's comp insurance and treating it like some welfare program -- they perpetually forget that the modest benefits are what workers get out of the deal, and immunity from their own negligence is what the businesses got. There are undoubtedly, businesses still operating today (and whining about their premiums) who would have been sued into non-existence for their own negligence without that immunity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 26 2017, @02:59PM (2 children)
Especially, when it's better for everyone not to ban those provably deadly chemicals. Then bans may never happen.
Having killed millions of people in the past century, the odious dihydrogen monoxide [dhmo.org] easily meets the "provably deadly" threshold. I think you can figure out why it hasn't been banned yet.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)
Your linked page says that "inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities" can be fatal and that DHMO is used "in pesticide production and distribution". The wording suggests to me that DMHO is a so-called inert ingredient. Chlorpyfiros, however, is an active ingredient in pesticides: it kills insects by inhibiting cholinesterase. It can also inhibit cholinesterase in humans, although we're able to detoxify it.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos [wikipedia.org]
What are the effects of DMHO exposure in the womb? Have there been similar incidents in which DHMO, or a pesticide containing it, was sprayed on crops and workers in a neighbouring field became ill?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 28 2017, @11:59PM
It didn't take me long to locate YouTube videos of DHMO applied [youtube.com] as insecticide. Note that the video shows a grossly negligent application of a huge amount of DHMO. That neighborhood will probably see generations of birth defects and strange illnesses just due to this one irresponsible person.
DHMO has always been detected in the presence of birth defects and problem births. There is no other known toxin or carcinogen with this high a level of correlation.
China has DHMO toxicity problems like you wouldn't believe. Millions of workers and others have died at a time due to unplanned DHMO releases and all five [wikipedia.org] of the worst known DHMO releases have been in China, impacting agricultural workers the most.
To be blunt, this chicken little concern over chlorpyfiros is ridiculous. DMHO is by far the most lethal chemical in the world. Nothing else comes within orders of magnitude of it. When are we going to ban the provably deadly DHMO?