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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: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 26 2017, @12:05AM (24 children)
This particular insecticide isn't in and of itself essential.
However, the whole family of organophosphates (of which this is a member) are highly suspect, neurotoxic to humans, aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, and really should be restricted from applications which can end up dosing developing brains.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 29 2017, @12:01AM (23 children)
So we shouldn't be hosing kids down with the stuff? ... I guess I better stop doing that then.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 29 2017, @03:02AM (22 children)
Yeah, it's pretty tough on the farm worker's kids when they come home from the fields and bring a greater than annual permitted dose into the house on their shirts.
However, stories of residual pesticides in Cheerios and other toddler foods have been circulating and recirculating since the 1990s and before - and they're not all overblown hype.
It's not just radioactive fallout in the milk anymore, we are dosing our crops with high levels of insecticides, and significant quantities are passing into the grocery stores above accepted limits. Not all foods, not all the time, but enough to reach millions of people's tables.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 29 2017, @03:58AM (21 children)
Actually, they easily can be all hype to the very last story. First, residual pesticide has no lower limit. Since it can be detected at insanely small doses, there is no actually meaning to "residual pesticide" as a useful measure of threat. Second, if you have to say "not all overblown hype", you're wasting your time. Public hysteria on chemicals is one of those places where smoke routinely means no fire.
Everything has measurable amounts of toxins. Our bodies create them so that is true, just from ourselves. You have to have a concrete idea of harm not vague "millions of peoples' tables" in order to think rationally about this problem. The first rule of toxicology is dose makes the poison. That concept is notably absent from your post.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 29 2017, @02:05PM (20 children)
>So bad chemical handling procedures?
Until the industry can demonstrate a way to implement "good chemical handling procedures" that don't result in an unacceptable number of children with deformed brain development, I'd say put the brakes on manufacture and distribution of the poison. Sure, the whacked out kids just end up in institutions or prisons - not "our" problem, right? Actually, even though they mostly die young, they're damned expensive for the 40-50 years they're in "the care of the state" and that's an externalized cost that the food and pesticide industry is putting on the taxpayers. If "industry can regulate itself" then, fine. As for now, they're dosing too many people with too much poison.
>Actually, they easily can be all hype to the very last story.
This was the logic behind the "lead scare" deniers - put enough contradiction out there to allow people to reasonably doubt either side, then continue with business as usual. Being atomic, lead is a pretty easy thing to trace, and still they managed to sow enough confusion to continue pumping it into the environment in mass quantities for decades after the "science was clear." Organophosphates do break down, eventually, and are a much more complicated mess, but in the end, we're doing the same thing - bathing the world in poison and pointing to the concentrated economic benefits as an excuse to keep externalizing the costs out onto the population.
>dose makes the poison. That concept is notably absent from your post.
The concept I am putting out there is that the studies to-date look at limited datapoints of measured concentrations, and if what they measure is acceptable, they wave the big green flag. For endeavors like the food industry, there are 300 million consumers in this country alone. The studies need to be able to collect enough datapoints to establish the variability of dose passing through to the consumers, and analyze that variability to estimate how many people are being poisoned at significant levels and how often (yes, dose.) As outlined above, pesticide application practices vary, significantly. I don't consider it acceptable if 0.1% of the industry practices are potentially harmful to developing brains. 0.1% is 300,000 people in the US alone - how many children are growing up in typical town of 300,000 population? Even if the window of vulnerability is tiny, just a few months, +3000 kids a year destined for lifelong care and support? If you don't care about the humanitarian side, calculate some costs: 150,000 "damaged" adults in the system, each costing $40K+ per year
just to imprison, more if you're actually caring for them. 6 billion dollars a year. Not a big deal, right, maybe $80 per year per household in additional taxes. Small price to pay for cheaper soybeans and corn?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 29 2017, @09:10PM (19 children)
That's already been done. The alleged example you spoke of is already regulated by existing law. My point is that such exposure is due to poor handling of chemicals, which is already a solved problem - just get the employers to follow the law. There is no case for banning a pesticide merely because someone doesn't handle it correctly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:22AM (18 children)
>just get employers to follow the law
is not an acceptable answer until employers actually do follow the law. Just because the prescribed law makes things safe "if it is followed" does not make people safe in reality. There is zero practical recourse in the system for people harmed by employers not following the law, especially for persons injured at the consumer level.
~80 years since DDT hit the market and employers still can't follow the pesticide handling laws closely enough to prevent significant harm to very significant number of people. If Freon-12 was handled "according to law" it wouldn't have been a problem for the ozone layer.
Sometimes banning a chemical is the only practical answer.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 30 2017, @09:02AM (17 children)
To the contrary, there is no other answer. There is no point to increasing regulation or banning chemicals when you're not enforcing existing law and regulation. The new law and regulation just becomes more stuff to ignore.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:57AM (16 children)
When the existing law and regulation doesn't work in practice, there is no point holding it up as "the answer" - decades of practice through all kinds of enforcement environments have shown: it doesn't work. Spills happen, "accidental exposures" happen, and they happen at an unacceptably high rate under the current regulation.
Scrap the current regulation, ban manufacture and distribution - that's a form of regulation that worked for DDT (where it was applied), worked for Freon-12 (at an environmentally acceptable level), and bears much less burden on the enforcement agencies (i.e. taxpayers) to reduce risks to an acceptable level.
Not everything Herr Trump has proposed is completely insane: the proposal to remove 2 regulations for every new regulation passed is an (arbitrary, loony from many perspectives) effective way to get rid of existing regulations that have been proven to be less than cost effective.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 30 2017, @10:50PM (15 children)
And when it does work in practice, then there is plenty of point to holding it up as the answer. You are absurdly wrong here.
And that same reasoning would ban DHMO. Further, we don't exist for the convenience of the enforcement agencies.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:58AM (14 children)
>we don't exist for the convenience of the enforcement agencies.
Nor do we exist for the convenience of the large scale agro-chemical industry. They only want the chemical because it increases yields and profits, perhaps even lowers cost of food to the consumers. No thank you - I don't play lottery tickets to win my fortune, and I don't want to play Russian roulette with my children's food.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 31 2017, @07:08AM (13 children)
Your lack of substantial evidence combined with this dependence on envy of chemical company profits demonstrates to me an argument that needs a lot of work before it is worth considering seriously.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 31 2017, @12:23PM (12 children)
In Intel's chip factories, yields are tracked, contamination monitored, and everything accounted for out to six-sigma and beyond. Nothing is left out of the analysis and accounting. That's the modern world of computer chip manufacturing.
In the "modern world" of potato chip manufacturing (and, yes, this is more of a concern in wheat, corn and soybeans than potatoes), the entire supply chain runs fast and loose, little better analyzed or accounted for than it was on plantations in the 1800s when the farmer/owners kept a personal eye on a smaller plot of land that was directly tied to their livelihood.
The attraction of organophosphate pesticides is strong - not only do they kill pests, they also fertilize the plants, both increasing yields and making the plants more competitive against residual insect insults. Yes, there are "laws" about application of these chemicals that are already banned from consumer use. And I would agree that few, if any, people have died from acute exposure. What is not tracked, what I have no data on because nobody has taken the time, effort or expense to collect the data on, is the actual number of people with long term negative neurological effects due to low level exposure. Scientific proof of the problem is well established:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chronic+neurological+effects+of+organophosphate+pesticides [lmgtfy.com]
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=effects+of+organophosphate+pesticides+on+neurological+development [lmgtfy.com]
What's not established is how often a farmer sprays the crops with higher doses than permitted by law or too close to harvest, or how often the application of the pesticides "accidentally" exposes people that shouldn't be exposed. Nobody is collecting this data at the level of completeness required to address the significant concerns in the above studies. The complaint is "it's too hard, it's too expensive, there's no point - it's a waste of time." My counter complaint is: "lifelong care of people with significant neurological damage is too hard, too expensive and it's too damn inhuman to go on creating people with these problems because you're too busy making profits."
It's not profit envy - profits are the motive for ignoring the problem. I've worked in too many industries for too long, seeing the same ostrich approach to concerns that might make a cash cow look bad. The longer they stall, the longer the gravy train continues to run.
Make a profit, please do, but don't ignore or deny the damage you cause along the way.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:14PM (11 children)
That's a non sequitur. There is no reason to keep track of potato chips to that degree - no least because the potato chip even in the presence of modern pesticides is far easy to make unlike the computer chip and of far less cost and value, even counting the alleged health effects of these modern pesticides.
That also means that they are decomposing into less harmful products.
We have yet to come across a reason for banning them, I see. The huge problem that is missing with your argument is a complete absence of any consideration of the costs or benefits. For example, you have yet to mention a study that supports your position and thus, establish even a remotely accurate basis for the cost you claim to care about. You have yet to acknowledge why we use pesticides in the first place (it's not to generate profits for chemical companies). That is an enormous benefit that is outright ignored.
Alluding to imaginary studies doesn't help your case. Arguing for banning on the basis of hypothetical harm (from misapplication no less) while ignoring the concrete benefit of these pesticides is a ridiculously biased argument. Finally, a standard argument from ignorance fallacy is a far cry from any argument for banning these chemicals.
Is it? I see you couldn't find the "scientific proof" yourself. Dumping raw google links rather than said "scientific proof" is a strong indication, you don't have a clue where to find this evidence, much less know if it supports your position.
And we should believe you why? A chemical company's conflict of interest is obvious. That doesn't mean that they don't deserve to earn a profit or are automatically in the wrong.
And once again, what does this have to do with banning the chemical? Shouldn't you bother to come up with evidence for your primary assertions at some point?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 31 2017, @07:33PM (10 children)
"Jane, you are an ignorant slut."
One internet point to Khallow for blustering past evidence, demanding proof that he himself does not provide, and relying on "that's the way is has always been, you have to prove me wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt before I acknowledge that there might even be a problem."
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:32AM (9 children)
And negative zillionly internet points to JoeMerchant for just saying shit which means nothing. Ever hear of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:47AM (8 children)
No, but I do sometimes tire of debaters who hold assumed political stereotypes as fair game and weighty evidence, demanding "extraordinary proof" in the face of hundreds of peer reviewed publications which all point in the same direction: poison is poisonous. Where are your peer reviewed studies saying that business as usual is harmless?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:20AM (7 children)
Well, sorry for being tiresome, but this alleged hundreds is a lot bigger than zero - which is the number of peer reviewed publications you've cited so far. I see no reason why I should be required to prove a negative when you can't be bothered to prove a thing.
As to poison being poisonous, that is the dumbest thing you've mentioned to this point. No one has contested that. Further, everything is poisonous in large enough doses, particularly water, the DHMO I keep referring to. I have yet to hear a response to my repeated observation that the same train of reasoning you've used to justify banning any pesticide can similarly be used to justify a ban of water.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2017, @03:50AM (6 children)
Click the google links, take a glance, there's a front page listing virtually nothing but toxicity studies, most with hundreds of citations - I think one of the childhood neurodevelopment studies has 600+ citations. Start reading and tell me how long it takes you to find one (not published by industry that profits from the sale and use of glycophosphates) that says "nope, studied it, nothing going on here, not a single person harmed from this stuff."
Water, in doses lower than those delivered during Radio station "hold your wee for a wii" contests, is generally beneficial and verily essential to life - no water, no life. At the extreme: no glycophosphates, nobody dies, they are not essential to life. Refer back to the literally hundreds of studies within two clicks of the Google links as to residual doses, what their limited findings say about how much is getting through to the general population and how bad it is when it gets there. I am not surprised that the majority offer "limited sample size, more study warranted" in their conclusions, that is the nature of academic funding.
But, they're all bleeding heart liberals with an agenda against everyone who makes their money through the open market, right? (Cheap shot offered in jest - you don't deserve it, but I'm giving it anyway.)
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @04:19AM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:57AM (4 children)
Evidence gathered by scientists, published in peer reviewed journals, 2 front pages with 20+ studies which are referenced by and reference hundreds more - what are you looking for? Personal anecdotes? Video taped documentaries? Whistleblower stories from company insiders? Generally speaking, the peer reviewed literature is the "gold standard" of proof.
I suppose I could read the studies to you, instead I am summarizing for you like they do in congressional testimony; better proof is that you select the studies yourself based on your own criteria of relevance and decide whether or not glycophosphates, in concentrations found in today's society, have negative effects on neurodevelopment sufficient to increase the burden of care for injured individuals. I've read a few dozen studies over the last 15 years and they all point me to these conclusions. I've also personally witnessed the cost of that care and the lack of ability for injured individuals or their caregivers to prove connection between source of injury and the individuals. 1:1 proof of injury at a level to make a lawsuit stick is lacking due to the obfuscation of how foods are delivered from the fields to the table, wind drift of pesticides when applied, and other vague factors which don't stand up as proof in the majority of individual cases that would support a claim of damages, but the aggregate studies demonstrate a causal link.
I could develop and publish yet another meta-analysis paper, reviewing the available literature and summarizing, but lacking academic standing (and funding) for such an endeavor, my contribution would be largely ignored, and/or ridiculed by detractors with contrary agendas, as you are doing.
Thanks, though, for encouraging me to dig into the papers yet again and see how the body of evidence has grown since the last time I looked a few years ago. The data gathered and the conclusions drawn haven't changed, just the political climate. That same wacky political climate that seems prone to "common sense" over evidence:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-meet-with-proponent-of-debunked-tie-between-vaccines-and-autism/2017/01/10/4a5d03c0-d752-11e6-9f9f-5cdb4b7f8dd7_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @01:13PM
And once again, no evidence is provided. You continue to make baseless claims.
Yes. There you go though as I note at the bottom of my post, you don't get why I don't care about your research. Your argument is too broken for research, real or imagined, to fill in those flaws.
You mean highly politicized commentary like they do in congressional testimony? I see once again, you don't actually summarize any research. You just claim to.
Let's recall some particulars of this situation. For some reason, chlorpyrifos had been made legal in the first place. That means a study or studies favorable to the pesticide and probably much larger in sample size and resulting validity to most of the papers you claim to cite. Second, your whole argument about banning chlorpyrifos works just as well for water. Sure, we don't need chlorpyrifos (or any other particular chemical) as much as we need water, but for agriculture, we do need something. Meanwhile, chlorpyrifos doesn't cause as much harm as water does, particularly when used properly. So we should be evaluating on cost-benefit, not on some bogus "but it's a poison" argument that applies to every chemical we use.
And that leads to my third point which is that you have only cited actual semi-concrete harm for farm workers (and growing children who allegedly came in contact with them) who didn't take proper precautions, that is, you propose to ban a chemical merely because someone was sloppy. There are standard regulatory fixes for that (such as fining those out of compliance with regulation) that don't require banning. Further, there's nothing magical about chlorpyrifos that makes said workers more sloppy. They would be just as sloppy with other pesticides. And most of those have similar problems (because they're poisons after all). So I don't see the point of banning the chemical du jour, when you have a problem that would continue to exist no matter what pesticides end up being allowed.
As I see it, your claim to know of lots of research is a red herring. Your argument is deeply broken whether or not that research exists.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @01:18PM (2 children)
And I couldn't skip this. You're so dishonest that you won't post a single link to support your position, but you will dump a link to an irrelevant anti-Trump story. If you really had "dug" into these papers, then you'd have more to show than this.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2017, @02:36PM (1 child)
I posted two links, links that lead to 40+ studies, one link down from them and you have over 1000 studies.
In that body of work, if I take the time to show you 1 or 2 or 3 papers supporting my side, well, then, I've cherry picked them, haven't I?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:45PM