The EPA denied a petition from environmentalists yesterday calling for a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos. In October 2015, in response to the petition filed in 2007 from the Pesticide Action Network North America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Obama administration’s EPA proposed to revoke all food tolerances for chlorpyrifos. The agency was under a court-ordered deadline to respond to the petition by Friday.

 

Earlier this month, NAAA met with EPA to discuss its proposed decision on the chlorpyrifos ban and earlier this year in January, NAAA submitted comments to keep chlorpyrifos on the market for aerial application. NAAA communicated to EPA that our industry mitigates drift now better than ever. NAAA, along with its many agricultural allies, communicated to the agency that it had misinterpreted the Food Quality Protection Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by trying to establish a standard of “absolute certainty that no harm will result” from a pesticide instead of a standard of “reasonable certainty that no harm will result.” We also stressed concern that EPA justified revoking tolerances for chlorpyrifos in part by relying on a secret study from Columbia University that was not made available to EPA or anyone else for review. NAAA also joined dozens of its agricultural partners in signing a letter to EPA Administrator Pruitt about chlorpryifos. The letter states, “Chlorpyrifos is one of the most widely used active ingredients in insecticides in the world. Since it was first registered in the United States in 1965, chlorpyrifos has played a key role in pest management efforts in the United States…”

 

EPA posted a notice to its website Wednesday evening, saying it will address the questions raised in the petition during a broader review of the pesticide that it expects to finish in 2022. That review will consider the concerns about potential neurodevelopmental toxicity in children that were raised by the environmental activist groups in their petition. "Despite several years of study, the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved," EPA wrote in the notice. It said that "further evaluation of the science during the remaining time for completion of registration review is warranted to achieve greater certainty as to whether the potential exists for adverse neurodevelopmental effects to occur from current human exposures to chlorpyrifos."

 

The decision added that "EPA has therefore concluded that it will not complete the human health portion of the registration review or any associated tolerance revocation of chlorpyrifos without first attempting to come to a clearer scientific resolution on those issues."