Tell the EPA to keep this toxic pesticide out of our food
Children and farmworker communities will yet again be in harm's way as a harmful pesticide is allowed to return to the market. For nearly half of a century, U.S. staple foods such as apples, cherries, peaches, and citrus were sprayed with chlorpyrifos (pronounced: klawr-pir-uh-fos), a dangerous pesticide that poisons farmworkers and in even smaller doses harms the developing brains of children.
In 2021, thanks to a court win for Earthjustice, the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization, and its clients, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned all food uses of chlorpyrifos. Unfortunately, that ban didn't last. After a lawsuit from Gharda, a chemical company, and agri-business groups, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals revoked the ban and ordered EPA to reconsider some food uses. Join Earthjustice in telling the EPA to protect children from neurodevelopmental harm and put the chlorpyrifos ban back in place.
We've known for well over a decade that chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates harm children's brain development. Based on an extensive body of peer-reviewed science, the EPA and its Scientific Advisory Panel have repeatedly found that chlorpyrifos harms the developing brain at exposures below what EPA has allowed. With the ban overturned and sent back to EPA for a do-over, we must fight this battle again. We must protect our children from chlorpyrifos – a dangerous pesticide that could subject them to lifelong learning disabilities. It's time for the EPA to act on the science and ban chlorpyrifos.
Chlorpyrifos is in our bodies, water, air, and food, and it's not going to get any better without decisive action from the federal government. Our government has a responsibility to protect us — as the EPA did when it banned chlorpyrifos from our food in 2021. We must pressure the EPA to follow the science and reinstate the chlorpyrifos ban.
Join Earthjustice in telling Administrator Regan that the EPA must follow the law and the science and put the chlorpyrifos food ban back in place.
To Administrator Regan:
Subject line: Reinstate the chlorpyrifos ban
Banning chlorpyrifos in 2021 showed your commitment to protecting children and farmworkers from the dangerous effects from spraying chlorpyrifos on our food. I urge you to follow the science and EPA's mandate to protect children from unsafe food by reinstating the chlorpyrifos food ban. With the 8th Circuit's ruling revoking the 2021 ban, people will again be at risk of being harmed by this dangerous pesticide. Children and farmworkers deserve better.
The EPA and its Scientific Advisory Panel have repeatedly found that even low levels of chlorpyrifos exposure is linked to learning disabilities in children. The EPA banned chlorpyrifos from food because it could not find chlorpyrifos safe in the face of these scientific findings and its statutory mandate to ensure children will not be harmed from pesticides used on food. When EPA announced the ban, you called it "an overdue step to protect public health" and stated EPA's commitment to "follow the science and put health and safety first." We have had two growing seasons without chlorpyrifos being used on our food after the EPA imposed the food ban. Farmworkers were spared needless pesticide poisonings and children were spared learning disabilities and other developmental harms.
EPA was founded in large part due to public outcry about pesticides in the 1970s, so I urge you to do justice to these founding principles by reinstating the chlorpyrifos ban and again putting health and safety first.
Sincerely,
[Name]
