The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule to partially revoke the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
“This rule revokes all tolerances for chlorpyrifos, except for those tolerances associated with the 11 food and feed crops that remain registered,” a news release from the EPA says.
Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate (OP) insecticide that is widely used in agriculture, including on soybeans, fruit and nut trees, vegetables, and other row crops. Over-exposure to the chemical can present risks to pregnant women and children, the EPA noted, as chlorpyrifos has been linked to neurodevelopmental effects.
The news release explained that the EVA revoked “all tolerances for chlorpyrifos, which establish an amount of chlorpyrifos that is allowed on food, effectively stopping the use of chlorpyrifos on all food and animal feed,” in 2021. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated the wide use of the chemical.
“Since the Eighth Circuit issued its ruling, EPA has worked with the chlorpyrifos registrants to further reduce pesticide exposures by limiting the registered uses of chlorpyrifos on food to be consistent with the 11 uses referenced by the Eighth Circuit and identified in the 2020 Proposed Interim Registration Review Decision (PID),” the EPA said. The 11 food uses for chlorpyrifos are alfalfa, apple, asparagus, tart cherry, citrus, cotton, peach, soybean, strawberry, sugar beets, spring and winter wheat, and are “limited to specific states that were assessed in the 2020 PID.”
“EPA continues to prioritize the health of children,” Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said. “This proposed rule is a critical step forward as we work to reduce chlorpyrifos in or on food and to better protect people, including infants and children, from exposure to chemicals that are harmful to human health.”
According to a study published in the National Library of Medicine’s National Center of Biotechnology Information, organophosphates are linked to developmental delays in children under the age of five. The case-control study from Thailand analyzed by researchers “found that chlorpyrifos and some other pesticides exposure during pregnancy were positively associated with developmental delay in children aged under 5 years.”
