Friends of the Earth Condemns Court Reversal of Chlorpyrifos Ban 

WASHINGTON– On Thursday, the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed EPA’s 2021 decision to ban chlorpyrifos on food crops. This reversal, made by a Trump-appointed judge, defies the agency’s earlier finding that there are virtually no safe uses of chlorpyrifos when it proposed revoking all food tolerances as early as 2015.

Chlorpyrifos harms children’s developing brains and is associated with attention deficit disorders, loss of IQ, reduced working memory and more. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also found that chlorpyrifos “threatens the continued existence” of more than 1,200 threatened and endangered species.

The court’s claim that EPA failed to do its due diligence ignores not one, but two Obama-era risk assessments that found chlorpyrifos has no safe uses, and that some children were being exposed to it – through food and drink alone – at 140 times the level considered safe. Under the Trump administration, the EPA reversed course on a ban that was proposed eight years ago.

“The science is clear that chlorpyrifos is toxic to children, pregnant people and farmworkers and the EPA’s common-sense decision to ban it was long overdue,” said Jason Davidson, Senior Food and Agriculture Campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “The 8th Circuit’s decision to overturn this critical science-based regulation is unconscionable and hands the pesticide industry a license to poison people and the planet. This critical protection must be restored, and EPA should move towards banning all organophosphate pesticides.”