In August, the the San Francisco-based Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that there was no safe level of exposure to chlorpyrifos in food, one of the most commonly used agricultural insecticides, and ordered it banned. The Trump administration subsequently appealed the ban, and is asking the full 22-judge court to rehear the case. On Wednesday October 24, a new development emerged in the debate over chlorpyrifos. The peer-reviewed journal PLOS Medicine released a study based on a full review of all existing literature that called for not only chlorpyrifos but the entire class of organophosphate pesticides to be banned to protect the health of children.
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, the paper’s lead author and director of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center, said: “We have compelling evidence from dozens of human studies that exposures of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides put children and fetuses at risk for developmental problems that may last a lifetime. By law, the EPA cannot ignore such clear findings: It’s time for a ban not just on chlorpyrifos, but all organophosphate pesticides.”
Read The Guardian’s full report here.
