When is enough enough?

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Harvesting Justice - the blog of Farmworker Justice

When is enough enough?

Written by Shelley Davis Friday, 19 September 2008 15:28

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This week the EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel took up the question of whether chlorpyrifos posed unreasonable risks to children and pregnant women.

Chlorpyrifos, derived from WWII-era nerve gas, is one of the most commonly used insecticides in US agriculture. It was previously the most widely used insecticide worldwide, until it was taken off the market for home and garden use because of its hazards to children. Apparently, however, children of farmworkers don't count because even though use in agriculture poses risks to them, the agricultural uses have mostly been left in place.

Usually the EPA evaluates the toxicity of a pesticide based on studies with lab animals, but here it had three epidemiological studies of pregnant women, infants and children who were exposed to chlorpyrifos at home or on the job.

Those and other studies found that developmental outcomes associated with chlorpyrifos include:

motor and cognitive delays;

attention deficit disorder;

decreases in birth weight,

length and head circumference;

severe and unusual birth defects;

increased risk for neural-tube defects;

and in one case, fetal death.

One study observed infants born both before and after the ban on home uses. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of harm occurred in the group who had been born while chlorpyrifos were still in use.

With so much evidence of harm in real-world circumstances, the only question left to answer is why hasn't the EPA taken this pesticide off the market. When is enough evidence enough?