The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took the next step to discontinue use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food by denying objections to EPA’s rule revoking all chlorpyrifos tolerances. The action is yet another strike for EPA’s science-based approach, drawing criticism from agricultural groups and farm state senators.

The final rule from EPA revoking all tolerances was issued in August 2021 and went into effect on Feb. 28, 2022. This clears the way for a court to decide whether to allow continued use of the insecticide. EPA issued the August 2021 final rule in response to the Ninth Circuit Court’s order directing the agency to issue a final rule in response to Pesticide Action Network North America and Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2007 petition. This petition requested that EPA revoke all chlorpyrifos tolerances because they were not safe.

EPA issued a final rule revoking all tolerances — which establish an amount of a pesticide that is allowed on food — for chlorpyrifos. Previously, chlorpyrifos was used for a large variety of agricultural uses, including soybeans, fruit and nut trees, broccoli, cauliflower and other row crops. Chlorpyrifos has more than 50 registered agricultural uses on numerous crops, many of which are high-benefit uses to protect against economically significant pests. In October, 80 agricultural groups filed formal objections to EPA’s August decision to revoke all tolerances of chlorpyrifos.

EPA claims it “has been found to inhibit an enzyme, which leads to neurotoxicity, and has also been associated with potential neurodevelopmental effects in children.”

“After more than a decade of studying a large body of science, EPA is taking the next step towards the cancellation of the use of chlorpyrifos on food,” says Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff.

In issuing the final rule, EPA found it could not determine that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm from aggregate exposure to chlorpyrifos — including food, drinking water and residential exposure — based on available data and considering its registered uses. EPA’s evaluation indicated that registered uses of chlorpyrifos result in exposures exceeding the safe levels of exposure, and thus have the potential to result in adverse effects.

Chris Novak, CropLife American president and CEO, stated when EPA made their original announcement in August 2021, “President Biden campaigned with the slogan of ‘Science over Fiction’ but the EPA’s decision to cancel all tolerances of chlorpyrifos does not live up to that standard or to the EPA’s commitment to scientific integrity. Decades of review by EPA career staff and independent scientific advisory panels have repeatedly supported safe uses for this product, yet this decision comes without a full scientific review or a thoughtful assessment of the beneficial uses of this product.” 

Novak continues, “Farmers need tools to fight insect pests, but the agency has taken an overly broad action that will cause significant problems for our industry’s farm customers.”

Wendy Brannen, American Soybean Association spokesperson, says EPA’s decisions come as no surprise. “The agency indicated in its court filings it had every intention of rejecting our objections, hearing requests, and stay requests,” Brannen says. “It’s unfortunate EPA sat on these objections for months and waited until the 11th hour to respond in an attempt to deny agricultural groups any recourse and seal the significant, irreparable harms growers and co-ops will experience under the rule.”

Brannen says the agricultural groups will review EPA’s rejection decision “but fully expect to find more flawed reasoning and legal gymnastics to defend the agency’s decision not to follow the law and ignore safety findings of EPA’s career scientists.

“We will also continue to pursue our legal challenge and stay request to obtain relief from this harmful, unfounded rule,” she says.

Congressional concerns mount against EPA

This comes just a week after four senators sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan asking him to “redirect” EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs “towards a regular, risk-based regulatory process that reflects real-world data provided by USDA and growers.”

The request follows a meeting between the senators and Regan last month. The letter says in part, “U.S. farmers and ranchers are already coping with record inflation and broken supply chains — the last thing they need is EPA voluntarily revoking or severely limiting traditional farming tools and methods. If these producers lose the ability to use certain crop protection products, farms will be forced to forgo conservation practices, like no-till farming, and revert to full tillage methods to control pests.”

On Nov. 12, 2021, EPA issued new biological evaluations for glyphosate, atrazine and simazine that vastly inflate the number of species and habitats found likely to be adversely affected. Industry grower groups have sought to provide EPA with better, real-world data sources, including comments on the draft biological evaluations — comments that EPA opted not to incorporate into the final BE.

On Dec. 21, 2021, EPA put out an unrequired, not mandated report tallying up the “increased number of drift complaints” of dicamba from last growing season.

“EPA has said publicly that there have been nearly 3,500 off-target movement inquiries on dicamba from the states, but we’ve seen reports that the state numbers are close to half of that. We can only presume this is an attempt to create a record to abandon the current label,” the senators state in a press statement. “Without meaningful use of over-the-top dicamba for the 2022 growing season, hundreds of thousands of farmers would likely be deprived of seed or herbicide during spring planting, which would be devastating for the agricultural economy.”

In addition, in September 2020, after several years of evaluation in the Registration Review, EPA approved and published the final Interim Registration Review Decision for the triazine herbicides. In this decision, EPA approved and published a revised CELOC (concentration-equivalent level of concern) used to determine potential risk to aquatic plant communities at 15 parts per billion. Shortly after the IRRD was published, activist groups filed a petition in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals alleging that EPA violated its duties under FIFRA when it approved the Interim Registration Review Decisions for atrazine, simazine and propazine.

“Last year, in an unprecedented move, EPA, in a motion in the court case, announced its intention to go back after the final decision was published and reevaluate that 15 ppb number which would create confusion about product use and monitoring if the agency changes the number,” the senators add.