E.P.A. Pulls Pesticide Dacthal From the Market Over Health Concerns

[Pelican Press 0]

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E.P.A. Pulls Pesticide Dacthal From the Market Over Health Concerns

In a move not seen for almost 40 years, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday

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suspending all uses of a weedkiller linked to serious health risks for unborn *******.

The herbicide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal, is used on crops such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions. Fetuses exposed to it could suffer from low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased I.Q., and impaired motor skills later in life, the E.P.A. said.

“DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately,” Michal Freedhoff, the E.P.A. assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety, said in statement. “In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to ******* that experience irreversible lifelong health problems.”

California-based AMVAC Chemical Corporation, the sole manufacturer of the pesticide, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s order followed several years of “unprecedented efforts” by the Environmental Protection Agency to get AMVAC to submit its own data on the pesticide and its health risks, the agency said. The agency estimates that pregnant women handling DCPA products could be subjected to exposures four to 20 times greater than what E.P.A. has estimated is safe for fetuses.

Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, also known as the National Farmworkers Women’s Alliance, called E.P.A.’s decision “historic.”

“We know intimately the harm that pesticides, including dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, can inflict on our bodies and communities,” she said in a statement accompanying the E.P.A. news release. “This emergency decision is a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families.”

The chemical has been prohibited for use on crops in the ********* Union since 2009.

Some advocacy groups criticized the agency for not acting earlier. “The E.P.A.’s decision to finally suspend DCPA is welcome news, but it’s long overdue,” said Alexis Temkin, senior toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

She pointed to the government’s

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on the pesticide’s health risks, based on studies submitted by its manufacturer. A

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led by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health found that more than half of adolescent women from farmworker communities in the Salinas Valley of California had been exposed to DCPA.

Farmworkers were at greatest risk from exposure to the chemical. That said, consumers can also be exposed to residue, Dr. Temkin said. And though washing is hygienic and likely helps reduce amounts of some pesticides, it will not remove all traces, she said. For example, DCPA can be absorbed by plants so it’s in the tissue, not on the surface.

Some farms have voiced opposition to banning the pesticide. It was “an essential tool for controlling yield-robbing grasses and broadleaf weeds,” a representative of Griffin Ranches, which grows onions, broccoli and cauliflower in Yuma, Ariz.,

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opposing any move toward a ban.

In many cases, “the alternative would be hand-weeding, which would entail bringing on additional labor,” he wrote. Preserving the use of the product “will maintain the positive economic impact it has had on America’s vegetable growers and will ensure the continued supply of affordable and healthy vegetables for ********* consumers.”

The Environmental Protection Agency said it would soon issue a notice of intent to cancel DCPA products permanently, a process that could take several months if uncontested by the manufacturer, or years if the move is contested.

In the interim, the agency invoked its authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act to simultaneously suspend the pesticide as an emergency measure, it said, because it had determined that the continued ***** and use during the time it would take to follow a normal cancellation process posed an imminent hazard.

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#E.P.A #Pulls #Pesticide #Dacthal #Market #Health #Concerns

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