U.S.: Court Ruling Starts Clock Ticking for Chlorpyrifos
In mid-2020, a decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding dicamba’s registration sent the agricultural industry scrambling for clarity, writes Eric Sfiligoj at CropLife. Now, almost one year later, another active ingredient has been sentenced by the court.
On April 29, Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ordered the EPA to quickly determine whether the insecticide chlorpyrifos can remain on the market or must be banned because of some studies linking its use to brain damage in children. The agency has 60 days from the ruling to make this determination.
“The EPA has spent more than a decade assembling a record of chlorpyrifos’ ill effects,″ U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote in the court’s majority decision. “Yet, rather than ban the pesticide or reduce the tolerances to levels that the EPA can find are reasonably certain to cause no harm, the EPA has sought to evade, through one delaying tactic after another, its plain statutory duties.″
In truth, chlorpyrifos was already on shaky grounds in many respects. California banned sales of the active ingredient in 2020, and other states such as New York have also moved to ban it. Furthermore, Corteva Agriscience, which had been the world’s largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, stopped producing it last year.
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