Six state prosecutors from New York, Maryland, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are joining environmental and social advocacy groups in a lawsuit to push the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
“It is EPA’s responsibility to protect Americans from unsafe chlorpyrifos residues on food because of the potential neuro-developmental and other adverse health effects caused by exposure,” the prosecutors said in their filing, according to Reuters. “Citizens of the proposed state intervenors consume foods grown throughout the United States and the world that contain chlorpyrifos residues.”
In 2015, the EPA decided that the spray, which goes by several brand names, didn’t meet safety standards laid out by a 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agency then “issued two proposals to ban chlorpyrifos but never produced a final rule, despite being ordered by a court on two separate occasions to take final action on the matter,” says Reuters. In March, Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, reversed the agency’s attempts to ban the pesticide, igniting the current lawsuit.