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NRDC and PANNA Petition EPA to Ban Dangerous Pesticide

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 13, 2007
Contact: Media Director, 415-981-1771, media@panna.org

The insecticide chlorpyrifos is already banned for home use due to dangers to children – yet millions of pounds are still applied near rural homes & schools.

San Francisco, CA
Washington, DC

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) filed a petition September 12 requesting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop the use of the highly toxic pesticide, chlorpyrifos.

Chlorpyrifos is a neurotoxic insecticide developed from World War II-era nerve gas.  Exposure can cause dizziness, confusion, vomiting, convulsions, numbness in the limbs, and even death.  Fetal and childhood exposure is associated with poor birth outcomes and long-term neurobehavioral deficits. For these reasons, since 2001, chlorpyrifos cannot be used in homes. 

However, approximately 10 million pounds are still used annually on corn, in orchards, and on other vegetable row crops. It contaminates our food and soil, and drifts into rural schoolyards and homes.  Also known as Lorsban™ or Dursban™, chlorpyrifos is responsible for a substantial number of worker poisonings each year, and its breakdown products have been detected in the bodies of three-quarters of the US population.

In 2001, an EPA report acknowledged that chlorpyrifos poses unacceptably high risks to workers and to the environment, but allowed its continued use in agriculture.

“It is inexcusable for the EPA to allow the use a pesticide they know to be damaging children, poisoning workers, and contaminating most Americans,” said NRDC scientist Dr. Jennifer Sass.

“Poisonings due to accidents and drift of airborne pesticides remain a serious hazard to children in rural and agricultural settings,” said Dr. Margaret Reeves, PANNA senior scientist.  “To protect children it is important to remove this and other pesticide hazards from their environments.”

Luis Medellin, a Lindsay, California resident, suffered first hand exposure to chlorpyrifos when it was applied to an orange grove near his house.  “I got sick, and my mother and younger sisters started throwing up, all this in our own home,” he said. 

There is ample science underscoring the dangers of continued chlorpyrifos use in agriculture.  PANNA and NRDC argue that EPA has neglected its legal and moral responsibility to protect human health by failing to take aggressive action on this toxic pesticide. 

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Available for Interviews:

  • Mae Wu, Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), (202) 289-6868, for legal questions

  • Dr. Gina Solomon, Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), (415) 875-6100

  • Dr. Margaret Reeves, Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), (415) 981-1771, ext 326

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