A federal appeals court on Thursday said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must ban a pesticide linked to developmental issues in children within 60 days unless it can find a safe use for the chemical.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the evidence compiled by the EPA fails to show that the substance chlorpyrifos is not harmful. Studies have linked exposure to chlorpyrifos to lower IQ, impaired working memory and negative impacts on motor development.
“The EPA has spent more than a decade assembling a record of chlorpyrifos’s ill effects and has repeatedly determined, based on that record, that it cannot conclude, to the statutorily required standard of reasonable certainty, that the present tolerances are causing no harm,” wrote Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee, in the majority opinion. He was joined by Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee.
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