The world’s largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, an agricultural pesticide linked to brain damage in children, has announced that it will stop producing the chemical by the end of the year.
The announcement on
Thursday by Corteva, the corporation formed from a Dow Chemical and DuPont
merger, comes after the Trump administration reversed regulatory plans to ban
the pesticide and rejected the scientific conclusions of US government experts.
Chlorpyrifos has been
widely used on corn, soybeans, almonds, citrus, cotton, grapes, walnuts and
other crops, but research has repeatedly found serious health effects in
children, including impaired brain development. Environmental groups have long
advocated for its ban, and the state of California, which grows the majority of
the nation’s fruits and nuts, defied Trump and banned the chemical last year.
Corteva said it was
ending production due to declining sales. Susanne Wasson, the president of
Corteva’s crop protection business, told Reuters it was a “difficult decision”.
Chlorpyrifos is a
neurotoxic chemical that was found to be harmful enough to humans that the US
banned it from residential use in 2000. The Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), however, has continued to defend its safety for agricultural uses.
In California’s Central
Valley, the heart of the agricultural industry, researchers raised concerns
about impacts on pregnant women who lived near farms that sprayed chlorpyrifos.
Some studies found low to moderate levels of exposure during pregnancy were linked
to memory problems and lower IQ.
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