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"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," said an EPA official, but advocates said the move was "long overdue."
Taking a rare step to "prevent imminent hazard," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an emergency order suspending all uses of an herbicide that has been linked to irreversible health risks for unborn babies.
The EPA issued the order after years of pushing AMVAC Chemical Corporation, the sole manufacturer of dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, to submit data about the risks posed by the chemical, which is also known as Dacthal and DCPA.
The agency estimated in 2023 that a fetus could be exposed to levels of DCPA four to 20 times greater than the safe limit, if a pregnant person handled products treated with the herbicide.
The chemical is used on crops including broccoli, onions, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts in the U.S., but has been banned since 2009 in the European Union.
Exposed fetuses can suffer effects including low birth weight, impaired brain development and motor skills, and decreased I.Q., according to the agency.
"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety, said in statement. "In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems."
"Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) called the suspension of DCPA "welcome news," but said it was "long overdue." The group's research found that even though the EPA has collected evidence of DCPA's health risks, up to 200,000 pounds of the herbicide were sprayed on crops in California in some recent years.
"For years, EWG and other public health advocates have warned about the serious risks the weedkiller poses to farmworkers, pregnant people, and other vulnerable populations," said senior toxicologist Alexis Temkin. "Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, also known as the National Farmworkers Women's Alliance, said the emergency order was "a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families."
"Alianza is pleased to see the EPA make this historic decision," she said. "As an organization led by farmworker women, we know intimately the harm that pesticides, including dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate... can inflict on our bodies and communities."
William Jordan, a volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network and a former deputy director for programs in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, noted that the agency made the emergency order and bypassed the lengthy process of canceling DCPA's approval due to the harm the chemical causes—the first time in 40 years that the EPA has taken the step.
"The Environmental Protection Network endorses the strong regulatory action taken by EPA to address the extraordinary risks to unborn children posed by the use of pesticides containing DCPA," said Jordan. "EPA's order immediately suspending all sales, distribution, and use of DCPA products is the only way to avoid the harm to children that would result from continued use of this dangerous pesticide."
Farmworkers "should not be subjected to additional health risks due to the negligent actions of pesticide manufacturers, farm owners, and state regulatory agencies," said one analyst.
Concerns about the safety of paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide, pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 to ban its use on golf courses—but the weedkiller is still permitted for agricultural use, and a new first-of-its-kind analysis shows how the EPA's continued approval of the substance has put low-income Latino communities at disproportionate risk for health impacts.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found in a study released Wednesday that 5.3 million pounds of paraquat were sprayed over a five-year period in California, the only state with readily available figures on the herbicide.
Most of the weedkiller's use was concentrated in central counties where farms produce almonds, walnuts, alfalfa, and other crops—and where Latino people make up about 75% of the population and nearly the entire farm labor force.
Ninety-six percent of farmworkers in the state are Latino, and 90% of people in the agricultural workforce were born outside of the U.S., making immigrants who often work for low wages among the people who are most affected by continued use of paraquat on farms.
The ingestion of a single teaspoon of paraquat is considered deadly, which has led 60 countries to ban the chemical while the EPA released an analysis in January concluding that its health risks were outweighed by the economic benefits of using paraquat.
The weedkiller has been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, respiratory damage, kidney disease, and childhood leukemia. Al Rabine, an analyst for EWG who authored the report, said the EPA has also ignored a "mountain of evidence" that paraquat causes Parkinson's disease.
An epidemiological study of central California found that people living within a third of a mile of where paraquat is sprayed are twice as likely to develop Parkinson's.
"Paraquat is not only a threat to our environment but also a direct danger to the health and well-being of these communities, particularly Latino populations, who make up the majority of the population," said Rabine. "The findings of our analysis underscore the urgent need for action by the state to protect these communities from the harmful effects of exposure to this toxic weedkiller."
Between 2017-21, EWG found, about 80% of the paraquat used on California crops was sprayed within Latino-majority census tracts. The group identified Kern County and the towns of Shafter and Wasco as "hot spots" for paraquat use.
"These three communities combined have over 80% Latino residents who witnessed almost 180,000 pounds of paraquat spraying during that time period," the group said.
In Kern County, which has a poverty rate of nearly 30%, EWG found that 1.2 million pounds of the herbicide were sprayed over roughly 1,200 square miles of farmland—threatening not only laborers who completed the work but also farmworkers who live in the surrounding communities, as paraquat can remain in soil and travel through the air—as well as coming home with workers on their clothing and potentially exposing their families.
EWG identified five "fatal flaws" in the analysis the EPA has used to defend its continued approval of paraquat for farming, including:
EWG called on the EPA to follow the lead of dozens of countries that have banned paraquat—but warned that states must not wait for the federal government to take action.
"Federal pesticide law sets a floor, not a ceiling—states can choose to restrict a chemical, even without an EPA ban," wrote EWG government affairs manager Geoff Horsfield and toxicologist Alexis Temkin. "To protect their residents and public health, state and local governments should exercise their power to ban paraquat."
Immigrant communities across central California, Horsfield said, "should not be subjected to additional health risks due to the negligent actions of pesticide manufacturers, farm owners, and state regulatory agencies."
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," said one plaintiff.
In what one plaintiff called "a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals," a federal court in Arizona on Tuesday rescinded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2020 approval of the highly volatile herbicide dicamba for use on certain genetically engineered crops.
In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury found that the EPA failed to comply with public notice and comment requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), legislation passed in 1947 to protect agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment.
"This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a plaintiff in the case. "Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators."
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," Kimbrell added.
Dicamba has damaged millions of acres of U.S. cropland since the EPA, during the Trump administration, dubiously approved its use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans developed by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
The EPA subsequently identified spray drift as the main environmental risk for dicamba due to its potential to contaminate nontargeted crops, declaring that since 2016 "there has been a substantial increase in the overall number of reported nontarget plant incidents."
As CFS explained on Tuesday:
In today's decision, the court canceled dicamba's over-the-top use, holding that EPA violated FIFRA's public input requirement prior to the approval. This violation is "very serious," according to the court, especially because the 9th Circuit previously held EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage yet, in the same 2020 decision, lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative and/or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found "the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations" again after taking these stakeholders' concerns into account.
"We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers, and the environment, and halted its use," Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition—another plaintiff in the case—said in a statement Tuesday. "The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely."
Tuesday's decision in Arizona follows a July 2022 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that found Monsanto and BASF were liable for damage to a Missouri peach farmer's groves caused by dicamba.
A 2021 EPA report revealed that high-ranking Trump administration officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, before reapproving the dangerous chemical. A separate EPA report described the widespread harm to farmers and the environment caused by dicamba during the 2020 growing season.
"Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops," said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network, a case plaintiff. "Today's decision provides much-needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment."