Dear NRDC Activist,

Big news! In response to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and our partners, a federal court has ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must ban chlorpyrifos — a toxic pesticide commonly sprayed on food crops, including apples, oranges, and berries — unless the EPA can identify uses that won't pose health risks.

This is a major victory for public health — especially for children.

For pregnant women and children, exposure to even low levels of chlorpyrifos can lead to increased risk of learning disabilities, including reductions in IQ, developmental delay, and behavioral problems. And farmworkers and their families, who are predominantly Latino, face the most exposure to this harmful chemical.

The EPA has delayed this ban for too long, and we need to keep up the pressure to ensure that agricultural communities are protected — and that kids can eat fruits and vegetables free of this neurotoxin.

Urge the EPA to heed the court's decision to immediately ban all uses of chlorpyrifos, and get this potent neurotoxin out of our fields and food for good!

There is no safe level of exposure to chlorpyrifos. Environmental health experts know it ... states like California that have already banned this pesticide, and others that are in the process of banning it — like Hawaii, New York, and Maryland — know it ... and Corteva, the producer of chlorpyrifos, knows it — which is why the company ceased making chlorpyrifos last year.

And the EPA itself knows it — in 2016, the agency identified unsafe chlorpyrifos residues in fruits, vegetables, and drinking water, and called for cancellation on all allowable residues in food.

The ban was originally proposed under the Obama administration, but the Trump administration illegally delayed putting it into effect, allowing the continued use of this toxic pesticide even though they knew it was damaging to human health. So NRDC and our partners filed a lawsuit against the administration and won.

But this fight isn't over yet. Industrial growers, pesticide makers, and chemical companies who benefited from Trump's illegal actions will try to prevent or delay phasing out the use of chlorpyrifos for as long as possible to bolster their profits at the expense of children's and farmworkers' health.

We must put an end to the use of this dangerous pesticide now — by raising a massive outcry that will drown out the industry groups fighting to maintain the toxic status quo.

There's no time to waste: Urge Biden's EPA to accept the court's findings and immediately take steps to ban chlorpyrifos.

Thank you for standing with us.

Sincerely,

Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, MPH
Senior Scientist, Healthy People & Thriving Communities, NRDC