New study shows that, when it comes to pesticides and children, the EPA has looked the other way

New study shows that, when it comes to pesticides and children, the EPA has looked the other way

It ‘easy to lose count of all the pesticides that are sprayed on the plants in the United States, and almost impossible to know all the names (dichloropropene and pyraclostrobin and spinetoram and so on). But it is not hard to guess who will be the most affected by all these chemicals: Children whose brains, nervous and hormonal systems are still developing at the time of exposure. What’s more, a new pesticide to be introduced today, a few years in the tissues of, say, a 50-year-old to build than a child, a life accumulating load of things. This is the main reason why, in 1996, Congress and President Bill Clinton signed the approved food grade Protection Act (FQPA). The legislation has been one of the most effective raid on pesticides in the food chain to date, the Environmental Protection Agency requires not only a threshold of exposure to create security for the population as a whole, to very limit, but permissible values ​​coming next 10 times in fact, well-protected to ensure that children. Legislation benefits everyone, of course: Ten times less pyraclostrobin on Apple is a good thing, no matter how old you are, but there are children who are the main beneficiaries. But a law is only as good as its application and a new study, the profit of the Environmental Working Group, -a charity and has been published in the journal Environmental Health, found that when it comes to FQPA, the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) should be determined in the labor market. The group interviewed 47 non-organophosphate pesticides category that tends to persist and soil found by the fact that the safety standards of 10 times has been applied only to five. “The FQPA has been a revolution in the way we think about impact of pesticides on children,” said the president of Environmental Working Group Ken Cook in a statement of the study accompanied publication “, but it is not good if the EPA does not use it.” in response to the publication of the study, once spokesman EPA said, “our commitment EPA needed to protect public health, including our most vulnerable population and severely according to law. EPA uses the security default factor of 10 times it would be because the abundance of high-quality, peer-reviewed data shows an alternative safety factor, can provide an equal amount of protection. “the study, by which is ten times the standard as the real gold standard, watched as Obama in 2011 by government generally seen as an already low environmental impact during the presidential FQPA application back and see the same application of an pesticides patchy that then. But the White House Obama has to take some proactive steps, 10 times the research standard organophosphate pesticides, and to expand that degrade relatively quickly, according to the US Centers for control and disease prevention, but while they are in order can even toxic than other varieties of pesticides, so much to make sarin nerve gas and other nervous system. Under the administration Trump, however, Obama’s decision as chlorpyrifos has been reversed for the most widely used organophosphate known. However Corteva Agriscience, the largest producer of chemical world nation under pressure from several states to ban the use, announced February 6 that it would cease production voluntarily agree. It is obviously something positive is that in this case, market forces were dependent enough to stop a chemical villain in the food chain. But it is obviously a bad thing is that a far greater percentage of cases, of course, the health of children in America does not have the same power in Washington. “The legislation clearly FQPA Congress gave EPA pesticides to protect the power of children’s health,” says Olga Naidenko, vice president of scientific studies of the Environmental Working Group, and lead author of the study. “The EPA should be able to make full use of this authorization, without waiting for additional information if the EPA decides guide to doing it.”
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