US EPA Announces Ban on Brain-Wasting Pesticide, Chlorpyrifos
(US & EU rapid bans contrast with Health Canada's 2020 re-approval then flip-flop to a three-growing-season phase-out)
TORONTO and OTTAWA, ON, Aug. 30, 2021 /CNW/ - Health and environmental advocates renew calls for Health Canada to ban Chlorpyrifos within six months following the Final Rule of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
In December 2020, Health Canada re-approved Chlorpyrifos for at least 15 years without considering health impacts, following its first full environmental review since 1969. In May 2021, Health Canada quietly announced a "ban" following three more growing seasons, based on the failure of registrant-companies to provide the required health data.
Canada's sluggish phase-out harms human and environmental health, and is at odds with trading partners. In April 2019, the European Food Safety Authority declared that Chlorpyrifos could not be established as safe, so it was banned from European food by October 2020. In February 2020, the world's largest manufacturer, Corteva (formerly, Dupont & Dow), announced plans to cease production. The US ban on food residues within six months—ordered by the US Federal Court of Appeals—leaves Canada alone with its Trump-style surrender to industry.
In December 2020, the US EPA also re-approved Chlorpyrifos for 15 years, but the Biden Administration then extended public consultations and ordered a government-wide Scientific Integrity Task Force to report on Trump administration interference in scientific decision-making by this September.
In June, Safe Food Matters and Prevent Cancer Now applied for judicial review of the slow pace of Health Canada's May 2021 "ban." The Centre for Health Science and Law, these two groups and others groups had objected to Health Canada's December 2020 failure to consider health impacts. CHSL also filed comments with the EPA and a consultation of the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics alleging bias and secrecy of Health Canada.
SFM and CHSL are also pressing judicial review of the herbicide Glyphosate, with CHSL citing documents indicating Health Canada's decades-long preference for industry-sponsored studies over research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and evidence that Health Canada ignored thousands of peer-reviewed Glyphosate studies and committed unconstitutional delays.
Immediately pre-election, outrage over increasing Glyphosate food limits spurred Ministerial commitments to reform pesticide regulation. All parties' platforms should so-commit.
SOURCE Centre for Health Science and Law (CHSL)
Bill Jeffery, LLB, Centre for Health Science and Law, [email protected], 1-613-565-2140; Mary Lou McDonald, LLB, Safe Food Matters, [email protected]; Meg Sears, PhD, Prevent Cancer Now, [email protected], 1-613-297-6042
Share this article