SOURCE: Environmental Working Group
One year ago today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt sided with the pesticide lobby over EPA scientists in an eleventh-hour decision to abort the agency’s proposal to ban chlorpyrifos from use on food crops. Chlorpyrifos is an insecticide that can harm children’s brains and nervous systems at small doses.
If Pruitt had stood by his own scientists, the chlorpyrifos ban could have taken practical effect next year, but now the EPA won’t reevaluate its safety until 2022. Based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the delay means roughly 30 million pounds of the weed-killer will be sprayed on cropland throughout the country in the next five years.
How much chlorpyrifos is sprayed in your region? Find out with EWG’s interactive map.
The evidence is overwhelming that even small doses of chlorpyrifos can damage parts of the brain that control language, memory, behavior and emotion. Multiple independent studies have documented that exposure to chlorpyrifos impairs children’s IQs. EPA scientists’ assessments of those studies concluded that levels of the pesticide currently found on food and in drinking water are unsafe.
Categories: Uncategorized
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
No more Facebook?
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Thanks for letting us know there’s a problem, Jacqueline. RT will check and try to fix any problems.
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Hopefully he will be unemployed very soon due to him spending our monies for travel and other expenses.
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This whole Administration needs to go! We need to get rid of these lame brains in Washington! They are KILLING everything! Talk about collusion and kick backs! How much is he being paid? I have my US Congressional members now on redial! How much more can Americans withstand before our country its people and the snimals are destroyed!
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MINUTE DOSES ADVERSELY AFFECT HONEYBEES
Study lead author Dr Elodie Urlacher says they found that chlorpyrifos-fed bees had worse odour-learning abilities and also recalled odours more poorly later, even though the dose they ingested is considered to be “safe.”
“For example, the dosed bees were less likely to respond specifically to an odour that was previously rewarded. As honeybees rely on such memory mechanisms to target flowers, chlorpyrifos exposure may be stunting their effectiveness as nectar foragers and pollinators,” Dr Urlacher says.
The study identified the threshold dose for sub-lethal effects of chlorpyrifos on odour-learning and recall as 50 picograms of chlorpyrifos ingested per bee, she says.
“This amount is thousands of times lower than the lethal dose of pure chlorpyrifos, which is around 100 billionths of a gram. Also, it is in the low range of the levels we measured in bees in the field.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160301174136.htm
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EPA chief met with Dow Chemical CEO before deciding not to ban toxic pesticide
By Associated Press
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s schedule shows he met with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris for about half an hour March 9 during a conference held at a Houston hotel. Twenty days later, Pruitt announced his decision to deny a petition to ban Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide from being sprayed on food even though a review by his agency’s scientists concluded that ingesting even minuscule amounts of the chemical can interfere with the brain development of fetuses and infants.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-epa-pesticide-dow-20170627-story.html
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EPA and Scott Pruitt sued by groups alleging agency violated federal records laws
Administrator Scott Pruitt and senior officials at the EPA have sought to prevent internal conversations from being documented as required by law, the groups claim in a complaint filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. They say the EPA has systematically refused to document “essential activities” under Pruitt, and higher-ups are creating a culture in which career employees are discouraged from creating written records.
These actions prevent Americans from obtaining records of EPA processes and decision-making through the Freedom of Information Act, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/epa-and-scott-pruitt-sued-over-federal-records-laws.html
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Meanwhile, while the USA burns, Pruitt is busying himself with making a sort of EPA Emperor’s coin:
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WHAT LIES UPSTREAM
FILMMAKER CULLEN HOBACK DIGS INTO POLITICAL COVER-UPS AND CHEMICAL SPILLS IN AMERICANS WATER
APRIL 10, 2018 | BY CRAIG PHILLIPS
POSTED IN HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT
MORE ABOUT WHAT LIES UPSTREAM
Filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s previous film Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), a humorous but chilling documentary about the erosion of online privacy and what info governments and corporations are legally taking from citizens each day, has become (or remains) timely again. Hoback’s new film, What Lies Upstream, promises to remain relevant for some time as well. It’s an unsettling expose about what led to, and the fallout from, the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia. (And as you’ll read at the end of this Q&A, his follow-up film sounds eerily timely and important as well.)
The film is “a quietly devastating documentary that’s all the more attention-grabbing for being such a scrupulously restrained and slickly polished piece of work,” wrote Joe Leydon in Variety. “Hoback’s a thorough researcher,” adds Matt Cohen in Washington City Paper, “and there’s no denying that the questions raised in his doc–and the lack of concrete answers from public officials–should be of grave concern.” What Lies Upstream premieres on Independent Lens on PBS Monday, April 16 at 10 pm [check local listings].
“This is a political story. Cameras are political tools and good politicians know how to use them to their advantage.”
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/filmmaker-cullen-hoback-what-lies-upstream/
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