PoliticsHealth and MedicineEnvironmentEnvironmental Protection Agency

Senator Demands More Info About EPA Chief’s Refusal To Ban Brain-Damaging Pesticide

Sen. Tom Carper says Scott Pruitt provided nothing to justify his decision.
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Senior Reporter, HuffPost

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) has requested all documents related to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to go against the scientific recommendation of his own agency and refuse to ban a widely used pesticide that’s been linked to learning disabilities in children.

In a Friday letter to Pruitt, Carper, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said he is “troubled” by the agency chief’s order to allow chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide that’s been used since the 1960s, to remain on the market for agricultural use. Pruitt “did not present any new scientific or legal analysis” to justify the decision, Carper noted.

“The previous finding to ban chlorpyrifos was based on extensive data, models and research developed by industry, government and academic scientists,” Carper wrote. “Absent such justification, this decision to lift the proposed ban could undermine the trust the public has in the agency to keep its food, water and air safe.”

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Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) speaks during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee confirmation hearing in January.
ZACH GIBSON via Getty Images

In November 2015, under the Obama administration, the EPA proposed to permanently ban the use of the chemical on food crops, citing potential risks to human health. The move stemmed from a 2007 petition filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pesticide Action Network North America.

In announcing his reversal, Pruitt said the proposed ban relied largely on studies “whose application is novel and uncertain.” He claimed that his decision was about “returning to using sound science in decision-making — rather than predetermined results.”

Critics quickly condemned Pruitt and President Donald Trump, accusing them of valuing corporate profits over public health. And environmental groups, including NRDC and Earthjustice, promised to fight the EPA in court.

Chlorpyrifos, also known by its trade name Lorsban, is used in nearly 100 countries on more than 50 different crops, including corn, soybeans, cranberries and broccoli. It was largely banned for at-home use in the U.S. in 2000, but continues to be widely used on thousands of American farms. 

Dow Chemical Co., the chemical’s producer, says it “remains confident that authorized uses of chlorpyrifos products offer wide margins of protection for human health and safety.” However, even low-dose exposure to organophosphates, particularly in the womb, has been found to harm brain development in children, leading to higher risk of disorders like autism.

The Washington Post reported Friday that a new EPA plan calls for laying off 25 percent of the federal agency’s staff and eliminating dozens of programs, including pesticide safety.

Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, is a longtime critic of the EPA who denies the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. A recent email dump revealed his close relationship with the oil, gas and utility companies he’s now tasked with regulating. 

Carper has asked the agency to provide him with copies of all documents and communications related to Pruitt’s decision on chlorpyrifos by April 28. 

You can read Carper’s full letter here.

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Before You Go

Why Scott Pruitt Is A 'Dangerous' Choice To Lead The EPA
He has threatened to undermine protections for air and water.(01 of04)
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President Donald Trump is no environmental champion, but even he has said it's “vitally important" to have “crystal clean” air and water.Pruitt, however, has proven himself to be antagonistic to even this idea.

Since taking office as Oklahoma’s attorney general in 2011, Pruitt has sued the Environmental Protection Agency on multiple occasions in an effort to overturn rules limiting air pollution from power plants -- including the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which curbs power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which place limits on the amount of mercury, arsenic and other toxic pollution.

As Elliott Negin, a senior writer atthe Union of Concerned Scientists, explained in January, those are both life-saving regulations: “Taken together, they are projected to prevent 18,000 to 46,000 premature deaths across the country and save $150 billion to $380 billion in health care costs annually. In Pruitt’s home state, the two regulations would avert as many as 720 premature deaths and save as much as $5.9 billion per year.”

Pruitt sued the EPA in 2015 over the Waters of the United States rule -- which, in a piece co-written with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), he called the “greatest blow to private property rights the modern era has seen.” The rule, which is currently tied up in the courts, extends EPA protection to tens of millions of acres of wetlands and millions of miles of streams, including those that 1 in 3 Americans rely on for drinking water.

Pruitt also sued the EPA over its 2015 regulation strengthening the national health standards for ground-level ozone or smog pollution.

Several of these lawsuits are still ongoing, and environmental advocates have called on Pruitt to recuse himself from decisions related to the regulations he’s challenged in court. Legal experts told Bloomberg, however, that they knew of no rules in place that would compel such an action on Pruitt’s part.

“Every American should be appalled that President-elect Trump just picked someone who has made a career of being a vocal defender for polluters to head our Environmental Protection Agency,” Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, said in a December 2016 statement. “He has fought Environmental Protection Agency pollution limits on toxic substances like soot and mercury that put us all at risk for increased cancer, childhood asthma and other health problems. He falsely claims that fracking doesn’t contaminate drinking water supplies.” (credit:Reuters)
He doesn’t think the EPA is the “nation’s foremost environmental regulator.”(02 of04)
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During a House Science Committee hearing last year, Pruitt stressed that the EPA might need to intervene on some “air and water quality issues that cross state lines,” but that the agency “was never intended to be our nation’s foremost environmental regulator.”

“The states,” he said, “were to have regulatory primacy.”

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt created a “federalism unit” with the specific aim of opposing federal protections and safeguards, including the Affordable Care Act and environmental regulations.

Under Pruitt, the EPA will likely witness “an increasing effort to delegate environmental regulations away from the federal government and towards the states,” Ronald Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, told The New York Times.

Though states may be best equipped to regulate certain industries, some experts have stressed that environmental protection is one area that needs more federal oversight.

“Pollution doesn’t respect state boundaries,” Patrick A. Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, told the Times. “States have limited ability to regulate pollution from outside the state, and almost every state is downstream or downwind from other pollution.” (credit:Nick Oxford/Reuters)
He doesn’t believe in climate change.(03 of04)
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The EPA’s stance on global warming has been unambiguous.

“Climate change is happening,” the agency said on its website, adding that the EPA is “taking a number of common-sense steps to address the challenge” of warming, such as developing emissions reduction initiatives and contributing to “world-class climate research.”

Pruitt, like most of Trump’s Cabinet picks, is a climate change denier. Ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus on the matter, Pruitt wrote last year that the debate on climate change is “far from settled.”

Gina McCarthy, the previous EPA chief, warned in November that denying the facts about climate change would undermine the United States' success both domestically and internationally. Other countries “are wondering if the U.S. will turn its back on science and be left behind,” she said.

“The train to a global clean-energy future has already left the station,” McCarthy added. “We can choose to get on board — to lead — or we can choose to be left behind, to stand stubbornly still. If we stubbornly deny the science and change around us, we will fall victim to our own paralysis.” (credit:Getty Images)
He’s a close ally of the fossil fuel industry ...(04 of04)
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… and their relationship has observers deeply concerned.

Since 2002, Pruitt has received more than $300,000 in contributions from the fossil fuel industry, including from political action committees connected to Exxon Mobil, Spectra Energy and Koch Industries. The New York Times reported in 2014 that he and other Republican attorneys general had formed an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with major oil and gas companies to undermine environmental regulations. One of the firms, Oklahoma’s Devon Energy,drafted a letter for Pruitt to send to the EPA in 2011. Pruitt printed the document on state letterhead and sent it off, almost verbatim, to Washington.

As attorney general, Pruitt also filed several lawsuits with industry players, including Oklahoma Gas and Electric and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by major oil and gas executives. In May 2016, Pruitt joined then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange in writing an opinion piece defending Exxon Mobil and other energy groups, after the oil giant came under scrutiny for allegedly failing to disclose its internal research on climate change.

The Times asked Pruitt in 2014 whether he’d been wrong to send letters to the federal government written by industry lobbyists, or to side with them in litigation. Pruitt was unapologetic.

“The A.G.’s office seeks input from the energy industry to determine real-life harm stemming from proposed federal regulations or actions,” his office said in a statement. “It is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant.”

Opponents, however, say Pruitt is a Big Oil ally — someone who, as EPA administrator, could prioritize industry interests over the health of the environment and the American people.

“This is a frightening moment,” Harvard University professor Naomi Oreskes said at a rally in December, referring to Trump's Cabinet picks. “We have seen in the last few weeks how the reins of the federal government are being handed over to the fossil fuel industry.”

“From denying settled climate science to leading the opposition of EPA’s Clean Power Plan, Pruitt has sent a loud and clear message to Big Oil and its well-funded mouthpieces that he’s their guy,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is one of the senators calling for Pruitt to disclose more details on his connection to some oil-funded groups, according to Mother Jones. “To put a climate denier at the helm of an agency working to keep our environment safe is as dangerous as it gets.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, echoed similar concerns: “The American people must demand leaders who are willing to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels. I will vigorously oppose this nomination.”

It’s not just Pruitt’s fossil fuel connections that have raised eyebrows. A recent Environmental Working Group investigation found that Pruitt gave a regulatory pass to polluters from the poultry industry after receiving $40,000 in campaign donations from executives and lawyers representing poultry companies.

“Very clearly, this is someone coming in [to lead the EPA] with an ideology to deregulate at whatever government level he finds himself,” Cook, the EWG head, told The Huffington Post. “There’s no saying that ‘we just have a different philosophy’ about who should enforce environmental law. The philosophy, if it exists, is that environmental policy shouldn’t be enforced at a state or federal level. It is industry unrestrained.” (credit:Getty Images)
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