The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency refused Wednesday to ban a commonly used pesticide that the Obama administration had sought to outlaw based on mounting concerns about its risks to human health.
The chemical compound chlorpyrifos, also known as Lorsban, has been used by farmers for more than a half-century to kill pests on crops including broccoli, strawberries and citrus. The EPA banned its spraying indoors to combat household bugs more than a decade ago. But only in recent years did the agency seek to ban its use in agriculture, after mounting scientific evidence that prenatal exposure can pose risks to fetal brain and nervous system development.
The chance to prevent brain damage in children was a low bar for most of Scott Pruitts predecessors, but it apparently just wasnt persuasive enough for an administrator who isnt sure if banning lead from gasoline was a good idea, Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook said in a statement. Instead, in one of his first major decisions as head of the EPA, like a toddler running toward his parents, Pruitt leaped into the warm and waiting arms of the pesticide industry.
