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Chris Alberti / CC BY 2.0

Lawsuit Against EPA Seeks Protection From Dangerous Pesticide Malathion

Conservation and public health groups sued the Trump administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt on Wednesday for failing to protect endangered wildlife and the environment from the dangerous pesticide malathion.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have failed to complete the legally required steps to fully assess and limit the dangers of the neurotoxin.

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Hold the Plum Pudding: U.S. Food Sampling Shows Troubling Pesticide Residues

By Carey Gillam

Sometimes the truth about our food is not very appetizing.

As many gather this holiday season for shared family meals, it is likely that they'll be serving up small doses of pesticides with each plate passed, including a prevalent type shown to be harmful to children and reproductive health.

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Animals
A bee pollinating a flower in the French countryside. Axel Rouvin / Flickr

French Court Temporarily Bans Two Pesticides Over Possible Threat to Bees

Bees are behind a French court ruling that suspended the license for two pesticides made by Dow Chemical.

Friday's preliminary ruling by an administrative court in Nice cited environmental risks of the pesticide sulfoxaflor. The decision overturned a ruling by ANSES, the French agency for health and environment.

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Dow CEO Andrew Liveris and President Donald Trump in February.

Trump Administration Seeks Two-Year Delay on Pesticide Assessments Following Industry Request

The Trump administration filed a motion before a federal judge requesting two more years to complete an assessment on the risks of three common pesticides on endangered species.

The pesticides in question—chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon—are three organophosphate insecticides known to harm the vast majority of the nearly 1,800 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to an extensive federal study.

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Trump's Pick for Top EPA Post Under Scrutiny for Deep Ties to Chemical Industry

From Scott Pruitt to Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump has notoriously appointed a slew of individuals with serious conflicts of interests with the departments they oversee.

The latest is Michael L. Dourson, Trump's pick to head the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, the government's chemical safety program. Media reports reveal that the toxicologist is under intense scrutiny for his extensive ties to the chemical industry and a resumé dotted with some of the biggest names in the field: Koch Industries Inc., Chevron Corp., Dow AgroSciences, DuPont and Monsanto.

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TP Martins / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

States Sue EPA for Failing to Ban Toxic Pesticide

By Farron Cousins

In late March, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt decided that his agency would not place an outright ban on a pesticide manufactured by Dow Chemical called chlorpyrifos.

The decision came after a federal court ordered the EPA to make a final decision on whether or not to ban the pesticide, which the Obama administration had proposed banning in 2015. The chemical has been on the market in the U.S. since 1965 under the brand name Lorsban and indoor use of the chemical has been banned for more than a decade.

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Dow CEO Andrew Liveris and President Donald Trump in February.

EPA Chief Met With Dow Chemical CEO Before Deciding Not to Ban Toxic Pesticide

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt met with Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris before deciding to reverse an earlier EPA decision to ban the company's toxic and widely used pesticide, chlorpyrifos.

According to records obtained by the Associated Press, the EPA boss met with Liveris for about 30 minutes at a Houston hotel on March 9. Later that month, Pruitt announced that he would no longer pursue a ban on chlorpyrifos from being used on food, ignoring his agency's own review that even small amounts of the pesticide could impact fetus and infant brain development.

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In March, EPA chief Scott Pruitt scrapped his own agency's proposal to ban chlorpyrifos.

12 Farmworkers Poisoned by Toxic Pesticide Only One Month After EPA Denies Ban

More than 50 agricultural workers southwest of Bakersfield, California in Kern County were inadvertently exposed to pesticide drift from a nearby field earlier this month. According to local reports, 12 farmworkers reported symptoms of vomiting, nausea and one person fainted due to exposure to Vulcan, an organophosphate-based chemical.

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Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris with President-elect Donald Trump at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dow Chemical Pushes Trump Administration to Scrap Pesticide Study

Dow Chemical, whose CEO Andrew Liveris is a close adviser to President Donald Trump, is pressuring the administration to throw out a government risk study on several popular pesticides, the Associated Press reported.

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