Court gives Trump administration another chance to argue against pesticide ban

With new studies showing one in two people in the US will get cancer in their lifetimes…… Profit before people…

“Attorney Patti Goldman of Earthjustice, the nonprofit representing environmental and farm labor organizations that filed the suit, said the EPA’s strategy under both Pruitt and current Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler is “to delay having to ban the pesticide as long as they can.”

The agency has released no new studies contradicting the Obama administration’s findings and has not formed a scientific advisory committee, Goldman said. Meanwhile, she said, children exposed to chlorpyrifos “are going to have damage to their brains that will be with them their whole life.”

Court gives Trump administration another chance to argue against pesticide ban

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A federal appeals court in San Francisco granted the Trump administration’s request Wednesday to reconsider its ruling that ordered a ban on the widely used farm pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical that, according to recent studies, can cause brain damage in children.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in August that President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency had presented no evidence or legal justification to delay a ban on chlorpyrifos.

The EPA under President Barack Obama, after years of inaction, had announced plans in 2015 to ban the pesticide by March 2017. But when that deadline arrived, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said further study was needed and granted an extension for as long as five years.

If last year’s ruling had become final, it would have required the EPA to prohibit all uses of chlorpyrifos within 60 days. But the court said Wednesday that a majority of its judges had granted the administration’s request for a new hearing before an 11-judge panel the last week in March.

For now, the rehearing order is a rare victory for the administration in a court that Trump has called “disgraceful” because of its rulings against him.

Chlorpyrifos, first developed as a nerve gas in World War II, had been in commercial use since 1965 to kill insects on more than 80 crops, including apples, strawberries, corn and soybeans. Research showing that the chemical caused brain damage in rats prompted the EPA to ban its use as a household product in 1998, but it is still used in agriculture.

Environmentalists and farmworker organizations have been pressing the EPA to outlaw the pesticide since 2007. Their lawsuit has been joined by California and six other states. Pesticide manufacturers and agriculture groups have supported the Trump administration’s position and contend chlorpyrifos can be used safely.

The appeals court panel, in its ruling last year, said EPA studies from at least 2008 onward found that chlorpyrifos was a likely cause of low birth weight, delays in mental development, and attention and behavior problems in children who had been exposed before birth or in early childhood. Once the EPA finds that a pesticide is potentially harmful to children, the court emocrats in charge, Colorado now backs clean air rule

The dissenting judge, Ferdinand Fernandez, said the court lacked authority to review the issue while the EPA was still considering it. Lawyers for the Trump administration made a similar argument in seeking a new hearing, saying that even if the EPA had acted illegally in postponing the scheduled March 2017 ban, the court should have sent the dispute back to the agency “for further consideration.”

Attorney Patti Goldman of Earthjustice, the nonprofit representing environmental and farm labor organizations that filed the suit, said the EPA’s strategy under both Pruitt and current Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler is “to delay having to ban the pesticide as long as they can.”

The agency has released no new studies contradicting the Obama administration’s findings and has not formed a scientific advisory committee, Goldman said. Meanwhile, she said, children exposed to chlorpyrifos “are going to have damage to their brains that will be with them their whole life.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

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