"Farmworker advocates celebrate rare EPA ban of toxic pesticide", August 9 2024

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced an emergency order this week suspending all use of an herbicide known to cause irreversible developmental damage to human fetuses.

The now-banned pesticide — dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, or DCPA, marketed under the trade name Dacthal — stops the growth of certain annual grasses and weeds, and was registered for use with broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and onions, among other crops, as well as turf. But mounting evidence has shown the chemical is dangerous to people — ”so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately”...

As of Tuesday, farmers won’t be able to buy more DCPA or use up their existing stock. It’s the first time in nearly 40 years that the EPA has exercised this emergency authority for a pesticide.

Farmworker unions and advocacy organizations are hailing the decision as a major victory for environmental justice, as pregnant people working on farms can be exposed to DCPA levels between 4 and 20 times higher than what the EPA estimates is safe. Nearly 80 percent of farmworkers nationally identify as Hispanic, while 70 percent are foreign born, and 20 percent of agricultural worker families live below the federal poverty line....

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Although DCPA product labels warned workers not to enter treated fields for 12 hours after the chemical was applied, EPA found that, in many cases, fields remained too dangerous to enter for periods of 25 days or more. A phenomenon called “spray drift,” where pesticides float from the point of application to other fields or neighborhoods, also posed potentially unmitigable risks to human health.

In April, the EPA issued a warning to farmworkers about the “serious, permanent, and irreversible health risks” associated with DCPA — including concerns that the chemical could induce changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, which are linked to low birth weight and impaired brain development, and motor skills....”

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