The U.S. EPA must ban chlorpyrifos residue in food or determine how much to reduce the allowable amount, a federal appeals court decided April 29 in the face of building evidence that the pesticide causes injuries, according to Bloomberg Law.
Pesticide Action Network North America and the Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. asked EPA to prohibit foods with chlorpyrifos residue in 2007 because of the chemical’s health effects. After more than a decade of agency inaction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a 2-1 vote gave the agency 60 days to decide what, if any, amount is safe.
The court also ordered EPA to either modify or cancel its chlorpyrifos registrations for food use under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.