Congress must act to keep us safe from high-risk pesticides
In the summer of 1996, the 104th Congress took less than a combined 15 minutes to pass the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) unanimously in both the House and Senate. This legislation focused on one of the touchiest public health issues government must contend with: how to keep pregnant women, infants and children safe given the presence of pesticide residues in food.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked for over four years on the policies and regulations needed to implement the FQPA. By the mid-2000s, the agency had taken significant actions on just a few high-risk insecticides, yet a few years later, the EPA declared "mission accomplished."
Instead of marking the end of a long, fractious debate, the FQPA simply marked the beginning of more disputes as many decisions made by the initial deadline failed to protect women and children. The legislation required the agency to assure a "reasonable certainty of no harm" from the pesticides consumed by pregnant women and children in food, but it fell far short of meeting this mandate.
In 2017, the EPA administrator did a 180-degree turn and refused to finalize the agency's Office of Pesticide Programs' 2015 proposal to revoke the tolerances of allowable uses of a pesticide called chlorpyrifos. This toxic insecticide disrupts brain development when women are exposed during pregnancy at levels well below what EPA currently allows. Its widespread use on fruit and vegetable crops makes it nearly impossible to avoid daily exposures, especially among consumers eating the recommended seven or more servings of fresh produce every day.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/congress-must-act-to-keep-us-safe-from-high-risk-pesticides/ar-AAMTS4x
