California regulators on Wednesday announced that they will ban a widely used pesticide that had been rescued from elimination by the Trump administration despite links to developmental disorders.

The move by the state Environmental Protection Agency is all but certain to draw legal challenges from Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences), which has pushed back at attempts by environmentalists to ban the chemical, chlorpyrifos, on a federal level.

The state is the largest user of chlorpyrifos — more than 900,000 pounds of it was applied in 2017 to almonds, grapes, citrus, alfalfa, stone fruit, cotton and other crops, according to state data.

Exposure to the organophosphate nerve agent has been linked to developmental disorders and neurological damage in animals and humans. </s> California regulators on Wednesday took formal legal steps to ban a widely used pesticide that had been rescued from elimination by the Trump administration.

The move by the state Environmental Protection Agency is all but certain to draw legal challenges from Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences), which has pushed back at attempts by environmentalists to ban the chemical, chlorpyrifos, on a federal level.

The state is the largest user of chlorpyrifos — more than 900,000 pounds of it was applied in 2017 to almonds, grapes, citrus, alfalfa, stone fruit, cotton and other crops, according to state data.

Exposure to the organophosphate nerve agent has been linked to developmental disorders and neurological damage in animals and humans.

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The ban is the first time the state has unilaterally barred an actively used pesticide, and will take effect in 15 days unless opposing parties request an administrative hearing.

The federal EPA is unlikely to challenge California, which often goes its own way on environmental matters, including auto emissions and climate regulation. An official from the federal agency said states are fr ee to enact their own pesticide regulations so long as they are at least as strict as federal rules.

State EPA chief Jared Blumenfeld said California opted for an outright ban because it could find no way to tighten rules enough to ensure public safety without making applications of the chemical ineffective. In May, the agency announced it would revoke all chlorpyrifos product registrations, leading to Wednesday’s formal cancellation notices sent to 13 manufacturers and pest-management companies.

Blumenfeld called on his federal counterpart to refocus attention on the chemical’s hazards.

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“They have that same science; they have that same legal basis, and yet, based on what appears from the outside to just be politics, they’ve been foot-dragging — and in fact worse than that, not taking their regulatory role seriously,” Blumenfeld said. “We have to step into the void and take action where the federal government has failed to do so.”

The state has been gradually tightening its restrictions on use of the chemical, so “farmers knew this was coming,” Blumenfeld said. “The handwriting has been on the wall for some time.”

Although growers have cut their use of the chemical by about half over the past decade, they have been uneasy about the state’s earlier signals that a ban was coming.

The citrus industry uses chlorpyrifos to combat the Asian citrus psyllid, which can spread a disease that can decimate entire groves. The pesticide also is critical to controlling leaffooted bugs and stink bugs in almond groves.

“California farmers are resilient, but the long-term viability of our farms in California depends on proper support from the administration and renewed cooperation of the state’s regulatory agencies, especially in light of the many other unique and expensive regulations that place California farmers at a growing competitive disadvantage,” Tom Nassif, president and chief executive of Western Growers, a regional industry group, said in May.

Val Dolcini, acting director of the state EPA’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, said he was “quite confident” that a newly formed working group, including academic, agricultural, regulatory and environmental experts, would identify an array of alternatives to the chemical. The state has allocated about $5 million in grants toward that end, he said.

Chlorpyrifos has become something of a poster child for the Trump administration’s rollback of regulation, which has occurred at times in defiance of scientific findings about health and environmental harm.

Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt halted an Obama-era ban that had been hastened by a court order, and his successor, Andrew Wheeler, has since extended the safety review of the pesticide through 2022. California, six other states and a host of environmental and labor groups have sued over those moves.

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A federal EPA spokesman said on Wednesday that the agency has responded to complaints about its decisions by expediting the review process — it now expects to make an interim decision by October 2020, followed by a public review process. </s> California regulators on Wednesday took formal legal steps to ban a widely used pesticide that had been rescued from elimination by the Trump administration despite links to developmental disorders.

The move by the state Environmental Protection Agency is all but certain to draw legal challenges from Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences), which has pushed back at attempts by environmentalists to ban the chemical, chlorpyrifos, on a federal level.

The state is the largest user of chlorpyrifos — more than 900,000 pounds of it was applied in 2017 to almonds, grapes, citrus, alfalfa, stone fruit, cotton and other crops, according to state data.

Exposure to the organophosphate nerve agent has been linked to developmental disorders and neurological damage in animals and humans.

The ban is the first time the state has unilaterally barred an actively used pesticide and will take effect in 15 days unless opposing parties request an administrative hearing.

It was unclear Wednesday whether the federal EPA could challenge California, which often goes its own way on many environmental matters, including auto emissions and climate regulation. An official from that agency was not available for comment.

While most states follow the federal EPA’s lead on pesticides, California reserves the right to revoke registrations of the chemicals within its borders, said state EPA chief Jared Blumenfeld.

“Certainly, God knows, I cannot predict what this federal government will do,” Blumenfeld said.

“They have that same science; they have that same legal basis, and yet, based on what appears from the outside to just be politics, they’ve been foot-dragging — and in fact worse than that, not taking their regulatory role seriously,” Blumenfeld said. “We have to step into the void and take action where the federal government has failed to do so.”

The state has been gradually tightening its restrictions on use of the chemical, so “farmers knew this was coming,” Blumenfeld said. “The handwriting has been on the wall for some time.”

Although growers have cut their use of the chemical by about half over the past decade, they have been uneasy about the state’s earlier signals that a ban was coming.

The citrus industry uses chlorpyrifos to combat the Asian citrus psyllid, which can spread a disease that can decimate entire groves. The pesticide also is critical to controlling leaffooted bugs and stink bugs in almond groves.

“California farmers are resilient, but the long-term viability of our farms in California depends on proper support from the administration and renewed cooperation of the state’s regulatory agencies, especially in light of the many other unique and expensive regulations that place California farmers at a growing competitive disadvantage,” Tom Nassif, president and chief executive of Western Growers, a regional industry group, said in May.

Val Dolcini, acting director of the state EPA’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, said he was “quite confident” that a newly formed working group, including academic, agricultural, regulatory and environmental experts, would identify an array of alternatives to the chemical. The state has allocated about $5 million in grants toward that end, he said.

Chlorpyrifos has become something of a poster child for the Trump administration’s rollback of regulation, which has occurred at times in defiance of scientific findings about health and environmental harm.

Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt halted an Obama-era ban that had been hastened by a court order, and his successor, Andrew Wheeler, has since extended the safety review of the pesticide through 2022. California, six other states and a host of environmental and labor groups have sued over those moves. </s> California will outlaw the use of a pesticide linked to developmental problems in humans after President Donald Trump's administration scrapped plans for a nationwide ban, state health officials said Wednesday.

The decision to ban chlorpyrifos in the agriculturally rich state follows "mounting evidence" of serious health effects for exposed children and other vulnerable people, two California health agencies said in a statement.

Toxic effects including "impaired brain and neurological development" occur at lower levels of the pesticide than previously thought, said the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR).

Farmers using the product will have 15 days to challenge the ban notice in court before it comes into effect, the DPR told AFP.

Virtually all residential uses of the pesticide has been banned since the end of 2001 throughout the United States.

In 2015, the Obama administration announced that it intended to ban its use completely.

The measure had not yet come into effect when President Donald Trump was elected, and the Environmental Protection Agency reversed the decision in 2017.

"California continues to move forward to protect public health, workers and the environment" despite the Trump administration's move, the statement said.

In California alone, more than 940,000 pounds of chlorpyrifos were used in 2017—about half as much as in 2005.

New working groups will be set up to find safer alternatives to the pesticide commonly used for citrus fruits, almonds, cotton, grapes, nuts, alfalfa and other crops.

The European Commission announced this month it will recommend chlorpyrifos does not have its license renewed when it expires in January, following a negative assessment by the EU's food safety watchdog.

Eight European countries have already individually banned products containing the pesticide. </s> DowDuPont, which produces the pesticide, has criticized efforts to curtail its use and said it will hurt farmers who rely on it to control insects.

Blumenfeld said the state took action in part because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump allowed chlorpyrifos to be used after the Obama administration tried to phase it out. The EPA reversed course on banning the pesticide in 2017, after re-evaluating the science. Blumenfeld criticized that decision.

"We’ve had enough evidence, the U.S. EPA and the Obama administration, to say it’s really time to take action,” Blumenfeld told KQED Science. "California is saying enough is enough. We need to take action to protect human health."

The pesticide is also in jeopardy on the federal level. After environmental groups and farmworkers challenged the EPA's reversal, a 9th Circuit judge ruled in their favor. The EPA appealed to the whole 9th Circuit, but again lost, and the court told the EPA to issue a new decision by July, based on the scientific record. California based its ban on that decision.

Chlorpyrifos is in a class of organophosphates chemically similar to a nerve gas developed by Nazi Germany before World War II. Its heavy use has often left traces in drinking water sources. A UC Berkeley study in 2012 found that 87% of umbilical-cord blood samples tested from newborn babies contained detectable levels of the pesticide.

Dr. Gina Solomon, a medical professor at UCSF and a former deputy secretary of Cal-EPA, said chlorpyrifos is unusual in that it's one of the best understood pesticides because it's been so extensively studied.

"We know a lot about what it does to developing children and that science is the bedrock of the action that Cal-EPA is announcing," she said. "Many pesticides have been studied well in lab rats but in this case we actually know what it does to people."

Studies in cities where the pesticide was once used to kill cockroaches before it was banned for indoor use in 2000, as well as research done in rural farmworker communities, showed that chlorpyrifos harmed brain development in fetuses and affected reading ability and IQ, Solomon said. "It also led to hyperactivity in children. Even head sizes were smaller in children whose mothers were exposed to the pesticide.

One area that's less-well studied is the impact of the pesticide on people who consume produce that has a residue of the chemical on it. Solomon said with California growing the majority of fruits and vegetables in the country there could be a ripple benefit for consumers in other states.

In August 2018, a California-sponsored scientific review found that the pesticide poses serious health effects in children at levels lower than previously understood. In November, California regulators recommended new restrictions on the pesticide that included discontinuing its use on most crops.

While the ban — technically known as a cancellation — could take up to two years to take effect, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation has recommended that county agriculture commissioners adopt stricter rules on where and how the chemical can be applied, including larger buffer zones.

To help farmers make the transition away from chlorpyrifos, the state is adding a $5.7 million to fund safer alternatives.

The state's decision Wednesday follows years of lobbying by environmentalists and farmworkers, who pushed California regulators to ban the insecticide, one of the most commonly used in the country.

Blumenfeld, who was confirmed as Gov. Gavin Newsom's CalEPA head in March, said he’d like California to approach pesticides differently, by ending the practice of banning them only to replace them with something similarly toxic.

“We need to move to a place where we are using the innovative spirit that California has, to come up with alternatives that are safe and nontoxic,” he said. “Farmers are actually hurting out there. A great majority of fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in America are grown in California. With climate change, there are going to be more pests, different pests—pests aren’t going away, they will get worse. We need nontoxic alternatives.”

Kevin Stark and Molly Peterson of KQED contributed to this post. </s> California environmental regulators announced Wednesday that they will ban a widely used pesticide in the state that can cause brain damage. The move comes two weeks after the Trump Administration said it would allow continued use of the product. </s> Inspectors have concluded that a "toxic chemical" containing chlorine was used in an attack last April in the Syrian town of Douma, at the time held by rebels but besieged by pro-government forces, the global chemical weapons agency said on Friday.

The attack on April 7, 2018, killed dozens of civilians and prompted airstrikes against the Syrian government by Britain, France and the United States.

Washington blamed the Syrian government and said it had used chemical weapons. Damascus denies having ever used chemical weapons.

During an investigation in mid-April, inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited two sites in Douma to interview witnesses and take samples, which have been analyzed in OPCW-affiliated laboratories.

The investigation did not assign blame, but the information gathered provided "reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018."

"This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine," the OPCW said in a statement.

Weaponizing chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by Syria in 2013, and is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law.

The OPCW has documented systematic use of the banned nerve agent sarin and chlorine in Syria's civil war, now nearing its eighth year.

From 2015-17 a joint UN-OPCW team had been appointed to assign blame for chemical attacks in Syria. It found that Syrian government troops had used the nerve agent sarin and chorine barrel bombs on several occasions, while Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants were found to have used sulfur mustard.

In June, the OPCW's member states granted the organization new powers to assign blame for chemical weapons attacks, but that was not the mandate of the team that carried out the Douma inquiry.

The OPCW is also looking into an alleged gas attack last November in Aleppo that reportedly made up to 100 people ill. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, blamed that attack on insurgents. </s> Image copyright AFP Image caption Crops are often treated with the herbicide glyphosate

Chemical giant Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289m (£226m) damages to a man who claimed herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer.

In a landmark case, a Californian jury found that Monsanto knew its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers.

It's the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging a glyphosate link to cancer.

Monsanto denies that glyphosate causes cancer and says it intends to appeal against the ruling.

"The jury got it wrong," vice-president Scott Partridge said outside the courthouse in San Francisco.

The claimant in the case, groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, is among more than 5,000 similar plaintiffs across the US.

Correspondents say the California ruling is likely to lead to hundreds of other claims against Monsanto, which was recently bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Mr Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014. His lawyers said he regularly used a form of RangerPro while working at a school in Benicia, California.

Glyphosate controversy far from settled

Analysis by James Cook, BBC North America Correspondent

Image copyright Reuters

The implications of this verdict will be felt far beyond Monsanto's headquarters in Missouri.

Glyphosate is the world's most common weedkiller and the science about its safety is still far from settled.

In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency, concluded that it was "probably carcinogenic to humans" . but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to insist that glyphosate is safe when used carefully.

Campaigners question how the EPA assessment was reached, citing evidence of what they say was inappropriate industry involvement in the decision.

Some Democrats have even called for a Department of Justice investigation into alleged collusion between government officials and Monsanto .

In California, where a judge recently ruled that coffee must carry a cancer warning, the agriculture industry sued to prevent such a label for glyphosate even though the state lists it as a chemical known to cause cancer .

In Europe, too, the battle over glyphosate has been fierce. French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to ban it despite the resistance of some French lawmakers and the fact that the European Commission recently granted the weedkiller another five-year licence .

Jurors found on Friday that the company had acted with "malice" and that its weedkillers contributed "substantially" to Mr Johnson's terminal illness.

Following an eight-week trial, the jury ordered the agricultural multi-national to pay $250m in punitive damages together with other costs that brought the total figure to almost $290m.

Mr Johnson's lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury's verdict showed that the evidence against the product was "overwhelming".

"When you are right, it is really easy to win," he said, adding that the ruling was just "the tip of the spear" of future legal cases.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Dewayne Johnson (R) hugged his lawyer after hearing the verdict

In a statement after the ruling, Monsanto said it was "sympathetic to Mr Johnson and his family" but it would "continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use".

"Today's decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews - and conclusions by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world - support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr Johnson's cancer," it added. </s> Inspectors have concluded that a "toxic chemical" containing chlorine was used in an attack last April in the Syrian town of Douma, at the time held by rebels but besieged by pro-government forces, the global chemical weapons agency says.

The attack on April 7, 2018, killed dozens of civilians and prompted air strikes against the Syrian government by Britain, France and the United States.

Washington blamed the Syrian government and said it had used chemical weapons. Damascus denies having ever used chemical weapons.

During an investigation in mid-April, inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons visited two sites in Douma to interview witnesses and take samples, which have been analysed in OPCW-affiliated national laboratories.

The investigation did not assign blame, but the information gathered provided "reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018".

"This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine," the OPCW said in a statement on Friday.

Weaponising chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by Syria in 2013, and is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law.

The OPCW has documented systematic use of the banned nerve agent sarin and chlorine in Syria's civil war, now nearing its eighth year.

From 2015 to 2017 a joint UN-OPCW team had been appointed to assign blame for chemical attacks in Syria. It found that Syrian government troops had used the nerve agent sarin and chorine barrel bombs on several occasions, while Islamic State militants were found to have used sulphur mustard.

In June, the OPCW's member states granted the organisation new powers to assign blame for chemical weapons attacks, but that was not the mandate of the team that carried out the Douma inquiry.

The latest OPCW report "adds one more case to the scores of illegal chemical weapons attacks confirmed since 2013", said Lou Charbonneau of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"It's clear that the organisation's new unit for attributing blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria has its work cut out. Those responsible for the use of these banned weapons should be unmasked and held to account."

The OPCW is also looking into an alleged gas attack last November in Aleppo that reportedly made up to 100 people ill. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, blamed that attack on insurgents.
California regulators announce a ban on chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate nerve agent used as a pesticide.