{"id":32151,"date":"2023-01-06T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T05:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=32151"},"modified":"2023-01-06T10:07:09","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T15:07:09","slug":"epas-failure-to-regulate-endocrine-disrupting-pesticides-before-a-federal-court-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2023\/01\/epas-failure-to-regulate-endocrine-disrupting-pesticides-before-a-federal-court-again\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA’s Failure to Regulate Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides before a Federal Court. . . Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides<\/em>, January 6, 2023)\u00a0Plaintiffs in a recent pesticide lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency<\/a> (EPA) reprise, in their arguments, a critique proffered repeatedly by Beyond Pesticides<\/a>: the agency has failed, for many years, to evaluate and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides adequately. The suit, according to Progressive Farmer<\/em><\/a>, argues that the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA<\/a>) \u2014 legislation that mandated that EPA establish \u201ctolerances\u201d for pesticides in foods and regulate on those bases \u2014 required EPA to develop an endocrine disruptor screening program (EDSP) and to implement it by 1999. The litigation goes on to note that<\/a> \u201cmore than twenty-five years after the passage of the FQPA, EPA has yet to implement the EDSP it created and further, has failed to even initiate endocrine testing for approximately 96% of registered pesticides.\u201d Plaintiffs are asking the court, among other requests (see below) to order<\/a> \u201cEPA to complete all actions required under the FQPA at issue in this case as soon as reasonably practicable, according to a Court-ordered timeline.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can, even at low exposure levels, disrupt normal hormonal (endocrine) function. Endocrine disruptors function by<\/a>: (1) mimicking the action of a naturally produced hormone, such as estrogen or testosterone, thereby setting off similar chemical reactions in the body; (2) blocking hormone receptors in cells, thereby preventing the action of natural hormones; or (3) affecting the synthesis, transport, metabolism, and excretion of hormones, thus altering the concentrations of natural hormones.<\/p>\r\n

ED compounds include many pesticides, exposures to which have been linked<\/a> to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson\u2019s, Alzheimer\u2019s, and childhood and adult cancers. ED chemicals can wreak havoc<\/a> not only in humans, but also, in wildlife and their ecosystems.<\/p>\r\n

The subject litigation was filed on December 20, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), the Center for Environmental Health, Pesticide Action Network of North America, Organizacion en California de Lideres Campesinas, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, and the Rural Coalition. A press release<\/a> from plaintiff CFS asserts: \u201cIn the 26 years since [FQPA], EPA has tested fewer than 50 of more than 1,315 registered pesticides for endocrine-disruption effects and completed only 34 of those tests.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Although an EDSP was created by EPA in 1998, the agency was sued by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1999 after failing to implement the program by the court-ordered August 3, 1999 deadline. That litigation resulted in the agency\u2019s 2001 agreement to prioritize chemicals for screening \u201cbased on both effect and exposure data.\u201d Progressive Farmer<\/em> reports<\/a>, \u201c\u2018EPA committed to publishing a list of initial chemicals to evaluate by 2002. . . . Instead, EPA released a draft list of chemicals for evaluation in 2007 and a final list of 67 chemicals in 2009, seven years after their original promise.\u2019 . . . EPA created a second list of 109 additional chemicals in need of testing. \u2018At the same time as EPA only managed to complete . . . testing for 52 pesticides, EPA completed registration for 425 new pesticides without consideration of their potential endocrine effects, flouting the whole point of Congress\u2019s FQPA mandates \u2014 bringing the total number of registered pesticides from 890 in 1990 to 1,315 in 2020. . . . There is little doubt that EPA\u2019s failure to complete screening of all pesticide chemicals for possible endocrine effects has caused damage to plaintiffs\u2019 members\u2019 health.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n

That 2009 list was recommended for so-called \u201cTier 1\u201d screening, based only on their pesticide registration status and\/or exposure potential through drinking water. As Beyond Pesticides has written<\/a>, \u201cTier 1 Screening is not sufficient to implicate a chemical as an endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC). In other words, Tier 1 findings do not hold much weight on their own. Rather, they are a tool for defining which chemicals must undergo Tier 2 testing. Tier 2 testing is intended to confirm and characterize endocrine effects, establishing dose-response relationships and other metrics typically used in conducting EPA risk assessments. EPA holds that only Tier 2, and not Tier 1 testing, can \u2018provide definitive proof of a substance\u2019s ability to interact adversely with these hormone systems in the intact organism.\u2019 Therefore, Tier 2 testing is the only stage that can influence regulatory decision making.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Progressive Farmer notes<\/a><\/em> that the EPA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found, in both 2011 and 2021, that the agency had failed to make any progress on implementing an endocrine disruptor screen program (the EDSP). That OIG report asserted<\/a>, \u201cAs of early 2021, the OCSPP has not issued any List 1\u2013Tier 2 test orders for wildlife studies and has only issued test orders for two pesticides for human health studies. Likewise, although the EPA developed and published List 2 with 109 chemicals, the EPA did not issue any List 2\u2013Tier 1 test orders. As a result, the EPA has not made meaningful progress in meeting its statutory obligation to test all pesticide chemicals for endocrine-disruption activity.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

As Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2019<\/a>, EPA\u2019s \u201cEndocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) began, then virtually stopped, its review and regulation of endocrine disrupting pesticides, despite a mandate in the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) to develop a screening program within two years and then begin regulating.\u201d (See p. 13<\/a> for a detailed chronicle of EPA\u2019s EDSP failures.) A CFS news release provides this additional outrage<\/a>: \u201cThe 2021 [OIG] report included the shocking revelation that some EPA staff were instructed to function as if the screening program had been eliminated from EPA’s budget, despite a $7.5 million allocation that same year \u2014 raising the prospect of EPA’s intentional violation of its statutory duty.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Beyond Pesticides has weighed in on EPA\u2019s lack of action on endocrine-disrupting (ED) pesticides many times, often in letters or testimony about the agency\u2019s failures in the face of scientific evidence of their harms. In 2019, Beyond Pesticides wrote comprehensively<\/a> about ED pesticides, and EPA\u2019s shortcomings in evaluating and regulating them, in the journal, Pesticides and You<\/em> (p. 9). Beyond Pesticides recently wrote<\/a> to EPA\u2019s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) about the inadequacy of the agency\u2019s review, and draft assessment, of the ED pesticide inpyrfluxam, particularly as it relates to the mandates of the Endangered Species Act. In 2022, the organization commented on EPA\u2019s failures to meet its statutory responsibility to protect people and wildlife from the dire consequences of exposure to ED chemicals, including the agency\u2019s interim decision on atrazine<\/a>. In 2021, Beyond Pesticides wrote to OPP about pentachlorophenol<\/a>; in 2022, EPA finally, after years of outcry, cancelled the registration<\/a> of the toxic and endocrine-disrupting wood preservative.<\/p>\r\n

The introduction to the plaintiff\u2019s brief, after chronicling EPA\u2019s failures in regard to ED evaluation and regulation, includes this pointed comment<\/a>: \u201cAll these failings are indications of EPA\u2019s lack of commitment to implement the EDSP and to achieve its congressional purpose of safeguarding public health, in violation of Congress\u2019s commands.\u201d Plaintiffs in the California case cite multiple requests in their complaint, chief among which is \u201cordering EPA to complete all actions required under the FQPA at issue in this case as soon as reasonably practicable, according to a Court-ordered timeline.\u201d They also request that the court:<\/p>\r\n