Action Alert – Sign the Petition to the EPA and Congress to Stop Pesticide Poisoning of Farmworkers & Their Children

Action Alert – Sign the Petition to the EPA and Congress to Stop Pesticide Poisoning of Farmworkers & Their Children

It’s wrong that farmworkers and their children continue to be exposed to the highly toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos. 

You can help right this wrong by signing the petition to ban agricultural use of chlorpyrifos.  We will send it to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Andrew Wheeler, and key Members of Congress.  Our goal is 5,000 signers.

To read and sign the petition, click here.

Chlorpyrifos is a highly toxic insecticide developed from World War II-era nerve gas.  Dow Chemical produces it. 

Studies show that prenatal exposure to very low levels of chlorpyrifos causes brain damage to children, resulting in permanent neurological deficits. 

Chlorpyrifos is applied on many crops, including apples, cherries, strawberries, citrus fruit, corn, almonds and Christmas trees.  Farmworkers report illnesses from chlorpyrifos every year. 

Farmworkers are exposed to it while working in the fields, harvesting the food we eat.  People who mix and apply this insecticide are at special risk.

Children, even when not working, are exposed to chlorpyrifos as it drifts in the wind when sprayed from fields onto school playgrounds and homes, from contaminated work clothes in the laundry and poisoned water supplies.   

Its effects include dizziness, vomiting, convulsions, numbness in the limbs, and loss of intellectual functioning.  In high doses, such as spills, it can cause respiratory paralysis and death.

In 2000, the EPA banned residential use of chlorpyrifos (pronounced klor-Peer-i-foss).  It’s time to end the EPA’s discriminatory permission to use it in agriculture.

EPA scientists concluded by 2016 that chlorpyrifos should be banned in agriculture.  But former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt ignored the science, defied normal agency process and refused to ban it.          

In a lawsuit in which Farmworker Justice is a plaintiff, a U.S. Court of Appeals has ordered the EPA to revisit the issue of a ban by July. 

Andrew Wheeler needs to hear from you. The petition tells Wheeler to take action now; it also supports legislation to ban chlorpyrifos.    

Thank you for making a difference in the lives of farmworkers and their children.  Sign the petition here.

Sincerely,

Bruce Goldstein

President, Farmworker Justice

P.S.  Your tax-deductible donation makes our work possible.