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.
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