Ignore pesticides data, firm urges
Dow asks U. S. agencies ‘ to set aside’ studies’ findings of harm
WASHINGTON — Dow Chemical is pushing the Trump administration to ignore the findings of federal scientists who point to a family of widely used pesticides as harmful to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species.
Lawyers representing Dow, whose chief executive officer is a close adviser to President Donald Trump, and two other manufacturers of organophosphates sent letters last week to the heads of three of Trump’s Cabinet agencies. The companies asked them “to set aside” the results of government studies that the companies contend are fundamentally flawed.
Dow Chemical wrote a $ 1 million check to help underwrite Trump’s inaugural festivities, and its chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris heads a White House manufacturing working group.
The industry’s request comes after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced last month that he was reversing an Obama- era effort to bar the use of Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide on food after recent peer- reviewed studies
found that even tiny levels of exposure could hinder the development of children’s brains.
In his previous job as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt often aligned himself in legal disputes with the interests of executives and corporations who supported his state campaigns. He filed more than a dozen lawsuits seeking to overturn some of the same regulations he is now in charge of enforcing.
Pruitt declined to answer questions from reporters Wednesday as he toured a polluted Superfund site in Indiana. A spokesman for the agency later told The Associated Press that Pruitt won’t “prejudge” any potential rule- making decisions as “we are trying to restore regulatory sanity to EPA’s work.”
The letters to Cabinet heads, dated April 13, were obtained by AP. As with the recent human studies of chlorpyrifos, Dow hired its own scientists to produce a lengthy rebuttal to the government studies.
Over the past four years, government scientists have compiled an official record running more than 10,000 pages indicating that the three pesticides under review — chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion — pose a risk to nearly every endangered species they studied.
Regulators at the three federal agencies, which share responsibilities for enforcing the Endangered Species Act, are close to issuing findings expected to result in new limits on how and where the highly toxic pesticides can be used.
“We have had no meetings with Dow on this topic, and we are reviewing petitions as they come in, giving careful consideration to sound science and good policymaking,” said J. P. Freire, EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs.
The office of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Natural Marine Fisheries Service, did not respond to emailed questions. A spokesman for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, referred questions to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA’s recent biological evaluation of chlorpyrifos found that the pesticide is “likely to adversely affect” 1,778 of the 1,835 animals and plants assessed as part of its study, including critically endangered or threatened species of frogs, fish, birds and mammals. Similar results were shown for malathion and diazinon.
In a statement, the Dow subsidiary that sells chlorpyrifos said its lawyers asked for the EPA’s biological assessment to be withdrawn because its “scientific basis was not reliable.”
FMC Corp., which sells malathion, said the withdrawal of the EPA studies would allow the necessary time for the “best available” scientific data to be compiled.
“Malathion is a critical tool in protecting agriculture from damaging pests,” the company said.
Diazi non maker Makhteshim Agan of North America Inc., which does business under the name Adama, did not respond to emails.
Environmental advocates said that criticism of the government’s scientists was unfounded. The methods used to conduct EPA’s biological evaluations were developed by the National Academy of Sciences.