chlorpyrifos pest

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oops see organo-phosphate

neglected? EU ban?

promoted to primary on OMG wheeler sci suppress

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40 pp emails

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/open_government/pdfs/Center-Letter-to-Inspector-General-to-Reopen-Bernhardt-Investigation-19-0434.pdf

12/20

no cites

Honorable Mark Lee Greenblatt Inspector General U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20240

Re: Request to Reopen Investigative Report of Alleged Improper Influence by the Secretary of the Interior in the FWS Scientific Process (Report Number: 19-0434) Dear Inspector General Greenblatt:

We write to you today to request that you consider reopening investigation 19-0434 regarding Secretary Bernhardt’s role in the review and delay of three biological opinions that evaluated the impacts of pesticides on endangered species. We have obtained significant new information that suggests Secretary Bernhardt omitted or deliberately misled investigators from the Office of the Inspector General regarding several material facts and key events in the timeline of this issue. These documents were obtained recently through the Freedom of Information Act, but should have been available to your inspectors, and at the outset raise concerns about the thoroughness of your investigation.

If Secretary Bernhardt did in fact willfully omit material information, that may constitute a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it is unlawful for anyone in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, to knowingly and willfully “falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact.” First, your report states that Secretary Bernhardt claimed: “he did not remember why he made this request, but someone at the EPA or the Council on Environmental Quality might have told him” about the biological opinions.1 This is extremely implausible. On October 5th, 2017 from 12:00-12:35pm eastern time, Secretary Bernhardt held a teleconference with Nancy Beck and Erik Baptist (then general counsel at EPA) entitled “Introductions.”2 Just minutes after that call ended, at approximate 12:49 eastern time on October 5th, 2017, Secretary Bernhardt wrote to Assistant Director for Ecological Services Gary Frazer, “Acting” Director Greg Sheehan, and Todd Willens the following email: “All: I apologize for the request, but I need to be updated on the status of consultations related to pesticides.” We are unclear why the Inspector General could not find this email.3

More importantly, your report states that: “Bernhardt told us he was ‘extremely troubled’ when he reviewed the draft biological opinion for malathion.”4 This begs a critical question not apparently reviewed by the Inspector General: Who provided Secretary Bernhardt a copy of the biological opinion and when did he review it? By the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own admission, the biological opinion is nearly 3000 pages long. Was Bernhardt given a complete copy? Was he provided a link to the shared drive that housed the biological opinion?

Documents previously obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Secretary Bernhardt received a summary PowerPoint and briefing document from Assistant Director Frazer on October 8th, 2017, but not a copy of the biological opinion itself.5 Thus, under the narrative set forth in your report, Secretary Bernhardt would like the public to believe that some point between October 5th 2017 and November 2nd 2017, he reviewed the biological opinions (each 3000 pages long), assessed their legal correctness and decided that the Fish and Wildlife Service should redo its draft based on his conclusions and the agreement of the Department of Interior Solicitors, and there is nothing more to the story. However, newly uncovered documents suggest that this was not the case. On October 20th, 2017 Secretary Bernhardt has a “Call with EPA” with Nancy Beck and Erik Baptist.6

On October 24th, 2017 Secretary Bernhardt has a “3rd Call” with Nancy Beck and Erik Baptist.The very next day, career staff at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially briefed Secretary Bernhardt on the contents of the biological opinions. Right after this meeting, Secretary Bernhardt had another “follow up call” with Nancy Beck, Erik Baptist, andMicahel Dourson, who was then the Senior Advisor to Administrator Pruitt. Whether or not Secretary Bernhardt reviewed the draft opinions prior to that day or only after the briefing is not clear, nor does the Inspector General report suggest that its investigators inquired into this vitally important fact.

Critically, on October 30th, 2017, a physical meeting occurred at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, that is described in the subject line of Secretary Bernhardt’s calendar as: “NEC PCC: ESA Section 7 (Read Ahead Attached).” Invited to this meeting by Mr. Bernhardt were the following political appointees: Ray Starling from the Executive Office of the President,Michael Catanzaro from the Executive Office of the President, Jordan Bonfitto from the Executive Office of the President, John Moran from the Executive Office of the President, Francis Brooke from the Executive Office of the Vice President, Mary Neumayr from the Council on Environmental Quality, Alexander Domesle from the Council on Environmental Quality, Christopher Prandoni from the Council on Environmental Quality,Nancy Beck from the Environmental Protection Agency, Erik Baptist from the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Vaden from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rebeckah Adcock from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Todd Willensfrom the Department of Interior, James Uthmeier from the Department of Commerce, and finally Michael Dourson from the Environmental Protection Agency. What occurred during this meeting was unknown until recently, when a partially-redacted email sent by Michael Dourson to Secretary Bernhardt was released to the Center for Biological

Diversity under the Freedom of Information Act, and only after two years of litigation. On or about November 2nd, 2017, Michael Dourson wrote an email to Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt which says the following:

Dear David We very much appreciate your hospitality yesterday and the opportunity to view the draft Biological Opinions. I got a much better sense of our options and will be working with senior leaders here to formulate a set of limited options for Administrator Pruitt to consider. Obviously, we look forward to working with you on this complex issue. Any insights would be very welcome. I list a larger set of options below, one of which may be your preferred approach. Your thoughts on these would be extremely valuable, as well as any new ideas. Cheers! Michael…

The day after this meeting, Secretary Bernhardt met again with Assistant Director Gary Frazer. Within a day, Assistant Director Frazer and the FWS Solicitor’s Office drafted a letter to EPA requesting more information on usage data for Chlorpyrifos, based on directions provided by Secretary Bernhardt to alter course on the biological opinions. Under the law, all biological opinions completed under Section 7(a)(2) must be based on “the best scientific and commercial data.” We understand that in your report, career officials stated to you thatSecretary Bernhardt’s intervention “influenced the legal interpretation of the ESA”that was used in the biological opinion, and that “it was not the norm but not unusual,” and that it was “not unprecedented.”7 

However, we are deeply concerned that your investigation failed to uncover the possible influence of numerous political appointees far beyond Secretary Bernhardt, including the Executive Office of the President, the Executive Office of the Vice President, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which has no formal role in this consultation) and potentially other political appointees. If Secretary Bernhardt employed a clever pretext for his actions that is legally defensible, but in fact only obscured the political motivations and improper influence on the process, then that is not acceptable or in accordance with the law. Accordingly, we ask the Inspector General to answer the following key questions: 1) On what day, by what manner, and by whom was the draft biological opinion on malathionconveyed to Secretary Bernhardt? Was he given the entire opinion in full, or an abridged summary? 2) What information was transmitted to political officials within the White House’s Office of the President, Office of the Vice President, Council on Environmental Quality, U.S

...

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intercept 921

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/24/chlorpyrifos-epa-ban-pesticides/

EPA’s Rationale for Banning Chlorpyrifos May Make it Harder to Eliminate Other Brain-Harming Pesticides

Sharon Lerner

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JUNE 2017 PAN etc

Objections to March 29, 2017

Order Denying PAN/NRDC

Petition to Revoke All Tolerances

and Cancel All Registrations for

the Pesticide Chlorpyrifos

https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/EPA_Objections%206%205%2017.pdf

...1. The Science Underlying EPA’s Findings that Chlorpyrifos is Unsafe is Well-Settled

In putting off action on the 2007 Petition and its proposal to revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances, the Pruitt Order alludes generally to scientific uncertainties, ignoring how much progress has been made in assessing the mounting scientific evidence of neurodevelopmental harm from chlorpyrifos exposures and the weight of the scientific evidence. EPA and the SAP have consistently found that chlorpyrifos causes damage to children’s developing brains and that this damage has resulted from exposures that are far lower than EPA’s regulatory endpoint. The 31 chlorpyrifos tolerances currently in place do not protect against these adverse brain impacts. On this point, assertions of scientific uncertainty ring hollow given the overwhelming scientific evidence and the unbroken EPA and SAP findings.

When EPA convened its SAP in 2008 to review post-re-registration science, the SAP found that prenatal and early postnatal chlorpyrifos exposures can produce long-lasting cognitive and motor impairments. 2008 SAP Report at 11-12. The SAP also found that the exposures associated with this serious harm were below EPA’s regulatory endpoint. Id. at 43-44. In 2012, the SAP again found, based on more extensive scientific review, that chlorpyrifos is associated with abnormal reflexes, mental deficiencies, and attention and behavioral problems from exposures lower than those associated with cholinesterase inhibition, EPA’s regulatory endpoint. 2012 SAP at 17, 19. Even the 2016 SAP, which disagreed with EPA’s first attempt to quantify exposures correlated with such brain damage, agreed that chlorpyrifos harms children’s brains at exposures far below EPA’s regulatory endpoint and that EPA needs to be more protective than its 2014 risk assessment.2016 SAP 18, 52-53.

EPA’s risk assessments have, since 2011, similarly found correlations between low-level chlorpyrifos exposures and long-lasting harm to children’s brains. The 2011 PHHRA found that chlorpyrifos played a role in causing such neurodevelopmental harm. 2011 PHHRA at 8. The 2014 RHHRA made even stronger findings from multiple lines of evidence that chlorpyrifos results in neurodevelopmental harms to children, such as reduced IQ, delays in mental development, and attention disorders, and that the exposures associated with these brain impairments were too low to produce cholinesterase inhibition. 2014 RHHRA at 41-43, 46. There may be scientific uncertainty on other issues, but not as to these uncontestable findings. And these findings alone revealed in the 2014 RHHRA that chlorpyrifos is unsafe due to drinking water contamination. Id. at 48-49, 95-96.

Scientific uncertainty remains as to the mode of action by which chlorpyrifos damages children’s brains and the exact dose at which such effects occur. EPA does not need to know the precise mode of action to know that harm is occurring and that the statutory safety standard is being violated. See id. at 48. Nor does EPA need to know the precise dose at which neurodevelopmental harm occurs, given that such harm is occurring at exposures so far below the regulatory endpoint supporting the current chlorpyrifos tolerances that EPA cannot identify a safe exposure level. As explained below, Congress has prescribed how EPA must deal with such uncertainties in protecting the safety of our food supply and preventing harm to children. 2. Congress Directed EPA to Revoke Tolerances if Scientific Uncertainty Precludes Finding the Pesticide Safe. Congress has established a statutory standard that precludes delaying protection, particularly to children, due to scientific uncertainty when there is evidence of harm. This direction manifests itself in three ways.

...

C. Widespread Use of Chlorpyrifos in Agriculture is Legally Irrelevant Because Congress Made Protecting Food Safety and Preventing Neurodevelopmental Harm to Children Paramount. The Pruitt Order states: Although not a legal consideration, it is important to recognize that for many decades chlorpyrifos has been and remains one of the most widely used pesticides in the United States, making any decision to retain or remove this pesticide from the market an extremely significant policy choice. 82 Fed. Reg. at 16,590; see also id. at 16,584 (“chlorpyrifos is currently the only cost-effective choice for control of certain insect pests.”). The Pruitt Order then cites the significance of the decision as a reason for further study of the risks before taking final regulatory action. Id.

EPA issued a press release on the Pruitt Order noting that chlorpyrifos is “one of the most widely used pesticides in the world” and quoting EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as saying, “We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on 58 Meeting minutes, report, and background material is available in Docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2010-0588 and on the SAP meetings website at: http://www.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/meetings/2011/021511meeting.html. 37 chlorpyrifos.” The EPA press release included a statement from Sheryl Kunickis, director of the Office of Pest Management Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”), endorsing the Pruitt Order because it “frees American farmers from significant trade disruptions that could have been caused by an unnecessary, unilateral revocation of chlorpyrifos tolerances in the United States.”59 EPA released another press statement on April 5, 2017, compiling statements from USDA and various agricultural associations praising EPA’s decision not to ban chlorpyrifos.60

As the Pruitt Order acknowledges, however, EPA must make food tolerance decisions based on safety and in particular whether EPA can find that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm from the pesticide. Congress decided long ago that the safety of our food cannot be sacrificed, and in 1996, it expanded that mandate to aggregate exposures to a pesticide in food, drinking water, and pesticide drift. EPA cannot leave tolerances in place in the absence of a finding of safety, no matter how widely used the pesticide is.61 Indeed, widespread use of chlorpyrifos cuts the other way because its use exposes children and communities throughout the country to poisoning and brain damage risks, making the Administrator’s decision to delay protections even more egregious....

CONCLUSION For these reasons, EPA must reverse the Pruitt Order and revoke all chlorpyrifos tolerances. This misguided Order and the delay it has spurred threaten to expose countless children and communities to chlorpyrifos well into the future. People will needlessly suffer from poisonings from chlorpyrifos drift. Parents will watch their children struggle with attention disorders and impaired brain functioning that hinders their ability to learn and play, and the children will experience lifelong deficits that make it harder for them to achieve their full potential and dreams. Prolonging revocation of chlorpyrifos tolerances, as required by the law and science, is not only unlawful, but also callous and heartless. EPA should rule on these objections within 60 days and expedite revocation of all chlorpyrifos tolerance.

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WAS sAB INVOLVED?

https://newrepublic.com/article/159943/scott-pruitt-epa-whistleblower

NO LNX MANY

Natasha Geiling/October 26, 2020

Scott Pruitt Was Even More Selfish and Vengeful Than We Thought

A new lawsuit sheds light on whistleblower retaliation at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Scott Pruitt speaks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Road to Majority Policy Conference.]

When former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in July 2018 amid a flurry of ethics scandals, he had already weathered months of inquiries into inappropriate use of the office for personal gain. He had spent over $100,000 of taxpayer money on first-class flights to Italy and Morocco. He had installed a $43,000 private phone booth in EPA headquarters. He ordered the locks in EPA headquarters to be replaced with biometric locks, even though he couldn’t explain to a member of Congress what biometric locks are. And all the while, he paid $50 a night for a condo on Capitol Hill owned by the wife of a lobbyist—a lobbyist whose clients are regulated by the EPA.

Even amid Pruitt’s nonstop public relations nightmares, he maintained President Trump’s support, which made it feel like Pruitt could get away with everything. In the end, there wasn’t a single scandal, or final straw, that precipitated his downfall—it was the endless parade of them. In his resignation letter, Pruitt said that he and his family were victims of “unrelenting attacks.” Trump, for his part, said that Pruitt told him he didn’t want to be a “distraction” for the administration.

The subtext, of course, was that if Pruitt had managed to keep his lavish spending and cozy relationship with lobbyists quiet, he could have stayed atop the EPA indefinitely. Which explains why, days after Pruitt’s resignation, one of the EPA officials who blew the whistle on Pruitt’s behavior took credit for his departure.

“I hate to take a credit for a man losing his job, but I guess I’d have to say that I take the credit,” Kevin Chmielewski, a former EPA employee, told The Hill in July 2018. Chmielewski, who served as deputy chief of staff for operations at the agency throughout most of Pruitt’s tenure, took issue with what he saw as Pruitt’s “chronic abuse of taxpayer dollars.” Chmielewski took concerns about Pruitt directly to the White House and, eventually, to congressional Democrats. In response, Chmielewski was placed on administrative leave without pay. He was one of four EPA officials who were reassigned or demoted or who left the agency because they flagged Pruitt’s ethical and financial misconduct.

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Now comes the long-awaited postscript in this chaotic saga. In a new lawsuit filed in federal court on October 20, Chmielewski paints an even harsher picture of administrative retribution. According to the lawsuit, on February 12, 2018—the day after The Washington Post broke the story about Pruitt’s first-class travel habits—Chmielewski came to work only to find that he had been locked out of his office. He was subsequently escorted from the building and told that if he did not resign, he would be fired from the EPA. Chmielewski did not resign, but a few months later, he was informed in a letter that he was considered to have resigned from the EPA effective March 17, 2018.

Chmielewski’s lawsuit seems to confirm the toxic work environment previously reported at the EPA under Pruitt’s leadership. But the lawsuit also highlights, more specifically, the extent to which Pruitt’s tenure was driven by selfishness. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment; Scott Pruitt’s mission was to protect himself and his cronies.

“Our job is to enforce the law,” Pruitt told Time in October 2017, railing against the previous administration, which he said had “taken those statutes and stretched them so far.” But when it came time actually to enforce the law, Pruitt supported cutting funds to the EPA’s enforcement office.In the first two years of the Trump administration—the two years in which Pruitt was at the helm of the EPA—prosecutions of environmental crimes, which are investigated by the EPA and pursued by the Department of Justice, dropped precipitously. According to a recent study from the University of Michigan, prosecutions under the country’s two landmark environmental laws, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, declined by 50 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Instead, when Pruitt took action, it was always to protect himself and the industry-connected donors who had fueled his political rise. According to a since-deleted tweet Pruitt sent in January 2018, Trump’s deregulatory agenda, carried out at the EPA by Pruitt, saved industry $300 million in regulatory costs. That the repealed regulations would have prevented thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks received no mention in Pruitt’s tweet.

When Pruitt tried to defend his first-class plane trips, he blamed “a very toxic environment, politically.” His concern over toxicity apparently did not extend to children and farmworkers sickened by pesticides. In March 2017, in one of his first acts as EPA administrator, Pruitt rejected the recommendation of EPA scientists to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos on farms. Scientists cited studies connecting use of chlorpyrifos to declines in cognitive health, particularly among young children. Pruitt cited the need for “regulatory certainty.” He did not mention that, 20 days earlier, he had met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, who had also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

When viewed in light of Pruitt’s history at the EPA, the allegations in Chmielewski’s lawsuit reveal a familiar pattern of a man far more concerned with self-preservation than ethical considerations. In an EPA typified by deregulation and delay, Chmielewski claims he was elbowed out a day after The Washington Post broke the story about Pruitt’s first-class travel. But it makes sense that retribution would come swiftly for someone who broke Pruitt’s cardinal rule: Never put other people before yourself.

Natasha Geiling @ngeiling

Natasha Geiling is an environmental writer living in Berkeley, California.

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pesticide linked to brain damage in children could finally be banned

Reynard Loki Independent Media Institute

A federal appeals court has ruled that unless the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can prove that the pesticide chlorpyrifos is safe, it must be banned. The chemi...

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ryan jackson cos

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an 920

EPA allows continued use of a neurotoxin found to harm kids’ brains

Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

Dismissing extensive scientific evidence showing that even low levels of chlorpyrifos damage children’s brains, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a risk assessment calling the toxic pesticide’s effects “unresolved”…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-epa-allows-continued-use-of-a-neurotoxin-found-to-harm-kids-brains/

an 920

EPA allows continued use of a neurotoxin found to harm kids’ brains

Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

Dismissing extensive scientific evidence showing that even low levels of chlorpyrifos damage children’s brains, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a risk assessment calling the toxic pesticide’s effects “unresolved”…

no lnx 2 cid one pbs newshour

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Dismissing extensive scientific evidence showing that even low levels of chlorpyrifos damage children’s brains, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a risk assessment calling the toxic pesticide’s effects “unresolved” and allowing its continued use in a wide variety of agricultural products pending a future final decision on its use.

Reacting to the EPA’s move, Patti Goldman, managing attorney at Earthjustice, accused the agency of “ignoring decades of science by leading universities and in doing so, neglecting its duty to protect children from pesticides.”

“Ignoring the demonstrated harm to children doesn’t make chlorpyrifos safe, it just shows a commitment to keep a toxic pesticide in the market and in our food at all cost,” Goldman added.

The EPA’s third risk assessment (pdf) for chlorpyrifos, which is theresult of litigation by environmental groups, stated that “the science addressing [the pesticide’s] neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved.” This, despite the study finding some dietary risks to adults, children, and handlers of the chemical, as well dangers to animals.

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide applied to crops, animals, and buildings to eliminate insects and worms, killing them by attacking their nervous systems through acetylcholinesterase enzyme inhibition. Invented by Dow Chemical Company in 1966, it is classified as “moderately hazardous” (pdf) to humans by the World Health Organization. Chlorpyrifos was banned in 2000 for most household uses but is still applied to dozens of crops on over 40,000 farms.

Last December, the European Union voted to effectively ban chlorpyrifos. Thailand also tried to ban the pesticide, but backed down last year under pressure from the Trump administration to continue buying it.

In 2016 under the Obama administration, EPA scientists found that chlorpyrifos poisons food and drinking water and recommended a ban on the pesticide, citing extensive research of its effects on children and agricultural workers. The pesticide has poisoned farmworkers, and researchers at Columbia University (pdf), Stanford University (pdf), the University of California at Berkeley (pdf), and elsewhere have shown that it is neurotoxic and damages children’s brains by, among other harms, delaying development, damaging memory, lowering IQ, and reducing attention span.

However, in March 2017 then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected his own agency’s scientific findings and issued a ruling (pdf) upholding use of the neurotoxin. The American Academy of Pediatrics said it was “deeply alarmed” by Pruitt’s decision, which came after consultations with lobby groups including the American Farm Bureau Association.

Corteva Inc., which is owned by Dow Chemical and is the largest producer of chlorpyrifos, has also been lobbying the EPA, according to Earthjustice, one of the groups suing to ban the chemical. Progressive Farmer reported Wednesday that Corteva will phase out chlorpyrifos production, citing declining demand as the primary factor in its decision.

In 2017, the attorneys general of seven states—New York, California, Washington, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont—formally called on the EPA to take immediate action to ban chlorpyrifos. Absent action from the Trump administration, Hawaii in 2018 became the first state to ban pesticides containing the chemical, although the ban won’t go into effect until 2022. California and New York followed suit, while lawmakers in several other states have introduced bills to ban it.

In a major victory for chemical corporations, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced in July 2019 that the agency would not ban chlorpyrifos, prompting a lawsuit by a coalition of health and labor organizations.

“Trump’s EPA might want to dismiss the science and the law to protect corporate profit, but we are confident the courts won’t stand for this,” said Dr. Elena Rios, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, at the time.

Many scientists have expressed alarm that the U.S. government is upholding chlorpyrifos use.

“Strong evidence now supports the notion that organophosphate pesticides damage the fetal brain and produce cognitive and behavioral dysfunction through multiple mechanisms, including thyroid disruption,” wrote Leonardo Trasande, a professor of pediatrics, environmental medicine, and population health at New York University School of Medicine, in 2017.

“A regulatory ban was proposed, but actions to end the use of one such pesticide, chlorpyrifos, in agriculture were recently stopped by the Environmental Protection Agency under false scientific pretenses,” Trasande added. “Scientists have a responsibility to rebut and decry these serious challenges to human health and scientific integrity.”

“There are all these studies that have been done of kids showing that chlorpyrifos harms their brains especially as they’re young or fetuses as they’re developing,” Erik D. Olson of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)—one of the groups fighting for a chlorpyrifos ban—told The Hill on Tuesday. “The very young are at much greater susceptibility than older people, and also more exposed.”

NRDC said that “EPA political appointees are pushing to not only ignore the epidemiological studies showing children are harmed by real-world uses of chlorpyrifos, but to also strip away the ‘uncertainty factors’ that are routinely applied to add a measure of protection for children, and to address uncertainties in the risk assessment.”

The EPA’s final decision on chlorpyrifos will be made at a future date, with most experts believing the latest risk assessment points to approval or an inadequate offer to limit its use.

“With how toxic it is you can’t mitigate the harm enough to make sure not really impacting people’s lives and health and the environment,” Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Hill.

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https://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-chlorpyrifos

220 yay

major chemical company discontinues brain-damaging pesticide

The largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States announced it will stop selling the nerve agent pesticide, which is linked to brain damage in children. Yet the Trump administration still refuses to ban it entirely, leaving many vulnerable.

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https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/11/9/16619988/scott-pruitt-epa-dysfunction-staff

11/17 2x?

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites. In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, “We are going to get this right.”

The following month, Pruitt — Oklahoma’s attorney general before he joined the EPA — tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert “Kell” Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups. Kelly started by consulting career staff members — often knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers’ suggestions. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup.

“We’re missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund,” said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity.

What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. Today’s EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees.

A few dozen political appointees brought in under the Trump administration are driving policy. At least 16 of the 45 appointees worked for industries such as oil, coal and chemicals, as this CIP graphic shows.

Four of these people — and another 21 — worked for, or donated to, politicians who have questioned established climate science, such as Pruitt and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

Career staff members — lawyers, scientists, analysts — are largely being frozen out of decision-making, current and former agency employees say. These staffers rarely get face time with Pruitt and frequently receive top-down orders from political appointees with little room for debate. They must sometimes force their way into conversations about subjects in which they have expertise.

RELATED

Meet the fossil fuel all-stars Trump has appointed to his administration

And that is a big mistake, said one of Pruitt’s predecessors.

Career employees are “very dedicated to protecting human health and the environment, and they will change their ways of how they do that if they’re convinced you really want to accomplish that aim,” said Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator under President George W. Bush.

One such employee agreed. “I think it’s the fact that we’re not following regular procedures; we’re not sure of what the legal justification is for some of the things they’re asking us to do. We’re just kind of being told, ‘Do the opposite thing you did 18 months ago.’ That’s hard to swallow.”

The EPA staffers who spoke to the center say the isolation of Pruitt’s top staff from the rest of the agency limits the perspectives the administrator is exposed to before making decisions.

Two appointment calendars, covering a six-month period beginning in March, show that Pruitt hears overwhelmingly from industry. He was scheduled to meet 154 times during the period with officials from companies such as Exxon Mobil and trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest lobby group. API was among at least 17 donors to Pruitt when he ran for state or federal office or led theRepublican Attorneys General Association that have met with him as EPA administrator. Those same calendars indicate he saw only three groups representing environmental or public health interests, though an EPA press release says he met with two others.

EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman disputed claims that the roughly 15,000-person agency is riven with discord. Career employees are “vital” to the EPA’s work and meet regularly with political appointees and the administrator, she said, citing ongoing deliberations on a water pollution rule as an example. (Two career employees who spoke to the center at Bowman’s request confirmed that they routinely work with political appointees and did so on the water rule.)

“We talk to people throughout the regions, the states, the career staff, and a variety of different perspectives prior to making decisions,” Bowman said, adding in an email that “we follow the Administrative Procedure Act in our regulatory process, meaning taking into consideration comments submitted by ALL commenters, including environmental NGOs, the public, and other commenters.”

For the public, much is at stake. Under Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times as Oklahoma’s attorney general, the agency has already declined to ban a pesticide linked to neurological damage in children, frozen requirements to reduce water pollution from coal-fired power plants, and opened the door to loosening limits on toxic coal waste. The EPA most recently proposed eliminating the Clean Power Plan, an Obama administration rule aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the power sector.

“These rules [being rolled back] aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are ways to improve things,” said Gordon Binder, who served as chief of staff for then-EPA Administrator William Reilly under President George H.W. Bush. "But Pruitt’s come in with a fly swatter and is slapping them down instead of laying out the problems with a rule and saying, ‘How can we fix it?’”

Who’s running the EPA?

There’s a striking absence of high-level leadership at the EPA. Only one of 13 positions requiring Senate confirmation — Pruitt’s — is filled. These positions — higher-ranking than those held by the 45 political appointees — include leaders of key agency offices that oversee air, water, and other programs. Six people have been nominated for the 12 open slots and are awaiting confirmation (although two of them have joined the EPA in the meantime as senior advisers).

Most major decisions are made on the third floor of the William Jefferson Clinton South Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, where Pruitt and his handful of confidants have their offices. Among those who most prominently have Pruitt’s ear: EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who previously held the same position with Inhofe, and Samantha Dravis, who worked with Pruitt at the Republican Attorneys General Association and now leads the EPA’s Office of Policy.

Dravis, widely seen as Pruitt’s closest adviser, came to the agency with a background in law and politics but little environmental experience. That’s a departure from her two immediate predecessors, who were already at the EPA when they were tapped to lead the policy office.

RELATED

The EPA is taking unprecedented steps to oust scientists who receive its grants]

Jackson helped Inhofe negotiate major bipartisan deals in the Senate, such as the passage of federal chemical policy reform. Still, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act to the New York Times show that Jackson directed career staff to deny a petition seeking to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide suspected of harming children’s brains, directly contradicting the recommendations of EPA scientists.

Bowman said in an email that career staff were “instrumental” in drafting the denial. The former acting head of the EPA’s chemicals office, a career employee who left the agency last month, told the Times she opposed the decision, even as she followed Jackson’s instructions.

Other influential political appointees include Sarah Greenwalt, senior adviser to the Office of the Administrator, who worked for Pruitt when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general; Bowman, head of public affairs, who came from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade group; and Mandy Gunasekara, a senior policy adviser who worked on the Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Nine career staff members told the center their opinions seem to hold little weight. They are excluded from meetings, they say, and their advice on agency operations is often disregarded. Some believe this is because of the flurry of leaks that have come from inside the agency since Pruitt took office. Political appointees have lashed out at suspected leakers and relieved them of work assignments, even in the absence of proof, career employees said.

RELATED

Why the head of the EPA built himself a secret phone booth

“They are terrified of career staff leaking,” one said. “And once they get an idea in their head [about] someone, they won’t change it.”

Bowman said, “Those concerns have not been brought to our attention. And if they are, we will do everything we can to address them.”

Pruitt has broken with tradition by forgoing many introductory briefings with career staff designed to help new administrators set priorities, several current and former employees said. Instead, he’s worked to roll back EPA rules, an effort that also diverges from common practice.

Political appointees are taking more of a hands-on role in tasks career employees previously would have handled. Take, for example, a recent notice announcing that the EPA plans to reconsider whether certain vehicle emission standards for greenhouse gases were too strict. Career staff had drafted a concise version of the notice, but appointees expanded the number of vehicles affected by the review and made the Department of Transportation the lead agency on the decision, despite the EPA’s legal obligations to control planet-warming emissions under the Clean Air Act.

“This was a much more major rewrite” than would have happened under previous administrations, said an EPA employee familiar with the matter. “At least one plausible outcome of this process,” the employee said, “is that the EPA would unilaterally abdicate its [legal] responsibility.”

“It looked like he was kind of checking the box to meet with us”

On the rare occasions when career employees are asked to brief Pruitt, he seems unwilling to change his anti-regulatory posture on major industry priorities, according to some career employees. Betsy Southerland, who headed an office within the EPA’s water program until August, said her team met with Pruitt twice about a rule designed to limit wastewater discharges from power plants as he considered weakening parts of it.

The team told Pruitt that industry arguments against the rule had already been considered and were found to be inaccurate. They offered more nuanced actions the administrator could take to address concerns expressed by the Small Business Administration, a separate federal agency; and the Utility Water Act Group, a lobbying organization. Pruitt was unmoved, she said. In August, the EPA announced it would reconsider key parts of the rule.

“You get the feeling that his mind was made up before we started the briefing process,” Southerland said. “It looked like he was kind of checking the box to meet with us.” The Times found similar behavior by Pruitt when the EPA declined to ban chlorpyrifos. Pruitt didn’t follow agency scientists’ advice, having “promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is ‘a new day and a new future,’” the Times reported.

These episodes could simply reflect inexperience — appointees struggling to figure out the agency they lead. They also could reflect pressure placed on the EPA by executive orders and presidential memoranda to act quickly on big-ticket issues like the Clean Power Plan.

But Pruitt’s pro-industry bent has convinced some current and former employees that he and his like-minded advisers are aiming to destroy the EPA from the inside.

“Look, I think he does not support what the agency has been trying to do for 40 years,” said William Ruckelshaus, EPA administrator under Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “He wants to dismantle — not improve or reform — the regulatory system for protecting public health and the environment.”

Rachel Leven is a reporter on the environment and workers' rights team at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, DC.

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https://www.vox.com:{/2018/9:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/27/17905858/trump-children-health-epa-immigration

The head of an Environmental Protection Agency office in charge of protecting children’s health was put on leave this week, a move she says is part of a Trump administration effort to “disappear” her office.

The New York Times first reported that Ruth Etzel, a renowned pediatrician and head of the Office of Children’s Health Protection, was removed from her post. And since then, a leaked email from Etzel suggested the worst fears of children’s health advocates may be true.

“I appear to be the ‘fall guy’ for their plan to ‘disappear’ the office of children’s health,” Etzel wrote Tuesday in an email obtained by BuzzFeed. “It had been apparent for about 5 months that the top EPA leaders were conducting ‘guerrilla warfare’ against me as the leader of OCHP, but now it’s clearly official.”

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Etzel or her office. It’s small, with a $2 million budget and only 15 full-time employees. But it has the huge responsibility of protecting the youngest people from environmental hazards. And pushing out the boss, a 30-year career employee, rang alarm bells for children’s health professionals.

“Dr. Etzel is a well-respected giant in the field of pediatric environmental health,” Mona Hanna-Attisha, associate professor of pediatrics at Michigan State University, told Vox. “Her role is critical to ensuring that children — who are disproportionately impacted by environmental burdens — are protected.” Removing her, Hanna-Attisha added, may be seen as “a threat to today’s children and generations of children who will bear the brunt of this anti-science and shortsighted disinvestment.”

Vox reached out to the EPA for comment about Etzel’s removal, and in an email, Donna Vizian, principal deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Administration and Resources Management, said, “We do not comment on personnel matters.”

Kevin Bogardus at E&E News reported Friday that the agency put Etzel on leave to review concerns about her leadership of the office[ twt]

[Kevin Bogardus

@KevinBogardus

.@EPA confirms Ruth Etzel, head of its Office of Children’s Health Protection, was placed on leave.

Why? To review “allegations” about her leadership of the office.

Statement from Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson below]

But Etzel’s ouster also appears to be part of a pattern across the Trump administration to repeal, dial back, or stall environmental regulations that were designed to protect kids’ health. Those moves come alongside other administration policies, on issues like immigration and public welfare, that stand to have severe health consequences for children.

There’s a reason the government has regulations in place specifically to protect kids. Little ones are more vulnerable to environmental toxicants; their bodies and brains are developing, and early exposures to harmful substances can have lasting impacts. As the EPA itself notes on its website, children are not little adults. Young people can also suffer lasting health problems from disruptions to nutrition, housing, health care, and family life.

Policymakers have historically recognized this, crafting rules to protect children from toxic chemicals, malnutrition, and abuse. The Trump administration’s attempts to soften or roll back these protections is especially jarring considering we live in a country where kids are already more likely to die before adulthood compared those in other high-income countries.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been happening, and four areas to watch.

1) Reversing a ban on a pesticide EPA’s own analysis finds is particularly harmful to children

In August, the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. But the Department of Justice this week tried to fight the ban and filed an appeal of the decision.

The pesticide is used to kill insects in nearly 100 countries across 8.5 million crop acres per year, making it the most widely used pesticide in agriculture. However, studies have found that chlorpyrifos causes brain damage in children. Researchers reported that its effects take root in utero and manifest when the child is older as lower intelligence and other neurological defects.

Health campaigners petitioned the EPA to determine that there is no safe exposure level for the chlorpyrifos, paving the way for a total ban.

Last year, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt denied the petition, even though the agency’sown assessment stated the “EPA cannot find that any current tolerances are safe and is therefore proposing to revoke all chlorpyrifos tolerances.”

If the legal fight continues, the Supreme Court will have to weigh in on the chlorpyrifos ban.

2) Attempting to delay new lead safety standards for children

Lead is a naturally occurring heavy metal found in mineral deposits in the Earth’s crust. It’s also a poisonous substance for humans. Inside the body, lead can slip into human cells easily and wreak havoc. In children, particularly those under the age of 10 or babies in the womb, the metal can pass through the blood-brain barrier and kill off brain cells. Children absorb up to five times as much lead as adults, and with their smaller bodies and developing nervous systems, it doesn’t take much to sicken them.

That’s why federal and local environmental policies have focused on reducing lead in our environment, and especially protecting children. It’s also why agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recently determined there’s actually no known safe blood concentration for children.

In 2017, the EPA asked for a six-year delay to update 17-year-old regulations on lead in paint and dust, including determining new standards on safe lead levels of lead exposure for children. In December, an appeals court forced the agency to finalize its updated standard within a year.

3) Using immigration policy to limit access to social services

It’s not just trauma of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border: Trump’s proposed immigration rules will harm the health of children of would-be green card holders, too — and the administration knows it.

On Saturday, the Department of Homeland security unveiled a draft regulation that would change how the government evaluates new green card holders, making it possible to deny entry to anyone who is likely to become “public charge.” As Vox’s Dara Lind explained, this could “change the face of legal immigration” in this country, depending on how the document, if finalized, is interpreted.

Lind writes: “the way the regulation is laid out, as long as an immigrant not reliant on social services, not making enough money doesn’t in itself count against an immigrant — she just doesn’t get points in her favor.”

Buried in the document is DHS’s own acknowledgment that the change will harm children. In a list of potential “follow-on effects” from the new policy, the document reads: “Worse health outcomes, including increased prevalence of obesity and malnutrition, especially for pregnant or breastfeeding women, infants, or children, and reduced prescription adherence.”

That’s because, as Lind explains, the new policy would send the “message that immigrants can be punished for using public benefits — and so they should play it safe and un-enroll, or not enroll at all.”

4) Lifting controls on toxic air pollution

Of course, many of the things that harm adults also harm children, so the long list of environmental regulation rollbacks under the Trump administration also pose risks for kids, even when the rules aren’t specifically meant to protect the young.

Air pollution, for example, is particularly hazardous to children, exacerbating infant mortality, asthma, and developmental delays. Earlier this year, the EPA took steps toward deregulating major sources of toxic air pollution. The agency is also relaxing emissions and fuel economy standards for cars, one of the largest sources of air pollution.

Many of these proposals haven’t taken effect, and some have been shot down in the courts as environmental groups, states, and activists have challenged the federal government’s rollbacks of environmental protections. But the administration remains dogged in its deregulatory agenda, so expect more attempts to relax rules that protect the health of the youngest Americans.

==

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see nancy beck:

...But her confidence in the E.P.A.’s resolve was fragile, and it had been shaken by other actions, including the order Ms. Hamnett received to reverse course on banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos.

The order came before Dr. Beck’s arrival at the agency, but Ms. Hamnett saw the industry’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, instructed Ms. Hamnett toignore the recommendation of agency scientists, she said.

The scientists had called for a ban based on research suggesting the pesticide might cause developmental disabilities in children.

Photo Farm workers in a field picking berries. Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide blamed for developmental disabilities in children, is still widely used in agriculture. In March, Mr. Pruitt overrode agency scientists’ recommendation to ban it. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times]

To keep the pesticide on the market, under E.P.A. guidelines, the agency needed to have a “reasonable certainty” that no harm was being caused.

:{:{}:

}:

“The science and the law tell us this is the way to go,” Ms. Hamnett said of a ban.

:{:{}:

}:

But the reaction from her superiors was not about the science or the law, she said. Instead, they queried her about Dow Chemical, the pesticide’s largest manufacturer, which had been lobbying against a ban.

The clash is recorded in Ms. Hamnett notebook as well as in emails among Mr. Pruitt’s top political aides, which were obtained by The Times.

“They are trying to strong arm us,” Mr. Jackson wrote after meeting with Ms. Hamnett, who presented him with a draft petition to ban the pesticide.

Mr. Jackson, Ms. Hamnett’s notebook shows, then asked her to come up with alternatives to a ban. He asserted, her notes show, that he did not want to be “forced into a box” by the petition.

Photo Ms. Hamnett recorded Mr. Jackson’s reaction to a pesticide ban in her notebook.]

“I scared them,” Mr. Jackson wrote in an email to a colleague about his demands on Ms. Hamnett and her team.

As a possible compromise, Ms. Hamnett’s team had been talking to Dow about perhaps phasing out the pesticide instead of imposing an immediate ban. But Dow, after Mr. Trump’s election, was suddenly in no mood to compromise, Ms. Hamnett recalled. Dow did not respond to requests for comment.

She now knew, she said, that the effort to ban the pesticide had been lost, something Mr. Jackson’s emails celebrated.

“They know where this is headed,” Mr. Jackson wrote.

Just over a week later, Ms. Hamnett submitted a draft order that would deny the request for a ban.

“It was hard, very hard,” she said, worrying that the pesticide would continue to harm children of farmworkers. “That was not one of my best days.”

The episode is one reason she worries the E.P.A. will defer to the chemical industry as it begins to evaluate toxic chemicals under the standards created by the new law. She became particularly concerned because of a more recent exchange with Dr. Beck over methylene chloride, which is used in paint removers.

...

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trump epa fail

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-total-disgrace-outrage-as-trump-epa-says-it-wont-ban-pesticide-linked-to-brain-damage-in-children

no lnx

' A total disgrace’: Outrage as Trump EPA says it won’t ban pesticide linked to brain damage in children

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 19, 2019

In a move environmentalists denounced as yet another case of the Trump administration putting industry profits over public health, the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday that it will not ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to brain damage in children.

“By allowing chlorpyrifos to stay in our fruits and vegetables, Trump’s EPA is breaking the law and neglecting the overwhelming scientific evidence that this pesticide harms children’s brains,” Patti Goldman, attorney with Earthjustice said in a statement. “It is a tragedy that this administration sides with corporations instead of children’s health.”

EPA chief Andrew Wheeler’s decision to reject a petition by environmental groups calling for a ban on the neurotoxic chemical ignores the assessments of his agency’s own scientists, said Tiffany Finck-Haynes, pesticides and pollinators program manager for Friends of the Earth.

“The EPA’s refusal to ban chlorpyrifos ignores decades of science showing that this pesticide has irrevocable effects on human health and the environment,” said Finck-Haynes. “The EPA is endangering the lives of children to protect pesticide industry profits.”

Friends of the Earth

@foe_us

Today Trump's @EPA announced that it will not #BanChlorpyrifos — a brain-damaging pesticide that EPA's own scientists have deemed unsafe at any level.

"The EPA is endangering the lives of children to protect pesticide industry profits."https://foe.org/news/trumps-epa-continues-delay-federal-ban-brain-damaging-pesticide-chlorpyrifos-leaving-states-take-action/ …

Trump’s EPA continues to delay federal ban on the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos, leaving...

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will not ban the neurotoxic, brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos. Last summer, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals...

foe.org

Chlorpyrifos has been banned for household use since 2000, but the pesticide is still used by farmers on “more than 50 fruit, nut, cereal, and vegetable crops,” according to the New York Times.

“In 2016,” the Times reported, “more than 640,000 acres were treated with chlorpyrifos in California alone.”

The Obama administration in 2015 proposed banning use of the pesticide on food crops, but former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt authorized its continued use in 2017.

“This is a total disgrace,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) tweeted in response to the EPA’s decision on Thursday.

Finck-Haynes ofFriends of the Earthsaid that as the federal government continues to work on behalf of chemical interests, states must take immediate action to protect the public and the environment.

“While the federal government refuses to act, we urge states to step in, ban chlorpyrifos, and demonstrate that they will safeguard public health and the environment,” said Finck-Haynes. “We call on [New York] Governor [Andrew] Cuomo to sign the chlorpyrifos ban bill sitting on his desk and protect New Yorkers from this toxic pesticide.”

In a statement on Thursday, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) highlighted the Trump administration’s ties to Dow Chemical, the largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States.

“The relationship between President Trump and Dow Chemical… has been called into question,” the group said. “Among other things, the chemical manufacturing giant reportedly donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration, and its CEO previously played a chief advisory role to the president, heading up his now defunct American Manufacturing Council.”

Erik Olson, senior director of health and food at NRDC,said the effort to achieve a ban on chlorpyrifos will continue.

“Until EPA gets this stuff out of our fields and off our food,” said Olson, “this fight is not over.”

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519

yay

California, Nation’s Top User of Chlorpyrifos, Announces Ban on Brain-Damaging Pesticide

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desmog

David Halperin, crossposted from Republic Report

In October 2016, candidate Donald Trump unveiled a package of government ethics reforms that he said would “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC; it included a ban on former federal employees lobbying the government for five years and stricter rules on what constitutes lobbying. He seemed to be promising to undermine the power of special interest lobbyists and restore government to the people.

But Trump’s every move since being elected has been in the opposite direction. A former coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, runs the Environmental Protection Agency; an ex-pharmaceutical lobbyist, Alex Azar, runs Health and Human Services; former for-profit college lobbyists control policy at Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education; and much more. On issue after issue, from weakening protections against toxic pollution, to undermining access to health care, to giving tax advantages to the rich, the administration has sided with wealthy interests over working people.

This Thursday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to consider Trump’s nomination of another former industry lobbyist, David Bernhardt, to be Secretary of the Interior.

Bernhardt, currently the Department’s acting secretary and deputy secretary, would replace Ryan Zinke, whose reign was characterized by troubling conflicts of interest, paired with an extraordinarily audacious sense of entitlement and self-aggrandizement.

Bernhardt is less flamboyant, more skilled in the ways of law and government.  But in terms of the ways that money corrupts politics and policy, his record is even more concerning.

David Bernhardt is the ultimate swamp creature.

The weekend brought the revelation, in a *Reveal* / *Politico* report, that at a 2017 meeting of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), Dan Naatz, the group’s political director, was recorded telling the 100 executives gathered that then-deputy secretary Bernhardt was their boy.  “We know him very well,” Naatz said, “and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues.”

Naatz didn’t stop there. He predicted that Zinke would be the Interior figurehead, while Bernhardt would get things done: “What secretaries of Interior do is go out to Yellowstone, go out to Tetons … have big vision for what they’re going to do… David is going to be the COO. David’s going to move the pieces. David’s going to be part of that, and we know him well.”

Barry Russell, IPAA’s CEO, bragged in the session of meeting with Zinke and with Scott Pruitt, then the EPA head. He also noted that Bernhardt, while at the powerhouse DC lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt, had led IPAA’s legal team challenging federal endangered species rules: “The guy that actually headed up that group is now the No. 2 at Interior. So that’s worked out well.”

An Interior spokesperson told the Reveal reporter that Bernhardt “has had no communication or contact with either Barry Russell or Dan Naatz.”

But there’s no doubt that these men and other oil and mining lobbyists have gotten what they wanted out of the Trump administration, especially from their faithful servant David Bernhardt.

During that 2017 meeting, IPAA circulated a “regulatory update” memo, listing five major environmental laws and regulations they wanted to overturn. Since then, the Trump administration has gutted four of those five targets — measures that were aimed at (1) limiting water pollution from energy fracking; (2) reducing climate change-causing methane gas releases; (3) requiring restoration of public lands damaged by energy projects; and (4) holding energy companies accountable for harms to migratory birds.

An earlier Reveal report, last month, exposed Interior Department emails showing that Bernhardt played a critical role in the 2017 decision to revoke the government’s 50-year authority to use the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to prosecute companies that accidentally kill migratory birds through activities like oil drilling.

While Bernhardt is legendary for his skill at avoiding a paper trail for his activities — he  claims, “I have not personally maintained a calendar for years” — Reveal also has documented that Naatz and other IPAA representatives met in April 2018 with Todd Willens, Bernhardt’s top aide, to discuss the migratory birds issue, as well as the rules requiring restoration of public lands. Hours later, Willens met with Bernhardt.

Another investigative piece, published in the New York Times last month, revealed that, since 2017, Bernhardt has been pushing at Interior to eliminate another environmental rule, one he had long been paid to oppose as a lobbyist — protection against destruction of a species of river fish. Bernhardt admitted to the Times that four months after joining Interior, he directed a senior Department official to initiate an effort to weakening protections for the fish in order to free up water for agricultural businesses — the same businesses Bernhardt had represented while at Brownstein Hyatt.

Bernhardt’s intervention in a matter he had pursued as a lobbyist appears to have violated the Trump administration’s ethics pledge, requiring officials to refrain from such involvement for at least two years. Last month, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), along with the non-profits Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen, called for investigations of this potential violation.

Invoking a strained and dubious interpretation of the ethics pledge— that Bernhardt’s actions at Interior are legal because he has worked on the broad issue of water rights, and not just the included issues affecting his ex-clients — Bernhardt and Interior spokespersons insist that he complied, and generally assert that he has abided by all regulations governing ethics and recusal. But even if that were true, the scandal, as is often the case, isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what is still legal in swampy Washington DC.

Bernhardt epitomizes the Washington revolving door— getting paid by taxpayers to master policy issues in government jobs, and cashing in on his experience and connections as an industry lobbyist. In 1998, he jumped from his job as an aide to a House Republican to join Brownstein Hyatt. He later entered the George W. Bush Interior Department as a top aide to Secretary Gale Norton and then as the Department’s chief lawyer, and he worked to overturn the congressional prohibition on oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge. When the Bush administration ended, Bernhardt returned to Brownstein Hyatt, where he lobbied for or advised dozens of energy and mining companies and trade associations, like IPAA, seeking to end or avoid Interior regulations.

Among other work at Brownstein Hyatt, Bernhardt lobbied on behalf of EP Energy to delay protections against air pollution from coal-fired power plants. He worked for Rosemont Copper,  which seeks to dispose of toxic waste in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona.In the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon gulf oil disaster, Bernhardt lobbied to expand offshore drilling on behalf of Cobalt International Energy, a company probed by federal law enforcement agencies for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

More than 150 organizations joined a letter opposing Trump’s appointment of Bernhardt as deputy secretary, charging that the nominee was “laden with conflicts of interest that raise serious questions about his ability to act in the public interest.” (More than 160 groups signed a new letter, released today, opposing Bernhardt’s confirmation to be secretary.) Indeed, critics have labelled Bernhardt “a walking conflict of interest,” and as if to prove that, he reportedly carries with him a small card that lists all his potential conflicts.

While brushing aside concerns about his own conflicts, Bernhardt charged last month in a letter to Interior staff that Department’s “ethics challenges were part of a mess that we inherited” from the Obama administration, which he appeared to denounce for “a culture of ethics avoidance” and “an avalanche of ethical misconduct.”

Meanwhile, Bernhardt’s former firm, Brownstein Hyatt, is now the second biggest-earning lobby operation in DC, with reported lobbying revenues rising to $31.6 million in 2018.

Bernhardt and other Brownstein Hyatt lobbyists have, since 2013, donated almost $1 million to senators who will vote on his confirmation for the Interior job.

And yet another report, in the Times today, shows that Bernhardt led an effort to block the release of a government analysis of the dangers that various pesticides create for a range of endangered species, and replace it with a narrower approach sought by chemical manufacturers. One of those companies, Dow, had donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration.

CNN has calculated that since Bernhardt joined Interior in 2017, the Department has made at least 15 policy changes or proposals that would directly aid former Bernhardt clients.

Trump seems to love Bernhardt these days, because, unlike former defense secretary James Mattis, who slow-walked Trump’s demand for a military parade, Bernhardt has been willing to indulge the president’s fantasy for a Trumpified 4th of July celebration. “David, you’re taking care of that,” Trump said, regarding the July 4 plans, to Bernhardt at one of his staged cabinet meetings, “and we’ll see how it works out with schedules and everything else.” Bernhardt also escorted Trump and Vice President Pence on a 90-second visit to the Martin Luther King memorial on MLK day in January.

For Bernhardt, a master DC operator, playing Trump probably isn’t too hard. Give him his parade, tell him you’re making America great again, and you can go to town destroying protections for public lands, clean air and water, and endangered species, and protections against dangerous climate change, all to benefit your former, and likely future, corporate clients.

With revolving door men like David Bernhardt running our government, Trump’s promises to drain the swamp, and to fight for every day Americans, are revealed to be, as someone might put it, a total and complete hoax.

==

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no lnx kos

it ’s rare when the findings on an environmental problem are this definitive. With shifting climate conditions and all the other aspects of human activity and how it impacts the biosphere, sharp population declines can take animals and plants to the brink of extinction and still leave scientists scratching their heads over what went wrong. That’s what makes the Interior Department analysis of the pesticides malathion and chlorpyrifos such a victory—and what happened next such a horror show.

The New York Times reports that the two pesticides were found to be such a threat that they “jeopardized the continued existence” of not just a few species, but over 1,200 species, ranging from tiny fish to colorful birds to kit foxes. The pesticides are a potent cocktail for disaster, and the Fish and Wildlife Service spent years putting together an airtight case that the two had to be banned to avoid massive ecological disaster.

The findings were set to become public at the end of 2017. But then … they didn’t. Instead, Donald Trump inserted industry lobbyist David Bernhardt as deputy secretary of the interior. Bernhardt blocked the release of the information, announced new rules narrowing the means by which Fish and Wildlife could evaluate the data, and sent the whole study back to square one—not just wiping out years of work, but putting hundreds of species and whole ecosystems at risk of collapse.

For his work in assisting the pesticide industry, Bernhardt is now on track for a promotion. He is Trump’s new nominee to be the next secretary of the interior, and his confirmation hearing is coming up on Thursday. Bernhardt would replace Ryan Zinke, who abruptly left his position after a series of scandals. It may not seem possible, but Bernhardt is worse. As the Natural Resources Defense Council explains, this isn’t Bernhardt’s first go-round in Washington. He’s a top predator in the lobbyist swamp, having spent more than 20 years on every aspect of ruining public lands from opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee to oil drilling, to putting snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park.

And it will come as absolutely no surprise that Dow, the company behind chlorpyrifos, donated $1 million to Trump’s shady inaugural committee.

Since Trump’s crew took over, Dow has been a regular visitor at both the EPA and the Interior Department. The changes in the way pesticides are being treated that Bernhardt put in place didn’t originate with Bernhardt. They are exactly what Dow requested.

Dow and other pesticide manufacturers were aware of the study when Trump came into office. They followed up their fat contributions with letters to Zinke at Interior, Scott Pruitt at EPA, and Wilbur Ross at Commerce, asking all of them to “set aside” the findings. Zinke was still interior secretary when the regulations were turned back, but it was Bernhardt who put his name to the policy changes and tossed a study that would have dealt with a massive ecological threat that will now continue for years.

Since taking office, Trump has made hundreds of vague and unsupported statements about how America’s water was “cleaner than ever” and how the country had “moved to the top of the charts” on the environment. Trump continues to produce these nonsensical statements, pulled from the so-so-clean streams of his nether regions, even as he lifts bans on pollution from fracking, allows mines to fill streams and rivers with waste, and leaves a rapidly ticking time bomb of pesticides in place.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-house-brain-damaging-pesticides-2613568873.html

Trump White House Pushes to Let Minors Spray Brain-Damaging Pesticides on Farms

The White House's just-released list of planned environmental and public health rollbacks includes letting high-school-age kids spray brain-damaging pesticides on commercial farms.

The plan would drop the age of workers permitted to spray restricted-use pesticides on crops from 18 to 16. Minors would be allowed to apply dangerous chemicals such as chlorpyrifos, which U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists say can cause brain damage in children even in small doses.

The move, which would take effect next September, was first announced last year by Scott Pruitt, the former head of the EPA, who was forced in July to resign after a string of ethical scandals.In one of the first acts of the Trump administration, Pruitt aborted a scheduled ban of chlorpyrifos just weeks after meeting with the CEO of Dow, chlorpyrifos's manufacturer.

Pruitt's reversal of the ban was recently overturned by a federal appeals court. Under acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, the EPA is fighting the court's order to ban the pesticide.

The minimum age rules were enacted by the Obama administration to protect minors who work on farms. Many of these teenagers are migrant workers who speak little English, making it harder to understand directions on how to apply pesticides safely. The rules were championed by physicians and farmworker-rights advocates, who led a multi-year effort to improve protections for farmworkers.

"Letting younger teenagers handle dangerous pesticides fits perfectly with the Trump administration's war on children's health protection," said EWG President Ken Cook. "There are other farm jobs they could do that don't involve strapping containers of dangerous chemicals on their backs that they will inhale and ingest. But this administration will let unscrupulous farm bosses risk these kids' health."

"Maybe the president should pick up a spray nozzle for a day and see what it's like walking through a plume of pesticide fumes," said Cook. "But the closest he gets to a farm is flying over them on the way to his golf resorts and MAGA rallies."

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Hawaii Bans Use of Toxic Pesticide Chlorpyrifos ›
• Trump Administration Asks Court to Re-Hear Case That Banned ... ›

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Hawaii Becomes First State in the U.S. to Ban the Toxic Pesticide, Chlorpyrifos

Tuesday Hawaii made history, as it became the first state in the U.S. to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a highly toxic neurotoxin that causes significant damage to brain development in children. The pesticide's detrimental health effects led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Obama administration to propose banning all of its agricultural uses, but the Pruitt-led EPA under the current administration reversed this pledge. The bill, SB3095, is a significant first step in protecting public health from pesticide harms for the State of Hawaii. In addition to banning chlorpyrifos, SB3095 requires all users of Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs) to report usage of these pesticides, and mandates minimum 100-foot no-spray zones for RUPs around schools during school hours.

=== https://www.alternet.org/environment/thanks-scott-pruitt-30-million-pounds-brain-damaging-pesticide-will-be-sprayed-crops

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https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-syngenta-pesticides-2535467506.html

Trump EPA Slammed for Ag Giant's 'Absurdly Low' Pesticide Fine

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a settlement this week with Syngenta Seeds, LLC over violations of federal pesticide regulations at its farm in Kauai, Hawaii.

The company, a subsidiary of Swiss biotech giant Syngenta AG, agreed to pay a civil penalty of $150,000 and spend another $400,000 on worker protection training sessions.

"Reducing pesticide exposure for the millions of farmworkers who cultivate our food is a high priority for EPA," said Alexis Strauss, EPA's acting regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest. "This settlement will bring to Hawaii and Pacific Island growers much-needed training to protect agricultural workers."

That fine, however, is a tiny fraction of the $4.8 million in civil penalties initially sought by President Obama's EPA.

According to an EPA complaint, on Jan. 29, 2016, 19 workers entered a Syngenta field recently sprayed with a restricted use organophosphate insecticide. Ten of these workers had to be taken to the hospital for medical treatment.

The EPA alleged that Syngenta misused the pesticide "Lorsban Advanced," and failed to notify workers to avoid the field. The active ingredient in "Lorsban Advanced" happens to be chlorpyrifos, a controversial insecticide linked to a host of health and environmental problems. It was said that Syngenta allowed workers to enter the site without protective gear and did not provide adequate decontamination supplies at the field, nor did it supply prompt transportation for emergency medical care.

Then, in an amended complaint filed this month, Syngenta again violated pesticide use rules in January 2017 after a worker sprayed chlorpyrifos on a field but did warn work crews about the treated areas. One worker who said he was exposed experienced "adverse health effects" as a result.

Chlorpyrifos is widely used in citrus, nuts and orchards. Chemical maker Dow Chemical sells about 5 million pounds of it in the U.S. each year.

But chlorpyrifos is acutely toxic and associated with neurodevelopmental harms in children. Furthermore, the EPA released a report indicating that that 97 percent of the more than 1,800 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act are likely to be harmed by the commonly used insecticide.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-pesticides-assessments-2509672274.html

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Trump Administration Seeks Two-Year Delay on Pesticide Assessments Following Industry Request

The Trump administration filed a motion before a federal judge requesting two more years to complete an assessment on the risks of three common pesticides on endangered species.

The pesticides in question—chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon—are three organophosphate insecticides known to harm the vast majority of the nearly 1,800 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to an extensive federal study.

Notably, the Associated Press reported, the administration's motion comes after chlorpyrifos-maker Dow Chemical Co. and two other organophosphate manufacturers asked the government to ignore the findings of the aforementioned study.

"It's appallingly clear that the pesticide industry is now essentially running Trump's EPA," said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This disturbing request shows that [EPA administrator Scott] Pruitt and Trump are more interested in protecting the profits of their corporate buddies than the hundreds of endangered species threatened by these deadly pesticides."

If the request is granted, it would modify a 2014 legal agreement secured by the Center for Biological Diversity that required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess the pesticides' harms by the end of 2017.

According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

?"Under the Endangered Species Act, the EPA must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure its actions do not jeopardize endangered species or harm their habitats.

Despite this clear mandate, the EPA has essentially ignored the plight of endangered species injured and killed by pesticides. Only after the Center's 2014 legal victory did the agency agree to comply with this long-standing requirement.

Unless the court approves the new delay request, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries services will use those assessments to develop common-sense measures to reduce the pesticides' harm to endangered species—for example by limiting spraying in their habitat—by the end of the year."

The Associated Press pointed out that this move "is the latest example of the Trump administration seeking to block or delay environmental rules at the behest of the industry."

Dow contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee. President Trump also named Dow CEO Andrew Liveris head of his American Manufacturing Council and received the president's ceremonial pen used to sign the executive order aimed at eliminating regulations that he claims are damaging to the U.S. economy.

In March, according to records obtained by the Associated Press, Pruitt met with Liveris for about 30 minutes at a Houston hotel. Later that month, Pruitt announced that he would no longer pursue a ban on chlorpyrifos from being used on food, ignoring his agency's own review that even small amounts of the pesticide could impact fetus and infant brain development.

In March, according to records obtained by the Associated Press, Pruitt met with Liveris for about 30 minutes at a Houston hotel. Later that month, Pruitt announced that he would no longer pursue a ban on chlorpyrifos from being used on food, ignoring his agency's own review that even small amounts of the pesticide could impact fetus and infant brain development.

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Mny of the negative effects of the Trump administration are intangible, either taking the form of psychological trauma or economic and environmental harm that will only be understood in the fullness of time. But there’s at least one consequence that won’t take years to discover: damaged brains across America.

That may sound hyperbolic, but it refers to the very real effects of a chemical called chlorpyrifos. Originally, chlorpyrifos belonged to a class of chemicals developed in Nazi-era Germany as a form of nerve gas. The chemical later proved to be an effective insecticide and became one of the most widely used pesticides in the United States—until studies began to reveal its side-effects.

It turns out chlorpyrifos wreaks havoc on human and animal brains. As Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times recently reported, numerous studies have shown how the chemical "damages the brain and reduces I.Q.s while causing tremors among children."

Chlorpyrifos, which has worked its way into the food, water and air supply of the U.S., has also been linked to cases of lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

So why isn’t the toxic stuff banned already? That's a good question. Around 17 years ago the Environmental Protection Agency did ban the pesticide for residential use and under the Obama administration was on its way to extending that ban to agriculture and outdoor use this past spring. And then the Trump administration intervened by rejecting the ban.

Connecting the dots here isn't difficult. As Kristof points out, the "nerve gas pesticide" is made by Dow Chemicals, a company that donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration. In return, Dow is now allowed to continue spraying its toxic pesticide on crops and public lands for years to come.

"This was a chemical developed to attack the nervous system," Virginia Rauh, a Columbia professor who has conducted research on the pesticide, told Kristof. "It should not be a surprise that it’s not good for people."

Scientists from the EPA came to a similar conclusion years ago when they discovered that fruits and vegetables treated with this pesticide contained "up to 140 times the limits deemed safe."

A Dow spokesperson told Kristof that the company "stands by the safety of chlorpyrifos." Despite protests from the American Academy of Pediatrics that say otherwise, the Trump administration chose the interest of industry over concerns for public health. Following years of effort to rid the world of a proven harmful substance, Americans will now continue to be exposed to Dow Chemical Company's nerve gas pesticide.

"This is troubling for every single one of us who eats fruits and vegetables—especially children and expecting mothers—all across the country," said NRDC senior scientist Jen Sass. "No matter how you vote, there are some issues we should all be able to agree on, and this is one of them: Chemicals that are dangerous for our children’s health do not belong in the food we feed our families. And we will not stand by while a powerful industry continues to put them at risk."

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