Together, the four chemicals make up over 40 percent of annual pesticide use in the United States. The settlement, announced on Feb. 19, 2016, has been a long time in coming, according to Brett Hartl, the endangered species policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a national, nonprofit conservation organization with over 990,000 members.
“Once the Fish and Wildlife Service completes its analysis, and the public finally learns just how toxic and deadly these pesticides are to endangered species, we hope that the government will ultimately take most of these products off the shelf,” said Hartl in a press release from the center.
The Environmental Protection Agency is required by law to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on the impact of pesticides on endangered plants and animals before it registers the pesticide under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.
Actually, back in the summer of 2015, after a series of lawsuits brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, an agreement was reached that would have the EPA begin analyzing the harmful affects of atrazine and glyphosates by June 2020.
The new settlement dated February 19, 2016, follows along the same lines as the 2015 settlement with the EPA. In the new settlement, the USFWS will have until December 2022 to finish the consultation process on the four chemicals. It is expected that analysis will lead to some permanent restrictions on some of the most harmful uses of these toxic pesticides.
“With more than 300 million pounds of Roundup and 80 million pounds of atrazine being dumped on the landscape each year, it’s hard to even fathom the damage being done to endangered species, our environment, and our own health,” said Hartl.
Bringing the Endangered Species Act into the picture is probably the only way left to get the EPA to stop acting as a “rubber-stamp” for the agro-chemical industry and start protecting the environment as they are supposed to in making decisions about dangerous chemicals we are dumping all over the country.
Glyphosate has been linked to the decline in a number of wildlife species and claims by some people it has made them ill. The increased use of glyphosates has come with the widespread use of herbicide tolerant genetically engineered crops such as corn, cotton and soy, to name a few.
Last year, the World Health Organization announced that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen, and just the other day, the Food and Drug Administration announced it would begin testing for glyphosates in food. Glyphosate is the name of the chemical used in the widely popular herbicde Roundup, made by Monsanto.
Next to glyphosate, atrazine is the second most used pesticide. It is widely used on corn and sugarcane crops, golf courses and residential lawns. What consumers don’t know is that atrazine has been found in 94 percent of the drinking water in the U.S., with the highest levels being found in the Midwest where corn is grown. Atrazine has been linked to linked to increased risks of thyroid cancer, reproductive harm and birth defects in people.
The bottom line, folks, is that our government agencies are legally and morally responsible for ensuring that harmful chemicals are not being used on our environment that could cause harm to our wildlife, our land and most important, those of us who live here.
