The nation's most productive agricultural state will ban a widely used toxic pesticide blamed for harming brain development in babies, California officials said Wednesday.
The move would outlaw chlorpyrifos after scientists deemed it a toxic air contaminant and discovered it to be more dangerous than previously thought. State Environmental Secretary Jared Blumenfeld said it's the first time the state has sought to ban a pesticide and the move was overdue."This pesticide is a neurotoxin and it was first put on the market in 1965," Blumenfeld said."So it's been on the shelf a long time and it's past its sell-by date.
DowDuPont, which produces the pesticide, has criticized efforts to curtail its use and said it will hurt farmers who rely on it to control insects. The pesticide is in a class of organophosphates chemically similar to a nerve gas developed by Nazi Germany before World War II. Its heavy use has often left traces in drinking water sources. A UC Berkeley study in 2012 found that 87% of umbilical-cord blood samples tested from newborn babies contained detectable levels of the pesticide.
Studies in cities where the pesticide was once used to kill cockroaches before it was banned for indoor use in 2000 and in rural farmworker communities showed it harmed brain development in fetuses, affected reading ability and IQ, and led to hyperactivity in children, Solomon said. Even head sizes were smaller in children whose mothers were exposed to the pesticide.
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