The soaring number of children with developmental disabilities over the last three decades has alarmed and baffled researchers. Theories abound, from vaccine side effects, which Big Pharma has spared little expense trying to discredit, to looking at genetic patterns and sequencing that might provide clues to vulnerability. Of course, common sense dictates environmental factors be examined, surely pollutants are a natural suspect proven over the years to cause all manner of other maladies; why wouldn’t government watchdogs air on the side of caution and limit the exposure of unborns to such toxins? Why indeed!
Chlorpyrifos was introduced by Dow Chemical in 1965. Designed to kill insects in rural, business and residential settings, Dow aggressively promoted its distribution. Oranges, apples and bananas, among other cash crops, were held out as benefitting from regularly scheduled applications of the pesticide. More than 100 countries were targeted by Dow and became reliable chlorpyrifos consumers.
But like many Dow breakthroughs of the 50s and 60s, what made the product effective also rendered it dangerous to humans. Deemed a level II toxin by the World Health Organization, the pesticide was tied to chronic wheezing, immune issues and lung cancer in adults. However, children, specifically unborn children, were shown to be particularly vulnerable to the product’s nasty side effects.
In utero exposure is the most difficult scenario to research and draw conclusions about when looking for links to developmental problems. What pregnant women ate and where they may have been exposed is hard to catalog and investigate. But chlorpyrifos was prolific enough to emerge early on as a prime suspect. Residential use of the product was prohibited in 2001; by the time the Obama EPA moved to ban chlorpyrifos completely, many felt it was long overdue. Indeed, a study released in 2012 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) concluded that even limited exposure to the pesticide could impact pre-natal brain development, while higher levels produced “abnormal areas of enlargement and indentation across the surface of the brain.”
Scott Pruitt came into his duties as Trump’s EPA Administrator with an ambitious agenda. Nowhere was he more activist than rolling back regulations deemed to have removed once profitable products from the marketplace. Anywhere the science was debatable – read corporate lobbyist claims – Pruitt wasn’t just going to offer a benefit of the doubt, he was going to employ the full weight of his office. The regulatory history of chlorpyrifos fit that paradigm to a tee.
On March 29 of last year, Pruitt issued the following statement in heralding his decision to lift the Obama ban on chlorpyrifos:
“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment. By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.”
The statement aped the climate change talktrack, essentially accusing the research community, dedicated to getting to the bottom of a horrific epidemic of children suffering life-ruining maladies from the minute they emerge in the delivery room, of bad faith conclusions meant to addle respectable commerce.
Of course, the spectrum of developmental deficits is non-partisan, with no regard for political affiliation. Yet and still, that hasn’t stopped Trump and his Fox/AM creators, as they do with every other issue, from declaring us against them when it comes to regulation of poisons. Worrying about the unborn as anything other than the political football of pro-life righteousness is a liberal deficiency. Compelling evidence linking a toxin of the same family developed by Nazi weapon makers to pre-natal and infant injuries can be breezily condemned because, after all, “the left” are hypocrites, who support killing babies through abortion. Ah, the circular insanity of nihilism.
Scott Pruitt has been run out of DC on a rail, the result, not of overt subservience to corporate money which the chlorpyrifos action fully exemplified, but a long list of other outrageously corrupt personal perks he felt entitled to enjoy. Better yet, his decision to lift the ban on Chlorpyrifos sales met with similar ignominy the other day. In a split decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled there was no justification for Pruitt’s policy “in the face of scientific evidence that it’s residue on food causes nuerodevelopmental damage to children.” The EPA has 60 days to ban all sale of chlorpyrifos.
While this story seems to end on the hopeful note that enough institutional decency exists to check at least the most extreme assaults by Trumpism on hard won regulatory gains directed at protecting our children, don’t get the champagne out just yet. Pruitt’s successor, Andrew Wheeler may not be the unhinged show horse few missed when sent packing back to Oklahoma, but he has spent his career feeding at the same trough. And while, the court’s ruling was forceful, Wheeler’s spokesman merely acknowledged the agency was “reviewing the decision.” Stay tuned.
In this Administration nobody ever says never when it comes to senselessly attacking what its wretched core has been taught to disdain… even as their children suffer the same fate as the ones they couldn’t care less about. BC