EPA proposes to ban chlorpyrifos on most food

The US Environmental Protection Agency plans to prohibit use of the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos on food, except for critical uses on 11 food and feed crops, the agency announced Dec. 2 in a proposed rule. The action comes after years of back-and-forth between the agency and the courts over whether to ban the insecticide, which is linked to adverse neurodevelopmental effects in children.

The EPA’s latest proposal is in response to a 2023 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. That ruling reversed a ban on chlorpyrifos on food that had been finalized by the EPA in 2021. In its reversal decision, the court stated that the EPA had failed to consider whether chlorpyrifos could be applied safely to a few select crops.

The court referenced 11 crops—alfalfa, apples, asparagus, cherries, citrus, cotton, peaches, soybeans, strawberries, sugar beets, and wheat. In late 2020, under the first Trump administration, the EPA said chlorpyrifos provides high benefits for those same crops and is critical for managing insects on them.

The agency’s new proposal would allow chlorpyrifos on only those 11 crops, in line with the 2023 court ruling. Prohibiting the insecticide on all other food crops could decrease its use by 70% compared with historical trends, the agency says in a news release.

Use of chlorpyrifos has been declining for years. A handful of states, including California, have banned the chemical. In 2020, when sales of chlorpyrifos ended in California, Corteva Agriscience announced that it would stop producing it because of low demand.

Environmental groups welcome the EPA’s proposal but say it doesn’t go far enough to protect children and farmworkers. The Biden administration “inherited a backlog of pesticides needing action to safeguard children from preventable learning disabilities and behavioral disorders,” Patti Goldman, an attorney at the environmental law group Earthjustice, says in a statement. “Unless the EPA acts quickly to finalize proposed food bans on chlorpyrifos and other organophosphates, it will leave children without desperately needed protections.”

The EPA is separately evaluating the safety of chlorpyrifos and other organophosphate pesticides as part of a routine registration-review process that happens every 15 years for pesticides sold in the US. The agency expects to make an interim decision in 2026 on whether chlorpyrifos can remain on the US market.