EPA Disregards Toxic Weed Killer’s Risks To Children

By: Mary Ellen Kustin (EWG)

The Environmental Protection Agency appears poised to approve Dow Chemical’s bid to market a new toxic weed killer based on an agency analysis that failed to consider its danger to children’s health, as federal law requires.

This new toxic herbicide would be marketed to farmers to indiscriminately spray on fields of corn and soybeans that have been planted with recently developed genetically engineered varieties built to withstand the spraying. The EPA has indicated that if the U.S. Department of Agriculture allows for the new GE corn and soybean crops to be unregulated on the open market, the agency will follow suit and approve the weed killer created to be used on those crops.

EPA is accepting public comments through June 30, 2014 on their pending decision to approve the weed killer. And they could make their final decision anytime after the comment period closes.

But the EPA failed to fully assess the serious health risks of a new herbicide formulation that, if approved, would lead to the largest increase in use of a known toxic weed killer in decades.

Dow AgroSciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company) has asked EPA to rubber-stamp its application for widespread distribution of Enlist^® Duo herbicide, a mixture of 2,4-D and glyphosate, the main herbicide found in Monsanto’s best-selling RoundUp^® weed killer.

EWG’s analysis of EPA’s recent risk assessment for 2,4-D and Enlist^® Duo finds that the agency did not take steps to protect children’s health, as required by the Food Quality Protection Act. (Full story here)… 

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