Interior Nominee Censored Endangered Species Assessment of Organophosphates

[struggle4progress]

Mar 29, 2019 | ENVIRONMENT

... While chlorpyrifos is the worst of the three, the censored biological opinion includes similarly concerning findings for two other organophosphate pesticides, malathion and diazinon, which are currently jeopardizing 1,284 and 175 species, respectively. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that that all organophosphates have a common mechanisms of effect and therefore the multiple exposures to these pesticides lead to a cumulative risk ...

Mr. Bernhardt, whose nomination for Secretary of the Interior may be confirmed today, led the Department of the Interior’s effort to block the release of these critical findings. According to documents obtained by CBD through a Freedom of Information Act request, Mr. Bernhardt had six meetings with Fish and Wildlife in October of 2017, and was shown a recovered PowerPoint containing the findings of the three organophosphates’ widespread harms to endangered plants and animals. Following these meetings, Mr. Bernhardt helped to draft a letter stating that the assessment was not ready for release.

The FWS opinion, a compilation of nearly four years of rigorous scientific review, was not just a routine assessment; rather, it was the outcome of a legal settlement with CBD, which required EPA and FWS to make such assessments public by the end of 2017. In April of 2017, Dow AgroSciences directly requested that the agencies abandon the assessment. Seven months later, under the direction of the Department of the Interior, FWS indefinitely delayed efforts to release the already completed assessment, thus failing to fulfill the terms of the settlement and their mandate under the Endangered Species Act.

This latest revelation adds to a trend of Trump administration officials interfering with a legally mandated environmental assessment and regulation. In fact, Mr. Bernhardt would have had less opportunity for the present interference, had it not been for former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s push, in collaboration with Dow Chemical, to keep chlorpyrifos on the market in 2017 ...

https://citizentruth.org/documents-reveal-that-interior-nominee-censored-endangered-species-assessment-of-organophosphates/

[KT2000]

1. here is the trick of this

in order to protect humans we must rely on the Endangered Species Act. It has already been revealed that chlopyrifos harms humans, especially children - their brains while developing. When a chemical harms or kills humans that only means it will take years, decades of arguing before anything is done. When it affects the endangered species, they MUST act.

Humans depend on the laws protecting endangered species and air quality in national parks. The protections for actual humans is very weak. We are racking up damage to humans from endocrine disrupting chemicals and the arguments have been going on since the 1960s - nothing NOTHING has been done.