6/20/2019 Update: HB 2619 did not make it out of commitee, but NCAP and allies will work to reintroduce the bill in 2020.
4/30/2019 Update: HB 2619, to ban chlorpyrifos, is in the House Rules Committee. Please contact the legislators in the committee and urge them to support a ban on chlorpyrifos:
Speaker of the Oregon House, Tina Kotek
503 986-1200, [email protected]
Majority Leader, Jennifer Williamson
503 986-1436, [email protected]
Rules Chairman, Paul Holvey
503 986-1408, [email protected]
Rules Member, Rob Nosse
503 986-1442, [email protected]
Minority Leader and Rules Member, Carl Wilson
503 986-1403, [email protected]
Rules Member, Denyc Boles
503 986-1419, [email protected]
Rules Member, Barbara Smith Warner
503 986-1445, [email protected]
Rules Member, Sherrie Sprenger
503 986-1417, [email protected]
Sample Email:
Dear members of the House Rules Committee,
As an Oregon resident, I urge you to protect the health of our communities and wildlife by supporting HB 2619 to ban chlorpyrifos. EPA scientists concluded that chlorpyrifos is dangerous at ANY level of exposure, yet we are eating it on our foods, drinking it in our waters, allowing farm workers to be exposed, and putting endangered wildlife at further risk. Please support a ban on this toxic pesticide today.
Sincerely,
[Your name here]
[Your city, Oregon]
Background Information
Getting the worst pesticides off the market is an on-going effort. Ideally, all safety tests would be ordered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and completed prior to registration. In reality, most pesticides undergo limited testing prior to being authorized for sale. Long-term effects, such as cancer or developmental harms, are often not understood until years after the chemical has been on the market and making its way into our water and bodies.
When we do figure out that a pesticide is harming human health, we need to take it off the market. Right now in Oregon, we have that chance with House Bill 2619. The bill would prohibit the use and sale of a pesticide called chlorpyrifos in Oregon.
Chlorpyrifos is a Big Problem
Sold under various trade names (Lorsban, Dursban and others), chlorpyrifos is used to kill insects and mites in many grains, vegetables, nuts, fruit (and in non-food crops such as Christmas trees and nursery crops). Apples, corn, strawberries, and broccoli are some of the common foods we eat that are frequently treated with chlorpyrifos.
According to EPA’s 2016 risk assessment, chlorpyrifos damages the developing brains of children, causing delays in mental development in babies and toddlers, attention problems and autism spectrum disorder in early childhood, and intelligence diminishment in school age children who were exposed to chlorpyrifos during gestation. Prenatal exposure to very low chlorpyrifos levels can harm babies permanently.
Chlorpyrifos also is found on our food at dangerous levels. According to EPA’s 2016 risk assessment, we are all consuming much more chlorpyifos than any level EPA deems safe. Children ages one to two are exposed to levels of chlorpyrifos in food 140 times what EPA deems safe.
Chlorpyrifos is extremely harmful to the farm and field workers who grow our food, who get inhalation exposures as they work. Finally, chlorpyrifos gets into our streams and is threatening our already highly diminished endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead. In 2017, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that this chemical jeopardizes the survival and recovery of all listed salmon and steelhead in Oregon, Washington and California. Orca whales in Washington are also jeopardized by chlorpyrifos.
The EPA was reportedly ready to ban this insecticide, recognizing the harm. Then, President Trump appointed Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA and the ban was set aside. The New York Times reports that the chemical’s manufacturer conducted heavy lobbying prior to the reversal of EPA’s decision.
Join Us in Helping Pass This Law
Please call your legislator and let them know we need this bill to protect Oregon children, farm workers, farmers, and streams.
Find your legislator here.
Want to learn more about chlorpyrifos? See: https://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-chlorpyrifos
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As an Oregonian we deeply value living in a clean and safe environment. We believe that Oregon is a forward-thinking state that has the gumption to do to take bold action without corporate influence, to protect the citizens and non-human life of this incredible land we call home. Invisible poisons have been allowed to be spread all over our land and waters due to perpetual delay in action of our legislators and a ‘favorable regulatory climate’ at the national level, ((the outcome of decades of intense lobbying by the chemical industry (and downright corruption i.e.: the ‘greasing of the palms’)). This is why you, as an Oregon legislator or agency, beholden to the citizens of Oregon and not to behemoth multinational chemical corporations, must not further delay in the outright ban of chemicals known to cause a myriad of health problems, neurological damage and mortality to the inhabitants of our state and beyond.
Please immediately ban the toxic pesticides that are polluting the soil, water and lifeforms of Oregon. This cannot and must not wait any longer. These toxic chemicals are causing catastrophic losses to our native birds, pollinators, fish and biodiversity as a whole, in addition to the severe lifelong neurological defects in humans. This message is to strongly support ODA in taking steps to protect Oregonians from highly hazardous pesticides. The rules must fully phase out ALL uses of chlorpyrifos by December 31, 2023, if not sooner.
According to the EPA’s own 2016 risk assessment, chlorpyrifos damages the developing brains of children, causing delays in mental development in babies and toddlers, attention problems and autism spectrum disorder, and intelligence diminishment in school-age children who were exposed to chlorpyrifos during gestation (unknowingly through the poison-laden foods their mother ate). Prenatal exposure to very low chlorpyrifos levels can harm babies and children permanently.
In addition, Chlorpyrifos is extremely harmful to the essential farm and field workers who grow our food, who get direct inhalation exposures as they work as well as through skin contact in chemically-treated fields. Chlorpyrifos enters our creeks, streams and rivers and is causing severe threat to our already highly diminished endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead populations. This is unacceptable! In 2017, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that the chemical jeopardizes the survival and recovery of all listed salmon and steelhead in Oregon, Washington and California. Orca whales in the waters off of Washington state are also jeopardized by chlorpyrifos. The entire food chain and web of life is harmed by these toxins!
By allowing harmful chemicals to be spread across our state, you are knowingly violating the Endangered Species Act. In addition, by postponing this issue repeatedly over the years, it is a willful dereliction of your duty as a public servant committed to the well being of Oregonians.
Chlorpyrifos should be banned globally, and this can begin right here in Oregon. This horribly toxic chemical is causing detrimental irreversible affects to the intellectual capacity of humans, forfeiting the future potential of a growing children and costing us billions in healthcare for lifelong mental health and disability assistance. Evidence of this can be found in the EPA’s own 2016 risk assessment for Chlorpyrifos which found the chemical in our food at dangerous levels. In the study, children ages one to two are exposed to levels of chlorpyrifos in food 140 times what EPA deems safe.
This chemical (as well as the slew of other toxic chemicals allowed on the market) aren’t something that anyone should categorically consider safe. They are poison.
Children worldwide are being exposed to a toxic stew of unrecognized chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, truncating future achievements and damaging societies. The evidence proves that Chlorpyrifos and dozens of other industrial chemicals widely disseminated in the environment are the primary contributors to the global, silent pandemic of neurodevelopmental toxicity. There are dozens of chemicals that are known developmental neurotoxins, and that number keeps increasing. It is unacceptable to allow poisons that cause grim effects to fetal brain development. This must change now.
Immediately ban Chlorpyrifos. And ban glyphosate and neonicotinoids too while you’re at it.
In fact, ALL toxic chemicals should be strictly banned from use and screened for in our food and product supply to halt the further poisoning of our people and the brains of our future generations. The continued inaction is depriving the next generation of their full potential.
The time is now. We should put our collective efforts into Integrated Pest Management and transition our agriculture to become the first all-organic state. Another world is indeed possible, one without widespread invisible poisons.
Thank you for your time. I’d appreciate a response and would like to be included in any follow up or movement forward on this very important issue.
Sincerely,
Anna Fay