EPA Beginning to Backtrack on Farmworker Health Protections from Toxic Pesticides - Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog
(Beyond Pesticides, December 19, 2017) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to revisit, and potentially weaken, rules passed in 2015 to update farmworker protections from hazardous pesticides. Improvements to Agricultural Worker Protection Standards (AWPS) were proposed under the Obama Administration after over a 20-year delay. While certain provisions will go into effect next year, the Trump Administration and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will nonetheless propose new changes that are likely to significantly weaken safeguards for farmworker health. Health and farmworker groups are deriding the move as another signal that the current Administration is carrying out the orders of the pesticide industry. Most workers in the U.S. look to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for standards to protect them from exposure to hazardous chemicals. However, farmworkers are not eligible for protection under these rules. Protection for farmworkers from pesticides is left to EPA’s authority under AWPS, a standard that is far less protective than OSHA. EPA announced in a press release that three aspects of the Obama-era AWPS would be revisited: i) a requirement that the farmworker be a minimum age of 18 to apply toxic pesticides; ii) a provision that establishes 25 to 100 ft ‘exclusion zones’ […]
