Former EPA official says agency fails to protect public from toxic pesticides | Pesticides

Federal regulators are discouraged from talking about potentially dangerous pesticides, according to a former agency official.

Karen McCormack, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist who spent 40 years at the agency, told Al Jazeera’s investigative show Fault Lines that she believed the EPA was failing in its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals.

“In the past three decades that I’ve worked at EPA, it’s been very rare for a toxic pesticide to be taken off the market,” she told Fault Lines. “Just about every new pesticide application submitted to the agency is approved, no matter how high the risk.” As the Al Jazeera report points out, paraquat is banned in 58 countries, but its use is increasing in the United States.

The segment, which aired on Wednesday, appeared reporting by the Guardian which revealed decades of efforts by Syngenta to hide evidence of how chronic exposure to the popular herbicide paraquat can cause Parkinson’s disease.

The Guardian’s Paraquat Papers, published in 2022 in association with the New Membersexposed years of corporate efforts to cover up paraquat’s links to Parkinson’s disease, mislead the public, challenge published scientific literature, and influence the EPA.

Al Jazeera’s new series, The Pesticide Playbook, draws on thousands of previously undisclosed internal corporate records.

Dr Deborah Cory-Slechta, a prominent researcher, told Al Jazeera: “There is a very strong and compelling body of evidence based on the epidemiological studies and what we know from animal models of Parkinson’s disease” that paraquat changes in the brain causes leading to Parkinson’s.

As revealed by the Guardian, in 2005, Syngenta worked behind the scenes to keep Cory-Slechta from sitting on an EPA advisory panel, which saw her as a threat to paraquat. Company officials wanted to make sure that the efforts did not go to Syngenta, the documents shown. The agency eventually chose someone else for the panel.

In comments to the Guardian in October 2022, Syngenta deny paraquat caused Parkinson’s and said the weight of scientific evidence shows no causal link between the chemical and the disease. When asked about the Cory-Slechta correspondence, a representative said: “We disagree and take exception to this mischaracterization.” An EPA spokesperson told the Guardian in 2022 that scientific research did not support a causal link between the chemical and the disease. The EPA responded to the allegations outlined in the Fault Lines piece by telling Al Jazeera the agency is “committed” to ensuring its decisions are “free from unwarranted interference”.

McCormack described a culture of “regulatory capture” at the EPA, saying colleagues who spoke out in favor of tighter pesticide regulations were often sidelined.

“If you do decide to go for the [EPA] pesticide program and you act against the agricultural interest, it will not be good for your career,” she said.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment on McCormack’s statements.