In a move not seen for almost 40 years, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an emergency order suspending all uses of a weed killer linked to serious health risks for unborn babies.
The herbicide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal, is used on crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions. Fetuses exposed to it could suffer from low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life, the EPA said.
“DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately,” Michal Freedhoff, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety, said in statement. “In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems.”
California-based AMVAC Chemical Corp., the sole manufacturer of the pesticide, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tuesday’s order followed several years of “unprecedented efforts” by the Environmental Protection Agency to get AMVAC to submit its own data on the pesticide and its health risks, the agency said. The agency estimates that pregnant women handling DCPA products could be subjected to exposures four to 20 times greater than what the EPA has estimated is safe for fetuses.
Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, also known as the National Farmworkers Women’s Alliance, called the EPA’s decision “historic.”
The chemical has been prohibited for use on crops in the European Union since 2009.
Some advocacy groups criticized the agency for not acting earlier. “The EPA’s decision to finally suspend DCPA is welcome news, but it’s long overdue,” said Alexis Temkin, senior toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization.
She pointed to the EPA’s own statements reaching back to the 1990s on the pesticide’s health risks, based on studies submitted by its manufacturer. A 2019 study found that more than half of adolescent women from farmworker communities in the Salinas Valley of California had been exposed to DCPA.
Some farms have voiced opposition to banning the pesticide. It was “an essential tool for controlling yield-robbing grasses and broadleaf weeds,” a representative of Griffin Ranches, which grows onions, broccoli and cauliflower in Yuma, Arizona, wrote in a 2022 letter opposing any move toward a ban.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
