US chemical giant to stop producing herbicide called ‘toxic cocktail’ by critics | Herbicides

Chemical giant Corteva will stop producing Enlist Duo, a herbicide considered one of the most dangerous still used in the United States by environmentalists because it contains a mixture of Agent Orange and glyphosate, both associated with cancer and widespread ecological damage.

The U.S. military deployed Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam War, causing serious health problems among Vietnamese soldiers and residents.

Glyphosate, on the other hand, is a toxic and highly controversial herbicide ingredient that has given rise to similar litigation. Both are banned or severely restricted in many industrialized countries.

Despite the risks of combining these substances, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has twice approved its use on food crops. The complex is spread across approximately 4.5 million acres of fields each year in which genetically modified corn, soybeans and cotton are grown.

The ruling will end a decade of litigation and public pressure campaigns to ban Enlist Duo, and advocates are “celebrating it as a victory,” said Kristina Sinclair, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Food Safety (CFS), which is a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“After more than a decade of legal battles, rather than try to refute our arguments in court, the manufacturer removed Enlist Duo from the market,” Sinclair said. “Our food system should never have been doused with this toxic cocktail, and never will be again. »

Corteva did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Sinclair said it was unclear why the company decided to remove Enlist Duo. Corteva said it sold more than $1 billion worth of Enlist products in 2022. The chemical Agent Orange 2,4-D will still be used in Enlist One, and a lawsuit asking a judge to invalidate its approval will continue.

2,4-D works by attacking the roots and leaves of weeds and causing them to produce unwanted cells, much like inducing cancer, to kill or hinder them. The substance is considered a “possible” carcinogen by the World Health Organization and, among other human health effects, it is linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, birth defects, respiratory problems, Parkinson’s disease and reproductive problems.

It is also believed to harm hundreds of endangered species, including butterflies, birds, fish, deer, panthers and bats, the CFS wrote in its court papers. The suit further alleges that the product’s approval threatens to increase the spread of new herbicide-resistant weeds because the EPA has failed to properly mitigate the risks. This requires farmers to manage new “superweeds.”

The EPA first approved Enlist Duo in 2014, sparking a lawsuit from CFS and others claiming the agency violated federal law by failing to ensure the herbicide would not cause “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment” as required under state pesticide laws. At that time, the EPA declared, without engaging in legally mandated consultations under the Endangered Species Act, that the chemical cocktail would cause no harm to endangered species.

A federal court invalidated the EPA’s approval of Enlist Duo in 2020, but the agency reapproved it in 2022 for seven years of use. Advocates argued that the EPA based its health and environmental impact assessments on past use levels, which significantly underestimated the threat.

The EPA’s reapproval of Enlist Duo despite the court’s finding is emblematic of a broader, misguided philosophy of the agency’s pesticide division, said Nathan Donley, director of environmental health at the Center for Biological Diversity, which was involved in the lawsuits. The agency is still looking for “adjustments,” he said.

“Whenever the courts find flaws in their approach, there is never a moment of reflection, there is never an acknowledgment that their process is flawed, there is simply a rush to find the quickest workaround to get reapproval,” Donley said.

“Getting pesticides to market is always the EPA’s goal – and when that is the driving force of a country’s regulator, there’s not much to expect from them,” Donley added.