“An assessment of a pesticide that the Environmental Protection Agency issued last year is fraudulent, according to a complaint the environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility submitted to the EPA’s Office of Inspector General today. The complaint accuses senior managers at the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs of omitting “known facts” and issuing false and misleading representations about the science on 1,3-Dichloropropene, or 1,3-D, which Dow AgroSciences, recently rebranded as Corteva Agriscience, sells under the brand name Telone. The complaint alleges that agency staff knowingly ignored studies showing that the pesticide causes cancer. PEER is requesting that the EPA’s inspector general investigate the matter.
The human health risk assessment of Telone, which was published in draft form on February 4, 2020, took the unusual step of downgrading the pesticide’s cancer rating. In 1985, the National Toxicology Program found “clear evidence” of the chemical’s carcinogenicity in rats and mice, which developed lung and bladder tumors after exposure. The EPA described the chemical as a probable human carcinogen that same year and went on to confirm that designation in 1996, 2000, and 2005. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of California, and the National Toxicology Program have also repeatedly found Telone to be a “likely human carcinogen.””
