The decision by Andrew Wheeler, the EPA administrator, represents a victory for the chemical industry and for farmers who have lobbied to continue using the substance, chlorpyrifos, arguing it is necessary to protect crops.
It was the administration’s second major move this year to roll back or eliminate chemical safety rules. In April, the agency disregarded the advice of its own experts when officials issued a rule that restricted but did not ban asbestos, a known carcinogen. Agency scientists and lawyers had urged the agency to ban asbestos outright.
In making its chlorpyrifos ruling, the EPA said in a statement that the data supporting objections to the use of chlorpyrifos was “not sufficiently valid, complete or reliable.” The agency added that it would continue to monitor the safety of chlorpyrifos through 2022.
The substance, sold under the commercial name Lorsban, has already been banned for household use but remains in widespread use by farmers for more than 50 fruit, nut, cereal and vegetable crops. In 2016, more than 640,000 acres were treated with chlorpyrifos in California alone.
Representatives of Corteva Agriscience, the maker of chlorpyrifos, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
The Obama administration announced in 2015 that it would ban chlorpyrifos after scientific studies produced by the EPA showed the pesticide had the potential to damage brain development in children. That ban had not yet come into force when, in 2017, Scott Pruitt, then the administrator of the EPA, reversed that decision, setting off a wave of legal challenges.
Those lawsuits culminated in April when a federal appeals court ordered the EPA to issue a final ruling on whether to ban chlorpyrifos by this month.
Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental group that brought a legal challenge against the EPA’s 2017 decision, criticized the decision. She said groups would sue again.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.