Protecting Farmworkers from Endocrine Disrupting Pesticides
Center for Food Safety and farmworker organizations secured a landmark legal settlement forcing EPA to take long-overdue action on endocrine-disrupting pesticides after decades of failing to protect farmworkers and public health.
What Are Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides?
Endocrine-disrupting pesticides are chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormone system, which regulates critical functions including growth, fertility, metabolism, immune response, and development.
Exposure to endocrine disruptors has been linked to reproductive harms, birth defects, cancer, metabolic disorders, immune dysfunction, and developmental impacts.
Although Congress required EPA to assess pesticides for endocrine-disrupting effects in 1996, the agency tested only a small fraction of registered pesticides over nearly three decades.
Farmworkers and rural communities face especially high risks due to repeated chronic exposure to pesticides in agricultural settings.
Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticide Litigation
Center for Food Safety, alongside farmworker and environmental health organizations, sued EPA over its decades-long failure to test and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides as required by federal law.
The lawsuit challenged EPA’s failure to properly implement the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP), which Congress mandated in 1996 to evaluate pesticides for hormone-disrupting harms to humans and wildlife.
Plaintiffs argued EPA unlawfully failed to protect farmworkers, consumers, and wildlife from pesticides linked to reproductive harms, birth defects, cancer, immune dysfunction, and other serious health impacts.
In a major victory, EPA agreed to a landmark legal settlement requiring the agency to take concrete steps to assess endocrine-disrupting pesticides and establish timelines for reviewing dozens of chemicals over the coming years.
The agreement marked a major step toward protecting farmworkers, rural communities, and public health after decades of agency inaction.
Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides and Our Work
Endocrine disruptors interfere with the body’s hormone system and have been linked to reproductive harms, infertility, developmental disorders, immune dysfunction, metabolic abnormalities, and certain cancers.
Farmworkers, children, and rural communities are especially vulnerable to exposure from agricultural pesticides.
Congress directed EPA to implement the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program in 1996, yet the agency failed for decades to adequately test pesticides for endocrine-disrupting effects.
By 2022, EPA had tested fewer than 50 of more than 1,300 registered pesticides.
Center for Food Safety and allied organizations sued EPA in 2022 over its unlawful failure to regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides. The resulting legal settlement requires EPA to move forward with pesticide assessments and establish timelines for evaluating endocrine harms linked to pesticide exposure.
Farmworkers face repeated exposure to pesticides linked to endocrine disruption while working in agricultural fields and surrounding communities.
The lawsuit and settlement aim to push EPA toward stronger oversight and accountability to better protect the health of farmworkers, their families, and rural communities.
