EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Met With Dow CEO Just Before Killing Effort To Ban Toxic Pesticide

‘The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head, Scott Pruitt, sparked outrage in March when he rejected his agency’s proposed ban on a pesticide shown to harm children’s brains.
New reporting by the Associated Press Wednesday prompts further question about his decisions to ignore the EPA’s own science and then greenlight the Dow Chemical-manufactured pesticide, chlorpyrifos, as the company had requested.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a frequent Trump critic, weighed in on the new reporting, tweeting: “I heard this pesticide helps growth in the swamp.”
Records obtained by AP show that Pruitt had a 30-minute meeting with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris on March 9. That’s just three weeks before he denied a petition from two environmental groups, initiated a decade ago, calling for a total ban on the harmful pesticide—a decision, wrote Kristin Schafer, program and policy director at Pesticide Action Network, that “clearly and publicly puts the interests of a chemical corporation above both scientific evidence and children’s health.”’
Read more: EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Met With Dow CEO Just Before Killing Effort To Ban Toxic Pesticide