{"id":127879,"date":"2014-07-03T19:58:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T19:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=127879"},"modified":"2014-07-03T19:58:51","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T19:58:51","slug":"5000-schools-risk-toxic-pesticide-exposure-epa-approves-new-gmo-pesticide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/5000-schools-risk-toxic-pesticide-exposure-epa-approves-new-gmo-pesticide\/","title":{"rendered":"5,000+ Schools at Risk of Toxic Pesticide Exposure if EPA Approves New GMO Pesticide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Mary Ellen Kustin and Soren Rundquist<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There are 5,609 American schools within 200 feet of farm fields that may soon be blanketed with massive amounts of a toxic defoliant linked to Parkinson\u2019s disease, non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma and reproductive and immune system problems.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the finding of a new Environmental Working Group (EWG)\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/api.tiles.mapbox.com\/v3\/ewg.iign8e8o\/page.html#5\/40.731\/-93.889\" target=\"_blank\">analysis<\/a>\u00a0that shows that hundreds of thousands of children across the country will be at risk of increased exposure to the harmful chemical compound\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/24D\">2,4-D<\/a>\u00a0if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)<a href=\"http:\/\/ecowatch.com\/2014\/07\/01\/epa-dow-pesticide-gmo\/\" target=\"_blank\">approves a new weed killer mixture called \u201cEnlist DuoTM\u201d<\/a>\u00a0created by Dow AgroSciences (a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co.).<\/p>\n<p>That apparently doesn\u2019t worry the EPA. But if these rural schools were full of plants rather than children, the agency would be concerned.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to dousing crops with noxious chemicals, the EPA focused on buffer zones for plants, not people\u2013according to the agency\u2019s recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2014-0195-0002\" target=\"_blank\">risk analysis<\/a>\u00a0of Enlist Duo, which is a combination of 2,4-D and glyphosate. In its assessment, the EPA called for a 200-foot buffer zone to protect non-weed plants from the product but glosses over the health risks to children. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/agmag\/2014\/06\/epa-disregards-toxic-weed-killer-s-risks-children\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a>\u00a0about EWG\u2019s analysis of how the EPA got it wrong.)<\/p>\n<p>The agency is in the process of deciding whether to approve Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybeans designed to withstand blasts of 2,4-D and glyphosate. If the EPA gives the weed killer combo a thumbs-up, the amount of 2,4-D sprayed in the U.S. by 2020 would increase three-to-seven fold the amounts used today, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aphis.usda.gov\/brs\/aphisdocs\/24d_deis.pdf\">U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/agmag\/2014\/06\/thousands-schools-would-be-close-toxic-spray-zones\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Ellen Kustin and Soren Rundquist There are 5,609 American schools within 200 feet of farm fields that may soon be blanketed with massive amounts of a toxic defoliant linked to Parkinson\u2019s disease, non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma and reproductive and immune system problems. That\u2019s the finding of a new Environmental Working Group (EWG)\u00a0analysis\u00a0that shows that hundreds of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,955],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-127879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}