News Releases

In one of his first major decisions as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt sided with the pesticide lobby over scientists in an eleventh-hour decision to abort the agency's proposal to ban chlorpyrifos – an insecticide that at small doses can harm children's brains and nervous systems – from use on food crops.

President Trump's rollback of the Clean Power Plan is not just a foolish failure of leadership on climate change, but another attack on public health that will trigger more asthma attacks among American children and cause more adults to die before their time, said EWG President Ken Cook.

Despite the rapid growth of the organic food industry, U.S. production lags significantly behind consumer demand. A new report from EWG shows that with modest reforms to existing programs, Congress could help growers transition away from farming that relies on chemical pesticides and expand the acreage dedicated to organic agriculture.

Strawberries remain at the top of the Dirty Dozen™ list of the EWG Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™, with spinach jumping to second place in the annual ranking of conventionally grown produce with the most pesticide residues.

Every five years, the government passes an almost-trillion-dollar piece of legislation that profoundly impacts food and farm policy. For decades, big agribusiness has dominated the process, with its interests taking precedence over public health and the environment.

DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours agreed today to pay $671 million to settle about 3,500 lawsuits from West Virginia and Ohio residents whose drinking water was poisoned by a cancer-causing chemical used to make Teflon. Although the settlement closes the most infamous case involving the chemical PFOA, its toxic legacy lingers worldwide, said EWG President Ken Cook.