Pesticides put MAHA's power to the test

The Hill

a day ago

The New York Times reported last week that a draft of the Trump administration's upcoming MAHA report does not call for new restrictions on pesticides and describes existing procedures as 'robust.'
MAHA-aligned activists recoiled.
'The MAHA draft report stating that the EPA's [Environmental Protection Agency] pesticide review process is 'robust' is the biggest joke in American history. And it's not funny. It's deadly,' Zen Honeycutt, founder of the activist group Moms Across America, wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Meanwhile, a Republican-authored House Appropriations bill seeks to block pesticide labels that go beyond what the EPA uses based on its current human health risk assessment.
During a markup last month, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the Interior-Environment Appropriations subcommittee, said the measure says 'states cannot require a pesticide label that is different from the EPA label.'
'The language ensures that we do not have a patchwork of state labeling requirements. It ensures that one state is not establishing the label for the rest of the states,' Simpson said, adding that his comments were meant to be clarifying for all the ' MAHA moms that are out there that are concerned about this that have been calling.'
But critics say such a move could prevent the use of updated science on pesticide labels.
'The language in here … says that EPA should only update labels according to the human health risk assessment. EPA, by law, is required to do those human health risk assessments every 15 years, but they often don't complete those in time,' said Geoff Horsfield, policy director at the Environmental Working Group.
'The way the law works currently is states have the power to do additional addendums, and that's where you see, say, a state requires an additional setback so that you can't spray within 250 feet of a school, or you're required to wear additional types of PPE [personal protective equipment],' he continued. 'Those types of restrictions are usually included in a label addendum … and those types of tweaks would be essentially prohibited by this language.'
Also causing controversy is another provision related to 'forever chemicals,' toxic substances linked to diseases including cancer and have become widespread in the environment.
The measure seeks to bar the EPA from enforcing a draft report that found that food from farms contaminated with these chemicals may pose cancer risks.
MAHA activists have slammed both provisions, saying in a letter to President Trump that GOP support for the measures is 'unconscionable.'