A news release from the EPA on March 29, 2017, announced that administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos.

“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment,” said Pruitt. “By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.”

Under the previous administration, the EPA proposed to revoke all food residue tolerances for chlorpyrifos in October 2015. The current administration says its proposal “largely relied on certain epidemiological study outcomes, whose application is novel and uncertain, to reach its conclusions.”

The petition to ban the pesticide, which is produced by Dow AgroSciences, was filed nearly a decade ago in September 2007. According to CNN, the petitioners, some scientists and environmental groups claim that chlorpyrifos can harm children’s developing brains and nervous systems.