Finally It's Adieu to Chlorpyrifos: 1 in 20 Acres of California Vines Will No Longer Be Sprayed with Neurotoxin Related to Nazi's Nerve Gas

Raise a glass to the sunsetting of chlorpyrifos, one of the most dangerous agricultural chemicals that was used for decades on wine grapes (and other crops). 

In California, its use on agricultural crops came to an end Dec. 31, 2020.

Now the EPA has finally forbidden the use of chlorpyrifos in agriculture nationwide. It was already banned in the EU earlier in 2020.

Still, it's shameful that it wasn't banned earlier, despite many attempts by scientists, pediatricians, the medical community and public health officials. It was on its way out the door when Trump prolonged its use by overturning attempts to ban it during his administration.

Yet what's most shameful of all is that it was ever used and then continued to be used on California vineyards. In 2018, the most recent year in which California released aggregated pesticide use data, the state's wine grape growers used 52,902 pounds of it on 28,822 acres.

WWI-WWII: GERMANY'S WEAPONIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMICALS

In World War I, the Germans established chemical warfare by introducing mustard gas, a breakthrough chemical weapon, against the British, killing as many as 20,000 in the first six weeks it was used on the battlefield. This success led the Germans to continue to develop chemical warfare. 

The Nazis took developing organophosphates as chemical weapons to new heights in World War II, enhancing work done in 1936 by Gerhard Schrader, a pioneer in organophosphates used as systemic insecticides in agriculture. His discoveries of the deadly nerve gas Sarin and the toxic organophosphate Tabun gave Germany a huge advantage in chemical warfare.

Schrader in his lab, I. G. Farben (photo: Bayer Archives)

In Germany, Zyklon B [not an organophosphate], which had been invented in the 1920s, as a pesticide and delousing agent, became the most famous chemical in World War II. When the Nazi's came to power, they turned the deadly gas on the Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

Tabun was used on Jewish prisoners as well as hundreds of Schrader's other compounds.

Germany's chemical warfare in World War II wasn't the end of the story, though, as Sarin and Tabun have continued to be used, most notably in Syria.

ORGANOPHOSPHATES IN PEACETIME 

Schrader discovered malathion, which was also used in agriculture.

After World War II, German manufacturers and others returned their attention to the use of organophosphates in ag. 

Excerpt from von Hippel's The Chemical Age

When the most famous post war insecticide, DDT, which worked so well against malaria, turned out to be more toxic than had previously been thought, Dow Chemical launched chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide [not a systemic] in 1966. It was created as an alternative to DDT and became widely used and well known under the product names Lorsban or Dursban.

(To anyone interested in reading more about the historical development of these chemicals, I recommend Frank von Hippel's excellent and fascinating 2020 book The Chemical Age, published by UChicago Press, which presents a compelling, detailed history in several chapters of the main German and Nazi personalities and their competitive races to become the top dog scientist. The book details the interconnected strands of Germany's agricultural pesticide and chemical weapons research.)

A DEAD END

But chlorpyrifos, too, was soon found to be highly toxic and years of research have only shown more and more severe impacts on health.

These have been published over decades in peer reviewed medical studies, linking the chemical to declines in children's brain health and increased risks of cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

In a pesticide hair testing study of 150 people, conducted in Europe by the Green Party, chlorpyrifos was found in 10% of the people tested. (It can be eliminated by eating an organic diet.)

Groups of medical and scientific professionals–including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Academy of Sciences–have called for it to be banned since the 1970s.

CALIFORNIA AND CHLORPYRIFOS

So in order to grow wine grapes, 52,902 pounds of chlorpyrifos was still used in 2018 despite its significant and known impacts.

As recently as 2015, in Sonoma, Gallo sprayed 147 gallons of it on 400 acres at Two Rock on Gina Gallo's favorite Chardonnay vineyard. 

Kendall Jackson used 16 gallons on 13 acres on Brown's Lane in Petaluma.

Sonoma Cutrer sprayed it on 100 acres in Sonoma County in 2017.

2018: Hot Spots 

The state agricultural pesticide map lets us take a look at where chlorpyrifos was most intensively used in 2018 (the most recent data the state has made available). Here are some of the hot spots, generally located along the spine of Route 99, running through the heart of the Central Valley, supplier of supermarket wines to the nation.

Lodi

Bakersfield

Certified Sustainable Wines May Be Grown With Chlorpyrifos

Even more shocking is that a bottle of Certified Sustainable Wine from the CSWA can still be grown with chlorpyrifos today if it's used during the winery's first year of certification. For vintages before 2017, there were no restrictions on its use in "certified sustainable wines."

Though sales of it are banned in California, it could be obtained (until the EPA ruling now) in other states.

Groundwater Contamination

As I wrote in a previous post here, "All this comes in the wake of epidemiological studies released in 2009 showing rural Californians drinking private well water in Tulare, Fresno and Kern counties had an 82% increased chance of getting Parkinson's due to chlorpyrifos being used in their areas."

Now, at long last, there will be a law against it.

UPDATE

*August 30 editor's note: Portions of this post on pesticide history have been revised and updated with specific citations in response to reader feedback asking for more details. 

The original version contained an error regarding Zyklon B; Zyklon B is not chemically related to chlorpyrifos (as has been incorrectly reported in other articles on the Internet), since it is not an organophosphate insecticide, and this has been corrected. 

New text was added on pesticide history to provide a broader context for the development of this class of chemicals and to provide more background on the linkages within the German and Nazi era development of these chemicals. 

Germany's leadership in the early and mid 20th century led it to become the giant that it is today in pesticide industry. The latest advance of this cultural and scientific movement was Bayer's 2018 purchase of Monsanto (and Roundup), which has mired the company in financial and internal leadership battles, after the merger was completed under intense scrutiny.  According to the Wall Street Journal, this was "one of the worst corporate deals."