Some members of Congress are trying to sneak language into a must-pass funding bill that would effectively block state and local pesticide protections. These important safeguards protect children and homes from the risks of pesticide spraying.
Pesticides have been linked to serious health harms, including cancer, neurotoxicity and harm to development and reproduction. Because of their developing bodies and brains, children are especially susceptible to potential health problems.
Citing these risks, many states, cities and counties have adopted practical standards to limit pesticide use, restrict spraying near schools, or require notifications when pesticides are used near daycares, parks and other areas the public may gather.
These local ordinances and restrictions are often added as supplemental information to pesticide labels, along with what the Environmental Protection Agency requires. Courts have long upheld that states may add this supplemental information and warnings as long as they don’t conflict with federal law.
More than 30 states – including Georgia, Kentucky and Texas – have adopted tough standards limiting how and when pesticides can be sprayed near schools.
California and Texas lawmakers, for example, require school officials to use low-risk pesticides. Alabama and North Carolina ban crop dusting near schools. Many other states – including Arizona, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire – have also placed buffer zones for pesticide spraying around schools. Other states, including Georgia and New Mexico, limit the times when pesticides can be sprayed near schools.
Illinois and other states require that alerts be posted on school grounds to warn students before or after spraying. Some states, including Kentucky, Minnesota and Nevada, require that parents be notified about spraying.
Some, like Louisiana and Pennsylvania, require schools to track students who are sensitive to pesticides.
A “poison pill” rider (an accurate use of the term if there ever was one), Section 453, in the fiscal year 2026 House Interior-Environment bill would undo this longstanding state and federal partnership for regulating pesticide spraying.
The provision would bar states from regulating pesticides in a way that better fits their local environments and that best protects their communities. States, companies, or other federal agencies would no longer be able to add anything to pesticide labels other than what the EPA requires.
Shielding foreign chemical manufacturers
Section 453 would be a gift to chemical companies that make pesticides, boosting their efforts to avoid legal liability for health problems caused by exposure to their products.
When courts have looked at farmers and workers who have been injured by pesticides, they have relied on state laws to understand those harms more clearly – and to pursue justice.
Research continues to show that many of the pesticides can cause cancer and other diseases. That includes RoundUp, which contains glyphosate, and Gramoxone, which contains paraquat.
If this poison pill becomes law, crop chemical makers could avoid paying millions in liability cases to people sickened by exposure, while continuing to shield potential harms and what they may have known from the public.
Blocking states and localities from more stringent protections – through more strongly worded warnings and labels – would let companies off the hook. It would let them downplay their liability for victims’ health problems.
And it would help pesticide manufacturers protect their bottom lines.
Handcuffing the EPA
Section 453 would also handcuff the EPA’s authority to assess the risks of pesticides.
The provision would hamstring the agency’s ability to respond to the most recent data about pesticides’ health risks. It would do this by requiring the EPA to rely on human health risk assessments alone.
The agency is only required to complete those human health risk assessments every 15 years and often fails to do so.
For example, a state, pesticide maker or the EPA may find new information showing a pesticide causes harm or requires additional protections when applying. This would require an update to the label, forcing the EPA to undergo another new human health risk assessment, which could take years to complete. In the meantime, people would continue to be exposed to the chemical and suffer health harms.
The EPA would also have to research pesticide cancer risks itself instead of using existing experts and data. Many federal agencies rely on the International Agency for Research on Cancer to identify probable and likely carcinogens. But the EPA would be forbidden from using such data and classifications.
If the Department of Health and Human Services were to determine that a pesticide is a carcinogen, Section 453 would ban the EPA from using that data.
The EPA is just beginning to address the widespread use of toxic pesticides. Tying its efforts to potentially outdated assessments that may not reflect the best science will impair its ability to take swift and necessary action to protect public health.
The battle is just beginning
House Republicans refuse to remove the harmful provision from the EPA’s funding bill.
Instead of protecting the public and listening to health advocates, Republicans are acting at the behest of foreign chemical companies, like Bayer-Monsanto and ChemChina’s Syngenta, and the former pesticide lobbyists at the EPA.
This poison pill is just another Republican effort to undo state and local pesticide laws and protect chemical companies, whether through EPA actions or the upcoming farm bill.
Advocates are pushing back. Over 140 mayors, lawmakers and other officials from more than 30 states are standing together to urge Congress to reject legislation that would limit longstanding state and local pesticide safety rules.
They’re joined by hundreds of members of Congress and 185 environmental, health and agricultural organizations, including EWG.
Congress should heed these calls and reject legislative proposals to block state and local laws put in place to safeguard communities.
