"Karen McCormack says regulators at environmental agency are discouraged from speaking up about dangerous chemicals".

"Federal regulators are discouraged from speaking up about potentially dangerous pesticides, according to a former agency official.

Karen McCormack, a retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist who spent 40 years with the agency, told Al Jazeera’s investigative show Fault Lines that she believed the EPA was not fulfilling its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals.

“In the last three decades that I have worked at EPA it has been very rare for a toxic pesticide to be taken off the market,” she told Fault Lines. “Just about every, every new pesticide application that is submitted to the agency is approved, no matter how high the risk.” As the Al Jazeera report notes, paraquat is banned in 58 countries but its use is on the rise in the United States."

Carey Gillam reports for the Guardian December 18, 2023. [2]