Internal EPA documents released in litigation show the agency allowed pesticide manufacturer Bayer to select its preferred regulatory options for the destructive weedkiller dicamba. During a May 2025 meeting, the EPA presented Bayer with a menu of mitigation options, and Bayer chose the less restrictive measures, which the EPA then wrote into a proposed federal rule. While environmental advocates condemn this as corporate self-regulation, the EPA defends the process as standard procedure.
EPA-Bayer dicamba regulation process
- ▪Bayer selected the less restrictive volatility mitigation option allowing dicamba application up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with reduced acreage, and successfully requested an unproposed option allowing full-field treatments at higher temperatures without tank mixing.
- ▪Internal Environmental Protection Agency documents released in ongoing litigation show the agency allowed pesticide manufacturer Bayer to select from a menu of regulatory options for the weedkiller dicamba.
- ▪During a May 2025 meeting, the Environmental Protection Agency presented Bayer with two volatility mitigation options and three runoff mitigation options, concluding with a request for Bayer to choose which options to proceed with.
- ▪The Environmental Protection Agency incorporated Bayer's selected volatility, runoff, and custom tank-mixing regulatory preferences into a proposed federal rule published a few months after their May 2025 negotiations.
Dicamba drift damage nationwide
- ▪Dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of United States farmland, including orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees, and wildlife refuges, since its initial approval in 2016.
- ▪Agricultural experts have identified dicamba drift damage as the most severe herbicide-related damage in the history of United States agriculture.
Dicamba health risks
- ▪The weedkiller dicamba is highly drift-prone, kills non-target vegetation and crops for miles around treated fields, and is linked to liver cancer and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
- ▪Advocates from the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, including Kelly Ryerson, criticized the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory process as evidence of agency capture by pesticide companies at the expense of farmers.
Industry influence on EPA
- ▪An Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson defended the agency's actions, stating that working with pesticide manufacturers to identify mitigation ideas is standard regulatory procedure and does not mean registrants dictate terms.
- ▪Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity stated that the Environmental Protection Agency crossed a regulatory line by allowing Bayer to select its own mitigation measures for dicamba.
Legal challenges to dicamba
- ▪The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety brought the lawsuit that led to the public release of the internal Environmental Protection Agency documents.
- ▪Federal courts have twice ordered dicamba off the market due to drift problems, though the Environmental Protection Agency has subsequently re-approved the herbicide.
EPA leadership chemical industry ties
- ▪Internal documents show that the dicamba regulatory plan was presented to Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council who leads the Environmental Protection Agency's office of chemical safety.
- ▪The top four positions within the Environmental Protection Agency's toxics office are held by former chemical industry leaders, including deputy assistant administrator Kyle Kunkler, a former pesticide industry lobbyist who oversees the pesticides program.
Debatable claims
- ▪The United States should ban the weedkiller dicamba
- ▪Former chemical industry lobbyists should be barred from leading EPA chemical safety offices
- ▪The EPA should not have allowed Bayer to choose its own dicamba regulations
Story comments
Loading comments…