Georgia Andromidas

May 13 saw a ray of hope for public and environmental health in Canada. After 53 years of use, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) quietly issued a three-year plan to ban the persistent, toxic insecticide chlorpyrifos. Canada lags in pesticide regulation. Routine 15-year reassessment had been lagging when in December 2020, the PMRA published the first environmental review since chlorpyrifos entered the Canadian marketplace in 1969.

This article was originally published by Undark and appears here as part of Canada's National Observer's collaboration with Climate Desk. Around 10 years ago, in the fierce heat of the Kansas summer, many of the noxious kochia weeds invading Phillip Stahlman’s research fields simply wouldn’t budge when sprayed with a mixture of two widely used herbicides, glyphosate and dicamba.

While dairy farmer Jeff Hamilton has glyphosate (pronounced gli-fa-sate) sprayed on his crops every spring, he’s made peace with the herbicide prevalent in farming across Canada. “When you’re using millilitres per acre, for me, I’m not concerned,” he said on his farm in late September. His family has lived on the same plot of land, east of Ottawa, for nearly 100 years. His father and grandfather were dairy farmers. His son was expected to join the business.