Many Pesticides Were Never Properly Tested by the Government

Nearly 30 years after a federal mandate, many pesticides still haven’t been properly tested for their effects on human endocrine health.

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Cheap food production in the modern conventional system has dramatically increased our exposure to pesticides, far beyond anything previous generations experienced.

Even the U.S. government acknowledges there is evidence that pesticides may harm human health. Yet despite this, the regulatory system has been slow to act…delaying testing, postponing decisions, and allowing corporate influence to shape the pace of oversight.

So the truth is, many of these chemicals were never adequately tested for long-term human health effects by the very agencies responsible for regulating them.

Under a federal law implemented nearly 30 years ago, the EPA was required to screen pesticides for endocrine-disrupting effects.

Three decade later, that work remains incomplete.(ref) We’re still waiting on the most basic safety evaluations of chemicals that now saturate our food, water, and soil.

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Many people understand that crops (whether for livestock feed, grains or produce) are often spayed with pesticides. But exposure doesn’t stop there. Pesticides move through the entire food chain.

Animals raised in industrial systems consume pesticide-laden feed crops and are exposed to chemical pesticide inputs in their environments. In confinement systems (CAFOs), this exposure can come from multiple sources:

• Rodenticides (like warfarin and bromethalin) are used around feed storage and manure piles to kill rats and mice.

• Insecticides (like organophosphates and synthetic pyrethroids) are fogged, sprayed, or even mixed directly into feed to control flies, mites, and beetles.

• Medicated feeds often include compounds like carbaryl, designed to kill both internal and external parasites.

This adds another layer of exposure, one most people never consider. Over time, these compounds accumulate in livestock fat, organs, and secretions, eventually making their way into meat, milk, eggs, and even our waterways. (ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref)

This creates a continuous, low-level exposure that our bodies were never designed to handle.

So we have to ask: what are the long-term consequences of this kind of large-scale chemical exposure?

Research has linked chronic pesticide exposure to hormone disruption, fertility issues, gut dysfunction, metabolic disturbances, and the development of chronic disease.

But truthfully, we still don’t fully understand the long term human health effects because the long-term testing was never completed by the government agencies that were supposed to regulate them.

In many ways, we are living the experiment in real time.

Who Is the Government Really Protecting? The Government Failed to Screen Pesticides for Hormonal Harm

Is the government truly in place to protect public health and ensure these chemicals are properly tested?

Or have key agencies been captured by the very industries they’re supposed to regulate?

To answer this, let’s go back to 1996: a pivotal year when the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was signed into law. (ref)

On paper, the FQPA looked like progress! It gave the EPA a clear mandate: protect human health from pesticide exposure and evaluate whether these chemicals act as endocrine disruptors (compounds that can interfere with hormones and metabolism, even at extremely low doses).

“The new law required the EPA to develop a screening program specifically to determine if chemicals used in pesticides had estrogenic properties.”

This Act was supposed to be a turning point and may have had good intentions.

But it has epically failed.

From “Zero Tolerance” to “Acceptable Risk”

Before 1996, pesticide regulation relied on the Delaney Clause, a strict, hazard-based standard.

If a chemical was found to cause cancer at any level it was banned from the food supply. No exceptions.

After this FQPA, this approach was replaced with a more lenient risk-based model.

Instead of asking “Is this chemical harmful?”, regulators began asking: “At what level is this harm acceptable?”

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Under this system, a pesticide could remain in the food supply, even if it was known to be hazardous, so long as exposure levels were deemed “low risk.”

This shift gave manufacturers significantly more flexibility to keep chemicals on the market.

While this is a loss for the food system, our health and the environment, this was a huge win for pesticide manufacturers!

What was once a zero-tolerance standard became a system of managed exposure.

The Promise of Endocrine Testing

Another piece of this FQPA set up in 1996 also required the EPA to establish the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP): a system designed to evaluate whether pesticides interfere with hormonal systems.

To guide the process, a federal advisory committee made up of scientists, public health experts, and industry representatives was tasked with prioritizing chemicals for testing.

At the time, over 80,000 chemicals were in use.

So how many did they begin with?

Just 52.

Less than one-tenth of one percent, and the reasoning behind this selection remains unclear.

But the plan they laid out was straightforward:

> Tier 1: A broad screening to identify whether a chemical interacts with hormone systems (estrogen, androgen, thyroid)

> Tier 2: A deeper dive to determine whether those interactions actually cause harmful biological effects, and at what levels.

On paper, the plan sounded like progress.

In reality, the program never delivered.

The Reality: Delays, Failures, and Abandonment

Implementation was a hot mess.

Not only were the deadlines missed, they weren’t even close.

• - Tier 1 testing didn’t begin until 2009, thirteen years after the law passed in 1996
• - Tier 2 testing has still not been fully validated today
• - And many chemicals flagged in Tier 1 were never followed up on

Nearly three decades later (today), the EPA has yet to complete the very testing it was legally required to perform.

(And they even have it listed on their website that testing isn’t completed)

This isn’t a minor delay… it’s a systemic failure.

One that has allowed endocrine-disrupting chemicals to remain in the food system, largely unchecked, for close to 30 years.

The 2021 Inspector General Report

In 2021 (25 years after the FQPA was signed into law) the EPA’s own Inspector General reviewed the program. (ref)

His findings were deeply concerning:

> Over 1,300 chemicals were identified as high priority. Yet only a small fraction had even been considered for screening, let alone tested. Hmm, sounds like Big Ag lobbying dollars at play.

> The EDSP had effectively stalled, despite being required by federal law

> But perhaps the most troubling: after receiving initial data from Tier 1 testing, the EPA changed how results were evaluated.

In other words, they moved the goalposts after seeing the data.

Instead of using a consistent, science-based framework to determine which chemicals posed endocrine risks, the agency altered its evaluation approach, effectively rewriting the rules mid-game. This not only introduced bias, but also calls into question the validity of the entire screening process.

Some EPA staff even reported being told to operate as if the program had been defunded entirely.

By 2021, the EDSP had a small budget of just $7.5 million (a very small fraction relative to the government’s budget) and only four staff members.

A System That Never Delivered

It has now been nearly 30 years since the FQPA was passed and the federal government has still not fulfilled its legal obligation to evaluate pesticides for endocrine disruption.

Meanwhile, these chemicals remain widely used, and widely consumed.

This is not just bureaucratic inefficiency.

It’s a clear example of how regulatory systems can be influenced, delayed, and diluted over time by Big Ag lobbyists (who don’t want their profitable pesticides to be tested).

When oversight agencies begin to accommodate the industries they regulate (become ‘captured’), whether through inaction, shifting standards, or lack of enforcement, the system stops functioning as intended.

The result is a public left exposed to chemicals that were never fully evaluated for long-term safety.

What Are Pesticides, Really?

Let’s break it down.

The term “pest” refers to any organism (whether insects, weeds, rodents, fungi, or bacteria) that is considered harmful in an agricultural setting.

The suffix “-cide” comes from the Latin caedere, meaning “to kill.”

So by definition, pesticides are substances designed to kill living organisms.

Different targets, same purpose: destruction.

Modern pesticide use didn’t evolve slowly, it accelerated rapidly after World War II.

The same chemical infrastructure developed for warfare was redirected toward agriculture.

Ammonium nitrate, used in explosives, became synthetic fertilizer

Organophosphates, originally developed as nerve agents, were repurposed as insecticides

Yes… nerve agents.

These compounds disrupt how nerves transmit signals. In warfare, they paralyze or kill. In agriculture, they’re used to do the same, just to smaller organisms.

But it’s naïve to assume chemicals designed to disrupt life operate with perfect precision in a living system. There are always downstream effects….

And many pesticides are marketed as highly “specific”.

For example:

> Glyphosate blocks an enzyme in the shikimate pathway, found in plants but not humans

> Certain insecticides bind to neural receptors more common in insects

But targeted does not mean contained. Pesticides don’t stay where they are applied. They move through soil, water, air, food systems. They impact pollinators like bees and butterflies, soil microbes, birds, and aquatic life. And ultimately, they reach us. Through the food we eat and the water we drink.

Biological systems are interconnected. When one pathway is disrupted, ripple effects follow, impacting microbes (including those inside of our gut), ecosystems, and often unintended species.

So in reality, these chemicals behave less like scalpels and more like broad-spectrum disruptors.

Now, of course there’s a big difference between occasional use and systemic reliance.

The modern food system is a system build on chemical dependence.

(Similar to how modern medicine often relies on pharmaceuticals to manage symptoms.)

These chemicals enable monocropping, compensate for degraded soil health, and support large-scale confinement livestock systems (confinement animal feeding operations, CAFOs).

But instead of addressing root causes, they act as short-term fixes.

And each “solution” often creates new problems.

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Even though the government has not conducted adequate long-term endocrine health assessments on the thousands of chemicals and pesticides in use in agriculture today, independent researchers have continued documenting the real-world consequences of chronic exposure.

When you look at the broader body of evidence, the health impacts become difficult to ignore. Chronic pesticide exposure has been linked to increased risk of disease and cancer, hormone disruption, impaired gut health, and metabolic dysfunction that can contribute to weight gain and a slowed metabolism.

I dive deeper into the research behind these health effects of pesticides in this blog post: The Health Effects of Pesticides.

Follow the Money

You’ll often see polished ads and reassuring statements from agrochemical companies claiming that pesticides are safe and well-regulated. But we always need to ask: who benefits from that message?

Because when you follow the money, a very different picture starts to emerge.

Waging chemical warfare against natural biological systems does not come without consequences. And history shows us something important, nature always adapts. Pests develop resistance, requiring stronger chemicals, higher doses, or entirely new formulations. What begins as a “solution” quickly turns into an escalating cycle.

The widespread use of synthetic pesticides is not fundamentally about feeding the world. It’s about maximizing yield and minimizing cost in the short term. This system didn’t arise naturally, it was engineered over decades through a combination of government policy, corporate influence, and economic incentives that reward output over long-term resilience.

Government subsidies and crop insurance programs favor high-yield commodity crops, which are often heavily dependent on chemical inputs. At the same time, agricultural policy is heavily shaped by powerful lobbying groups, making it easier (and more profitable) for farmers to rely on synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Meanwhile, regenerative and low-input approaches are often underfunded, overlooked, or dismissed as impractical.

And then there’s the structure of the industry itself.

Major agrochemical companies aren’t just selling individual products, they’re building integrated systems of dependence. They patent chemical compounds, securing exclusive rights and long-term profit streams. They also sell genetically modified seeds designed to work in tandem with their herbicides, along with synthetic fertilizers and other inputs. These are often bundled together into full “solutions,” making it increasingly difficult for farmers to step outside the system.

The result is a feedback loop: the more a farmer relies on these inputs, the harder it becomes to operate without them.

What gets framed as “modern agriculture” is, in many ways, a tightly controlled economic ecosystem, one where the incentives are aligned with chemical use, not necessarily with long-term soil health, farmer independence, or human health.

These synthetic solutions were never the fix. They were quick-fix band-aids for a broken system - a system that’s completely out of sync with nature.

A Better Way Forward

Clearly, we can’t rely on top down regulation to ensure food is safe. Regulatory capture is a real thing.

So real change is going to come from bottom up demand, and supporting farmers doing things the right way!

When budget and opportunities allow, it’s important to be intentional with food sourcing for your long term health.

Choose food you can trust, and support farmers working with nature, not against it.

This is where regenerative systems offer a fundamentally different approach, one that doesn’t rely on this constant chemical treadmill.

When you can, choosing grains, produce, meat, dairy, and eggs from regenerative farms that prioritize clean feed, low-input systems. This can significantly reduce your exposure through food!

Instead of relying on chemical “fixes” (drugs and pesticides), these systems work with biology and produce more nutrient-rich food with less of a chemical burden.

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We started Nourish after seeing firsthand the downfalls of the modern food system, and realizing most people don’t have access to food they can truly trust.

So we built an alternative. One centered around small, regenerative farms. No pesticides. No drugs. Food raised the way it should be: resulting in better nutrient density, better flavor, and cleaner inputs from start to finish.

Corn and soy free eggs/chicken/pork, 100% grass fed beef/lamb, heritage wheat flour and sourdough, raw A2 cheese & more, all delivered directly to your door.

Because once you understand the problem… the next step is choosing better!

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