EPA, Enviros Disagree on Pesticide Reassessment

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EPA, Enviros Disagree on Pesticide Reassessment

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, August 5, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency claimed on Friday that it has met a Congressionally mandated deadline

to reassess the safety of pesticides. But the Natural Resources Defense

Council, which sued the agency over its pesticide reviews and won a

settlement setting a new deadline for reevaluating the chemicals, says the

EPA has failed to act on the most toxic and highest priority pesticides.

In 1996, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), ordering

the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reassess existing standards for

allowable pesticide residues on food, also called tolerances. The EPA had

until August 3, 2002, to complete its safety evaluations for more than 66

percent of existing pesticide tolerances.

Most conventionally grown crops are treated with some sort of insecticide or

herbicide to reduce damage from pests and weeds. (Photo by Doug ,

courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture)

On Friday, the EPA marked the " successful completion " of this second phase

of its 10 year effort to reassess tolerances for thousands of chemical

compounds. " The rigorous scientific and public processes followed by EPA

during this tolerance reassessment continues to strengthen our confidence in

the overall safety of the nation's food supply and underscores the benefits

of eating a varied diet rich in fruits and vegetables, " said

, the EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention,

Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

" This accomplishment represents a great deal of work, not only by EPA staff

but also significant contributions from many scientific experts, various

stakeholders and the public, " added.

said the EPA has now reassessed more than 6,400 tolerances for

pesticide residues on food, giving priority to pesticide classes which may

pose the greatest risk, including the organophosphate, carbamate,

organochlorine classes, as well as pesticides which show evidence of causing

cancer. The EPA has completed its tolerance reassessment for up to

three-quarters of the individual pesticides in each of these various

classes, he said, along with a number of other individual pesticides that

are not part of these classes.

But the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) charges that the EPA is

overstating its accomplishments, and has yet to review some of the most

dangerous chemicals on the market. In August 1999, the NRDC sued the EPA,

charging that the agency missed a congressionally mandated deadline under

FQPA to review the most dangerous pesticides to ensure they are safe for

infants and children, and failed to implement a program to test whether

pesticides harm the body's hormone controlled endocrine system.

The suit also charged that the EPA missed deadlines for reviewing almost 200

pesticides registered before 1984, under 1988 amendments to the Federal

Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

Residues of pesticides left on produce can harm the developing bodies of

children. (Photo by Weller, courtesy Agricultural Research Service)

Under a January 2001 settlement between the EPA and the NRDC, the EPA agreed

to complete assessments of all 39 organophosphate insecticides on the market

by August 2002, and set timetables for reviewing the cumulative effects of

several other classes, including carbamates and triazines.

The settlement also required the EPA to decide on a specified timetable how

it will control or eliminate the risks of 11 highly hazardous pesticides:

phosmet, azinphos-methyl, propargite, chlorpyrifos, atrazine, carbaryl,

benomyl, endosulfan, lindane, diazinon and metam sodium. On Friday, the EPA

announced it has completed its reassessments of four of those chemicals:

benomyl, diazinon, endosulfan and lindane.

The EPA promised to review actions to protect farm workers from three of the

most risky insecticides used on crops - azinphos methyl, chlorpyrifos and

diazinon - and agreed to initiate a program testing for the effects of

pesticides and certain other chemicals on the body's endocrine system.

While the EPA now claims to have reassessed more than 6,400 tolerances, the

NRDC says that the agency has not completely reviewed all those tolerances.

In fact, many of the pesticides it claims to have reviewed were already off

the market or rarely used, making their review less urgent than the hundreds

of hazardous chemicals still on the market, the group says.

" EPA is using Enron like accounting to claim that it has met the mandate of

the law, " said Olson, a senior attorney at NRDC. " As this latest

deadline passes with little agency action on the most toxic and highest

priority pesticides, EPA's delay only benefits the chemical industry at the

expense of our children's health. "

Aerial pesticide spraying of soybeans (Photo courtesy Agricultural Research

Service)

The NRDC is now reviewing the EPA's compliance with the 2001 consent decree,

as well as the agency's compliance with the August 3 deadline.

The EPA says it has now revoked more than 1,900 tolerances after finding

evidence of risks to adults and children. Some of the tolerances were

canceled because combinations of certain pesticides, or the cumulative

effects of these chemicals, were found to be dangerous.

The agency developed new methods for assessing combined exposures from food,

water and residential sources of exposure, which provide a more complete

picture of risk than had previously been possible, the EPA says. The EPA

also developed methods for assessing the cumulative risk of multiple

pesticides that have a common mechanism of toxicity.

More information on tolerance reassessment is available at:

http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/tolerance/

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002.