EPA close to completing study of food-related pesticide use.

The Environmental Protection Agency has completed 99.5 percent of the work mandated in a 10-year review of thousands of limits on food-related pesticide residues, agency officials said Aug. 1. In addition, EPA has released the cumulative risk assessment for the organophosphate pesticides and is seeking public comment on the document.

When the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 was passed, "Congress presented EPA with an enormous challenge," because the agency had to come up with the scientific methodologies to accomplish the task, said Jim Gulliford, assistant administrator in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, during a teleconference to mark the near-completion of the work.

Congress directed EPA to review and update nearly 10,000 of the residue limits, which set the maximum legally permissible limits for such residues on food, under more protective standards designed to protect children and public health from pesticide risks. The FQPA also required EPA to reassess active ingredients in pesticides.

An assessment of aldicarb remains to be completed this fall, EPA said. When that review is complete, EPA will be able to conclude the cumulative assessments for the carbamates class of pesticides (aldicarb, formetanate, carbofuran, oxamyl, and carbaryl) and complete the reassessment of the remaining tolerances.

To ensure continuous updating of health and safety information about pesticides, EPA will issue a final rule that establishes a registration review program to reassess pesticides on a continuous 15-year cycle, according to the agency. The active ingredients had 9,721 reassessments of residue limits, known as tolerances, associated with them. By the deadline, the agency will have completed 9,637, EPA said.

However, that accounting includes hundreds of tolerances for which EPA has essentially put off a final decision for several years. For example, in May, EPA proposed to revoke exemptions from regulatory limits on residues for 129 inert substances used in pesticide formulations, arguing that it lacks sufficient data to conduct the detailed reassessment required under the FQPA. However, manufacturers were given two years to provide the data before most of those revocations would go into effect.