Archive for October, 2018
FDA Pesticide Residue Monitoring 2016 Report and Data
Oct 25th
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently published its Pesticide Residue Monitoring 2016 Report. The report discusses testing of 711 pesticides and industrial chemicals from 7,413 total samples. The report states that the results were consistent with previous years’ results. Two groups of samples were taken — those from domestic foods and those from imported products.
Ninety-nine per cent of the samples from domestic products and 90 per cent of those from imported foods comply with federal standards. No detectable levels of pesticide residues were found in 52.9 per cent of domestic and 50.7 per cent of imported human food samples.
PPDC Meeting
Oct 18th
Pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs is holding a public meeting of the Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee on October 31, 2018. This meeting is intended to provide advice and recommendations to the EPA Administrator on issues associated with pesticide regulatory development and reform initiatives, evolving public policy and program implementation issues, and science issues associated with evaluating and reducing risks from use of pesticides.
The PPDC meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 31, 2018,from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 1, 2018, from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. there will be an informational seminar on biotechnology- pesticide issues held for stakeholders.
Nominate Members of the FIFRA SAP
Oct 9th
EPA is requesting nominations of experts for ad hoc participation on the FIFRA SAP. Nominees will be considered for ad hoc participation in upcoming FIFRA SAP peer reviews, providing independent scientific advice to the Agency on health and safety issues related to pesticides. Nominations, including contact information and affiliation(s), should be submitted to the Designated Federal Official, Dr. Marquea D. King (king.marquea@epa.gov or 202-564-3626) on or before November 13, 2018.
Click here for more details and relevant links.
OIG Report Criticizes EPA’s Pesticide Emergency Exemption Process
Oct 1st
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General released a report entitled “Measures and Management Controls Needed to Improve EPA’s Pesticide Emergency Exemption Process.” This OIG Report included the following summary:
“What we found
The EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) does not have outcome measures in place to determine how well the emergency exemption process maintains human health and environmental safeguards. The program office also does not have comprehensive internal controls to manage the emergency exemption data it collects. Finally, the OPP does not consistently communicate emergency exemption information with its stakeholders.