Order Denying Petition to Revoke All Tolerances for the Pesticide Chlorpyrifos
In this Order, EPA denies a petition from the 9th Circuit Court requesting that EPA revoke all tolerances for the pesticide chlorpyrifos under section 408(d) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and cancel all chlorpyrifos registrations under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. The petition was filed in September 2007 by the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
There will be a period in which objections or requests for hearings on this order can be made 60 days after date of publication in the Federal Register. Unless there is strong scientific evidence in support of claims made in the petition, all chlorpyrifos uses will be retained until 2022, when registration renewal of chlorpyrifos will be revisited.
For tree fruit growers the continued use of chlorpyrifos will provided greatest level of control of borers. These include dogwood borer (DWB) and most importantly, black stem borer (BSB), which we believe contributes to significant tree stress leading to Sudden Apple Decline (SAD) in newly planted and young apple production systems on highly dwarfing rootstock.
During a revision of pesticide standards and development of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in 1996, the FQPA standardized the way the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would manage the use of pesticides and amended the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. It mandated a health-based standard for pesticides used in foods, provided special protections for babies and infants, streamlined the approval of safe pesticides, established incentives for the creation of safer pesticides, and required that pesticide registrations remain current.
The FQPA required additional safety margins of insecticides such as organophosphates for infants and children in section 408(b)(2)(C) of the FFDCA known as a “FQPA lOX safety factor”. However, there remains the potential for chlorpyrifos to cause neurodevelopmental effects in children at exposure levels below EPA’ s existing regulatory standard which is determined as 10% cholinesterase inhibition from exposure to chlorpyrifos. That said, EPA will require further study on the potential for chlorpyrifos to result in adverse neurodevelopmental effects prior to the 2022 registration renewal of chlorpyrifos.
