EPA Pesticide Registration and ESA Compliance

The Endocrine Society has issued a Statement of Principles on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and public health protection. It recommends that EPA and other agencies adopt these principles in their screening for and regulation of endocrine disrupting chemicals. These principles include the following.

• Basic scientists actively engaged in the development of new knowledge in relevant disciplines should be involved in evaluating the weight-of-evidence of EDC studies, as well as in the design and interpretation of studies that inform the regulation of EDCs.

• State-of-the-art molecular and cellular techniques, and highly sensitive model systems, need to be built into current testing, in consultation with the appropriate system experts.

In a letter dated June 18, 2012, EPA objected to several aspects of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s May 11, 2012 draft biological opinion regarding the effects of the herbicide thiobencarb on endangered and threatened pacific salmonids.  EPA also asked NMFS to respond to public comments on the BiOp in a transparent manner:  In EPA’s own words:

EPA believes that public transparency and accountability are core values for our agencies. EPA recommends that NMFS include a section in the fmal BiOp that responds to all the public comments received.  More specifically, NMFS should: 1) indicate for each comment accepted how that acceptance is reflected in revisions to the draft BiOp and 2) for each comment rejected, the rationale for rejecting the comment and not revising the BiOp.

In a June 12, 2012, letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Reps. Bob Gibbs (R-OH), chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s water panel, and Andy Harris (R-MD), chairman of the House science panel’s environment subcommittee, ask several questions regarding two studies that EPA intends to use to support the scientific and economic basis for EPA’s pending final guidance clarifying the scope of the Clean Water Act. Among other questions, the Congressmen’s letter asks EPA whether it plans to classify the pending economic and scientific studies as “highly influential scientific assessments,” a category of studies that EPA and White House guidelines generally subject to heightened peer review scrutiny.  EPA sent its final guidance to the White House Office of Management & Budget on Feb. 21 for OMB review.

In a letter to EPA dated May 31, 2012, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service issued a final Biological Opinion on the effects of EPA’s registration of pesticides containing the active ingredients oryzalin, pendimethalin, and trifluralin on endangered species, threatened species and critical habitat that has been designated for those species.  NMFS’ BiOp concludes that pesticide products containing these three active ingredients are likely to jeopardize approximately half of the listed pacific salmonid ESUs/DPUs and adversely modify their designated critical habitat.

● Click here to read NMFS’ BiOp