Now Available for Public Comment: ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments

This original announcement was published by EPA’s Health and Environment Risk Assessment team on November 10, 2020. Click here for more information. 

 

Notice: EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program released the Office of Research and Development (ORD) Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments, or IRIS Handbook, for a 90-day public comment period. The IRIS Handbook provides operating procedures for developing IRIS assessments including problem formulation approaches and methods for conducting systematic review, dose response analysis, and developing toxicity values.

EPA is submitting a notice for publication in the Federal Register (FR). Please refer to the official notice in a forthcoming FR publication, which will appear on the Federal Register website (https://www.federalregister.gov/) and on Regulations.gov (https://www.regulations.gov) in Docket No. EPA-HQ-ORD-2018-0654. Once published in the Federal Register, an additional IRIS listserv notice will be distributed to notify the public.

For more information on this document, please visit the EPA IRIS website.

EPA Releases Draft Biological Evaluations for Atrazine, Simazine and Propazine

This original announcement was published by the EPA on Friday, November 6, 2020. Click here for more information.

 

EPA is taking the next step in its regulatory review of atrazine, simazine and propazine, three widely-used herbicides used to control a variety of grasses and broadleaf weeds. Atrazine is used on about 75 million acres of agricultural crop land every year and is especially effective, affordable, and well-studied.

In September 2020, EPA announced its interim registration review decisions for atrazine, simazine and propazine (collectively known as the triazines), finalizing measures to protect human health, mitigate potential ecological risks while providing America’s farmers with valuable tools they have come to rely upon.

Today, EPA is releasing its draft biological evaluations (BEs) for triazines for public review and comment. Biological evaluations are the beginning of EPA’s Endangered Species Act consultation review process for pesticides where the agency determines if an endangered or threatened species or critical habitat could be affected by the use of a certain pesticide.

EPA will accept public comments on the draft evaluations until Jan. 5, 2021. After carefully considering the public comments received and any additional data received, the agency will finalize the BEs. If EPA determines a pesticide may affect a listed species or its critical habitat, the agency will consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (the Services) as appropriate. The Services will then issue a biological opinion to determine if the population of a species would be adversely impacted and, if so, propose ways to reduce risks. It is the goal of EPA to ensure that pesticides can continue to be used safely with minimal impacts to threatened and endangered species.

This is the second group of pesticides, and the first herbicides, where the agency used its March 2020 Revised Method for National Level Listed Species Biological Evaluations of Conventional Pesticides to assess potential impacts that these herbicides may have on threatened and endangered species and their critical habitats. As such, EPA used advanced exposure modeling techniques to estimate exposures to plants in various environments such as wetlands.

The biological evaluations make effects determinations for 1,795 listed species and 792 designated critical habitats when these pesticides are used according to product labels. This includes no effect (NE), not likely to adversely affect (NLAA), and likely to adversely affect (LAA) determinations. A summary of LAA determinations for atrazine, simazine, and propazine is below:

  • Atrazine is likely to adversely affect 54 percent of all species and 40 percent of critical habitats ;
  • Propazine is likely to adversely affect 4 percent of all species and 2 percent of critical habitats; and,
  • Simazine is likely to adversely affect approximately 53 percent of species and 40 percent of critical habitats.

To read the biological evaluations, please visit our webpage. EPA is accepting public comments via docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2020-0514 at www.regulations.gov.

EPA Proposes Updates to List of Pests of Significant Health Importance

This original announcement was published by the EPA on November 4, 2020. Click here for more information.

 

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released an updated list of pests of significant health importance for public review and comment.

Federal law requires EPA, in coordination with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to identify pests of significant public health importance and in coordination with the Public Health Service, to develop and implement programs to improve and facilitate the safe and necessary use of chemical, biological, and other methods to combat and control such pests of public health importance. The list serves as a useful tool for private and public organizations including local or state governments, departments of public health, pesticide registrants, and non-governmental organizations when making decisions and plans about future public health actions.

Since this list’s original publication in 2002, new vector-borne diseases have been identified and pests that had been previously thought of as benign or nuisance pests have been found to adversely impact public health. EPA, CDC and USDA collaborated to update the list to incorporate significant changes regarding vector-borne diseases and related research, and eliminate gaps or ambiguities in the current pests list.

The draft Pesticide Registration Notice more precisely describes both the pests and expected public health impacts and adds several new pests (ex. brown dog tick) and public health impacts (ex. Zika fever and coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2). Other pests have been renamed or grouped with similar species or removed altogether (ex. hobo spider).

The list does not affect the regulatory status of any registration or application for registration of any pesticide product.

EPA will take public comment on the draft Pesticide Registration Notice during a 60-day public comment period ending on January 3, 2021 via www.regulations.gov (Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OPP-2020-0260).