|
 Since
the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) is at the center of the FQPA debate, we sought out the
man responsible for handling the pesticide evaluations for the agency,
Jim Jones. Jones, director of the EPA’s Office
of Pesticide Programs, answered some of the criticisms of his program
and wanted to reassure Green Industry professionals that the implementation is on schedule.
Here are some of his responses:
Q.: The goal was to review 9,700 pesticide tolerances in 10 years.
That seems like an ambitious plan, particularly for an agency that has
been traditionally understaffed and overworked. How many people are working
on these evaluations and what has it been like to actually do the evaluations?
Jones: It’s been a huge challenge for us. We did get some
additional resources after the law passed in 1996, and the program grew
somewhat. My office has 825 federal employees. About 350 of them work
specifically on pesticide reregistration and tolerance reassessment, and
250 of them work on registration, which is the process for approving new
pesticides.
Q.: Has the funding stayed constant since 1996? Is there any truth
to the rumor that there’s a hiring freeze in your office that prevents
you from replacing people who leave or retire? How has that affected your
manpower allocations?
Jones: On the budget front, the absolute dollars have grown extremely
slowly since the FQPA was passed — so slowly, in fact, that the real
terms, [the amount of money available] has actually eroded. Although the
initial bump from the FQPA has been maintained, it’s been eroded
because the costs of what we do have increased. We peaked at 870 employees
in 1997, and we’ve had to reduce the number of people working on
these issues since then. We don’t have a hiring freeze, however.
We can replace people who retire.
Q.: How many tolerances have you examined so far?
Jones: We’ve done around 6,200 so far. We’ve done around
1,000 per year and have been fairly consistent in that. We’re proud
to say we met the two interim deadlines in 1999 and 2002, and we’re
on track to meet the final deadline in 2006.
Q.: How many products have you had to impose some sort of risk
mitigation on?
Jones: We haven’t actually attempted to calculate in an
aggregate sense how many reviews have resulted in risk mitigation. We’ve
certainly seen hundreds where uses have been significantly modified, whether
it’s been a deletion of a use or a change in how the product can
be used. We’ve actually seen several hundred of them be voluntarily
cancelled by manufacturers for reasons other than our evaluation.
Q.: When you go to a company and say, “We need to review
this chemical because it’s in this class of chemicals that we’re
looking at right now,” what has been the chemical companies reaction
been?
Jones: We’ve had disagreements [with individual companies]
as we go through the process on a number of facets of the review, whether
it’s a disagreement over how we’re calculating risk, how we’re
interpreting hazard or how we’re estimating exposure. Throughout
the process, there’s constant tension in the system. Overall, as
a group, they’ve been responsive to the process because we’ve
tried to be as transparent as possible.
Q.: Some of the chemical companies have said that the whole regulatory
process is slow because the EPA hadn’t focused on turfgrass in the
past. What was your experience when you first starting reviewing products
for the turf and ornamental market?
Jones: Our expertise when FQPA passed was best at evaluating
pesticide residues on food and the risks they pose to people. We’ve
had to do a lot of work in trying to evaluate exposures in the turf market.
We’ve invested a lot of money in that area, and now we’re pretty
comfortable with the analyses we’re getting. It has speeded up the
process, too.
Q.: If Green Industry professionals decide they need a chemical
that’s under review to stay on the market, how important is it for
them to be involved in the process?
Jones: It’s important that stakeholders, like Green Industry professionals,
participate in the process. At our Web site, they can follow any chemical’s
path and find out exactly where it is at any given time. It helps us make
better-informed decisions, and it helps them make sure their interests
are represented.
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