RE: Why is new pesticide adverse effects info so hard to get at?

[Sue.Darcey, Pesticide Report <sdarcey@erols.com>]

Alright, Rich, I confess:

I partially knew the answer to this access question, even as I was
asking it -- I just wanted to see if anybody else was also trying
to find this information about pesticide adverse effects, and was
having as difficult a time retrieving it as I do, or if the Office
of Pesticide Programs is just discriminating against reporters.

Over the past six years of my writing about pesticides, I've filed
about 12-15 FOIA requests, and since I live in the Washington,
D.C., area, routinely visit the pesticide docket room, trolling
for pesticide adverse effects information that I can glean through
public comments, studies, environmental reports, etc.

My experience is that FOIA does work -- it just takes too long.
For example, I filed a "piggyback" FOIA request to get all the
reports adverse effects reports on Dursban (chlorpyrifos), and I
finally got a huge mass of information (with the confidential
business information, and names of victims exposed to Dursban
deleted) about 5 months after I filed my request.

So part of my question is -- why does it have to take so long?

When I call EPA pesticide staff, as you suggested, to get pesticide
adverse effects information more quickly, they very gently, yet
firmly, insist that I use the FOIA process.  If this is the only
way to know what ill health effects citizens have reported about
their exposure to individual pesticides, I think that OPP has an
obligation to hasten this FOIA information retrieval process.

What the pesticide docket room will supply you, to my knowledge,
is the following:

1) An index to old pesticide toxicity studies that have been
submitted to the agency in support of a pesticide registration.
(On Friday, Sept. 15, EPA finally put this index of old studies up
on its Office of Pesticide Programs website, under "FOIA Information."
All these studies have already been "cleared" for confidential
business information, so anything that a chemical manufacturer
doesn't want you to see, has been surgically removed from these
studies.)

2) The latest risk assessment reviews the agency has conducted on
a select list of organophosphate pesticides (those that have
undergone Food Quality Protection Act hazard assessment reviews).
These are important studies and contain some oblique references to
pesticide adverse effects reports, and are good to have,but they
only represent a tiny fraction of the entire registered pesticide
universe.

For example, if you want to know, right now,about the effects of
malathion and diazinon, that information is fresh and current,
because OPP (office of Pesticide Programs) just completed preliminary
risk assessments on these two.  But if you are curious about
"Roundup" (glyphosate)-- the most common home use herbicide in the
U.S., your information request will be denied unless you file a
FOIA and wait four months, or wait three or four years until EPA
gets around to conducting a risk assessment on it.

3)REDS -- Reregistration Eligibility Decisions:  If the pesticide
you are interested in happened to be in EPA's priority list to be
reviewed before FQPA was passed in August 1996, there is the
possibility that OPP did a thorough review on it in the last three
years, and that information is retrievable from the docket room,
or via OPP's website.  But again, the list of current REDs is only
the tip of the registered pesticide iceberg universe.

4) Public comments -- If EPA has put out a proposed rule on a
specific pesticide tolerance, a subject of a pesticide "special
review", or because they are investigating a cluster of similar
pesticides for any reason, it is possible to learn about some of
the adverse effects of that pesticide from the public comments that
come in from environmental groups or state agencies.

The pesticide docket room also has information on upcoming FIFRA
(Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) Science Advisory
Panel meetings, but the FIFRA SAP only review the most controversial
of pesticides (for example, they recently had a meeting to review
the carcinogenicity of malathion, because there has been some
scientific disagreement about this).

My experience with the OPPT library and the general EPA headquarters
library is that all the pesticide information in there is old,
except for the stuff in newsletters put out by my competitors
Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News and Bureau of National Affairs,
who have about as much access to new pesticide information as I
do.

But I confess, I haven't visited either of these libraries for two
years, having given up, because most of their data is outdated.

I keep watching the OPP web page, and other online sources, in the
hopes that some new database that contains pesticide adverse effects
information, or new toxicity information, will suddenly appear....

It does aggravate me, though, that EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs
has this pesticide adverse effects already, but effectively sits
on it and refuses to give it out until you jump through the FOIA
hoops to retrieve it.

Sue Darcey, Pesticide Report