The Environmental Protection Agency announced a strategic plan that aims to ensure that its assessments of pesticides more closely, quickly, and effectively evaluate the potential for endocrine effects in humans. This will work alongside EPA’s ability to protect against those effects as part of its pesticide decisions under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and to implement the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program under section 408(p) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Going forward, EPA will use its existing FIFRA data collection authorities to obtain the data it needs to make both FIFRA and EDSP decisions on whether the pesticide impacts the human estrogen, androgen, and thyroid systems. Given the large number of pesticides awaiting these decisions, EPA is prioritizing the approximately 400 conventional pesticide active ingredients that are being registered for the first time or undergoing registration review.
EPA has identified 30 high-priority pesticides that require additional data on potential human estrogen and/or androgen effects. These pesticides are considered high priority because preliminary data indicate the chemicals may cause activity in the endocrine system. EPA is seeking available data or information on these chemicals for 60 days as part of a public comment period. Additionally, to fill any remaining data gaps, the Agency intends to issue FIFRA human health data requests for these chemicals in the spring of 2024. EPA is also seeking available data or other information to evaluate endocrine data needs for a second group of 126 conventional pesticides for which the Agency’s initial analysis has found limited endocrine data. For 161 additional conventional pesticides, the Agency will determine which ones it needs to obtain updated endocrine data for in the coming years as part of registration review. The comment period for this action is open, interested parties can submit data or a comment in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2023-0474 at www.regulations.gov.