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Pesticide News Story: Regional Stakeholder Meetings on Common Methodology to Characterize Pesticide Effects on Aquatic Life
For Release: December 4, 2009
In the November 25, 2009, Federal Register, EPA announced that starting January 2010, it will conduct six public meetings across the country to solicit input on methods being evaluated by the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), the Office of Water (OW), with the support of the Office of Research and Development (ORD), to characterize effects from pesticides on fish, other aquatic organisms, and aquatic plants in aquatic ecosystems. At the public meetings, EPA will detail initial thinking on how to ensure that effects are characterized consistently by both OPP and OW. Following these meetings, EPA plans to develop a set of white papers describing potential new tools and analytical approaches that may be used by EPA, state pesticide and water quality agencies, and other stakeholders. These white papers will explore methods for estimating aquatic toxicity data for deriving community level benchmarks and methods to address effects on plants. EPA expects to solicit additional stakeholder input on the tools and approaches as the white papers are developed. The tools and approaches will undergo peer review prior to being made available.
More detailed information on this project is available on EPA’s Web site, including background documents and meeting presentations, locations, dates, and times. The Federal Register notice also provides meeting information and can be accessed in Regulations.gov, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0773.
Scientific views and other comments from the public regarding information presented at the public meeting can be posted to the docket at EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0773.