Setting the standard

On March 19, 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to revise the federal regulations issued under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) that direct agricultural worker protection (40 CFR 170). Taken collectively, these regulations are known as the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard, or WPS.

The current WPS provisions have been in place since 1992. Drawing from 20-plus years of implementation and a thorough stakeholder review, EPA decided it was time for an update. The proposal reflects current research on best practices for mitigation of occupational pesticide exposure to agricultural workers and handlers. It aims to strengthen the protections provided to agricultural workers that handle pesticide products under the WPS by improving elements of the existing regulation, such as training, notification, communication materials, use of personal protective equipment, and decontamination supplies. The EPA expects the revisions, once final, to prevent unreasonable adverse effects from exposure to pesticides among agricultural workers and pesticide handlers; vulnerable groups, such as minority and low-income populations, child farmworkers, and farmworker families; and the general public.

One sticking point with the WPS is the importance and independence of family farms. The EPA recognizes that many of these businesses rely on immediate family to complete these tasks. These revisions aim to protect workers while ensuring agricultural productivity and preserving the traditions of and exemptions for family members working on family farms.

When EPA opened the proposal to comments, it received plenty of feedback. The comment period was extended an additional 60 days, until August 18, 2014, in response to requests from growers, industry, farmworker advocates and states for additional time to provide input.

“The opportunity to revise the rule may not come again for some time, so we are committed to getting it right,” said Jim Jones, assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “Updating the 20-year old regulation to provide more protections to the nation’s two million farm workers and their families from pesticide exposure is a priority for EPA.”

The extended deadline led to a flurry of comments from members of the horticulture industry, and the trade associations representing them. The Georgia Green Industry Association, which represents more than 650 wholesale nurseries, landscape and irrigation companies, and garden centers, used its comment to state its opposition to the new regulations.

“We are concerned that EPA has failed to adequately justify the need for many of the changes now being proposed, and that EPA woefully underestimates the regulatory cost burdens that will result if many of the proposed changes are made final,” wrote the association’s executive director, Sherry Morris, in an Aug. 18 letter to EPA. “This proposal will impose additional legal burdens on farmers, increase workplace obligations, expose growers to third party lawsuits, and increase costs with no proven beneficial effects.”

AmericanHort also filed its official comments on August 18, calling for EPA to withdraw or dramatically scale back the proposed rule. In addition to concerns about the adverse economic impact on nursery, greenhouse and floriculture operations, the association suggests that EPA should focus the necessary resources to work with state pest control regulators and agricultural stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness of the current WPS, rather than re-write the standard that has served growers and their employees well for the past few decades.

Craig Regelbrugge, senior vice president of Industry Advocacy & Research for AmericanHort, hopes the EPA takes grower concerns into consideration before a final rule.

“There is no set or required timeframe for EPA, and clearly they’ve received a lot of comments so it does take time for them to be reviewed and characterized,” Regelbrugge says.

Kevin Keaney, branch chief of the Office of Pesticide Programs, Field and External Affairs Division of the EPA, provided an update that sheds light on the tremendous scale of this project. “We are finishing the review and our responses to the 23,000-some comments,” he says.

“We are scheduled to publish the final regulation in late August or early September.”
 

Properly equipped

EPA says its proposed changes “provide significant improvements to worker training regarding the safe use of pesticides, including how to prevent and effectively treat pesticide exposure.” A big part of safety is the use of personal protective equipment, or PPE.

The EPA’s Labeling Requirements for Pesticides and Devices require that pesticide products sold for agricultural use include precautionary label statements addressing dermal protection. Any product that contains a pesticide – including baits, aerosols, fertilizers, seed, organic pesticides, even “natural” products – must be handled using the required PPE in the correct way. The required PPE could be chemical-resistant gloves or a respirator. It varies for different pesticide products and for different formulations of the same product. The required PPE may be different for tasks such as mixing, loading, application, repair, cleanup and/or early entry into a treated area.

PPE requirements can change at any time due to new research and/or regulatory requirements, so read the entire label every time you purchase a pesticide. The current PPE regulations under the current WPS are available here: www.epa.gov/oppfead1/safety/workers/protective-equipment.html.

More resources available

The cooperative extension programs at land grant universities are active in the training of agricultural personnel and offer training to satisfy EPA’s requirements for WPS. There are several other organizations that provide education, training or simple information about PPE and WPS, from the Weed Science Society of America, the Association of American Pest Control Officials, to the American Association of Pesticide Safety Educators.

The WSSA published a series of articles regarding education of pesticide handlers and are available at www.wssa.net. Find your closest extension here: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/. To find your local pest control official, visit the AAPCO website, www.aapco.org/officials.html.

In the most-recent the Journal of Pesticide Safety Education (www.jpse.org), the AAPSE published a research article: “Call for Clear and Accurate Communication about PPE for Dermal Protection for Pesticide Handlers.” The authors, Anugrah Shaw and Courtney Harned of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Carol Black, extension specialist at Washington State University, believe that EPA needs to review its processes, science and information management to more clearly communicate what PPE is required to protect pesticide handlers.

This is an important issue, because confusing or inaccurate PPE statements on pesticide labels negate the time, effort and resources expended in conducting exposure studies, risk assessment, risk mitigation and training.