EPA releases revision to the Final Rule on Pesticide Testing

The revision released on Friday misses the whole point. While adding nursing women and infants to the list of "protected" persons, the rule allows a backdoor, a loophole, for testing on the people the rule it is said to protect.

For background on this topic read this, this and this. The long and the short is that the Bush administration colluded with the pesticide industry to create these rules so they would favor business over the most vulnerable in society and allow for pesticides to be tested on pregnant women, nursing women and children.

The update to the rule states that the EPA will not allow testing on nursing women or infants. But read a bit further and you find that the revision will allow the EPA to use pesticide testing results from tests conducted on nursing women and infants so long as nursing status ("nursing" or "not nursing") is omitted from the report. [See pg. 36178]

Both, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have waived the opportunity under FIFRA to review the proposed rule.