The Environmental Protection Agency recently made pesticide incident data from around the country available to the public, which makes up about a decades's worth of incidents and planned monthly updates. According to a release by the EPA, the move shows how the agency is dedicated to environmental justice and is aligned with the Equity Action Plan.
“It is particularly critical to share how pesticides may have impacted our most vulnerable populations, including children and farmworkers," EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said in the release.
The EPA has taken a significant step toward transparency by making 10 years of pesticide incident data available on its website. This move aligns with the EPA's commitment to environmental justice, ensuring the public and community organizations can access data on pesticide exposures, especially among vulnerable populations, according to the release.
The data sets, which are sourced from the Incident Data System, provide information on pesticide exposure incidents that include incident dates, reasons for reporting and severity of the incidents, the release reported. The EPA has not verified the raw data's accuracy or completeness, however, so users should be cautious when drawing conclusions.
The release said the EPA receives pesticide incident information from a number of sources, including pesticide manufacturers, the public, state regulators, the National Pesticide Information Center and the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
The incident data includes reports of unreasonable adverse effects caused by pesticide products. Previously the EPA mainly provided incident information to the public upon specific requests or as summaries during the pesticide registration review process. Making the data accessible addresses long-standing requests from farmworker organizations and public health officials to share incident data, the release said.
The EPA has released the last 10 years of incident data because older data may not reflect current pesticide product labels due to label changes during registration review, the release stated. The EPA now plans to update the data monthly.
The incident data is critical for the EPA's periodic review of pesticide registrations, ensuring registered pesticides do not pose unreasonable adverse effects. This data helps the EPA evaluate the risks associated with pesticides, leading to necessary label changes, restrictions and mitigation measures to reduce risk to humans and the environment, according to the release.
