Source: Mary Emma Young, CropLife America, 2/24/14 WASHINGTON, DC –
CropLife America (CLA) strongly supports rigorous worker protection standards
for applicators of pesticide products and looks forward to reviewing and
providing comments on proposed changes to the agricultural Worker Protection
Standard (WPS) released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on
Feb. 20. CLA hopes to continue its collaboration with the Agency and other
stakeholders in developing regulations that fully protect the health and safety
of America’s farmworkers, practically support farming operations and align with
the scientific standards of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide
Act (FIFRA).
As the federal statute regulating the crop protection industry, FIFRA
mandates that crop protection products undergo years of rigorous testing and
risk assessments to determine their potential impacts on human health and the
environment before being registered for use. EPA further ensures responsible
product use through strict labeling measures, developed as a result of these
risk assessments, which dictate where a product can be applied; where and how it
can be stored; restrictions for use; and other information on proper use. This
process helps ensure that applicators use crop protection products responsibly
with no unreasonable adverse effects. Registrants of crop protection products
also support training programs for workers that improve compliance with
requirements established by EPA, among a wide array of stewardship
initiatives.
“The health and safety of America’s farmworkers is paramount to the crop
protection industry, and we have strived for decades to continuously improve the
technology surrounding product formulation and application,” noted Jay Vroom,
CLA’s president and CEO. “We look forward to providing comments to EPA on the
proposed changes to the Worker Protection Standard and ensuring that any final
regulation is representative of the ongoing, science-based advancements in our
industry.”
Vroom observed that much work is ahead in revising the WPS. He said, “EPA has
highlighted that their new proposal calls for changes that will require
significant resources from farmers, including variable buffers on some fields;
mandatory ‘no entry’ signs on field perimeters; and mandatory recordkeeping,
among other provisions. CLA will work with farmer organizations to analyze these
proposals and comment on whether or not they are feasible and can make
significant improvements in worker protection compared to other innovative
alternatives.”
The CLA president also expressed concern with the proposal’s “background
justifications,” and commented, “While CLA fully supports updating this rule to
improve worker protection, we do have concerns about some of the ‘suppositions’
in the proposal’s preamble language, which relies on only part of the
epidemiological information available in the public domain, and seems at present
to accept a broad and very liberal range of estimates of theoretical harm, as
well as supposed under-reporting of worker exposure incidents. CLA will be
providing extensive comment on those specific provisions of the proposal.”
To learn more about CLA’s position on the WPS, visit http://www.croplifeamerica.org/pesticide-issues/worker-protection.
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