Senator Inhofe Admonishes EPA on Neonics - The Edge from the National Association of Landscape Professionals

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Senator Inhofe Admonishes EPA on Neonics

Last week, U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla), chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to Jim Jones, assistant administrator of the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), expressing concern with a series of risk assessments being conducted on neonicotinoid insecticides known as “neonics.”

In his letter Inhofe stresses that the EPA’s authority to regulate pesticides is granted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and that any attempts to deviate from a risk-based approach in favor of a precautionary principal would not be viewed favorably. Under the provisions of FIFRA, the EPA’s assessment process must follow a risk-based approach as opposed to the precautionary principal advocated for by anti-pesticide activists. Under the risk-based approach, the EPA review must assess “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment” and take into account the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of the use of any pesticide. This is markedly different than a precautionary approach, which calls for measures to be taken when an activity “potentially” raises threats to the environment, even if cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

Inhofe is also critical of the EPA’s research approach and urges the agency to study the issue using levels of neonics that accurately reflect real world exposure and states “the limited findings of your imidacloprid risk assessment have already prompted misleading and sensationalist headlines from the media and calls by well-funded environmental activist groups to outright ban neonicotinoid instecticides.”

NALP and its industry allies have been diligently working to educate decision makers at all levels of government on pollinator health. Despite activist claims, the scientific consensus is that pollinator health is an extremely complicated issue and there are multiple factors that contribute to population declines. Senator Imhofe’s letter strongly reinforces that premise and puts the EPA on notice that not only is Congress watching, but they are insistent that the agency follows federal rules.