1) Identify children living on and near farms (and any other highly exposed group of children) as a “major identifiable subgroup” for all FQPA determinations,52 and designate these children as a “population at special risk” who must be protected in order to fulfill the FQPA requirement that pesticide tolerances provide “a reasonable certainty that no harm will result to infants and

children from aggregate exposure to the pesticide chemical residue.”53 As demonstrated in the attached report, Trouble on the Farm: Growing Up with Pesticides in Agricultural Communities, children living on and near farms may have substantially increased exposure to pesticides over other groups of children. These children represent a significant proportion of

the population, and any tolerance that does not protect them cannot be found to provide “a reasonable certainty of no harm” under the law.

2) Make a specific finding regarding the exposure of this subpopulation to pesticides from:

a. presence in the fields for any reason;

b. food eaten directly from the field, and the amount of such food in farm children’s diets;

c. contact with parents’ contaminated hair, skin and clothing;

d. laundering work clothes with children’s clothes;

e. drinking water contaminated with pesticides, [including from small water systems, private wells or surface water in farm areas];

f. outdoor air, fog and drift from spraying;

g. indoor air;

h. house dust;

i. dermal exposure, especially through pesticides on farm children’s hands from contact with contaminated soils, from washing or playing in irrigation ditches and from contact with pets; and

j. breastmilk.

If EPA finds, as a result of this evaluation, that it lacks complete information on any of these

documented pathways of exposure, it must apply the tenfold (or greater) safety factor

provided for in the Act54 and require the submission of the missing data. If, as a result of its

evaluation of available data, including the scientific literature, EPA finds actual exposures, the

agency must set tolerances for that chemical at a level which account for these exposures.

4) In evaluating exposure pathways, identify substances with a common mechanism of toxicity as

required by FQPA,55 and assure that exposure evaluations account for all pathways of

exposure to all chemicals with a common mechanism of toxicity.

5) Make available funding for studies to better characterize national baselines for human

exposures to common pesticides through programs such as the National Health and Nutrition

Examination Survey (NHANES) and extramural research

47 U. S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Pesticide Program: Residue

Monitoring 1997 (August 1998), available at http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/pes97rep.html.

48 Supra note 25.

49 Supra note 2.

50 Supra note 1 at 14.

51 Supra note 1 at 15.

52 21 U.S.C. §346a(b)(2)(C).

53 21 U.S.C. §346a(b)(2)(C)(ii)(II).

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