US EPA drafts pesticide cumulative risk guidance

The U.S. EPA is requesting public comment on a draft guidance document, Pesticide Cumulative Risk Assessment: Framework for Screening Analysis. Building on EPA’s work on cumulative risk assessments, this document provides guidance on how EPA will screen available information to identify groups of pesticides that may have a common mechanism of toxicity. Once groups of chemicals with common mechanisms have been identified, EPA refers to the potential risk resulting from combined exposure to all chemicals of the class as cumulative risk. EPA will be accepting public comments until August 28, 2015.

By establishing guidance for conducting a screening level analysis of chemicals that have the potential cumulative risks, EPA will be able to more efficiently prioritize its cumulative risk assessments. Prior to development of this framework, cumulative assessments required extensive resources, large amounts of data, and sometimes involved labor-intensive scientific analysis.
This screening-level approach will ultimately allow the Agency to address the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requirements to consider available information concerning cumulative effects of pesticides having a common mechanism of toxicity while efficiently using resources.