Update on US EPA’s progress for implementing the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the Agency’s first year progress on deliverables under the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022 (PRIA 5).

Registration service fees authorized by PRIA fund approximately one third of EPA’s pesticide program activities. In recent years, EPA has received an increased number of applications requiring the Agency to review more scientifically complex topics, including implementation of Endangered Species Act (ESA) compliance as part of its regulatory determinations. Fee increases and revised decision review timeframes authorized by PRIA 5 help improve EPA’s performance in its review of new applications and reevaluation of older registered pesticides. In addition to revised fees and decision timeframes, PRIA 5 included new provisions, such as implementation of farmworker protections and health clinician training, bilingual pesticide labeling, targeted funding to address the backlog of non-fee related applications, and development of ESA guidance to registrants. Highlights of EPA’s implementation of PRIA 5 include:

• Providing required funding through an interagency agreement between EPA and CDC/NIOSH to support the SENSOR program for pesticide incidence surveillance.

• Conducting significant outreach to and seeking feedback from a broad array of stakeholders—including farmworkers and farmworker advocacy groups, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, the Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, pesticide companies, states, and EPA regions—on implementation of bilingual labeling including ways to make it more accessible to farmworkers. Outreach activities included hosting a public webinar on ways to make bilingual pesticide labeling accessible to farmworkers.

• Publishing a Notice of Funding Opportunity in June 2023 and reviewing applications for the PRIA set-aside ″partnership grant″ that will be awarded in early 2024 to fund the National Pesticide Information Center.

• Centralizing more than 1,000 pesticide guidance documents related to pesticide regulation and pesticide-related resources on a new webpage, featuring an easy-to-use search tool, in June 2023.

• Implementing a number of process changes for review of fee-related actions, most notably those relating to the renegotiation of PRIA due dates. These changes will result in improved efficiency and transparency regarding EPA’s review of fee-related actions.

• Providing farmworker training and education grants through continuation of existing cooperative agreements, including subawards to non-profit, community-based organizations.

• Publishing a Request for Information to solicit stakeholder input on the program design for the Health Care Provider Training cooperative agreement Notice of Funding Opportunity in September 2023.

• Issuing guidance to improve the efficiency of EPA’s ESA analyses for new conventional pesticide active ingredient applications and active ingredients undergoing registration review in September 2023.

• Awarding a new five-year cooperative agreement for the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP), which includes environmental justice components such as collaboration between PSEPs and minority serving institutions and translation of pesticide safety materials, in September 2023.

• Successfully migrating all divisions within EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs into the new information technology (IT) workflow on the Salesforce platform, thus meeting IT upgrade requirements specified in PRIA 5 in September 2023, three months earlier than required.

• Beginning to reduce the backlog of pesticide registration actions submitted outside of PRIA and processing these actions according to their timeframes.

• Issuing ESA guidance for review of new outdoor uses of registered conventional pesticides in December 2023.

• Establishing the Vector Expedited Review Voucher program that incentivizes the development and submission of applications for new insecticides to control the spread of vector-borne disease in December 2023.

• Engaging potential candidates for a third-party assessment of the process for reviewing PRIA pesticide applications. EPA expects to award a contract in the coming months.

• Expanding an existing EPA contract to provide training to EPA employees on regulatory responsibilities and policies relating to PRIA. EPA is concurrently developing a competitive grant for training that will be directed to institutions of higher education consistent with PRIA 5 requirements.

• Establishing a process for sharing EPA’s review of studies, known as data evaluation records, with the applicant at the time of the regulatory decision.

Learn more about PRIA 5 implementation