Pesticides

The federal government and private organizations collect information on the amount of pesticides used in the United States, but no data systems exist that track pesticide usage in the United States. GAO estimates that each year at least 56 million pounds of pesticides from U.S. and Canadian sources end up in the Great Lakes watershed, including about 46 million pounds used on crops, eight million pounds used on lawns, and more than two million pounds used on golf courses. Pesticides that are repeatedly applied during the year on fruits and vegetables enter the Great Lakes and stay there, becoming more concentrated with time. The long retention time allows some pesticides to settle in lake-bottom sediments and become absorbed into the food chain. High levels of banned pesticides are still showing up in fish tissue. Preliminary findings by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show that the effects of nine herbicides in current use may be more long lasting than once thought. EPA needs to complete its water quality monitoring program and use this up-to-date data in its reregistration program, which requires these pesticides to be reevaluated for their health and environmental effects. Data also indicate that millions of pounds of unusable pesticides being stored on farms present a disposal problem for the Great Lakes region. EPA has begun a program in the area to dispose of some of these pesticides, but large quantities remain, including banned, spoiled, and unneeded materials.

GAO found that: (1) the federal government and private organizations lack sufficient database systems to track pesticide usage in the Great Lakes watershed; (2) out of an estimated 56 million pounds of pesticides used annually within the U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes watershed, 46 million pounds are used on agricultural crops and 10 million pounds are used on lawns and U.S. golf courses; (3) herbicides account for three-quarters of the total agricultural pesticides and are applied by aerial sprayers to control weeds; (4) fungicides and insecticides account for the remaining agricultural pesticides and are applied largely to fruits and vegetables to control diseases and pests; (5) persistent pesticides are retained in the Great Lakes for long periods and eventually bioaccumulate because only 1 percent of Great Lakes water is circulated annually, allowing pesticides to settle in lake-bottom sediments; (6) results from fish-tissue monitoring show that restricted pesticides are still being detected at high concentrations and may be more persistent than previously thought; (7) EPA needs to complete its water quality monitoring program and use current and accurate data in its pesticide reregistration program so that it can fulfill its pesticide monitoring requirements; and (8) although EPA has instituted a program to dispose of unusable pesticides in the Great Lakes watershed, large quantities of banned, spoiled, and improperly stored pesticides remain.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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