Federal Efforts To Regulate Pesticide Residues in Food

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for establishing all tolerances for pesticide residues on the basis of data submitted by petitioners concerning the nature, level, and toxicity of the residue. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for enforcing tolerances and accomplishes this by testing food samples to determine if residues exceed tolerance limits. The American public has not been adequately protected from potential hazards of pesticide use because of inadequate efforts to implement existing federal laws. EPA established many tolerances without sufficient test data to determine the level of pesticide residue that would likely remain on a crop after treatment or the potential of the pesticide to cause cancers, birth defects, gene mutations, or reproductive difficulties. EPA did not always comply with its own procedures for limiting aggregate tolerances and registered pesticides for use on food crops without setting associated tolerances. FDA generally did not test food for over 75 percent of the pesticide residues for which tolerances had been established. A followup review of EPA and FDA actions indicated that little progress has been made. Data gaps still exist. Residues of 195 pesticides for which tolerances have been established are seldom, if ever, monitored in the food supply, and 21 pesticides suspected of causing cancer have 661 individual tolerances that will not be monitored by the most frequently used FDA test.