[Pollinator] FW: Pollinator Lawsuit

[Tom Van Arsdall]

FYI

 

R. Thomas (Tom) Van Arsdall, Director of Public Policy

   Pollinator <http://www.pollinator.org/>  Partnership

   (703) 509-4746

   tva at pollinator.org

   

 

<http://iwpnews.com/201312112455495/EPA-Daily-News/Daily-News/groups-pestici

de-suit-tests-application-of-novel-epa-pollinator-framework/menu-id-95.html>

Groups' Pesticide Suit Tests Application Of Novel EPA Pollinator Framework

 

 

Environmental and beekeeper groups have filed an opening brief in a case

that appears to mark a first legal test for EPA's risk assessment framework

for ensuring pesticides do not harm pollinators, alleging that the agency's

registration of sulfoxaflor failed to adequately address the findings of an

assessment conducted under the framework.

 

In Dec. 6 opening briefs in the case Pollinator Stewardship Council et. al.

v. U.S. EPA et al., the groups are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the

9th Circuit to remand EPA's May 6 registration of sulfoxaflor for

reconsideration, arguing that the agency's finding that the registration

will not pose risks to pollinators is unsupported by evidence, including the

agency's new tiered approach for assessing risks to pollinators.

 

"EPA's own scientific analysis confirms that sulfoxaflor poses 'a potential

risk for bees' and finds that [the manufacturer's] Tier 2 field studies were

'unable to preclude risk to developing brood or long-term colony health.'"

the petitioners' brief says. Tier 1 of the framework found sulfoxaflor "very

highly toxic" to individual bees,

<http://iwpnews.com/iwpfile.html?file=dec2013%2Fepa2013_2146.pdf> according

to the brief.

 

The beekeepers' challenge to EPA's May 6 registration of sulfoxaflor is the

first to challenge a pesticide registration since the agency last year

proposed its new pollinator risk assessment framework.

 

EPA's proposed framework uses a tiered approach in assessing risks to

pollinators and seeks to account for pesticides such as sulfoxaflor that are

systemic, meaning chemicals are taken up into plants pollen nectar and stem.

The agency has acknowledged that its traditional assessments have failed to

account for the risks of systemic pesticides, including chronic or sublethal

effects, to pollinators.

 

But the framework has already received mixed reviews from a Science Advisory

Panel that EPA established to review it, as well as from some

environmentalists and states.

 

The risk framework was intended to respond to growing concerns about the

decline of honey bee and other pollinator populations. EPA and the U.S.

Department of Agriculture (USDA) are investigating the causes of the massive

decline in bee populations since 2006, and in May issued a report on honey

bee health that blamed a combination of stressors including habitat loss,

parasites, lack of genetic diversity, disease and pesticide exposure.

 

While EPA considers pesticides one of the variety of factors in the overall

decline in bee populations, the agency plans to use the new risk assessment

framework in its years-long reevaluations of the controversial neonicotinoid

class of pesticides suspected of harming bees.

 

Draft Assessment

 

Early this year environmentalists and a Washington state official criticized

a draft EPA risk assessment for sulfoxaflor, which utilized the agency's

proposed framework, saying the assessment relies on studies with uncertain

results, calls for outdated mitigation methods and may also be limited for

assessing non-honeybee risks.

 

While similar to neonicotinoids in that it interacts with the nicotinic

acetylcholine receptor, causing paralysis and mortality in target insects,

sulfoxaflor has been slightly altered from other neonicotinoids to prevent

resistance. EPA's Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)

registration of the chemical allows it to be used on a slew of grains,

vegetables, fruits and ornamentals.

 

While the agency in its human health assessment found little concern for

human health effects of the chemical, in its ecological assessment, it noted

that the pesticide is "classified as very highly toxic."

 

However, the agency found that if applied at maximum application rates, the

concentration in plant nectar would only exceed concentrations of concern in

roughly 3 percent of cases. What's more, it found that the strength of

exposed hives "was similar to control or pre-exposure hives," according to

the registration decision.

 

As part of the registration decision, EPA required the registrant to include

protective statements on product labels that limit applications to when bees

are not expected to be present.

 

But in their opening brief, beekeepers call the mitigation measures

voluntary and arbitrary, and argue they are inadequate to reduce risks.

Also, they say EPA's determination the registration will have no

unreasonable adverse effects is unsupported by evidence, including the

findings of agency scientists using the risk assessment framework.

 

Specifically, the petitioners argue that registering the pesticide without

valid tests to satisfy the framework's Tier 2, which requires industry to

submit studies to help the agency assess whether risks to individual bees

extends to entire bee colonies, violates FIFRA and the agency's own rules,

both of which require field tests of impacts to bees for unconditionally

registered pesticides. The petitioners also say the registration violates

FIFRA because the agency ignored the registration's economic impact on

beekeepers and crops dependent on bees for pollination.

 

In addition to criticizing EPA's use of the risk assessment framework,

plaintiffs argue that EPA's registration decision relies on arbitrary and

inadequate mitigation measures to reduce risks to bees and says the agency's

risk-benefit analysis favored the benefits of the pesticides and failed to

account for the "devastating impact that sulfoxaflor will have both on the

beekeeping industry and on the multitude of important crops" that require

pollination. -- Dave Reynolds( <mailto:dreynolds at iwpnews.com>

dreynolds at iwpnews.com)



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