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January 26, 2015

EPA Responds to Petition for Writ of Mandamus Relating to Chlorpyrifos

Lisa M. Campbell James V. Aidala

Along with the release of the revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos, in late December 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a Response to the Petition for a Writ of Mandamus that the Pesticide Action Network North America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, filed in September 2014 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This action is the latest of several brought to try to achieve a ban of chlorpyrifos and a revocation of food tolerances for chlorpyrifos.

EPA’s December 2014 response states that its “thorough consideration of these issues will inform its ultimate decision whether to leave in place the tolerances for chlorpyrifos or cancel chlorpyrifos registrations, and a full record will facilitate any subsequent judicial review of those decisions.”

On January 7, 2015, EPA included in a status report to the court the issuance of its revised human health risk assessment. EPA indicated that currently it plans to “issue a proposed rule to revoke tolerances in early 2015 or a final denial order in mid-2015.”

It is not clear what EPA implies by stating that it could issue a proposed tolerance revocation in “early 2015” when the assessment of chlorpyrifos has only recently been released, availability announced in the Federal Register on January 14, 2015, and there is an open comment period on the document scheduled to close on March 16, 2015. Any action would presumably take some time, given the need to review submitted comments and formulate a response. Preparing any regulatory action would take some additional amount of time, especially since registrants of chlorpyrifos products can be expected to have substantial comments on the documents.