Pesticides; Emergency Order Suspending the Registrations of All Pesticide Products Containing Dimethyl Tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA)

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0374; FRL-12147-01-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pesticides; Emergency Order Suspending the Registrations of All Pesticide Products Containing Dimethyl Tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Order. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) is issuing an Emergency Order directing the suspension of all registrations issued under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) for pesticide products containing the active ingredient dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA), also marketed under the trade name Dacthal. EPA has determined that continued sale, distribution, or use of DCPA products during the time required to cancel such products would pose an imminent hazard and that an emergency exists that does not permit EPA to hold a hearing before suspending such products. These determinations are based primarily on a risk of thyroid hormone perturbations in the fetuses of female bystanders and workers who apply DCPA or who enter treated fields after application. EPA has concerns that pregnant individuals may be currently exposed to DCPA at levels higher than those that cause fetal thyroid hormone disruption, but at which no thyroid effects would occur in the pregnant individual. The downstream effects of such hormone perturbations in the fetus may include low birth weight and irreversible and life-long impacts to children exposed in-utero, such as impaired brain development and motor skills. While the sole registrant of DCPA products, AMVAC Chemical Corporation (AMVAC), has attempted to address these concerns, EPA has determined that there is no combination of practicable mitigations under which DCPA use can continue without presenting an imminent hazard. Set forth below are the substantive bases for these determinations and the procedures that affected registrants must follow to obtain a hearing on or otherwise challenge these determinations. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This Emergency Order is issued and effective immediately upon signature. The sole affected registrant has also been notified by certified mail. Any request by the registrant for a hearing on the issue of whether an imminent hazard exists must be received by the Clerk of the EPA Office of Administrative Law Judges (OALJ). A copy of the Emergency Order has been filed with the OALJ Clerk. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The docket for this action, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0374, is available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Additional information about dockets generally, along with instructions for visiting the docket in-person, is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/</E> dockets. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jean Overstreet, Pesticide Re-Evaluation Division (7508P), Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: 202-566-2425; email address: <E T="03">overstreet.anne@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> This action is directed to the public in general and may be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders including environmental, human health, farm worker and agricultural advocates; the chemical industry; pesticide users; and members of the public interested in the sale, distribution, or use of pesticides. Since others also may be interested, the Agency has not attempted to describe all the specific entities that may be affected by this action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> EPA is issuing an Emergency Order directing the suspension of all registrations for pesticide products containing the active ingredient dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA), also marketed under the trade name Dacthal. See Unit II. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> The Emergency Order is issued under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 7 U.S.C. 136 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> pursuant to section 6(c)(3) (7 U.S.C. 136d(c)(3)). See Unit IV. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. What is DCPA?</HD> DCPA is a benzoic acid herbicide (Herbicide Resistance Action Committee/Weed Science Society of America Group 3) which inhibits cell division of root tips in target plants. It controls annual grasses and broadleaf weeds before they emerge in a variety of agricultural crops. DCPA is registered for agricultural uses, including on <E T="03">Allium</E> species, <E T="03">Brassica</E> species, cucurbits, root vegetables, fruiting vegetables, strawberry, sod and nursery ornamental production. Non-agricultural uses of DCPA include non-residential grass/turf including golf courses and athletic fields. While these turf uses are considered non-residential because the treated turf is not a home lawn, there is still the potential for residential post-application exposures as a result of application to these use sites. The registered end-use product may be applied by handheld, ground, aerial, and chemigation equipment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Why is EPA issuing this Emergency Order?</HD> EPA has determined that the further sale, distribution, and use of DCPA as an herbicide would pose an imminent hazard during the period required to conduct administrative hearings concerning cancellation. EPA has further determined that an emergency exists with respect to all DCPA products which does not permit it to hold a hearing concerning its determination of imminent hazard before acting to prohibit further sale, distribution, and use of such products. EPA has evaluated the available information concerning the risks and benefits associated with continued use of DCPA during the time required for a cancellation hearing. Based on this information, EPA has determined that the risks of continued use during this period outweigh the benefits and that registered DCPA products therefore pose an imminent hazard. The Agency has determined that this imminent hazard constitutes an emergency, such that sale, distribution, and use of all DCPA products must be suspended during the pendency of any expedited hearing held under FIFRA section 6(c)(2). EPA's findings concerning the existence of an imminent hazard and an emergency are summarized in Unit V., and Unit VI. then provides in greater detail the evidence and analyses upon which these findings are based. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Emergency Order</HD> This Emergency Order suspends the registration of all pesticide products which contain DCPA (see Table 1). EPA has determined that continued registration of DCPA products during the time required to conduct a cancellation proceeding would likely result in unreasonable adverse effects on the environment (which, according to FIFRA section 2(j), includes “man and other animals living therein”) and therefore poses an imminent hazard. EPA has also determined that there is a substantial likelihood that the continued sale, distribution, or use of DCPA products during the pendency of a suspension hearing would result in serious harm and therefore that an emergency exists that does not permit EPA to hold a hearing before suspending such products. Accordingly, EPA is issuing this Emergency Order immediately suspending all registrations of DCPA products. The substantive rationale for these determinations is explained below. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,xs72,xls60,r100"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Pesticide Products Subject to Order</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Product</CHED> <CHED H="1">EPA Reg. No.</CHED> <CHED H="1">Registrant</CHED> <CHED H="1">Active ingredient</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Dacthal Flowable Herbicide</ENT> <ENT>5481-487</ENT> <ENT>AMVAC</ENT> <ENT>Dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA).</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Dacthal W-75 Herbicide</ENT> <ENT>WI050002</ENT> <ENT>AMVAC</ENT> <ENT>Dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA).</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Technical Chlorthal Dimethyl</ENT> <ENT>5481-495</ENT> <ENT>AMVAC</ENT> <ENT>Dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA).</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> Pursuant to FIFRA section 6(c)(3), EPA hereby suspends the registration of each pesticide product containing DCPA as identified in Table 1. Effective immediately, no person in any state may distribute, sell, offer for sale, hold for sale, ship, deliver for shipment, or receive and (having so received) deliver or offer to deliver to any person any pesticide product containing DCPA. Additionally, in accordance with FIFRA section 6(a)(1), EPA has elected not to permit the continued use of existing stocks, consistent with its policies applicable to cancellations where the Agency has identified significant risk concerns. See 56 FR 29362, 29367, June 26, 1991 (FRL-3845-4). Generally, the Agency will not permit continued distribution, sale, or use of a cancelled pesticide that raises risk concerns, absent a showing that the benefits of such use exceed the risks. The same facts supporting the imminent hazard determination in this Emergency Order weigh heavily against allowing any sale, distribution, or use of DCPA during cancellation proceedings. Accordingly, this Emergency Order expressly prohibits any person from using any pesticide product containing DCPA for any purpose. However, EPA will allow continued distribution of existing stocks of DCPA for the express purpose of returning any DCPA product to the registrant of such products. EPA intends to issue a notice of intent to cancel the same DCPA products (identified in Table 1) within the next 90 days ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 93k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━