Chlorpyrifos; Tolerance Revocation

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 180</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPP-2024-0431; FRL-12415-01-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Chlorpyrifos; Tolerance Revocation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> EPA is proposing to revoke all tolerances for residues of chlorpyrifos, except for those associated with the use of chlorpyrifos on the following crops: alfalfa, apple, asparagus, tart cherry, citrus, cotton, peach, soybean, strawberry, sugar beet, and spring and winter wheat. This proposal also addresses the request to revoke all chlorpyrifos tolerances contained in the September 12, 2007, petition submitted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 10, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPP-2024-0431, through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Additional instructions on commenting and visiting the docket, along with more information about dockets generally, is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patricia Biggio, Pesticide Re-Evaluation Division (7508M), Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: 202-566-0700; email address: <E T="03">OPPChlorpyrifosInquiries@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</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, 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. How can I get electronic access to other related information?</HD> You may access a frequently updated electronic version of 40 CFR part 180 through the Office of the Federal Register's e-CFR site at <E T="03">https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What action is the Agency proposing?</HD> EPA is proposing to revoke all tolerances for residues of the insecticide chlorpyrifos as contained in 40 CFR 180.342, except for those tolerances associated with 11 uses that were proposed for retention in the Agency's December 2020 C <E T="03">hlorpyrifos Proposed Interim Decision</E> (2020 PID). (Ref. 1) As a result of voluntary cancellations and label amendments, registrations of chlorpyrifos will be limited in terms of food uses to these crops within certain states, as proposed in the 2020 PID and EPA's <E T="03">Updated Chlorpyrifos Refined Drinking Water Assessment for Registration Review</E> (September 2020) (“2020 DWA”) as described in Unit III below. (Ref. 2) Therefore, the Agency is proposing to revoke all other tolerances that are not needed as a result of the cancellations, including uses in food handling establishments and food service establishments. This proposal will also address the request to revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances in the pending 2007 Petition from NRDC and PANNA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. What is EPA's authority for taking this action?</HD> Pursuant to its authority under section 408 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), 21 U.S.C. 346a ( <E T="03">https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/21/346a</E> ), EPA may respond to a petition filed with the Agency under FFDCA section 408(d) by issuing a proposed and final rule under FFDCA section 408(e). The 2007 Petition requested that EPA revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances, as well as cancel chlorpyrifos registrations. EPA is proposing to revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances that will no longer be necessary due to the cancellation of domestic uses on those commodities. Under section 408(e) of the FFDCA, EPA may issue a rule revoking tolerances after providing notice of a proposed rulemaking and a period of not less than 60 days for public comment. 21 U.S.C. 346a(e). <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. What is the expected impact of this action?</HD> The revocations of these tolerances are not expected to present extraordinary circumstances because the registrants have requested, pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) section 6(f) (7 U.S.C. 136d(f)), to voluntarily cancel uses associated with these tolerances. EPA is in the process of approving those cancellation requests under FIFRA, which means that soon the tolerances will no longer be needed to cover residues of chlorpyrifos in or on those food commodities. The revocations of tolerances could impact foreign producers who use chlorpyrifos to control insect pests and importers of those commodities. Shipments found to have residues could not be sold in the United States, which may represent a loss to importers or their trading partners. It is possible that these effects could have downstream effects, such as raising costs to U.S. consumers of these commodities. Regardless of the potential impacts of this action, tolerances can only be maintained if they are safe, which is a risk-only analysis under the FFDCA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">F. What can I do if I want the Agency to maintain, for import purposes, a tolerance that the Agency proposes to revoke?</HD> This proposed rule provides a 60-day public comment period. All chlorpyrifos registrants have already voluntarily requested cancellation of all the uses of chlorpyrifos associated with the tolerances proposed for revocation in this notice. Once those cancellations are effective, those uses of chlorpyrifos on these commodities will no longer be registered in the United States, and once use terminates under the applicable existing stocks provisions, the tolerances will no longer be necessary to cover residues from use of the pesticide. Any food being moved through interstate commerce after tolerances are revoked would be covered by the FFDCA channels of trade provision, 21 U.S.C. 346a(l)(5), as described in Unit VII.A. The Agency's typical process, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> during registration review, is to remove tolerances from the regulations that are no longer necessary. This avoids confusion among the regulated community by reflecting registered uses and label directions and helps with consistency in enforcement under the FFDCA and FIFRA. The only reason to retain a tolerance in such circumstances is for import purposes. Any commenter seeking to retain tolerances for import purposes must provide a comment to that effect and include information demonstrating the need for retaining a specific tolerance for specific imports, even if they have previously provided this information; a hypothetical need based on the potential for some commodities containing chlorpyrifos residues to one day be imported into the United States is insufficient. If any data are necessary to retain the tolerances for import purposes, EPA will issue an order in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> under FFDCA section 408(f). The order would specify data needed and the timeframes for submission of the data and would require that within 90 days some person or persons notify EPA that they will submit the data. If the data are not submitted as required in the order, EPA will take appropriate action under FFDCA. After considering comments that are received in response to this proposed rule, EPA will issue a final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">G. What should I consider as I prepare my comments for EPA?</HD> 1. <E T="03">Submitting CBI.</E> Do not submit CBI information to EPA through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or email. If you wish to include CBI in your comment, please follow the applicable instructions at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets#rules</E> and clearly mark the part or all of the information that you claim to be CBI. In addition to one complete version of the comment that includes information claimed as CBI, a copy of the comment that does not contain the information claimed as CBI must be submitted for inclusion in the public docket. Information so marked will not be disclosed except in accordance with procedures set forth in 40 CFR part 2. 2. <E T="03">Tips for preparing your comments.</E> When preparing and submitting your comments, see the commenting tips at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/faq.</E> 3. <E T="03">Environmental justice.</E> EPA seeks to achieve environmental justice—the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in Agency decision-making and other Federal activities that affect human health and the environment so that people are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks). To help address potential environmental justice issues, the Agency seeks information on any groups or segments of the population who, as a result of their location, cultural practices, or other factors, may have atypical or disproportionate and adverse human health impacts or environmental effects from exposure to chlorpyrifos, compared to th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 173k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━