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ADVANCED PESTICIDE RISK ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGY

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http://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_comments.cfm

Impact/Purpose:

Extend existing model technologies to accommodate the full range of transport, fate and food chain contamination pathways, and their biogeographical variants, present in agricultural landscapes and watersheds. Assemble the range of datasets needed to execute risk assessments with appropriate geographic specificity in support of pesticide safety evaluations. Develop software integration technologies, user interfaces, and reporting capabilities for direct application to the EPA risk assessment paradigm in a statistical and probabilistic decision framework.

Description:

The use of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and growth regulating chemicals is necessary in modern agriculture, silviculture, and public health vector control operations. The task for environmental risk assessment is to delineate the food chain contamination and ecological vulnerabilities arising from pesticide use under a variety of land use and product registration scenarios, while properly accounting for the complex chemical properties (chirality, hydrophobicity, and reaction mechanisms) governing pesticide transport and fate in the environment. Possible pesticide use scenarios begin from scenarios of climatology, land management practices, hydrology, and sediment erosion and transport. Within the framework established by these broad categories, forecasting of pesticide exposure requires knowledge of expectations and uncertainties in agronomic practices, crop phenology, crop and pest biogeography, IPM (Integrated PestManagement) practices, and mitigation measures. This research task is designing and implementing a probabilistic decision support system, undergirded by a suite of sophisticated process-based models of pesticide environmental chemistry and biology, for direct assistance to EPA's regulatory programs in their mandated pesticide risk assessments. Research activities extend from analysis of the reliability and uncertainty of predictive modeling tools, through production of user interfaces designed to aid regulatory personnel in their daily activities, to production of high-quality standardized databases with direct linkages to OPP (Office of Pesticide Programs) modeling software.

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT
Start Date:09/01/2000
Projected Completion Date:09/01/2011
OMB Category:Other
Record ID: 29213