Summary: Many pesticides are in use today that have never been fully evaluated for their potential to cause cancer, reproductive disorders, birth defects, and environmental damage. More than 20 years ago, Congress required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reassess and reregister thousands of older pesticides using current scientific standards. Although EPA has made progress in completing the first several steps of the reregistration process, the agency will be unable to complete the pesticide reassessment in 1997 and product reregistration in 1998 as expected. EPA believes that the program may not be completed until 2006. Meanwhile, most of these products continue to be sold and distributed despite sketchy knowledge of their health and environmental effects. EPA will be unable to complete the program on schedule because it did not take into account the complexity and magnitude of the reregistration task or the resources needed to conduct the program. Also, a large number of the studies that the registrants submitted as part of the process have been unacceptable. In addition, EPA's progress in reregistering pesticides used mainly on food products--those with the greatest potential to cause serious health problems--has been much slower than expected. Concentrating on these high-priority pesticides could help EPA assess their risks more quickly and accelerate actions to reduce those risks.
