Background

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Data Call-In (DCI) on October 18, 1995 requiring that pesticide manufacturers submit data on the persistence of chemical residue on crop foliage and also on dermal and inhalation exposure to pesticides during reentry into any pesticide-treated agricultural site.  The data are being used to estimate exposure to agricultural workers when they enter fields that have been treated with a pesticide, and to calculate the restricted entry intervals that appear on product labeling.

The Agricultural Reentry Task Force, L.L.C., (ARTF) was organized as a “joint data development task force” in which pesticide manufacturers work together to develop a database that meets EPA’s requirements.

This proprietary database of generic agricultural reentry transfer coefficients (TCs) is being used by EPA, California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR), and Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) to evaluate member companies’ chemicals.  The generic TCs in the ARTF database enable regulators and ARTF members to estimate occupational exposure and risk in any scenario where a worker might contact treated foliage.  However, ARTF’s exposure studies and TC database may only be used to make regulatory decisions for the members who have sponsored the research or compensated ARTF for the right to cite the ARTF data.

From the beginning, ARTF worked very closely with EPA, CDPR, PMRA and the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in developing this database.  The Task Force had a Joint Regulatory Committee where representatives from these agencies conferred with task force members on the regulatory direction of the project.  ARTF’s general plan for conducting exposure studies was approved by the Joint Regulatory Committee.