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Pesticide Tolerances
By law, EPA is responsible for regulating the pesticides that are used by growers to protect crops and for setting limits on the amount of pesticides that may remain in or on foods marketed in the USA. These limits on pesticides left on foods are called "tolerances" in the U.S. (they are referred to as maximum residue limits, or MRLs, in many other countries).
EPA establishes tolerances for each pesticide based on the potential risks to human health posed by that pesticide. Some risk assessments are based on the assumption that residues will always be present in food at the maximum level permitted by the tolerance. Other risk assessments use actual or anticipated residue data, to reflect real-world consumer exposure as closely as possible.
As stated above, EPA sets the tolerance limits for each pesticide that may be found on foods. But the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enforces tolerances established for meat, poultry and some egg products, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforces tolerances established for other foods. In this way, these federal agencies ensure that the nation's food supply is maintained safely at all times.
In August 1996, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was amended to include the Food Quality Protection Act or FQPA. This Act required EPA to reassess by August 2006 all of the pesticide tolerances that were in place in early August 1996 to ensure that they met current safety standards and were supported by up-to-date scientific data. Read more about tolerance reassessment status and FQPA accomplishments.
In addition, EPA is reviewing tolerance tolerance decisions that were based on:
- the anticipated residue levels of the pesticide in or on food, as reflected in crop field trial or food processing studies, or
- the actual levels of the pesticide that have been measured through food monitoring studies.
Periodically, and depending on the specific pesticide tolerance in question, EPA will re-check the risk assessments used to set tolerances, to ensure that tolerances remain safe over time and accurately reflect actual or anticipated residue levels in foods. Read more about Process for Reviewing Tolerance Decisions Based on Anticipated or Actual Residue Data and also Status of Anticipated/Actual Tolerance Review Process.
Actions on Pesticide Tolerances
EPA publishes a notice in the Federal Register for several tolerance-related actions:
- Notice of filing of a petition to establish a tolerance
- Establishment of a tolerance
- FIFRA Section 18
- Revoking a tolerance
In addition, if an objection to a tolerance is filed, EPA will make this information available.
Sources of Information on Tolerances
Tolerances are published in the Code of Federal Regulations.
In addition, there are several sources of information on pesticide tolerances:
- an EPA database that allows searching by crop or by pesticide for tolerance information
- Changes to tolerances and new tolerances are published in the Federal Register.
- The National Pesticide
Information Retrieval System (NPIRS) includes a Tolerance Index
database as one of its set of six subscription access online
databases. These databases are offered and maintained by the Center
for Environmental and Regulatory Information Systems (CERIS) at Purdue
University.
The Food and Feed Commodity Vocabulary consolidates all the major Office of Pesticide Programs Commodity Vocabularies into one standardized vocabulary. Each lookup term is assigned an EPA preferred term, an EPA (40 CFR 180.41) crop group name/number, and a monograph number where further information about a specific commodity can be found. The preferred term will be the only term accepted in establishing pesticide tolerances.