The Food Quality Protection Act

In 1996, the US Senate and House of Representatives passed the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). In order to make their exposure and risk assessments as accurate as possible, the US ERA Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) has established guidelines to determine a value to assign for NDs. These guidelines can be summarized... 

In addition to the processed commodities listed in the Series 860 Table 1, some registrants choose also to provide data on other processed fractions. With the advent of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 and the emphasis on protecting the food supply for children, collecting residue data on additional processed commodities may be prudent. Fruit purees are popular as baby food in the USA and are an example of a processed commodity that could come under additional scrutiny since they make up a large portion of an infant diet. 

One common objective of an LSMBS is to refine the estimates of actual exposure of consumers to ingredients or impurities in one or more products. For example, study results might be intended to determine a realistic human dietary exposure to pesticide residues in fresh fruits and vegetables. The advent of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA) has produced an enhanced focus on the exposure of children to pesticides. A well-designed and implemented LSMBS would afford the opportunity to delineate better the exposure and risk to children and other population subgroups. The LSMBS would provide consumer-level data at or near the point of consumption, allowing the refined, relevant, and realistic assessments of dietary exposure. 

In the USA, the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996 has had a significant impact on the determination of residues in drinking water. FQPA requires that all sources of a pesticide be included in its risk assessment, so the potential exposure from drinking water containing a particular pesticide could be a significant... 

The second milestone event in the USA in the 1990s was passage of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in 1996. The goal of the FQPA was to assure a reasonable certainty of no harm as a result of exposure to pesticides for all US population groups. The FQPA incorporated into federal law the major recommendations of the 1993 National Academy of Sciences (NAS)/NRC report, as well as the recommendations of a 1987 NAS/NRC report entitled Regulating Pesticides in Food The Delaney Paradox (National Research Council, 1987). 

Consumers Union (2001). A Report Card for the EPA Successes and Failures in Implementing the Food Quality Protection Act. Consumers Union of the United States, Yonkers, NY. 

Landrigan, P. and Benbrook, C. (2006). Impacts of the food quality protection act on children s exposures to pesticides . Delivered at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the AAAS Opportunities and Initiatives to Minimize Children s Exposure to Pesticides, St. Louis, Missouri, 19 February 2006. 

Implications of the Food Quality Protection Act Common Mechanism of Toxicity... 

The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996 mandated that the US EPA carry out risk assessments that consider the cumulative effects of exposure to pesticides having a common mechanism of toxicity, as well as consider exposure to each pesticide by various routes of exposure (e.g., dermal, dietary, inhalation) and sources (e.g., residues in food and water) in an aggregate manner [19]. To accomplish this, there needs to be sufficient evidence supporting a common adverse effect that is associated with a common mechanism of action in specific target tissues. To date, the required criteria necessary to establish a common mechanism of toxicity with a specific toxic effect for the pyrethroids are not available [1,8,98]. 

Under the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), the U.S. EPA evaluates the potential for people to be exposed to more than one pesticide at a time from a group of chemicals with an identified common mechanism of toxicity. As part of the examinations, to clarify whether some or all of the pyrethroids share a common mechanism of toxicity, a comparative FOB (functional observational battery) studies with 12 pyrethroids were carried out under standardized conditions [15]. The FOB was evaluated at peak effect time following oral administration of non-lethal doses of pyrethroids to rats using com oil as vehicle. Four principal components were observed in the FOB data [22], Two of these components described behaviors associated with CS syndrome (lower body temperature, excessive salivation, impaired mobility) and the others described behaviors associated with the T syndrome (elevated body temperature, tremor myoclonus). From the analysis, pyrethroids can be divided into two main groups (Type I T syndrome and Type II CS syndrome) and a third group (Mixed Type) that did not induce a clear typical response. Five other pyrethroids were also classified by an FOB study conducted in the same manner [16]. The results of these classifications are shown in Table 1. The FOB results for all non-cyano pyrethroids were classified as T syndrome, and the results of four ot-cyano pyrethroids were classified as CS syndrome however, three of the ot-cyano pyrethroids, esfenvalerate, cyphenothrin, and fenpropathrin, were classified as Mixed Type. 

On August 3, 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). The new law required major changes in pesticide regulation and afforded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unprecedented opportunities to provide greater health and environmental protection, particularly for infants and children. The FQPA required the EPA to review the more than 9,700 tolerances established before August 3, 1996 (the... 

The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) requires the EPA to conduct a review of pesticides that pose the most danger to human health. The EPA must make sure the pesticides meet new safety standards specifically designed to protect children. 

Shurdut, B.A., L. Barraj, and M. Francis. 1998. Aggregate exposures under the Food Quality Protection Act An approach using chlorpyrifos. Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 28(2) 165-177. 

The United States After reviewing the scientific data on atrazine since initiation of the Special Review in 1994 and changes in pesticide regulations under the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996, the USEPA in 2000 convened a Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to provide scientific advice on the potential for atrazine to be a carcinogen. The SAP concluded that atrazine was not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. In 2000, USEPA published its determination that... 

The oral reference dose (Oral RfD) is an estimate of the daily exposure of a person to a contaminant that is likely to be without appreciable risk of a deleterious non-carcinogenic effect during a lifetime (USEPA http //www.epa.gov/iris/). Oral RfD values for POP concentrations in seafood types are presented in Table 16.5, together with the daily intake of POPs from seafood consumed in Singapore. Daily intakes of POPs from seafood are below the oral RfD. The cancer benchmark concentration (Dougherty et al., 2000) represents the exposure concentration at which a lifetime cancer risk equates to one excess cancer death in one million persons. This level is defined as the public health protective concentration in the Congressional House Report to the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 in the USA. Cancer benchmark concentrations were exceeded for DDTs, heptachlor, and PCBs (See Table 16.5). The cancer hazard ratio is the ratio of the MDI for a specific contaminant relative to the cancer benchmark concentration. The cancer hazard ratio represents the extent to which average daily exposure exceeds the benchmark concentration. The cancer hazard ratio of seafood consumption... 

Cumulative risk assessment The evaluation of the risk of exposure to two or more chemicals. The USEPA defines cumulative exposure under the Food Quality Protection Act to be the evaluation of the risk of exposure to two or more pesticides that work through a common mechanism of action. 

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