Advisory Committee on Pesticides Annual Report 2001

<strong>Advisory</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> on Pesticides Annual Report 2001
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That approvals for all continuing uses (both animal husbandry and
glasshouse crop use) should be amended to impose a requirement for
the use of automated application equipment, to ensure that operators are
excluded from structures during application.
That approvals should be subject to provision of further data (physicalchemical
properties, methods of analysis, mammalian toxicology, operator
exposure and consumer exposure).
That approval holders must notify their intent to support these approvals
within short deadlines.
The ACP also noted that dichlorvos was under discussion by the <strong>Committee</strong>
on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the
Environment (COM), and recognised that the above recommendations would
perhaps require modification in accordance with the COM’s findings.
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At the May ACP meeting, members were informed that the COM findings were
not finalised, and thus it maintained its recommendations from the previous
meeting, with the minor change that ‘clean-up’ use on empty glasshouses
could remain, subject to the use of automated application machinery and the
provision of further data.
At the same time as the ACP review of dichlorvos, the COM reviewed all the
available mutagenicity data. The COM produced a preliminary statement,
concluding that dichlorvos was an in-vivo mutagen (i.e. capable of causing
mutations in living animals) at the site of contact. Approval holders were
invited to provide comments on this conclusion.
At the July ACP meeting, the <strong>Committee</strong> considered the possible implications
of the draft COM statement, and agreed to advise Ministers as follows:
If COM’s final conclusions were that dichlorvos was an in-vivo mutagen,
and COM could not exclude the possibility that the occurrence of tumours
in animal tests of carcinogenicity resulted from a genotoxic mechanism,
there should be immediate revocation of all uses (both agricultural and
non-agricultural).
This was to include recall of stocks from the supply chain for products
used in both the amateur and professional areas. This advice was given
as a precautionary measure, since the possibility of human genotoxic
carcinogenicity could not be excluded. The <strong>Committee</strong> agreed that any risk
of human carcinogenicity was likely to be very small, and would be mainly
associated with certain uses in the home and with exposures to some