United States
                       Environmental Protection
                       Agency
                   EPA- 822-F-12-001
                                                                          April   2012
            Human Health Benchmarks for Pesticides
Summary
EPA has developed a table of human health
benchmarks for approximately 350 non-
carcinogenic pesticides that are currently
registered to be used on food crops. These
human health benchmarks for pesticides are
levels of certain pesticides in water at or below
which adverse health effects are not anticipated
from one-day or lifetime exposures. The
benchmarks are for pesticides for which the
agency has not issued a drinking water health
advisory or set an enforceable federal drinking
water standard.

EPA developed the human health benchmarks
for pesticides to enable states, water systems and
the public to better determine whether the
detection of a pesticide in drinking water or
source waters for drinking water may indicate a
potential health risk. The human health
benchmarks for pesticides were developed with
the same methods used by the Agency to
calculate health advisories for drinking water
and are based on data that were peer-reviewed in
EPA's pesticide registration process.

The table of benchmarks can be found on EPA's
website at: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/hhbp .
EPA intends to update the online human health
benchmarks for pesticides table annually to
ensure that the best available science is
accessible to the public. Current EPA health
advisories and enforceable drinking water
standards for other pesticides can be viewed at:
http://water.epa.gOv/action/advisories/drinking/d
rinking index. cfm.

Background
On March 22, 2010, EPA Administrator, Lisa P.
Jackson announced a new drinking water
strategy that outlines four principles to expand
public health protection. One of these principles
is to use the authority of multiple laws to more
effectively protect drinking water, by sharing
data collected under different statutes. EPA
derived the human health benchmarks for
pesticides by applying the health effects data
from pesticide registrations under the Federal
Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and
tolerances  from the Federal Food Drug and
Cosmetics Act as amended by the Food Quality
Protection Act, to the typical methods used for
developing drinking water health advisories
under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

EPA is providing the benchmarks for
informational purposes for use by states, water
systems and the public to help understand
monitoring data for pesticides that have no
drinking water standards or health advisories.
Drinking water systems can also use them as
reference values to respond to customer
inquiries if pesticides are  detected in monitoring.

Development of Human  Health Benchmarks
for Pesticides in Drinking Water
To derive human health benchmarks for
pesticides, EPA used the acute or chronic
reference doses determined for human dietary
assessment for the most sensitive population and
applied standard exposure assumptions used in
calculating health advisories based on gender,
age, body weight,  and water consumption of
target populations. For the acute benchmark, the
entire exposure is assumed to occur from
drinking water (100 percent). For the chronic
benchmark, EPA applied  a default relative
drinking water source contribution (20 percent),
assuming additional exposure may arise from
other sources, like food, air or contact.

At present, human health  benchmarks for
pesticides are for non-cancer health endpoints
only. Benchmarks based on cancer effects are
not currently evaluated but EPA intends to
derive these benchmarks at a later time. The
human health benchmarks for pesticides table
includes mainly active ingredients at this time,
and thus inert compounds used in pesticide
formulations are not included.

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Human health benchmarks for pesticides do not
contain Food Quality Protection Act safety
factors in reference does, as they are not part of
the standard methodology used for calculating
health advisories under the Safe Drinking Water
Act.
For More Information
For more information regarding derivation of
human health benchmarks for pesticides send an
email to Santhini Ramasamy at
ramasamy. santhini(giepa. gov. For information
regarding the documentation for deriving the
reference doses send an email to Brenda May at
may.brenda@epa.gov.

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