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Fluazolate. Contamination incident; potential for ground water contamination by metabolites M01 & M06. UK Advisory Committee on Pesticides meeting, January 17, 2002.
http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committees/ACP/acp_minutes/ACP-289_mins.htmUK: MINUTES OF THE 289th MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PESTICIDES (ACP) ON 17th JANUARY 2002
The Advisory Committee on Pesticides provides independent advice to Ministers on matters relating to the regulation and use of pesticides, including applications for approval of new products and reviews of existing approvals. It usually meets in closed session (because of intellectual property and commercial secrecy considerations) approximately eight times a year in York.
Representatives from the following Departments and other organisations were present:
The Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD), Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Department of Health (DH), Health & Safety Executive (HSE), Food Standards Agency (FSA), Biological and Ecological Chemistry Department of IACR-Rothamstead (BEC) (BBSRC), Scottish Agricultural Science Agency (SASA) and Interdepartmental Group on Health Risks from Chemicals (IGHRC).At its meeting on 17 January 2002, the Committee discussed the following issues:
AGENDA ITEM 5: First evaluation for provisional approval of fluazolate in the product ÔJV 485 SC500Õ, formulated as a suspension concentrate containing 500 g/l fluazolate [ACP 11 (289/2002)]
5.1 - Members considered the first evaluation of a full safety and efficacy dossier supporting an application for approval of fluazolate, a new herbicide intended for pre-emergence use on winter wheat for control of annual grasses and broad-leaved weeds.5.2 - The Committee confirmed that they considered two of the metabolites (M01 and M06) to be Ôrelevant metabolitesÕ in terms of the Uniform Principles and that there would therefore be a legal requirement to prevent these metabolites from entering groundwater at predicted concentrations above 0.1 m g/l. The Committee agreed that there may be scope to achieve this using a regulatory approach that prevented the product being used on certain soil series. However, this approach would only be viable if it were shown to be enforceable and could be audited. The Committee noted that this kind of approach might become more practical as a consequence of ongoing developments such as the DEFRA Geographical Information System (GIS) field mapping project.
5.3 - In addition to the problem of ground water contamination by metabolites, the Committee identified several other issues that would need to be resolved before approval could be recommended. Reference values could not be set due to evidence from observations in humans following a contamination incident, which suggested that fluazolate was absorbed and that a biological effect occurred at lower doses than those which produced effects in animal studies. There were also concerns over certain aspects of the reproductive toxicity studies in animals. The Committee agreed that toxicological data would be required on the metabolite M06 if significant human exposures were predicted to result from contamination of groundwater or residues in following crops. There were also concerns regarding the buffer zone distance that would be needed to manage the risk to algae in UK, and about possible risks to non-target plants and adjacent crops.
5.4 - The Committee concluded that until these various issues have been resolved, approval could not be recommended.