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Safe Pesticides/Safe Products Research
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Science Products
This page provides information on selected scientific papers, reports, and other references produced by researchers in the Safe Pesticides/Safe Products Program.
Research papers are available from published journals or through PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles.
A list of the Clean Air Research Program's most highly cited publications (PDF) (27 pp, 274KB) demonstrates the program's impact on advancing human health research.
To obtain copies of ORD (and other EPA) documents:
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National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP) : NSCEP is EPA's central repository of all EPA documents with over 7,000 titles available in paper or electronic form. NSCEP also produces the EPA National Publications Catalog which is available on their web site.
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National Environmental Publications Internet Site (NEPIS) : NSPIS is EPA's largest electronic documents site which allows you to search view and print, including full images of all original pages and full-text, from a collection of over 10,000 archival and current documents. This collection may include documents that are no longer available in print form. ORD publications are listed at "Publication Title List - 600 Series .
Interspecies Extrapolation Models
The web-based interspecies extrapolation models allow for hazard assessments in aquatic systems. The ICE/ACE modeling approaches predict the effects of chemicals on aquatic and wildlife species, an essential component of the conceptual model for ecological risk assessment. Specifically, this approach facilitates the estimation of potential hazard for population level responses for untested chemicals or chemicals with limited toxic effects information. Web-based versions of ICE and ACE will provide immediate action to updates and improvements, and allow greater user flexibility in searching and correlation analysis.
A beta version of web-ICE, developed for wildlife, is available here 
ECOTOX Database
The ECOTOX database provides single chemical toxicity information for aquatic and terrestrial life and represents a suite of databases and expert systems that can be used by risk assessors and researchers to quickly locate relevant ecotoxicology data and models. These empirical data and predictive models are being used by various EPA Program Offices to support on-going risk assessments and hazard rankings of chemicals stressors. Recent enhancements include expanded taxonomic and chemical searching, and output directly to MS Excel format.
Ecological Exposure Tools
ORD has developed and provided to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs a series of ecological exposure models to generate data required by the Food Quality and Protection Act:
Test Protocols for Pesticides in Water
The Food Quality Protection Act requires the Agency to conduct assessments on pesticides in drinking water. ORD developed and validated a protocol for characterizing the fate of organophosphate pesticides and their degradation products as they travel from natural source waters through conventional drinking water treatment plants. ORD used the protocol to study six carbamate insecticides and the data were incorporated by EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs into Preliminary N-methyl Carbamate Cumulative Risk Assessment (PDF) (27 pp, 274KB) in 2005.
Chlorpyrifos Models and Data
Models and data developed were critical for risk assessments and regulatory decisions on the developmental effects of chlorpyrifos. More information is available here (PDF) (253 pp, 2.19MB)
PATCH Simulator
PATCH (Program to Assist in Tracking Critical Habitat) is a spatially explicit, individual-based, life history simulator designed to project populations of territorial terrestrial vertebrate species through time. PATCH provides a methodology for predicting wildlife population responses to multiple interacting stressors of both natural and anthropogenic origin, in real landscapes.
Gene Flow from Genetically Modified Crops
The objectives of the Gene Flow Project are to develop protocols to measure gene flow from genetically modified (GM) crops and to determine the potential ecological consequences of GM gene flow on plant communities. The protocols will help inform regulatory decisions by EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs on the environmental safety of GM plants that express pesticidal plant incorporated protectants (PIPs).
Initial efforts in the Gene Flow Project have focused on use of herbicide tolerant creeping bentgrass to develop and validate methods for measuring exposure to GM gene flow on a landscape level. Findings from the first three years of research have resulted in a change in the paradigm for how far viable pollen may move from GM crop source fields, from a scale of meters to kilometers. They also have resulted in documentation of the first establishment of GM crop/wild hybrids in non-agronomic environments in the US. The data from these studies was recently used by the US Department of Agriculture in assessing a penalty against a GM manufacturer for failure to conduct a field trial to ensure the GM product did not persist in the environment and for failure to comply with performance standards and permit conditions for field trials.
More information about methods for studying genetically modified pollen