Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) pesticide and disinfectant data systems, focusing on: (1) the Pesticide Product Information System (PPIS); (2) the Pesticide Document Management System (PDMS); and (3) the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and Toxic Substances Control Act Enforcement System (FATES).

GAO found that: (1) key data on disinfectants were inaccurate, incomplete, or missing; (2) PPIS had inaccurate data on the number of disinfectants registered to kill tuberculosis bacteria; (3) EPA did not know the extent to which pesticide data in the systems were inaccurate or incomplete, but estimated that it could be in the 60-percent range; (4) EPA lacked adequate procedures for ensuring that data were accurately coded and entered into the system and for ensuring that data remained current; (5) PDMS was missing some data on disinfectant efficacy studies that registrants submitted to EPA between January 1, 1985, and June 26, 1989; (6) FATES did not include production data for some disinfectants; (7) although EPA intended some of the elements in the systems to include the same data, there were some strong indications that they did not; (8) EPA did not consistently classify and code disinfectants in a way that completely distinguished them from other types of antimicrobial pesticides in the three systems; and (9) EPA plans to improve the systems did not address data integrity.