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Pesticides: Health and Safety |  |
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National Assessment of the Worker Protection Program
Documents marked as (PDF) are formatted in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format. Free Acrobat Reader software is available to enable you to read these files. Pesticide worker safety continues to be one of OPP’s highest priorities. In FY 2003, as part of a commitment to improve its pesticide worker protection program, OPP completed a national assessment of the worker protection program to review the implementation and enforcement of the programs and ways to make these activities more effective. The assessment had three major components: 1) public workshops to discuss the worker protection program, identify the program's strengths and weaknesses, and foster an exchange of ideas for improving the implementation of the program; 2) the establishment of three workgroups to further examine key program issues; and 3) a worker protection enforcement program element review (initiated by EPA's Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance and done in conjunction with OPP) to assess the combined effectiveness of the EPA and state compliance monitoring and enforcement efforts. The National Assessment of the Worker Protection Program brought together a wide variety of program stakeholders who participated in assessment workshop meetings and workgroups. The workgroups focused on general training issues, a national pesticide safety train-the-trainer pilot, and a hazard communication pilot. More detailed information on the public workshops held in Texas, California, and Florida and the final reports for the general training issues and train-the-trainer workgroups are available at the bottom of this page. Additionally, EPA headquarters, Regional and state pesticide lead agency staff conducted an enforcement program element review in every EPA region. The assessment process generated numerous recommendations for program improvement. The following program areas were identified as priorities for focus and further follow-up: pesticide incident monitoring and reporting, pesticide hazard communication and safety training, compliance monitoring and enforcement, complaints and retaliation, program guidance, and state oversight. In response to the assessment, EPA implemented several changes to improve national consistency and program implementation in the short term. EPA has worked closely with its regulatory partners to develop better program guidance and to improve communications and reporting. Also, the Agency focused on providing additional training opportunities for state compliance monitoring and enforcement staff to improve national program consistency. Several other activities are underway and additional follow-up activities are planned. EPA plans to generate a report on the national assessment of the worker protection program, in which it will address the full range of stakeholder recommendations, as well as the findings from the enforcement program element review. The report will focus on the program issues identified during the assessment, the response to stakeholder recommendations, and the Agency activities completed, in progress, or planned to enhance and improve the national pesticide worker protection program. Workshop Reports For more detailed information about the National Assessment Workshops, please see the reports below. Workshop #1
Workshop #2
Workshop #3 Workshop #4
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