Ecological Risk Assessment of the Uses of the Organophosphorus Insecticide Chlorpyrifos, in the United States - Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology - page 10

honey bees in the hive. Although there were data on the acute oral toxicity of CPY
to honeybees, this was not the case for non- Apis pollinators, where no data on toxic-
ity or exposures were found and risks could not evaluated.
An assessment of concentrations reported in pollen and honey from monitoring
in North America indicated that there was little risk of acute toxicity from CPY
through consumption of these food sources. Several models were also used to esti-
mate upper-bound exposure of honey bees to CPY through consumption of water
from puddles or dew. All models suggest that the risk of CPY is minimal for this
pathway. Laboratory experiments with fi eld-treated foliage, and semi-fi eld and fi eld
tests with honey bees, bumble bees, and alfalfa leaf-cutting bees indicate that expo-
sure to foliage, pollen, and/or nectar is hazardous to bees up to 3 d after application
of CPY to a crop. Pollinators exposed to foliage, pollen, or nectar after this time
should be minimally affected.
Overall, the rarity of reported bee kill incidents involving CPY indicates that
there is compliance with the label precautions and good agricultural practice with
the product is the norm in North American agriculture. We concluded that the use
of CPY in North American agriculture does not present an unacceptable risk to
honeybees, provided label directions and good agricultural practices are followed.
The lack of data on toxicity of and exposures to CPY in non- Apis pollinators was
identifi ed as an uncertainty. However, this issue is not specifi c to CPY and applies
to all foliar-applied insecticides.
Acknowledgments The authors of the papers thank Jeff Wirtz of Compliance Services International,
Julie Anderson of the University of Saskatchewan; J. Mark Cheplick, Dean A. Desmarteau, Gerco
Hoogeweg, William J. Northcott, and Kendall S. Price, all of Waterborne Environmental for their
contributions. We also acknowledge Yuzhou Luo of the California Department of Pesticide
Regulation for providing the SWAT dataset for the Orestimba Creek watershed that was developed
when he was associated with the University of California-Davis. We also thank Lou Best, Larry
Brewer, Don Carlson of FMC Corporation, Dylan Fuge from Latham and Watkins LLP, and Nick
Poletika and Mark Douglas from Dow AgroSciences for their contributions to the assessment of
risks to birds. We thank the anonymous reviewers of the papers for their suggestions and construc-
tive criticism. This independent evaluation was funded by Dow AgroSciences. Prof. Giesy was
supported by the Canada Research Chair program, a Visiting Distinguished Professorship in the
Department of Biology and Chemistry and State Key Laboratory in Marine Pollution, City
University of Hong Kong, the 2012 “High Level Foreign Experts” (#GDW20123200120) program,
funded by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, the P.R. China to Nanjing University
and the Einstein Professor Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial License, which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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