The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation developed a quantitative risk assessment process for bees that was vetted through EPA's external peer review process, i.e., the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP).  The process is tiered and at higher levels of refinement integrates data from laboratory and field-based studies.  In addition to data submitted by the regulated community, information is also drawn from open literature and from bee kill incident data.  Collectively, these data provide information across multiple levels of biological organization and may include a broad range of sublethal effects  on the whole bee and colony.   Integrating information across multiple levels of biological organization within the conceptual framework of an adverse outcome pathway can provide insight on linkages between measurement and agency assessment endpoints of impaired growth, survival or reproduction.  Depending on the extent to which linkages have been developed between measurement endpoints and assessment endpoints, data may be used either qualitatively or quantitatively.  Establishing such linkages can inform predictive models that may be used to extrapolate estimates of sublethal effects, exposure and the integration of exposure and effects, i.e., risk to apical outcomes for individual bees, colonies and populations.  Depending on the extent to which chemical modes of action and model elasticity are conserved, regulatory agencies may be able to apply information across chemicals, and through combinations of interpolation, extrapolation and bridging techniques, may be able to achieve an economy of effort in evaluating the potential for adverse effects from exposure to pesticides.

Assessing the potential for adverse effects to bees from exposure to pesticides: Integrating multiple lines of evidence across varying levels of biological organization

248th National Meeting (2014)

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