Over the past decade, various studies have associated declines in arthropod biodiversity with multiple stressors including habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, disease, and chemical stressors (<i>e.g</i>., pesticides). During this time, regulatory authorities have implemented new methodologies with which to assess pesticide risks to bees. However, analogous procedures for assessing risk to other non-target arthropods (NTA) are limited. At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), risk assessment of NTA has mostly focused on species that are Federally listed as “threatened” or “endangered” in the U.S. In these assessments, the primary objective is to evaluate the likelihood that a pesticide’s use would adversely impact an individual of a listed species and jeopardize its population or its designated critical habitat. To support these evaluations, a GIS-based platform is used to quantify the spatial overlap between a species’ occurrence, pesticide usage, and target crop distribution when risks exceed defined levels of concern. Field-scale exposure models are combined with relevant arthropod toxicity data to estimate potential effects in areas of spatial overlap. The large diversity in life history and habitat requirements of NTA, combined with limited information on factors governing pesticide exposure and toxicity, introduce multiple challenges in listed NTA assessment. This presentation will highlight these challenges in the context of recently published listed NTA assessments for pesticides. In addition, critical gaps in available information needed to advance the regulatory objectives of NTA risk assessment are discussed.

Pesticide risk assessment of non-target arthropods at USEPA: Challenges and lessons learned from recent listed species assessments

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ACS Fall 2022

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