Legistorm: Transparency's Sidekick

GAO testified that many concerns about pesticides raised by Rachel Carson 30 years ago in her book Silent Spring and by more than 100 GAO reports over the past 24 years remain unresolved. The Environmental Protection Agency's pesticide reregistration program, for example, evaluates the health and environmental effects of older pesticides, but after 20 years, only two of more than 19,000 products have been reregistered. Other longstanding concerns discussed include difficulties in removing dangerous pesticides from the market, holes in the safety net designed to warn consumers of pesticide dangers, groundwater contamination, inadequate monitoring of pesticides in food, deficient notice to foreign governments about exported pesticides that are banned or unregistered in the United States, poor safety protection for farmworkers, and a lack of a coordinated federal strategy to manage key pesticide data.