As NAAA reported last month, the EPA is proposing yet another round of changes to the Application Exclusion Zone (AEZ) rule. First conceived in 2015 as part of the revisions to the Worker Protection Standard (WPS), the EPA intended the AEZ to be a moving buffer zone around pesticide application equipment to protect workers from either drift or direct spray. When someone enters the AEZ, the applicator must cease the application. Confusion and agricultural industry objections to several parts of the rule have led to several iterations of the AEZ rule, culminating in the current proposed changes.
One critical point in the AEZ rule has been how someone inside the AEZ but outside of the agricultural establishment impacts an applicator’s ability to make an application. An example of this would be someone on adjacent property or on a roadside. The original AEZ rules required the application to stop when people were in this area, effectively allowing someone outside the control of the applicator or the grower to dictate whether or not the application could be made at the field edges. A 2020 AEZ revision changed this, requiring an application to stop only when someone on the agricultural establishment is within the AEZ. This positive change was quickly challenged in court, and now, in their 2023 proposed revision, the EPA is back to requiring applications be halted whenever anyone, on or off the agricultural establishment, enters the AEZ. The EPA also appears to have not included in these recent changes a 2018 clarification that allows an application to resume if the applicator determines if it is safe to do so, i.e. the wind is blowing away from anyone.
NAAA has drafted comments to the EPA explaining why this is detrimental to crop protection and completely unnecessary since the law of atmospheric physics precludes drift from traveling upwind . We need your help, though—please consider submitting your own comments to let the EPA know how the 2023 proposed changes to the AEZ will have a negative impact on you and your customers. Please feel free to use NAAA’s comments as a guide to assist you with writing your comments on your operation’s letterhead.
To comment:
-
Use your web browser to navigate to this webpage: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OPP-2022-0133/document
- At the top you should be a proposed rule with the title “Pesticides: Agricultural Worker Protection Standard; Reconsideration of the Application Exclusion Zone Amendments” as shown below.
- If you do not see this at the top, you can either scroll down to look
for it or click the down arrow next to “Sort by” and select “Comments
Due (Newer-Older)” as shown above.
- Click on the “Comment” button.
- You can either type your comments in the comment field or attach them as a separate file.
- Make sure you fill out the rest of the required information and then submit your comment.
Comments are due May 12. Please reach out to NAAA’s Director of Education, Safety and Policy, Scott Bretthauer, if you have questions about the proposed changes to the AEZ rule or on how to comment.
 rule. First conceived in
2015 as part of the revisions to the Worker Protection Standard (WPS),
the EPA intended the AEZ to be a moving buffer zone around pesticide
application equipment to protect workers from either drift or direct
spray. When someone enters the AEZ, the applicator must cease the
application. Confusion and agricultural industry objections to several
parts of the rule have led to several iterations of the AEZ rule,
culminating in the current proposed changes.){kind=small}
