Washington-The Fertilizer Institute reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has approved product testing data on phosphate and ammonia products generated by TFI and the European Fertilizer Manufacturers Association (EFMA) for inclusion into an international database of chemicals. The approval came at an OECD Screening Information Data Sets Initial Assessment Meeting (SIAM) in Paris, France. Acceptance of the data by the OECD provides further credibility to efforts to demonstrate with scientific data that fertilizer products are safe. “TFI completed its product testing program on 23 fertilizer materials in early 2003, demonstrating that all major fertilizer products are safe when used as intended and pose no harm to industry workers, community members or the environment,” said TFI President Ford West. “We are pleased at EPA’s sponsorship and the OECD’s approval for our phosphate and ammonia products in this internationally recognized forum.” The United States is the sponsor country for fertilizer products within the OECD process, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) served as the formal presenter for the TFI-EFMA data at the Paris OECD meeting. TFI was also present to provide technical support on the testing data. Successful adoption by OECD of these fertilizer products also confers regulatory approval through EPA’s High Production Volume (HPV) data challenge, and covers many of the important data points necessary in the current European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) program. EPA’s HPV Challenge program was developed to make publicly available a complete set of baseline health and environmental effects data on HPV chemicals. The data will provide the basis for better and faster decisions on which chemicals present risks and how to eliminate or manage these risks. It is EPA’s goal to assure that the public has access to health and environmental effects data for chemicals that are present in their environment. “TFI has been working to seek regulatory approval of this fertilizer product testing data both nationally and internationally and we thank EFMA for its assistance with this effort,” said West. “International approval for this safety data is essential given the globalization of the fertilizer industry and the increased efforts on the worldwide regulation of chemicals.” The nitrates and sulfate groups of TFI-EFMA fertilizer data are scheduled for OECD review in early November and fertilizer acids are scheduled for review in April 2008.
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