It takes up to 15 years for the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) to review acceptable exposure levels for a toxic chemical. APVMA is currently reviewing 19 chemically active substances, some of which have been in operation since 1996. Although APVMA denies that their review progress is too slow, from July 1, APVMA will be forced to complete the review of a chemical within 5 years.

The APVMA began its review of the broad-spectrum pesticide diazinon (Diazinon) in 1996 and is still under review. However, the preliminary review opinion report on the insecticide cotton retention phosphorus (azinphos-methyl) was released in 2006 and is still under review. The interim report on the insecticide chlorpyrifos was released in 2000, and the preliminary review opinion was released in 2009. The management said that the final review report is expected to be completed in 2015.

According to Raj Bhula, Executive Director of the APVMA Pesticide Program, the new regulations require a maximum of 12 months for assessments and a maximum of five years for special cases. She said the change in the time frame was conducive to greater transparency and that risks identified in the assessment would be addressed immediately.

Dr Bhula said: "We can make a mid-term environmental decision or a suspension decision, and there are multiple points in time to suspend the review action before a comprehensive review of a chemical substance is completed."

Dr Liz Hanna of the Australian National University thinks it is absurd that it would take APVMA more than 10 years to reach a conclusion. She said: "We certainly support a maximum time limit of five years. In a more ideal situation, we would like them to have sufficient resources to complete a full review in almost two years."

She said: "They are not doing it themselves. If they were a laboratory, that might be understandable because it would take many years to do it, but they are really just going through the literature. From a public health point of view, we think 15 years of review time is very irresponsible."

Dr. Hanna said the authorities' refusal to refer to the European approach was incomprehensible. "When APVMA said that they had taken the best approach and conducted the review entirely on scientific grounds, we thought it was incredible. When other countries withdrew, banned certain products, or reduced the concentration of products, we did not do so."

"If there is a study in the European Union that shows that a substance has exposure harm to human body, then our discrimination method should be the same. The exposure of the substance will be different when it is used in different crops, but the point is that we do not have the precipitation like Canada and Europe, which can flush toxic substances out of the river system."

"The amount of precipitation in Australia is very small, our ecosystem is not able to flush out toxic substances quickly, we don't have these advantages. So in many ways, our use of these substances is more harmful."