The mandates for both Washington State University’s (WSU) Food and Environmental Quality Laboratory and the Washington State Commission on Pesticide Registration (WSCPR) address operating a program for tracking the availability of effective pesticides for use on Washington’s minor crops. (RCW 15.92.060 & 15.92.100) This tracking program is the Pesticide Notification Network (PNN), which has, since 1997, been funded by the WSCPR and operated by WSU.
The purpose of the PNN is to inform Washington State pesticide users of registration and label changes for products of interest to agriculture. Information is distributed to commodity commissions, grower groups, WSU Extension personnel, and individual growers involved in Washington State’s diverse agriculture. Currently information is distributed to 271 PNN contacts.
One goal of the PNN is to get the right information to the right people. This is done by sending each PNN notification to a targeted distribution list. When people sign up for PNN service, they customize their "subscription" both by crop and by pesticide type. In this manner, an entomologist conducting research on tree fruit will receive only information about insecticides registered for use on tree fruits while the Washington Hop Commission receives notifications relating to all pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides) that may be used on hops. The PNN is a free service and anyone who is interested in subscribing to the PNN may do so. In addition to actively distributing information via e-mail notifications, the PNN also provides information on its Web site found at URL: http://ext.wsu.edu/pnn.
The table below summarizes the activity of the PNN from its inception in 1997 through 2007. In 2007, the PNN distributed 359 notifications via 31,544 e-mail messages. Because of the targeted nature of the PNN, the distribution list for each notification varies. In 2007 single notifications were sent to as few as 11 subscribers or as many as 256. Also in 2007 the number of PNN subscribers rose from 245 to 271 and the PNN web page was visited by an average of 8,377 visitors per month, up from 5,300 in 2006. Over the space of the year the PNN web page hosted more than 100,500 visitors. This is an increase of 58% from 2006.
| PNN Activi | ty Summary (in | ception to present) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | # Notifications | # E –Mail | # E-Mail/ Notification | Web Page Visitors – annual total | Web Page Visitors – monthly average |
| 1997 | 424 | 8,753 | 21 | ||
| 1998 | 279 | 4,446 | 16 | ||
| 1999 | 355 | 8,537 | 24 | ||
| 2000 | 344 | 11,335 | 33 | ||
| 2001 | 355 | 12,328 | 35 | ||
| 2002 | 338 | 15,476 | 46 | ||
| 2003 | 283 | 12,405 | 44 | ||
| 2004 | 325 | 16,621 | 51 | 6,748 | 613 |
| 2005 | 355 | 25,569 | 72 | 16,331 | 1,361 |
| 2006 | 349 | 30,387 | 87 | 63,605 | 5,300 |
| 2007 | 359 | 31,544 | 88 | 100,521 | 8,377 |
This year, at the request of WSDA, the PNN web page containing information on the Washington SLNs was revised. Now rather than having each year’s SLNs posted in separate tables, all of the Washington SLNs are posted on a single table and the table is then available on the web page sorted by SLN Number, EPA Registration Number, Registrant Name, Product Name, Ingredient, Crop, and also by Pesticide Type.
Information about the PNN was presented at two talks given in 2007. The first was at the Insect Pest Management Conference in Portland in January, the second was at the Orchard Pesticide Use meeting in Ellensburg in May.
As in the past, the PNN distributed several "special topic" notifications in 2007. These types of notifications cover issues outside the registration, labeling, and federal regulatory information normally provided on the PNN. Some of the special topic PNN notifications distributed in 2007 covered:
In 2007 the PNN also distributed 16 notifications covering various aspects of EPA Reregistration Eligibility Decisions or REDs. PNN notifications were sent out in 2007 related to REDs for the following active ingredients: aliphatic solvents, paradichlorobenzene, NAA, chlormequat, mefluidide, MCPP-P, 2,4-DP-P, aldicarb, aliphatic alcohols, antimycin A, rotenone, aliphatic esters, lime-sulfur, formetanate hydrochloride, dimethoate, and ethofumesate.