At a meeting in Geneva on March 10-13, 2008, the Chemical Review Committee of the Rotterdam Convention^[1] agreed to recommend that the herbicide alachlor and the insecticide aldicarb be added to Annex III of the convention.

Alachlor is used for controlling grasses and weeds in soybeans, corn, peanuts, dry beans and sunflower crops. It is classified as a "slightly toxic" substance by the EPA, but has been banned in the European Union since 2006.

Aldicarb is an insecticide approved by the EPA for use by professional pesticide applicators on a variety of crops, including cotton, peanuts and soybeans. The E.U. has banned its use since July 2007.

The committee declined to issue recommendations to list three additional insecticides – carbaryl, methyl parathion and mirex – on the grounds that several of the notifications supporting their listing in Annex III did not meet convention requirements.

A drafting group under the committee intends to prepare decision guidance documents, after which a final recommendation will be forwarded to the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Rotterdam Convention for final approval. The decision guidance documents will not be ready before the next COP meeting scheduled for Oct. 27-31, 2008, in Rome. This means that the listing of alachlor and aldicarb will have to wait until the following COP in 2010.