On April 16, 1973, the EPA Administrator adopted two recommended decisions by his Chief Administrative Law Judge that cancelled the last remaining registrations of DDT for domestic agricultural use. He also denied a request for a new registration for use on stored sweet potatoes.The two recommended decisions and the Administrator's orders adopting them bring to an end an important phase of the long-standing effort to bring about effective federal administrative control of pesticides.¹

Most domestic agricultural uses of DDT pesticide were ended by an EPA order that was issued on June 14, 1972, after lengthy cancellation hearings, and that became effective January 1, 1973. This order is now being challenged as unwarranted by the DDT industry in a suit pending in the District of Columbia Circuit, while environmentalists argue that the order is insufficient in that it does not ban all (including nonagricultural) domestic DDT uses.²