Since 1982, members of our staff have supported EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. As part of this contract, our staff assess environmental and human health impacts on anthropogenic chemicals. The agricultural industry is critical to food and textile production, it is a large contributor to the U.S. economy. Not only does the industry provide food and materials for the U.S., it also provides products that are high-demand exports for other countries. Our dedicated staff help support this important industry by helping to ensure products used by the agricultural industry aren’t adversely impacting humans, animals, and the surrounding environment.

Bee in a large, bright yellow bloom

Our work consists of

  • Evaluating pesticide residues in food and feed crops as well as livestock
  • Evaluating mammalian toxicity data for agricultural and industrial chemicals
  • Determining critical end-points, no-observed-adverse-effect levels and lowest-observed-adverse-effect, reference doses or reference concentrations, and cancer values
  • Assessing risk and analyzing weight of evidence
  • Evaluating chemical toxicity to non-target species
  • Determining no-observed-adverse-effect levels and lowest-observed-adverse-effect levels
  • Monitoring movement, metabolism, and degradation of chemicals in the environment
  • Evaluating regulatory compliance and quality assurance

For 41 years our staff have been providing these services to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, making this contract our longest client relationship!

Close-up view of a blueberry bush with hundreds of blueberries at all stages of ripeness
Blueberries rely on bees to pollinate them in order to produce fruit.

Mature cornfield stretching along side a road.
Amongst other uses, corn is often used as a feed crop, one in which our staff evaluate pesticide residues.

See More CSS Insights

Examining Cetaceans for Contamination and Pathogens

CSS has employee owners who are experts in monitoring cetacean health. Several CSS scientists supporting NOAA’s Centers for Coastal Ocean Science have recently conducted research and tests on marine mammals to explore uncommon behaviors and causes for strandings. View some examples of this research below. Microplastics are becoming increasingly abundant in coastal and marine environments.…

woman pointing to a sign talking to a group of students

Training the Next Generation of Researchers 

CSS staff support the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Division of Occupational Safety and Health by providing Safe Techniques Advance Research Science (STARS) training to summer interns. Following a pause during the pandemic, staff resumed training May 15, 2024. During the in-person STARS training, CSS staff cover key concepts from the pre-requisite NIH Lab Safety…

Managing a Highly Viewed YouTube Channel

For more than 20 years we have supported the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which is part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Our staff manage the NCBI section of the National Library of Medicine YouTube channel, which has over 73,000 subscribers. One video tutorial our staff developed was to help users understand…