Pesticides - trawl through the Ministries

Ever wonder who exactly regulates the pesticides you use on plants?
This caught my eye:

AVA's website

Here's the confusion: if you are growing plants in a HDB and start spraying away - who is going to regulate? Who does toxicity studies and monitors? Shouldn't it be the authorities involved with plants rather than those dealing with the environment?

It is interesting to know that the list of approved pesticides do not include a lot of very potent agents sold in smaller (yet potentially lethal) quantities on your super market shelves. There is a major discrepancy when the same potent agent is regulated with stringency by AVA when sold in bulk but exempted from regulations when sold in smaller volume. In fact, about 90% of the horticultural poisons sold off the shelves in DIY and supermarkets are not registered (and I assume to be not monitored).

It also gives a big headache to the poison centre here to monitor safety issues and have treatment protocols on hand without knowing the prevalence. it would be very confusing if one agency handles agri poisons and the other handles household horti poisons - unification is needed. You can imagine a scenario where you are thrown back and forth agencies when they say that a brand or chemical entity is not within their scope - time is ticking in emergency cases.

I was in shock when a friend told me that a box of extra potent pesticide was bought from across the Causeway only to read off "Streptomycin" as the active ingredient - talk about blaming hospitals for bacterial resistance!

Some people may criticise me for being a kan chong spider (ants on a hot pan) but then why want to allow preventable or controllable things to happen?