Collection of pesticide application data in view of performing Environmental Risk Assessments for pesticides

Abstract

In response to the Regulation 1107/2009, The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) funded a project to address cumulative exposure to plant protection products (PPPs) and the potential combined non-target effects of multiple applications of PPPs by means of carrying out surveys in eight EU Member States (MS), using a specifically designed survey form. The eight MS represent the Northern (Lithuania), Central (Belgium, Netherlands, Poland and United Kingdom) and Southern (Greece, Italy and Spain) regulatory zones. This project built upon on knowledge and experience of the previous EFSA pilot survey performed in six EU MS (CTF/EFSA/PPR/2010/04). Existing PPP usage surveys throughout the EU provide little information on how the products are applied by operators or details of mitigation measures used to reduce exposure (e.g. personal protective equipment), hours worked or specific times of application or other working activities performed by the operator that may contribute to the exposure. The PPP surveys in this project have collected in excess of 36,000 rows of information on a wide range of factors for operators such as the number of hours worked each day for specific the principle operator on over 400 farms, other worker activities, personal protective equipment (PPE) used and the details of 645 sprayers. The risk of exposure from combined toxicity resulting from the cumulative non-dietary exposure of operators to multiple active substances used for crop protection can be determined from such data. Together with the principal operator information, nine crops, some for direct consumption and some for processing, were selected and each MS collated information on 20 fields (one crop per farm) for between two and five crops, with at least two MS collecting information on each crop. These fields (582) were designated ‘environmental fields’ and information was collected on the multiple pesticide applications to that field in 2013 and, where possible, for the previous four years, together with information concerning in- and off- field margin characteristics.