Abstract
Introduction
Human health and the environment are major concerns for European Commission policy on the authorisation of plant protection products. The new regulation that revises and replaces the directive 91/414/EC moves towards the adoption of a Persistent Bioaccumulation Toxicity cutoff criterion because current pesticide risk assessment (PRA) is deterministic, based on few standard cases and therefore characterised by uncertainty. This revision could create concerns about sustainability.
Discussion
This paper analyses some effects of this directive on the agrochemical market and assumes new effects resulting from the introduction of the revision. Suggestions are made as to how pesticide risk assessment will have to adapt to answer the request of legislators on safety standards and sustainability, introducing probabilistic PRA. Toxicity and exposure functions will be fully characterised, producing distributions of predicted impact and quantifying the variability and uncertainty. For adopting PRA studies at the local/catchment scale, new assessment schemes will be necessary.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arias-Estevez M, Lopez-Periago E, Martinez-Carballo E, Simal-Gandara J, Mejuto JC, Garcia-Rio L (2008) The mobility and degradation of pesticides in soils and the pollution of groundwater resources. Agric Ecosyst Environ 123:247–260
Balderacchi M, Di Guardo A, Vischetti C, Trevisan M (2008) The effect of crop rotation on pesticide leaching in a regional pesticide risk assessment. Environ Sci Technol 42:8000–8006
Beulke S, Brown CD (2006) Impact of correlation between pesticide parameters on estimates of environmental exposure. Pest Manag Sci 62:603–609
Beulke S, Brown CD, Dubus IG, Galicia H, Jarvis N, Schaefer D, Trevisan M (2006) User subjectivity in Monte Carlo modeling of pesticide exposure. Environ Toxicol Chem 25:2227–2236
Boesten JJTI, Kopp H, Adriaanse PI, Brock TCM, Forbes VE (2007) Conceptual model for improving the link between exposure and effects in the aquatic risk assessment of pesticides. Ecotoxicol Environ Saf 66:291–308
Brock TC, Arts GH, Maltby L, Van den Brink PJ (2006) Aquatic risks of pesticides, ecological protection goals, and common aims in European Union Legislation. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2:e20–e46
Brown CD, Holmes C, Williams R, Beulke S, van Beinum W, Pemberton E, Wells C (2007) How does crop type influence risk from pesticides to the aquatic environment? Environ Toxicol Chem 26:1818–1826
Commission of the European Communities (2000) Communication from the Commission on the precautionary principle. Commission of the European Communities, Brussels
Dubus IG, Brown CD, Beulke S (2003a) Sources of uncertainty in pesticide fate modelling. Sci Total Environ 317:53–72
Dubus IG, Brown CD, Beulke S (2003b) Sensitivity analyses for four pesticide leaching models. Pest Manag Sci 59:962–982
ECPA (2006) ECPA evaluation—proposal for a regulation concerning the placing on the market of plant protection products—impact of the criteria for ‘non-approval’ and ‘candidates for substitution’. ECPA, Brussels
European Communities (2009) EU action on pesticides: “our food has become greener” (factsheet). In: Directorate-general for health and consumers (Hrsg.). European Communities: Brussels
FOCUS (2000) “FOCUS groundwater scenarios in the EU review of active substances” Report of the FOCUS Groundwater Scenarios Workgroup
Frewer LJ, Fischer ARH, van den Brink PJ, Byrne P, Brock T, Brown C, Crocker J, Goerlitz G, Hart A, Scholderer J, Solomon K (2008) Potential for the adoption of probabilistic risk assessments by end-users and decision-makers. Environ Impact Asses Rev 14:166–178
Glasson J (1999) The first 10 years of the UK EIA system: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Plan Pract Res 14:363–375
Hart A, Brown CD, Lewis KA, Tzilivakis J (2003) p-EMA (II): evaluating ecological risks of pesticides for a farm-level risk assessment system. Agronomie 23:75–84
Hela DG, Lambropoulou DA, Konstantinou AK, Albanis TA (2005) Environmental monitoring and ecological risk assessment for pesticide contamination and effects in Lake Pamvotis, northwestern Greece. Environ Toxicol Chem 24:1548–1556
Hubbard DW (2007) How to measure anything: finding the value of "Intangibles" in business. Wiley, Hoboken
Jones RL, Boesten JJTI, Fischer R, Gottesburen B, Hanze K, Huber A, Jarvis T, Klein M, Pokludova M, Remy B, Sweeney P, Tiktak A, Trevisan M, Vanclooster M, Vanderborght J (2007) Assessing potential impact to ground water in the EU and member state registration procedures. In: Del Re AAM, Capri E, Fragoulis G, Trevisan M (eds) Environmental fate and ecological effects of pesticides. La Goliardica Pavese, Pavia, pp 881–888
Neve P (2007) Challenges for herbicide resistance evolution and management: 50 years after Harper. Weed Res 47:365–369
Posthuma L, Suter GW, Traas TP (2002) The use of species sensitivity distributions in ecotoxicology. CRC Press, Boca Raton
PPDB (2009). The Pesticide Properties Database (PPDB) developed by the Agriculture & Environment Research Unit (AERU), University of Hertfordshire, funded by UK national sources and the EU-funded FOOTPRINT project (FP6-SSP-022704)
Scheringer M, Steinbach D, Escher B, Hungerbuhler K (2002) Probabilistic approaches in the effect assessment of toxic chemicals—what are the benefits and limitations? Environ Sci Pollut Res 9:307–314
Snell T, Cowell R (2006) Scoping in environmental impact assessment: balancing precaution and efficiency? Environ Impact Asses Rev 26:359–376
Trevisan M, Di Guardo A, Balderacchi M (2009) An environmental indicator to drive sustainable pest management practices. Environ Model Softw 24:994–1002
Van Wijngaarden RPA, Brock TCM, Van den Brink PJ (2005) Threshold levels for effects of insecticides in freshwater ecosystems: a review. Ecotoxicology 14:355–380
Whelan MJ, Davenport EJ, Smith BG (2007) A globally applicable location-specific screening model for assessing the relative risk of pesticide leaching. Sci Total Environ 377:192–206
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Richard H. Bromilow for revisiting the manuscript and Ettore Capri, Gabriella Fait and Paola Grasso for contributing the discussion. The study was supported by the European Community 7th Framework Project GENESIS (226536) on groundwater systems.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Balderacchi, M., Trevisan, M. Comments on pesticide risk assessment by the revision of Directive EU 91/414. Environ Sci Pollut Res 17, 523–528 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-009-0278-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-009-0278-2