PARENT SESSION
28 - Pesticide Exposure Assessment
8:30 AM to 12:20 PM, Tuesday, 14 May 2002
Session Chair: Gonzalez-Valero, Juan ¹, Tarazona, Jose ², ^{1 2} .
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(28-04) Putting farmers' behaviour in the risk assessment of pesticides.

de Snoo, Geert^*,1, de Jong, Frank¹, Van der Poll, Rob¹, Van Hooft, Pim¹, ¹ Centre of Environmental Science, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands

ABSTRACT- Although the registration procedures of pesticides becoming more and more strict, pesticides are still exceeding environmental standards. An explanation might be that until now, the ecological risk assessment of pesticides is based on Good Agriculture Practice. However, analyses of pesticide use data show that there is a large variation in the use of pesticides between individual farmers. Moreover, farmers often use higher doses, especially of insecticides and fungicides, than is recommended on the label. Calculations show that pesticide admission procedures should take a safety factor of 1.7 into account for insecticides and fungicides by working on the basis of Normal Agriculture Practice (about 95% of the farmers) rather than Good Agriculture Practice. If 95% of farmers should follow the instructions on the label the environmental impact of pesticides can be reduced by about 35%.

Key words: pesticide use, good agriculture practice, risk assessment, predicted environmental concentration