title: Pesticide exposure assessment for surface waters in the EU. Part 1: Some comments on the current procedure.
abstract: In 2001, the European Commission introduced a risk assessment project known as FOCUS (FOrum for the Coordination of pesticide fate models and their USe) for the surface water risk assessment of active substances in the European Union. Even for the national authorisation of plant protection products (PPPs), the vast majority of EU member states still refer to the four runoff and six drainage scenarios selected by the FOCUS Surface Water Workgroup. However, our study, as well as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), has stated the need for various improvements. Current developments in pesticide exposure assessment mainly relate to two processes. Firstly, predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) of pesticides are calculated by introducing model input variables such as weather conditions, soil properties and substance fate parameters that have a probabilistic nature. Secondly, spatially distributed PECs for soil-climate scenarios are derived on the basis of an analysis of geodata. Such approaches facilitate the calculation of a spatiotemporal cumulative distribution function (CDF) of PECs for a given area of interest and are subsequently used to determine an exposure concentration endpoint as a given percentile of the CDF. For national PPP authorisation, we propose that, in the future, exposure endpoints should be determined from the overall known statistical PEC population for an area of interest, and derived for soil and climate conditions specific to the particular member state. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Landscape Ecology and Resources Management, University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bach
authors.affiliation: German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dessau, Germany.
authors.forename: Mirjam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Diesner
authors.affiliation: German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dessau, Germany.
authors.forename: Dietlinde
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Großmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agroecology, RLP Agroscience, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.
authors.forename: Djamal
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guerniche
authors.affiliation: Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Schmallenberg and Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Udo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hommen
authors.affiliation: Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Schmallenberg and Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agroecology, RLP Agroscience, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kubiak
authors.affiliation: German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dessau, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dessau, Germany.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Priegnitz
authors.affiliation: Footways SAS, Orléans, France.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Reichenberger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agroecology, RLP Agroscience, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agroecology, RLP Agroscience, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Trapp
mesh_terms: D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D005062:European Union / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D010575:Pesticides / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis*; D011336:Probability; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis*; D014887:Weather
chemical_list: D010575:Pesticides; D012987:Soil; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: drainage; erosion; exposure assessment; pesticide; runoff; surface waters