Food Standards Agency
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Listen to this siteWednesday 25 August 2004
This research project will undertake a probabilistic assessment of the population uptake of pesticides and veterinary medicines from all potential exposure pathways.
Study Duration : June 2004 to November 2006
Contractor : Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh
The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) made recommendations for changes in the regulatory approval processes to include consideration of all sources of exposure to agricultural and non-agricultural pesticides and veterinary medicines. There is a need to assess the impact of implementation of the regulatory recommendations within the EU alone taking account of the exposure to products that will be imported from outside the EU. This will give a broad indication of the progress towards safeguarding against these mixtures that would result from EU implementation.
A number of pesticides and veterinary medicines will be identified for study based on their usage and biological half-life. Information relevant to consumer and occupational pesticide exposure will be collated from authoritative publicly available sources, both in the UK and elsewhere. Details of frequency and duration of exposure will be obtained. Food residue levels and food consumption data will be acquired, along with the possible effect of preparation techniques. For other exposures details will be identified of in use concentration of the active substance, pattern of exposure, etc. Where possible, pesticide exposures from products produced within the EU and those imported into the EU will be identified separately. Characteristics of the exposed population will be obtained, e.g. age, residence, food consumption habits, etc.
Annual mixed 'internal' exposure will be acquired for various groups in society using a single-compartment pharmacokinetic model using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. Exposure of each group will be characterised in terms of predicted mean and variation in exposure. An assessment of the impact of uncertainty in the model parameters will also be made. Particular emphasis will be placed on bystander exposure and the exposure of children. The study will provide an assessment of whether EU regulatory controls on human exposure to agricultural and non-agricultural pesticides and veterinary medicines provide sufficient protection when taking account of aggregate exposure and cumulative exposure.
The study was designed to inform the process of risk assessment of chemical mixtures. Exposure during application and in other occupational situations is assessed along with people living near to fields or who just happen to be in the vicinity of fields being treated, i.e. bystanders. Consideration is also given to the possible risks to consumers from eating food containing small amounts of pesticide residues. However, the regulatory processes generally only consider individual products and does not take into account exposure to other pesticide active ingredients with similar toxicity, to other products at different times or to the consumption of many different foods that may each contain pesticide residues.
This project has made an assessment of the exposure to pesticide mixtures from all potential pathways by creating a mathematical model of pesticide exposures from multiple active ingredients in food, or where exposure comes from occupational or bystander scenarios.
This project has identified the information that is available to describe the possible sources of pesticide exposure in Great Britain, has collected the available data and devised a model to use this information to estimate the exposure of the population. Results are presented for different groups of people exposed to pesticides mixtures and for the population. In addition, the potential impact of the research on regulation of pesticides is discussed.
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