Political background:
The policy document ¡§Sustainable Crop Protection¡¨ of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Safety (Ministry of ¡§LNV¡¨) indicates that the Dutch government strives for strict environmental criteria for pesticides at EU level. However, it also indicates there should be a level playing field for Dutch agriculture, implying that the Netherlands do not intend to use environmental criteria that are more strict than those at EU level (unless specific national conditions make this necessary).
The pesticide registration in the Netherlands is carried out by an independent organisation, i.e. the CTB. The Dutch government is responsible for defining protection goals and for providing corresponding adequate risk assessment methodologies to the CTB. The usual procedure is that such methodologies are developed in consensus workgroups containing scientists from relevant Dutch research institutes and from CTB.
Currently the European Commission is finalising the new EU regulation for placing plant protection products on the market. An important aspect of this new regulation is the introduction of zonal risk assessment procedures (the Netherlands are part of the central zone). Within each zone, risk assessment procedures have to be harmonised as much as possible.
The Ministry of LNV has indicated that risk assessment methodologies have to be developed, validated, reviewed or improved for the following protection goals:
- risk to aquatic organisms
- persistence in soil
- drinking water from surface water
- leaching to groundwater and to drinking water wells
- non-target plants
- effects of atmospheric deposition.
Knowledge to be developed:
Risk to aquatic organisms:
- Adequate handling of time-variable exposure of aquatic organisms in larger water courses in the risk assessment
- Testing of TOXSWA model against measured behaviour of pesticides in water courses and including exposure to transformation products of pesticides formed in surface water or in water sediments in TOXSWA
- Analysis of main causes of differences between available spray drift measurements from the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.
Leaching to groundwater and drinking water wells:
- Testing whether current Dutch risk assessment procedure for leaching to groundwater prevents registration of pesticides that may lead to exceedance of the 0.1 Ýg/L criterion in Dutch drinking water wells
- Release of GeoPEARL version that can handle restrictions in soil properties
- Development of FOCUS_PEARL version with improved FOCUS Groundwater Scenarios based on recommendations of FOCUS Groundwater Workgroup
Drinking water from surface water:
- Adequate calibration of first tier of the newly developed Dutch risk assessment procedure for drinking water from surface water against Dutch monitoring data from 2000-2004
- Development of risk assessment procedure for pesticides applied to hard surfaces.
Persistence in soil:
- testing of newly developed Dutch risk assessment procedure for a number of pesticides
- GeoPEARL version that can calculate exposure concentrations for the top layer of soil
PBT:
- development of first draft of guidance document to be used at EU level for PBT assessment
Atmospheric deposition:
- risk assessment procedure for effects of atmospheric deposition on nature conservation areas
Non-target plants:
- improved estimates of spray drift deposition onto non-target plants.
Publications of this programme are available Here |
