The PESTIRISK tool for personal planning of pesticide safe use by field users: concept and development

Introduction: The professional use of pesticides in agriculture entails exposure for the operator, with possible short- and long-term effects if suitable protection is not adequately employed. Risk Assessment is a compulsory activity of the farmer, however, necessary expert opinion and field measurements can be unavailable or unacceptably expensive. There is a strong need to give farmers a calculation tool to perform their own RA and to plan the safe use of pesticides at their premises. Material and Methods: The PESTIRISK tool is a model for relating personal exposure to its determinants and for evaluating exposure-related occupational risk. Algorithms are established to calculate the effect of determinants on exposure, based on pesticide use according to the EU-Good Agricultural Practices as applied in real-life scenarios of the Italian agricultural countryside. The determinants of exposure and their influence on exposure levels derive from the results of published studies. Systematic literature search with automated data-mining and expert opinion extracts meaningful quantitative and semi-quantitative information. Results and Conclusion: The initial data mining in Pubmed and Scopus and retrieved 332 articles, of which 42 were used for data extraction. The starting algorithms use a multi-step contamination-transport model with linear and non-linear coefficients and factors that depend on the different agricultural equipment and protective devices available, while, in the first instance, the chemical properties of the active ingredient will only influence mass-transport coefficients across barriers and safe exposure levels.