Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149017
Document accepted manuscript
Title (Primary) Risk from pesticide mixtures – The gap between risk assessment and reality
Author Weisner, O.; Frische, T.; Liebmann, L.; Reemtsma, T.; Roß-Nickoll, M.; Schäfer, R.B.; Schäffer, A.; Scholz-Starke, B.; Vormeier, P.; Knillmann, S.; Liess, M.
Source Titel Science of the Total Environment
Year 2021
Department ANA; OEKOTOX
Volume 796
Page From art. 149017
Language englisch
Topic T9 Healthy Planet
Keywords Environmental risk assessment; Plant protection products; Spray series; Pesticide exposure; Aquatic ecotoxicology; Ecological effects
Abstract Pesticide applications in agricultural crops often comprise a mixture of plant protection products (PPP), and single fields face multiple applications per year leading to complex pesticide mixtures in the environment. Restricted to single PPP, the current European Union PPP regulation, however, disregards the ecological risks of pesticide mixtures. To quantify this additional risk, we evaluated the contribution of single pesticide active ingredients to the additive mixture risk for aquatic risk indicators (invertebrates and algae) in 464 different PPP used, 3446 applications sprayed and 830 water samples collected in Central Europe, Germany. We identified an average number of 1.3 different pesticides in a single PPP, 3.1 for complete applications often involving multiple PPP and 30 in stream water samples. Under realistic worst-case conditions, the estimated stream water pesticide risk based on additive effects was 3.2 times higher than predicted from single PPP. We found that in streams, however, the majority of regulatory threshold exceedances was caused by single pesticides alone (69% for algae, 81% for invertebrates). Both in PPP applications and in stream samples, pesticide exposure occurred in repeated pulses each driven by one to few alternating pesticides. The time intervals between pulses were shorter than the 8 weeks considered for ecological recovery in environmental risk assessment in 88% of spray series and 53% of streams. We conclude that pesticide risk assessment should consider an additional assessment factor to account for the additive, but also potential synergistic simultaneous pesticide mixture risk. Additionally, future research and risk assessment need to address the risk from the frequent sequential pesticide exposure observed in this study.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=24894
Weisner, O., Frische, T., Liebmann, L., Reemtsma, T., Roß-Nickoll, M., Schäfer, R.B., Schäffer, A., Scholz-Starke, B., Vormeier, P., Knillmann, S., Liess, M. (2021):
Risk from pesticide mixtures – The gap between risk assessment and reality
Sci. Total Environ. 796 , art. 149017 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149017