FRANCE: ANSES published a report on agricultural professional exposure to pesticides

Anses auto-seised itself on 20 July 2011 to carry out a collective expertise to “identify, assess and characterise the risk exposure of farm workers to pesticides in agriculture in order to propose target reduction actions and proportionate prevention measures”.

Note that the term “pesticides” includes here plant protection products, biocides and veterinary medicines.

The expertise was organised around several areas of research:

• Hearings of stakeholder experts
• Review of the literature on the French situations
• Data from medical monitoring systems
• Case studies
• Agricultural statistics
• Scientific literature on foreign situations
• Exposure data and regulatory assessment

ANSES published its report on 25 July 2016 and particularly recommends:

• Continuing work at European level to harmonise and regularly develop a priori exposure and risk assessment methods as part of the marketing authorisation procedures for substances whose examination may depend on different regulations, depending on their uses.
• Continuing work to improve knowledge of the effectiveness of protective equipment, which must be compatible with the activity of people working in agriculture.
• In an independent framework, strengthening advice and training actions for pesticide users, in particular on the hazards, risks and safety of use. Certain exposure situations concerning sensitive or vulnerable populations, exposure when re-entering treated areas, or uses in the overseas territories, for example, require special efforts.

Lastly, in a context where the current available data  are often in short supply, the Agency recommends improving understanding of exposure of agricultural workers to pesticides:

• By strengthening the description of actual exposure situations in order to consolidate risk assessments or epidemiological studies, and also to assess the effectiveness of the recommended preventive measures,
• By strengthening the work on knowledge of exposure to mixtures of pesticides,
• By improving the accessibility, pooling, exploitation and capitalisation of information relating to pesticides, especially that concerning the exposure of people working in agriculture.

To download:

OPINION AND REPORTS from  ANSES related to “The exposure of agricultural workers to pesticides”

Volume 1: Main volume (in French)

Volume 2: Reviw of the literature on the French situations (in French)

Volume 3: Case study on sheep breeding (in French)

Volume 4: Case study on the re-entry in fruit tree crops (in French)

Volume 5: Possible use of agricultural statistics to support the charaterisation of farms, practices and exposure to pesticides in agriculture in France (in French)

Volume 6: Informations available in the vigilance monitoring systems, in the tables of occupational disease, the the SUMER survey and in the matrices jobs/exposure or crop/exposure (in French)

Volume 7: Exposure and registration of pesticides (in French)

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