Abstract
European Pesticide Registration requires a risk assessment (RA) for nontarget organisms according to EU Regulation. European Authorities have developed Guidance Documents (GDs) for RA considering exposure scenarios for the required organisms typical for terrestrial crops. The “Birds and Mammals EFSA GD” allows using multiple sources of information to extract information on species frequency needed in identifying focal species for higher‐tier RA. We developed an analytical framework to calculate species frequency according to availability of species and habitat quantitative data. Since the exposure scenarios reported in the EFSA GD are inconsistent for rice, we tested the method on birds and mammals in a portion of the largest rice‐cultivated area of Europe, the Italian Po floodplain. We derived three lists of focal species: (a) an expert‐based list based on land‐use data only, which can be useful for a preliminary exploration of potential candidate species; (b) a list derived from the interpolation of species data only, which reflects actual species frequency in rice fields; and (c) a list obtained by a species distribution model based on species monitoring and land‐use data, which account for species selectivity for rice crops and are transferable to other contexts. Focal species were identified for crop‐specific diet‐foraging guilds, to build specific exposure scenarios to assess the risk from pesticides application in rice fields. The partial differences between our lists and those previously proposed highlight the need for identifying national lists, which can vary according to study area, biogeographic region and exposure scenarios. The application of the proposed method in European rice‐producing countries should lead to crop‐specific lists, which could then be integrated to obtain a flexible European list applicable to higher‐tier RA. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:1020–1034. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).
Highlights
The European Regulation 1107/2009 EC describes the rules for Pesticide Registration to develop a risk assessment (RA) for nontarget organisms
We developed a general analytical framework to identify sets of focal species for higher‐tier RA that can be potentially applied to any crop type and study area, when data other than those suggested in Appendix M of EFSA Guidance Documents (GDs) are available
In this study, we proposed a tiered analytical framework that can be adapted to multiple sources of wildlife and habitat data to define focal species for higher‐tier RA in the context of European guidance
Summary
The European Regulation 1107/2009 EC describes the rules for Pesticide Registration to develop a risk assessment (RA) for nontarget organisms. European Authorities drafted Guidance Documents (GDs) to harmonize procedures and perform a proper RA by comparing the substance toxicity with organisms' exposure. RA is characterized by a stepwise evaluation represented at the beginning (lower tiers) by low realism and complexity. These steps represent a highly protective assessment of the risk. If the assessment at the lower tiers results in a high risk, it is possible to consider more complex scenarios close to reality in the higher‐tier RA In this step, RA is performed on species occurring in the target crop during the period of pesticides application (Schäfer et al, 2019)
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