Abstract
The attention paid to the use of pesticides has increased notably in recent years as demonstrated by the issue of laws and regulations requiring their safe and environmentally-conscious use (e.g. Directive 2009/128/EC and Regulation (EC) no. 1272/2008). Despite the benefits that can be achieved by pursuing the targets of stricter legislative framework, the difficulties for farmers in complying with it are remarkable, especially for small-sized companies. In fact, in contrast to other occupational health and safety (OHS) contexts, in the case of pesticides even a preliminary analysis on the relationship between pesticide use and the consequent exposure risks for the workers is a complex task. In order to reduce the above-mentioned gap, the present study is focused on the development of an easy-to-use tool for carrying out occupational risk assessment of agricultural activities related to the use of pesticides. The procedure was developed by starting from the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) approach and its improvements, and continuing to the thorough development of a tool for preliminary risk assessment, providing a simplified model for its practical application by farmers. A case study concerning olive cultivation was used for its first verification. The results achieved should be considered as an initial step for the promotion of safer practices when using pesticides, providing a consistent base for their further validation.
Highlights
In recent years, matters concerning the safer and more sustainable use of chemical products in agriculture have risen in importance worldwide [1,2]
Where the possible re-entry of the operator was included (RE-ENTRY), as well as a reducing factor considering the experience of the operator (SKILL), while PPE considers the status of the personal protective equipment and FREQ indicates how many times in a year the operator carries out activities involving the use of pesticides
Regarding the factor SKILL, the criteria used to introduce this aspect in Equation (2) are based on the information provided by the technical guideline provided by the International Social Security Association (ISSA) [76], where the skills of the operator are estimated considering its experience in carrying out a specific task
Summary
Matters concerning the safer and more sustainable use of chemical products in agriculture have risen in importance worldwide [1,2]. Measuring the level of exposure is a difficult and complex task, due to the particularities that characterize the agricultural activities, the differences among the operators and working environments [54]. Premarketing models were introduced due to the mandatory need for evaluating the exposure of operators as well as for residents and bystanders [60], providing calculators based on databases, such as the BROWSE model [61], EUROPOEM [57], or TOXSWA [62] Despite their ease of access, these models suffer from several drawbacks when applied in a practical context for occupational risk assessment [63,64]. The so-called job exposure matrices (JEMs) [65] present with limited effectiveness when considering the agricultural activities [59,66], and for effective results in the determination of intensity of exposure they should be used in combination with algorithms that take into account other parameters such as the application rate, the type of equipment, and the characteristics of the crop [67]
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