Pesticides: how can risk assessors make better use of epidemiological data?

EFSA’s pesticide Substance used to kill or control pests, including disease-carrying organisms and undesirable insects, animals and plants. experts have developed an approach that could help risk assessors to make better use of epidemiological data in the assessment of active chemical substances used in pesticides.

The Panel on Plant Protection Products and their Residues (PPR) has also made recommendations on how to improve the quality and reliability of epidemiological studies used in risk assessment  A specialised field of applied science that involves reviewing scientific data and studies in order to evaluate risks associated with certain hazards. It involves four steps: hazard identification, hazard characterisation, exposure assessment and risk characterisation. of pesticides.

The panel’s scientific opinion Opinions include risk assessments on general scientific issues, evaluations of an application for the authorisation of a product, substance or claim, or an evaluation of a risk assessment. is a follow-up to a literature review commissioned by EFSA that noted significant associations in epidemiological studies between exposure Concentration or amount of a particular substance that is taken in by an individual, population or ecosystem in a specific frequency over a certain amount of time. to pesticides and 23 major categories of human health outcomes.

The review also identified a number of weaknesses and limitations affecting the reliability of such studies and their applicability in the regulatory risk assessment of pesticide active substances.

As well as addressing these limitations, the PPR opinion also proposes a methodology for integrating epidemiological evidence with data from experimental toxicology, as the two lines of evidence can complement each other in the risk assessment process.

The use of evidence from epidemiological studies in risk assessment of pesticides is the subject of a conference being hosted by EFSA in November. The deadline for registration is 6 November.