EFSA Guidance Document for predicting environmental concentrations of active substances of plant protection products and transformation products of these active substances in soil

This EFSA guidance document provides guidance for the exposure assessment of soil organisms to plant protection products (PPPs) and their transformation products in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009  of the European Parliament and the Council. This guidance was produced by EFSA in response to a question posed by the European Commission according to Art. 31 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002  of the European Parliament and of the Council. Guidance is provided for all types of concentrations that are potentially needed for assessing ecotoxicological effects, i.e. the concentration in total soil and the concentration in pore water, both averaged over various depths and time windows. The current guidance is restricted to annual field crops under conventional and reduced tillage. The recommended exposure assessment procedure consists of five tiers. To facilitate efficient use of the tiered approach in regulatory practice, user-friendly software tools have been developed. In higher tiers of the exposure assessment, crop interception and subsequent dissipation at the crop canopy may be included. The models that simulate these processes were harmonised. In addition, an easy-to-use table for the fraction of the dose reaching the soil has been developed, which should be used at higher tiers in combination with the simple analytical model. With respect to substance-specific model inputs, this guidance generally follows earlier documents; however, new guidance is included for some specific substance parameters.