Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators

by Fischer, David; Moriarty, Tom

• ISBN13: 9781118852521
• ISBN10: 1118852524
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-07-14
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Pollinators play a vital role in ecosystem health and are essential to ensuring food security. With declines in both managed and wild pollinator populations in recent years, scientists and regulators have sought answers to this problem and have explored implementing steps to protect pollinator populations now and for the future. Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators focuses on the role pesticides play in impacting bee populations and looks to develop a risk assessment process, along with the data to inform that process, to better assess the potential risks that can accompany the use of pesticide products.

Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators opens with two chapters that provide a biological background of both Apis and non-Apis species of pollinators. Chapters then present an overview of the general regulatory risk assessment process and decision-making processes. The book then discusses the core elements of a risk assessment, including exposure estimation, laboratory testing, and field testing.  The book concludes with chapters on statistical and modeling tools, and proposed additional research that may be useful in developing the ability to assess the impacts of pesticide use on pollinator populations.

Summarizing the current state of the science surrounding risk assessment for Apis and non-Apis species, Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators is a timely work that will be of great use to the environmental science and agricultural research communities.

• Assesses pesticide risk to native and managed pollinators
• Summarizes the state of the science in toxicity testing and risk assessment
• Provides valuable biological overviews of both Apis and non-Apis pollinators
• Develops a plausible overall risk assessment framework for regulatory decision making
• Looks towards a globally harmonized approach for pollinator toxicity and risk assessment

Author Biography

David Fischer is Director of Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment at Bayer CropScience.

Thomas Moriarty is a Team Leader in the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Re-Evaluation Division.

Table of Contents

1.0  Introduction

2.0  Overview of Honey Bee Biology

This chapter is intended to provide an overview of the, biology and behavior of individual constituents of the honey bee colony, and biology of the honey bee hive.  The overview is intended to provide understanding and context for exposure and effects tests.

3.0  Overview of non-Apis Biology

This chapter is intended to provide a broad overview of the many non-Apis species, the essential differences between these and Apis species and, provide specific information on certain non-Apis species considered to be potentially most relevant for pesticide risk assessment.

4.0  Overview of Risk Assessment Process

Overview of risk assessment process describes the framework, steps and requirements which are components of regulatory decision making.  This section also highlights the specific design needs and rigor expected of data conducted to support regulatory decision making.

5.0  Risk Assessment Protection Goals and Problem Formulation for Pesticide Risk to Honey Bees (Apis) and Wild Bees (non-Apis)

Protection goals provide guiding purpose(s) and overall focus for risk assessment, and problem formulation provides parameters and direction for risk assessment.  This section discusses these elements so the reader understands the lens through which regulatory tests and their outcomes are considered.

6.0  Overview of Exposure Assessment

This section provides an overview of current knowledge of exposure testing applicable to pesticide risk assessment for honey bees.

7.0  Overview of Effects (Toxicity) Assessment

Provides an overview of current knowledge of effects testing applicable to pesticide risk assessment for honey bees.

8.0  Risk Assessment and Decision Making Process

Provides an overview and discussion of a proposed decision pathway, highlighting considerations and criteria used to determine whether and how a product should be screened for potential effects, including interpretation of effects with respect to protection goals.

9.0  Use of Ecological Models in Assessments of Pesticide Risks to Honey Bees and Wild Bees

Brief chapter on types and use of predictive and mechanistic models with the honey bee and the information needed for such models.

10.0  Statistical Considerations in the Design, Conduct, and Interpretation of Toxicity Studies and Risk Assessments

11.0  Summary of Recommendations and Research Needs

12.0  Appendix

                A.  Risk Mitigation and Monitoring Considerations

Risk management is an essential component of regulating plant protection products, however, since this topic was not one of the central themes of the Workshop, it is proposed that a brief discussion of risk management be captured as an appendix.

13.0  Acknowledgements

14.0  References and Literature Cited