Comments on pesticide risk assessment by the revision of Directive EU 91/414.

INTRODUCTION: Human health and the environment are major concerns for European Commission policy on the authorisation of plant protection products. The new regulation that revises and replaces the directive 91/414/EC moves towards the adoption of a Persistent Bioaccumulation Toxicity cutoff criterion because current pesticide risk assessment (PRA) is deterministic, based on few standard cases and therefore characterised by uncertainty. This revision could create concerns about sustainability. DISCUSSION: This paper analyses some effects of this directive on the agrochemical market and assumes new effects resulting from the introduction of the revision. Suggestions are made as to how pesticide risk assessment will have to adapt to answer the request of legislators on safety standards and sustainability, introducing probabilistic PRA. Toxicity and exposure functions will be fully characterised, producing distributions of predicted impact and quantifying the variability and uncertainty. For adopting PRA studies at the local/catchment scale, new assessment schemes will be necessary.