The use of a disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) metric to measure human health damage resulting from pesticide maximum legal exposures.

Most agencies around the world have developed a separate regulation frameworks for pesticides with different modes of action, likely because of the lack of a uniform quantification for health damage, which may underestimate pesticides' impact on human health and disease burden. In this study, the disability-adjusted life-year, a uniform metric used to express the human health impact and damage, was used to measure theoretical health damage resulting from maximum exposure as permitted by law to the most widely used pesticides. The total human risk characterization factors computed from chlorpyrifos and diazinon standard values through main exposure routes are generally larger than that of other widely used pesticides, and most factors of chlorpyrifos exceed the upper bounds of health risk. In addition, the damages to human health quantified from soil legal exposure to these widely used pesticides are much lower than that from exposure to drinking water or foods, which could help derive exposure allocation factors for different exposure routes. A total of 412 (28.3% of the total) computed total risk characterization factors of the 13 pesticides exceed the upper bound of tolerable risk uncertainty. Some nations, such as those in Europe, have adopted uniform and strict pesticide standard values as well as some computed risk characterization factors presented in the consensus data cluster. In addition, the results of an analysis on the geographical distribution of health risk characterization factors indicated that European nations have provided more conservative pesticide standard values in general. It is hoped that regulatory agencies can apply this uniform metric to compare and formulate legal limits for pesticides that have different modes of action.