Key message:
The Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment (VKM) will assess the representativeness of Forum for Coordination of pesticide fate models and their Use (FOCUS) scenarios for available surface water scenarios for pesticide risk assessment in Norway.
The Norwegian Food Safety Authority (NFSA) requires this knowledgebase as part of a review and eventual upgrade of the current risk assessment methodology.
The mandate
The NFSA asks VKM to assess the following objectives:
- To identify agricultural areas in Norway that are «represented» by soil and climate conditions in the ten FOCUS surface water standard scenarios or the four nationalscenarios, andquantify the size and spatial distribution of these areas.
- To determine how worst-case the areas identified in objective 1 are in terms of surface water exposure potential compared to agricultural land across Norway, and if they could be considered protective of additional areas, even if they are not directly representative.
- To identify the characteristics and spatial distribution of all agricultural land in Norway that is not represented by any of the ten FOCUS surface water scenarios or the four national scenarios.
- To assess the relative importance of surface run-off (both dissolved and particulate phases),drainflowand spray drift as routes of aquatic exposure to pesticides in Norway based on pedoclimatic characteristics.
The project group
Ole Martin Eklo – member of the VKM Panel on plant protection products (chair)
Tor Fredrik Holth - member of the VKM Panel on plant protection products
Michael Klein – external expert from Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, Germany
Nana Yaa Boahene – Project manager, VKM-secretariat
The Panel on plant protection products is responsible for the assessment. The report is expected to be published in January 2021.
Contact
The Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment
Office:
Sandakerveien 24 C (entrance D11) 0473 Oslo
Webmaster: Tanya S. Kristiansen
Senior Editor: Ingrid M. Høie