The US EPA OPP currently use a “scenario-based” approach consistent with federal government risk assessment guidance (NRC, 2009) to evaluate residential exposures to pesticides. Their 2012 <i>Standard Operating Procedures for Residential Pesticide Exposure Assessment</i> (Residential SOP’s)[1] are instructions for estimating exposure resulting from the 9 most common non-occupational pesticide uses. The exposure calculations draw from public and private datasets.<br/>Currently, the Agency uses deterministic point estimates for their short, intermediate long-term and lifetime exposure assessments. For these exposure assessments, the Agency believes arithmetic means are appropriate. However, this approach cannot adequately account for variation in human behaviour within a population or over time.<br/>Creme Global and CARES, a consortium of pesticidal product manufacturers, have developed a refined, cloud-based probabilistic model (‘CARES NG’) to assess cumulative and aggregate exposures to pesticides in the diet, while the assessment of residential exposures is still parameterised according to the deterministic US EPA residential SOP. Modelling and computational advancements provide an opportunity to expand CARES NG to better account for temporality and behaviours relating to the residential exposure scenario. This presentation will discuss probabilistic tools and methodologies such as Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) that can more realistically account for the impact of human behaviour on residential exposures, and for similarly modifying dermal and inhalation exposure assessments. The objective of this presentation is to encourage discussion on how best to characterise and realistically model residential exposures to pesticides in the future.

Advances in modelling residential exposure to Pesticides

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.