In many countries around the globe, an operator risk assessment for the application of agrochemicals is part of the local regulation and is required, if a company wants to register a new plant protection product (PPP). However, particularly for low- and middle-income countries located in Asia, Africa or Latin America, local authorities often do not request an operator risk assessment that considers local exposure scenarios and ensures that operators apply PPPs in a safe manner, mainly due to the lack of capacities or expertise. For those countries, Bayer has developed an operator safety standard that is applied internally to ensure that our crop protection products can be used with acceptable risks to operators. Our Operator Safety Standard reflects the guidelines and standards of international organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as those of regulatory authorities around the world, to ensure a globally consistent baseline for product safety. This process follows a three-pillared, risk-based approach using data and modelling: 1) Data collection – to determine the hazards associated with the product, determine safety thresholds, and define operator exposure scenarios; 2) Risk assessment – to evaluate the exposure by considering local agronomic standards, use scenarios, and compare the exposure estimate to the safety thresholds. We particularly consider exposure scenarios in low- and middle-income countries, like handheld application in a dense-rice field, a scenario that is uncommon in the US or the EU; 3) Risk management – defining measures that enable safe use of the product in practice and under consideration of realistic personal protective equipment. With our Safety Standard, we aim to raise the bar in operator safety for plant protection products, not only limited to our own portfolio. Therefore, we have published our approach on our transparency homepage and invite our competitors, regulators and other interested stakeholders to join us to develop an industry-wide safety standard.

Raising the safety bar for agrochemicals: Development of an operator safety standard for low- and middle-income countries

ACS Fall 2021

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