The European Group for
Integrated Pest Management in
Development Cooperation

Development of risk assessment methodologies and indicators to compare the long-term impact of different agricultural management systems on human health.

Purpose

• to strengthen IPM impact argumentation by providing a case of comparative evaluation of farming systems in regards to long-term effects on human health
• to provide new evidence of the effects of environmental-friendly crop management to support IPM advocacy and policy project.

Objectives

• to adapt existing methodologies to assess the chronic effects of pesticide exposure to IPM Programmes' requirements
• to explore possible methodological approaches to the up to date unsolved issue of quantifying IPM impact on health

Strategy

Two ecological case studies are conducted in India and Pakistan in areas with high and low (IPM and Organic) intensity of pesticide use to establish the relationship between pesticide exposure and chronic health effects. The incidence of pesticide-related occupational illness is collected from hospitals and health centres records and correlated with the pesticide use in the area. Pesticide use histories in the study areas is traced using locally identified proper information sources (e.g. dealers records, crop type and area). Official records are then compared/contrasted with expected health effects calculated on the basis of a risk assessment indicator (EIQ). The EIQ needs to be modified and adapted to location specific characteristics for this application. Interviews to selected informants at village level to triangulate the data are included in the survey. Results obtained using the three approaches - hospital registries, predicted effects on the basis of pesticide use data and people' recall information -are compared. The methodologies adopted by the case studies are reviewed in a final stakeholders' international workshop. Expected results of this workshop are: i) identification of possible methods for the systematic assessment of the IPM health benefits; ii) guidelines for similar impact studies; iii) identification of ways to include chronic effects of pesticide use in the IPM training curriculum.

Taskforce Leader

University of Wageningen, Biological Farming System Groups

Partners

European Institutions and collaborators:

• The Global IPM Facility at FAO in Rome
• Gerd Walter-Echols, Environmental Impact Assessment Specialist

• Institute of Plant and Environmental Protection, National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) PARC, Islamabad, Pakistan
• National IPM Programme, Institute of Plant and Environmental Protection, National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan
• Ecotoxicology Research Programme, Institute of Plant and Environmental Protection, National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan
• Women Agriculture Development Organization (WADO), c/o Agriculture Extension Dept, Mall Road Khairpur, Pakistan
• Farmer Welfare Association (FWA) Bahawalpur, House No. 18 A, Street No. 9, Model Town A, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

• Participatory Rural Development Initiatives Society (PRDIS) PRDIS

Documented results

• IPMEurope Task force 2004/2005: Development of risk assessment methodologies and indicators to compare the long-term impact of different agricultural management systems on human health
  [ipmeurope-2006a.pdf, 470 KB]

Contact

University of Wageningen, Prof. A. van Bruggen or the IPMEurope secretariat.

Top