Plant protection product risk assessment: distribution and experimental validation in terrestrial ecosystems

Risk assessment process is complex because it requires a multidisciplinary approach. In official European procedures, risk is assessed on standardised scenarios, where the territory, at different scale levels is described without taking into account the spatial variability of parameters. These approaches represent a powerful tool to characterize potential risk, anyway results obtained are not representative of actual site-specific conditions. The aim of this research was to analyse the main critical issues of agrochemicals risk assessment in terrestrial ecosystems. Different steps of agrochemicals risk assessment were considered and evaluated coupling field studies with predictive approaches. Different scale levels of risk assessment, with particular attention on exposure evaluation, were considered. Risk for pollinators was selected as a specific case of study and a procedure to assess exposure and risk for these organisms was developed.