Assessing pesticides fate and aquatic and soil organisms’ exposure in three EU countries throughout integrated in-silico approach

OBJECTIVES To develop an integrated modelling approach able to: • assess the fate and transport of PPPs used in three case studies, Portugal, the Netherlands and Denmark, one for each regulatory zone according to Regulation (EC) No. 1107/2009, in soil and water. • verify the model’s performance assumptions made during the development of the scenarios by comparing simulated data with monitoring data from case study sites (CSS). • assess the aquatic and soil organisms’ exposure to actual PPPs used in fields and their concentrations simulated by the models. HIGHLIGHTS • PECSW showed low, moderate and significant water bodies exposure to PPPs considered in PT, DK and NL, respectively. • Concentrations simulated in invertebrates and fish should not pose consumption risks for humans for PT and NL CSS. In DK CSS, for the herbicide prosulfocarb already a small consumption (13g) of a given invertebrate would lead to an estimated daily intake over the ADI. • PECsoil in PT CSS resulted lower than the monitored values whereas for NL and DK CSS an overestimation of one order of magnitude of the simulated PECsoil was observed. • For all three CSS the TER values indicate low risk for earthworms. • Beside several limitations, overall, the models performed well, with a difference of two orders of magnitude between monitored and simulated concentrations.