Assessing Ecological Risks for Pesticides in Latin America: An Overview of Andean-Countries Regulations and Guidelines. C. M. Tiu, Dow AgroSciences
Five countries from South-America, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela constitute the Andean Economic Trade-block by an agreement signed in May 1969. Among them, Colombia, in 1995, was the first to require formal risk assessment for pesticides. Ecological and worker exposure and risks were required for Importation and Production Licenses. The objective of the assessment is to characterize risks and benefits and design a risk management plan to prevent, reduce and control risks derived from the critical use, for each product to be imported or produced. The Andean Decision 436 was published in July 1998 to harmonize pesticide registration requirements among the five Andean countries. This regulation requires ecological risks to be characterized in a Tier I-IV approach, following specific methodologies to characterize expected environmental concentrations (EEC) and risk quotients to indicator organisms from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The requirement was not yet been implemented, since a Technical Manual has to be published, in order to indicate the procedure to be followed by the corresponding agencies. In the meanwhile, the Peruvian Agency for Environment Protection (INRENA) took the initiative to implement the ecological risk assessment in Peru and published in May 2001, the Peruvian Guideline to Assess Ecological Risks for Pesticides Registration and Control. Presently, Peru has implemented the risk assessment requirement and is recommending the basic methodology, indicated by the Andean Decision 436, plus algorithms and trigger values chosen from the ones already validated internationally and implemented by other agencies such as US-EPA, WHO and FAO. Dow AgroSciences has successfully applied the risk assessment methodology described by the Peruvian guideline for several registration and re-registration submissions.
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