An environmental indicator to drive sustainable pest management practices

The indicator EPRIP (Environmental Potential Risk Indicator for Pesticide) was released in 1997 with the aim of providing farmers with advice in selecting the most suitable pesticide with the least environmental impact. EPRIP 2, the newly developed, standalone version includes several improvements in the description of driving forces, in particular plant interception, drift and runoff and new database functionalities. EPRIP 2 is based upon the Exposure Toxicity Ratio (ETR) of the predicted environmental concentration (PEC) with toxicological parameters. When several applications of different active ingredients are used within the same pest control strategy, EPRIP 2 calculates a score for each active ingredient and for the overall pest control strategy. The latter evaluation is based on the probability of the EPRIP value exceeding two fixed risk thresholds. The probability of exceeding each threshold is calculated using the risk points of every application in the strategy and taking into account the risk points for surface water, groundwater, soil and air.