Managing and Analyzing Pesticide Use Data for Pest Management, Environmental Monitoring, Public Health, and Public Policy Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 193.32.95.227 on 09/02/18. For personal use only.
Preface The purpose of this book is to share with a wider public the fascinating insights derived from pesticide use data. The book also provides an overview of the systems used to gather and manage these data. Our ultimate goal is to inspire researchers and the public to utilize pesticide use data in diverse fields including pest management, environmental monitoring, public health, and public policy. Pesticides are important tools to reduce or eliminate damage to valuable assets, and they are widely used in agricultural and urban environments to control insects, pathogens, and weeds. Pesticides are registered for use through a strict regulation process that ensures the products are safe when used according to label directions. Nonetheless, when used improperly, these products have the potential to cause negative environmental and human-health effects. To help ensure safety, detailed risk-assessment methodologies have been developed to provide accurate evaluations of risks. These methodologies use many inputs including chemical-specific property data generated in soil, water, and air. In addition, risk assessments consider the directions for use specified on the product labels. Use directions include specific limitations on the areas or sites where a specific pesticide product may be used, such as a golf course or a cotton field, and also include information on allowable application rates and numbers of applications per season or year. Nonetheless, one question that is not answered by many risk assessment approaches is, in reality, how much of the product is used and in which settings. For example, a product may be registered for use on many crops, but for various reasons may only rarely be applied to some of those crops. Similarly, a product that is registered nationally may in reality only be used in a few niche regions of the country. First-order risk assessment typically assumes that any registered product would be used at the maximum labeled rate, and the maximum number of allowable times per season or year. Though intended to protect against worst-case scenarios, this approach might lead to an overestimation of real-world risks. This first-order assessment is helpful as a screen, but resources may be wasted evaluating the impact of a product in a region where it is used only rarely, if at all. To incorporate real-world use patterns into risk assessments, one approach is to use data on where a particular pesticide has been sold. All pesticide manufacturers have a basic idea of where their products are being sold, but these data are often imprecise because of distributor sales networks that buy in bulk and redistribute product. In order to understand the markets they work in, manufacturers have used companies that survey end-users, because their own sales networks cannot provide detailed information. Survey data are generated by
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phone and the surveys are generally designed to gather data on application details of the most commonly used products. An additional source of pesticide use information is market surveys conducted by federal (USDA & USGS) and state agencies. USDA performs chemical use surveys for crops on a rotating basis, due to funding limitations, but currently does not release survey results at the county level. USDA also collects chemical use information as part of other programs, but that information has not been made available due to privacy concerns. Meeting privacy concerns and obtaining funding for surveys are significant challenges, and these sources of use data typically have limited utility for ecological risk assessments. Commodity and user organizations sometimes conduct market surveys to collect and summarize usage information relevant to their memberships. In a market survey, a representative sample of users are asked a series of questions, including what pesticide products are being used on what crops. Most pesticide use surveys are aggregated at a geographic scale larger than the county level (e.g., state). The survey results can be disaggregated to the county level by combining with crop acreage information from the NASS Ag Census, as is done by USGS NAWQA National Pesticide Synthesis project (https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/). However, the quality of this type of use data can vary greatly. Further, detailed usage information based on market surveys is not available for every type of pesticide use, though it is generally available for most crop uses. Currently, the most comprehensive data on pesticide use is the pesticide use reporting system of the U.S. state of California. Users within California are required by law to provide information about all pesticide use in agriculture and certain other settings. The primary exceptions to universal reporting requirements are consumer home-and-garden uses. California makes sub-county pesticide usage data available to all, free of charge, through its Department of Pesticide Regulation Pesticide Use Report database: (http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/pur/purmain.htm). In an effort to further the science of pesticide use, this book explains the systems used for managing pesticide use data, and presents a selection of the compelling questions that have been investigated using that data. The book is organized into four sections with the following chapters:
Legal Authority and Administration of Pesticide Use Reporting 1. The History of Pesticide Use Reporting in California 2. The Infrastructure of California’s Pesticide Use Reporting Program 3. Data Quality Assessment within the Pesticide Use Database 4. The Maintenance and Use of California’s School Pesticide Use Report Database
Integrated Analyses of Pesticide Use Trends and Pest Management 5. Pesticide Use Reporting Data in Pesticide Regulation and Policy: The California Experience xii
6.
The Extensive Use of Pesticide Use Report (PUR) Data in Scholarly Scientific Research 7. Patterns of Fumigant Use in California Grapes 8. Recent Developments in the Registration and Usage of Botanical Pesticides in California 9. Spatio-Temporal Analyses of Pesticide Use on Walnuts and Potential Risks to Surface Water in California 10. The Impact of Integrated Pest Management and Regulation on Agricultural Pesticide Use in California 11. Employing California Pesticide Use Data for Evaluating IPM Programs and Informing Pesticide Policy and Regulation
Integrated Analyses of Pesticide Use Impacts 12. Implementing Pesticide Use Data and GIS Analysis To Improve Treated Area Estimates in Agricultural and Residential Exposure Assessment 13. Refined Processing of Pesticide Use Reports for Use in Data Analysis Conducted by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s Air Program 14. Methodology for prioritizing pesticides for surface water monitoring in agricultural and urban areas of California 15. Applications of the California Pesticide Use Reporting Database in More than 25 Years of U.S. Geological Survey Hydrological Studies 16. Tiered Approaches in Analyzing Rice Field Pesticide Fate and Transport for Ecological Risk Assessment 17. Potential Pesticide Use Risks to Honeybees during Almond Pollination in California 18. A Simplified Approach to Using Pesticide Reporting for Prioritizing Pesticide Risk in California’s National Parks 19. Pesticide Use Data and the Distribution of Illness Episodes: The Promise and Challenges of Geoinformatics 20. Economic and Pest Management Analysis of Proposed Pesticide Regulations
Available Tools for Data Query, Mapping and Risk Assessment 21. PURwebGIS: A Web Application for Query and Analysis of Pesticide Use Report (PUR) Data 22. Pesticide Use Risk Evaluation (PURE), a Self-Evaluation Tool of Pesticide Use 23. Comparisons of Analytic Methodologies for Correct Analysis of Pesticide Use Data with Examples 24. Recommendations for Future Improvements to the Pesticide Use Data and Database Integrations
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Many of the examples written about in these chapters are case studies of approaches that could be applied to sources of data other than the California state Pesticide Use Reporting system. We believe the perspectives reflected in the chapters provide valuable insights and practical experience that will enlighten scientists wanting to incorporate pesticide use data into their work. On the cover: All graphics and images were provided by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. We specifically thank Greg Wroblicky for the line graph, Megan Parker for the photographs of the bee and Capitol building, and Christopher DeMars for the map of California.
Minghua Zhang Land, Air and Water Resources Hydrology Science, Veihmeyer Hall University of California Davis Davis, CA 95616
Scott Jackson Valent U.S.A. LLC Dublin, CA 94568
Mark A. Robertson California Department of Pesticide Regulation Sacramento, CA 95812-4015
Michael R. Zeiss California Department of Pesticide Regulation (retired) Sacramento, CA 95812-4015
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