Nipped in the Bud?
—threat to pesticide-reducing technology

Adjuvants are a new technology, which in recent years have made an important contribution to reducing pesticide use and the cost of crop protection, to the benefit of farmers, the environment and consumers.  A proposed European Community Directive requires the same testing data on adjuvants as on pesticide active ingredients, and the Independent Adjuvant Associates believes this will effectively price adjuvants off the market. By Kay Barnett.

Adjuvants are generally inert products which improve the accuracy of delivering the chemical to its target by reducing drift and  run off, and improving uptake and spread. Many adjuvants, particularly the newer generation, are made of organic materials such as oilseed rape, soya oil and pinolene. The inert adjuvants have not been shown to exhibit potentially dangerous toxic interactions when mixed with a pesticide, and are not designed to be biologically active in the same way as pesticides.

    Given that the reduction of agrochemical usage is a key policy of the EC, national governments and others, it is hoped that such environmentally positive technology would not be discouraged.  However, there are proposals to extend the scope of the EC Registration Directive (91/414EEC) to cover all adjuvants.  The Directive, which has recently come into force requires that substances under its control are subject to ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ listing procedures.  Positive listing will require full efficacy and safety data to be submitted for every authorised use of the substance.  Under negative listing procedures, these requirements are waived unless evidence of harmful effects can be demonstrated.  It is proposed that all mixtures of adjuvants with pesticides will be subject to the positive listing procedures.

    While adjuvants should be subject to toxicological and environmental assessments to show they are safe for dispersal in the environment, these proposals will lead to costly data requirements which will discriminate against the inert adjuvants to the extent that it will remove them from the market.

    In one very important respect, adjuvants will be treated far more restrictively than pesticides:

• Mixes of two pesticides or more will require no safety or efficacy data (unless harmful effects are found at a later date). This is despite the fact that when two or more pesticides are mixed together, potentially dangerous toxic chemical reactions can occur between the active substances of the pesticides.

• Mixes of adjuvants with pesticides are subject to efficacy and safety data requirements on each pesticide, on every crop and at every dose rate.

The Independent Adjuvant Associates have asked regulatory bodies  to explain the basis for these requirements, but has received no satisfactory replies.

    If these proposals are passed in their present form, the cost of data requirements would force adjuvants off the market. Farmers only use adjuvants to reduce pesticide inputs if it saves on their costs.

    The Independent Adjuvant Associates have been lobbying for changes in the formulation of the legislation, but, although the proposals are currently at the stage where changes can be most easily made, representations so far have not appeared promising.

    It is an anomoly that in the current climate which seeks to reduce pesticide use, a technology which can contribute to reduction, as well as providing cost savings for farmers, may be eliminated by the very legislation that is purporting to protect the environment.

Kay Barnett is the spokeswoman for the Independent Adjuvant Associates which represents manufacturers and authorisation holders of adjuvants in Europe.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.21,September 1993, page 16]