Pesticides are approved in two distinct stages. Firstly, the active substance – the chemically active part of a manufactured pesticide product – is authorised. For the second stage, pesticide products containing that active substance (usually alongside many other ingredients known as ‘co-formulants’) are authorised. For example, the active substance glyphosate [...]
‘Highly toxic to bees’ – This classification is assigned if the LD50 (lethal dose 50%) for acute and dermal absorption by honey bees is lower than 2 micrograms per bee (μg/bee). The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose required to kill half the members of a tested [...]
Companies that manufacture pesticides are required by national regulators (such as the European Food Safety Authority, US Environmental Protection Agency and UK Health and Safety Executive) to conduct toxicity testing as a key part of the process through which an active substance is approved. The data generated by this toxicity [...]
While voluntary and stewardship approaches may work in other areas, they have repeatedly proven to be ineffective at reducing pesticide-related harms to either human health or the environment for a number of key reasons, including: Hazard vs. risk-based approaches – Arguably the most fundamental problem with voluntary and/or stewardship approaches [...]
An ectoparaciticide is an antiparasitic drug (usually a ‘spot-on’ treatment) used to kill parasites that live on the body’s surface (such as ticks and fleas). In the UK, there are 676 ectoparaciticide products approved for use in veterinary medicines for dogs and cats. Of this total, 523 products (77%) contain [...]
PAN UK’s 30+ years of expertise is on pesticides used on agricultural crops (or ‘plant protection products’ as they are also known). Therefore, we came to the issue of veterinary medicines with this background and so began our research by looking at active substances that are not approved for use [...]
They are by far the most common animals kept as pets in the UK, with 10.2 million dogs and 11.1 million cats. According to the PDSA, 80% of UK dogs and 82% of cats are treated with parasiticides (more commonly known as tick and flea treatments). Dogs and cats therefore [...]
Many of the other chemicals used in tick in flea treatments are known to be harmful to human health or the environment. They are, after all, designed to kill living organisms and therefore need to cause harm – at least to the target species – in order to be effective. [...]
There are currently more than 1,000 parasiticide products for cats and dogs in the UK. While a ban on pesticide active substance being included in pet medicines would mean removing 67% of these from the market, it would still leave almost 350 alternative products available. The list of alternative products [...]