Background. Food crop consumption is the predominant exposure pathway of the general public toward pesticides. Until now, health impacts of overall human exposure to pesticides used for specific crops have never been quantified. Aims. We aimed at quantifying the human health impacts of pesticides, detailing how pesticides contributed annual impacts to the value of an average burden of lifetime lost per person across Europe in 2003. Methods. We investigated human exposure to 133 pesticides applied in 24 European countries in 2003. We looked at the five most extensively used pesticides per crop using a combination of a dynamic multi-crop uptake model and a steady-state fate and exposure assessment tool, to characterize how pesticides affected the general population. From the results, we created a table of health impacts per kilogram of applied pesticide. Results. Overall, pesticides contributed annually to around 2000 disability-adjusted life years in Europe, to which only 13 substances applied to grapes/vines, fruit trees, and vegetables accounted for 90% of total annual health impacts. The burden per person in hours lost over lifetime was 2.6. Compared with figures for the burden from particulate matter in the air (195 days) or passive smoking (24 days), this figure is relatively low. However, uncertainties in our results highlight the figure could be somewhat higher, ranking pesticides with other important environmental stressors in health impact terms. On a positive note, 33 of the 133 assessed substances (which accounted for 20% of health impacts) are now banned in Europe. Conclusions. Our research has important policy implications, as the first attempt to quantify the extent of pesticides' health impacts in Europe at the level of individual pesticides, crop classes and country. However, some uncertainty will always remain, due to the fact that pesticides cannot ethically be tested on humans to find out their health effects directly.
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