Development of a Test Plan to Verify Pesticide Drift Reduction Technologies

摘要

Considerable research has taken place in recent years to determine the sources, pathways, and exposure to the environment from airborne pesticide spray, which can often drift off-target at the time of spray application. However, most of the research has focused on "conventional" technologies. A number of underutilized commercial technologies exist for managing drift; however, in many cases little information exists on their effectiveness in reducing spray drift levels in U. S. agriculture. Verification of the effectiveness of pesticide spray drift reduction technologies is a focus of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator's Environmental Technology Council. EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory has partnered with EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, EPA Regions, and others to complete this project under the Environmental and Sustainable Technologies Evaluation (ESTE) Program. The ESTE program is part of EPA's Environmental Technology Verification Program (ETV), which was created in 1995 to facilitate the commercialization of innovative or improved environmental technologies through performance verification and dissemination of information. In 2005, ETV established the ESTE program to focus these verifications specifically on agency needs. Consistent with other ESTE efforts, a technical panel of knowledgeable and interested stakeholders representing vendors, users, and regulators of pesticides as well as research scientists, educators, and others related to sprayapplication technology and drift management are preparing a verification test plan to be used to evaluate the performance of technologies that reduce pesticide spray drift. This test plan will describe the testing approach used to generate high-quality,peer-reviewed data for several drift reducing technologies, including test design and quality assurance aspects.