Exposure to pesticide residues during manual removal of bolting sugar beets: determination of transfer coefficients for worker risk assessment

摘要

Plant protection products often leave external residues on crops. Workers can be exposed to these residues when re-entering a recently-treated crop. Therefore, task- and crop-specific transfer coefficients are used to estimate the exposure of workers during re-entry: these relate to the transfer of foliar residues to clothing or skin. In this study, we considered a re-entry task not currently covered by European risk assessments: "manual removal of bolting beets" from sugar beet crops. This task can overlap with pesticide treatment, and it involves extensive contact with crop foliage. Therefore, we conducted a worker exposure study along with a dislodgeable foliar residue study in a sugar beet crop previously treated with a fungicide. We determined residues on the clothing of workers who had manually removed bolting beets, and we propose transfer coefficients that can be used in risk assessments to estimate worker exposure during the task "manual removal of bolting beets".