Ranking of fungicides according to risk assessments for health and environment

Denmark has introduced a new indicator for ranking the potential impact of pesticides on health and environment. The new Pesticide Load (PL) makes it possible for farmers to choose the least harmful fungicides and substitute between products which have an equally good efficacy profile. In practice PL varies for fungicide standard rates by a factor of 10. Products including epoxiconazole generally have higher PL's due to the human health profile of this active. PL's per area, crop or product will supplement the previous pesticide statistics based on treatment frequency index (TFI). PL has also been introduced as the basis for a new tax system for pesticides from 1 July 2013, replacing the old value based tax. The Government has asked for a 40% reduction in the PL per ha by 2015, based on substitutions to less harmfull products. As certain pesticide groups will be favoured by the new tax system it is expected that the system could lead to more problems related to pesticide resistance.