Estimating pesticide environmental concentrations in Latin America: the importance of developing local scenarios.

Data to assess pesticides exposure in soil and water are scarce and unevenly distributed in Latin America, especially due to the size of the region and the vast agricultural landscape. This makes it difficult to assess associated environmental risks. We suggest that the lack of pesticides exposure or monitoring data can be addressed with using validated models to provide estimated pesticides exposure concentrations in soil and water bodies. This exposure modeling approach has been used by regulatory agencies in other countries/regions such as the United States, Canada and the European Union. In order to properly estimate pesticide exposure concentrations, we advocate for the development of local scenarios containing local weather, soil and crop data to be used in the existing models. A sensitivity analysis of the models can be performed to determine parameters that are sensitive and therefore inputs to these parameters are derived locally. We believe the development of local scenarios in the region is attainable and can be a pragmatic approach for developing a more comprehensive picture of potential pesticide exposure in the region. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.