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Combining crop-exposure matrices and land use data to estimate indices of environmental and occupational exposure to pesticides

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Exposure assessment represents a major challenge for studies on the relation between pesticides and health.

Objective

We developed a method combining information from crop-exposure matrices (CEMs) and land use data, in order to compute indices of environmental and occupational pesticide exposure. We illustrate our approach using French data (1979–2010).

Methods

We used CEMs for five crops (straw cereals, grain corn, corn fodder, potatoes, vineyards) that describe use (annual probability, frequency, intensity) of pesticide subgroups, chemical families, and active substances by region and time since 1960. We combined these data with land use data from agricultural censuses (1979, 1988, 2000, 2010) to compute indices of environmental and occupational pesticide exposure in cantons (small French administrative units). Indices of environmental exposure were calculated based on the area of each crop in the cantons, while indices of occupational exposure depended on combinations of crops in each farm from the cantons. To illustrate our approach, we selected a pesticide group (herbicides), chemical family of herbicides (phenoxyacetic acids), and active substance from the phenoxyacetic acids chemical family (2,4-D).

Results

The estimated proportion of the area of crops with CEMs and of farms sprayed with herbicides was close to 100% between 1979–2010, but the estimated average annual number of applications increased. There were decreasing time-trends for phenoxyacetic acids and 2,4-D over the same period for all indices of exposure. There was a high use of herbicides throughout France in 2010, except in the South coast. For phenoxyacetic acids and 2,4-D, the spatial distribution was heterogeneous for all indices of exposure, with the highest values in the Centre and North regions.

Impact statement

  • Assessment of pesticide exposure is a key issue for epidemiological studies on their association with health outcomes. However, it presents some unique challenges, particularly for retrospective exposure and the investigation of chronic diseases. We present a method to compute indices of exposure by combining information from crop-exposure matrices for five crops and land use data. Specificities of environmental and occupational exposure are addressed using different methods. These methods are applied to pesticides used in agriculture in France for five crops (3 groups, 91 chemical families, 197 active substances) to produce indices at a small geographic scale from 1979 to 2010 for the whole metropolitan France. Besides using these indices in French epidemiological studies, our approach could be relevant for other countries.

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Fig. 1: Estimates of indices of environmental exposure to pesticides in French cantons (1979–2010).
Fig. 2: Spatial distribution of the estimated proportion of areas with CEMs sprayed with herbicides, phenoxyacetic acids, and 2,4-D, and of the estimated average quantity sprayed per hectare for 2,4-D in France (1979, 2010): environmental exposure.
Fig. 3: Estimates of indices of occupational exposure to pesticides in French cantons (1979–2010).
Fig. 4: Estimates of indices of occupational exposure to pesticides in French cantons (1979–2010).
Fig. 5: Spatial distribution of the estimated proportion of farms with crops with CEMs sprayed with herbicides, phenoxyacetic acids, and 2,4-D, and of the estimated average quantity per hectare for 2,4-D in France (1979 and 2010): occupational exposure.

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Data availability

The indices of exposure generated during the current study will be available through the Geodes website from Santé publique France before the end of 2024 for the three groups of pesticides and a selected number of chemical families (N = 20) and active substances (N = 11). They are also available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Ministère chargé de l’agriculture et de la souveraineté alimentaire. Access to some confidential data, on which is based this work, has been made possible within a secure environment offered by CASD – Centre d’accès sécurisé aux données (Ref. 10.34724/CASD).

Funding

This project was funded by an unrestricted grant from the Plan Ecophyto II, Agence française pour la biodiversité, Ministère de l’environnement. The authors did not receive any additional funding from any institution, including personal relationships, interests, grants, employment, affiliations, patents, inventions, honoraria, consultancies, royalties, stock options/ownership, or expert testimony for the last 12 months.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris-Saclay, UVSQ, Univ. Paris-Sud, Institut Gustave-Roussy, INSERM U1018, Team « Exposome, heredity, cancer and health », CESP, 94807, Villejuif, France

    Laëtitia Perrin & Alexis Elbaz

  2. Santé publique France, The French Public Health Agency, Direction santé environnement travail, Saint-Maurice, France

    Frédéric Moisan, Johan Spinosi & Laura Chaperon

  3. Santé publique France, The French Public Health Agency, Direction appui, traitements et analyses de données, Saint-Maurice, France

    Delphine Jezewski-Serra

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  1. Laëtitia Perrin
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Contributions

LP, FM and AE: designed the research; FM and AE: conducted the research; LP: performed statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript; FM and AE: supervised statistical analysis and the writing; LP, JS, LC, FM and AE: contributed to the data interpretation and revised each draft for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. AE had primary responsibility for the final content, he is the guarantor.

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Correspondence to Laëtitia Perrin.

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Perrin, L., Moisan, F., Spinosi, J. et al. Combining crop-exposure matrices and land use data to estimate indices of environmental and occupational exposure to pesticides. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00562-w

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