Phytopharmacovigilance: marking 10 years of the only scheme of its kind in Europe
A One Health vigilance scheme
ANSES has been running the phytopharmacovigilance (PPV) scheme ever since it was set up under the French Act on the future of agriculture, food and forestry of 2014. This vigilance scheme aims to identify signals of adverse effects associated with the use of plant protection products and report them to the various bodies responsible for assessing and managing risks. PPV concentrates on all the potential adverse effects from applying these products: on the health of workers and the general population, but also on the flora and fauna that are not targets of plant protection treatments and, more generally, on environments and ecosystems. It also strives to collect data on chronic effects, i.e. those that occur in the longer term, following moderate and repeated exposure.
Find out more about phytopharmacovigilance activities
An essential complement for managing the risks associated with products
PPV regularly provides input for ANSES's risk assessment activities and regulatory decisions on plant protection products. On several occasions, signals of adverse effects assessed by phytopharmacovigilance have led ANSES to amend the conditions for use in marketing authorisations (MAs), or even to withdraw the authorisations, in application of Article 44 of European Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009.
By providing additional data, particularly from real-life measurements, phytopharmacovigilance helps guide the collective effort to control the health and societal risks associated with the use of plant protection products. It supplements and supports public policies aimed at limiting the use of plant protection products to only what is strictly necessary, at national level with the Ecophyto plans, as well as at European Union level.
Read our page on ANSES and the authorisation of plant protection products
Strategic orientations to broaden the scope of PPV
In view of some of the limitations encountered by PPV, particularly with regard to data collection, one option would be to provide access to data on the application of plant protection products. Such data on the products used – their type and quantity – by crop and plot, digitised and collected over time, would save a great deal of time and improve the precision of the surveillance and vigilance work carried out by PPV.
Moreover, deploying this purely French scheme at the European level would provide new perspectives and data on a wider variety of climates, soils, uses, etc. This development would be especially relevant since the system for assessing and authorising plant protection products already takes advantage of complementary national and European skills.
How phytopharmacovigilance contributes to managing the risks of plant protection products
- Identifies signals by analysing the literature, in particular on underestimated hazards;
- Encourages and prepares for changes in the conditions for monitoring the environment and different media, by deploying studies or measurement campaigns in air, food, etc. – such as the national exploratory campaign to measure pesticides (CNEP) in ambient air, total diet studies (TDS), etc. – usually in partnership with third-party scientific players;
- Calls for existing MA decisions to be reconsidered, with a view to withdrawing them or regulating them more strictly (e.g. metam-sodium, S-metolachlor);
- Takes another look at the ex-ante assessment models applied to the examination of MA applications and the decision rules, to ensure that they continue to provide protection from adverse effects observed in real life (e.g. accumulation of S-metolachlor in environmental water, atmospheric dispersion of prosulfocarb);