Acknowledgements 
For financial support 
•The project PesticideLife - “Reducing environmental risks in use of plant protection products in Northern Europe” (2010–2013) 
•The project SysIndex – “Development of streamlined indicators in order to intentify and close down resource cycles and to improve dynamic sustainability of the food system” 
Potential ecotoxicity impact induced by  
plant protection products in Finnish crop farming  
Eurotox 1 to 4 in September 2013 
K. Räsänen1, T. Mattila2, P. Porvari2, S. Kurppa1, K. Tiilikkala1 
1MTT Agrifood Research Finland, 2Finnish Environment Institute SYKE 
Introduction 
 
-Potential ecotoxicity impact in LCA approach was used as an indicator for studying environmental 
effects of plant protection products (PPPs) in Finland.  
 
 
How ecotoxicity is forming in LCA ? - Figures 1 and 2 
 
- Chemicals’ ecotoxic effects can be measured with the ecotoxicity impact assessment in LCA per 
functional unit of the final product 
- Chemicals are used in different steps of the product chain, e.g. PPPs in the crop production in a field or 
industrial chemicals in the production of food packing materials 
≈ ecotoxicity footprint  
Conclusions 
 
•With this method the effects of high amount of different chemicals used in specific geographical condition can be compared to each others.  
-> changes can be done in risk evaluations and management nationally e.g. to exclude the most hazardous substances from the sales and replace them safer 
ones or to change methods in the agriculture towards to more environmental friendly way 
-> results can be used in product chain improvements or consumer communication 
• The risk results are also recommended to be related to the quantity and quality of the yield for obtaining the benefits from using of plant protection products.  
• Other LCA impact categories and methods linked to crop production should also be evaluated for obtaining more realistic environmental effects in the 
agricultural field system. 
Figure 2. The potential ecotoxic impacts of PPP 
emissions can be evaluated in LCA by modelling 
the fate of active ingredient in air, water, and soil 
and their exposure and effects on organisms. 
PestLCI  and Usetox were used in our studies. 
Material and methods 
 
How ecotoxic effects induced by PPP usage were measured?  
-PestLCI 2.0 (Dijkman et al. 2012) was used to model emission fate assuming average Finnish field conditions  
-SETAC consensus LCIA model USEtox™ (version 1.01) (Rosenbaum et al. 2008, UsetoxTM 2013) were used to 
calculate characterization factors. The model was customized to fit Finnish regional environmental conditions 
by obtaining the relevant parameters from GIS. 
-> a potential ecotoxic pressure (= impact score, CTU as an unit) describes the potentially affected fraction 
of species in the environment induced by the usage a PPP 
-values were calculated for 64 compounds from over 220 different applications 
 
-PPP sale data (active ingredient kg/year) was surveyed by Finnish Chemical Agency (Tukes)  
over the years 2000-2011.   
-In Finland 
- herbicides were the most used agricultural PPPs from the total 1707.5 tons 
- PPPs were used 0.7 kg/ha in the total agricultural land in 2011 
Figure 1. Forming of potential ecotoxicity in LCA. 
Circle illustrates the scope of our study. 
0 
10 
20 
30 
40 
50 
60 
70 
80 
90 
100 
All Fungicides Herbicides Insecticides Growth 
factors 
P
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2000-2011 
2011 
0 
200 000 
400 000 
600 000 
800 000 
1 000 000 
1 200 000 
1 400 000 
1 600 000 
1 800 000 
2 000 000 
0 
20 000 000 
40 000 000 
60 000 000 
80 000 000 
100 000 000 
120 000 000 
T
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 (
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Year of PPP sale  
0 20 40 60 
Total rest 
glyphosate 
malathion 
flamprop-isopropyl 
linuron 
MCPA 
mancozeb 
terbutylazine 
prochloraz 
pendimethalin 
methiocarb 
aclonifen 
fluazinam 
Potential ecotoxicity from totsl impact (%) 
2000-2011 
2011 
Figure 5. PPP substances in order to affect the most of 
the ecotoxicity pressure (in CTUs). Values are average 
impacts of active ingredients per year over 2000-2011 in 
Finland (%). Rest means other substances than these 
12 substances mentioned in this figure. 
Figure 4. PPP substance groups in order to affect 
ecotoxicity pressure (in CTUs). Values are sum of 
average impacts per year of active ingredients in 
substance groups over 2000-2011 in Finland (%).  
Figure 3. Potential ecotoxicity (in CTUs) for 
pesticides sold in Finland over 2000-2011. Line 
illustrates the total sales of pesticides (kg). 
Results 
 
- Figure 3. Overall ecotoxic pressure decreased over the time scale mainly because decreased sale amount of the main hazardous substance fluazinam.  
                  Single very hazardous substances had a strong increasing effect on the total impact.  
   There was no correlation between sales amount and ecotoxic pressure (R2=0.0007). 
- Figure 4. The main contributors to the total potential ecotoxic impact were fungicides. 
- Figure 5. The most hazardous substances were fluazinam, aclonifen, methiocarb, pendimethalin and prochloraz.