Operationalising Life Cycle Assessment of Pesticides (OLCA-Pest)

The main objective of the OLCA-Pest project is to build on current advances in life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment to operationalise and harmonize the emission quantification and impact characterization of pesticides in life cycle assessment (LCA) and product environmental footprinting. In current LCA practice, quantifying pesticide emissions from agricultural fields is not aligned with characterising related potential toxicological impacts on humans and different types of ecosystems. Furthermore, the pathways from pesticide application via emissions to environmental media and treated field crops to toxicity impacts are currently only partly and inconsistently covered and many relevant pesticides are currently not included. This leads to LCA results that are incomplete and often misleading and hard to interpret and this makes it impossible to assess and compare the environmental performance profiles of different pest management systems and practices.

Vision and project structure

It is the vision of the OLCA-Pest project to overcome currently existing limitations and challenges when addressing pesticides in LCA. Expertise and capacity will be brought together by (a) connecting researchers and LCA practitioners from academia, industry, and regulation in the OLCA-Pest consortium including Associate Partners (JRC and INRA) and by (b) ensuring a research effort that is aligned with current efforts on global pesticide consensus for estimating pesticide emissions for LCA and on the Agribalyse project series. The research conducted in the OLCA-Pest project will systematically confront and provide guidance to overcome several current issues and challenges of consistently addressing pesticides in LCA. The OLCA-Pest project will contribute to go beyond state-of-the-art assumptions by improving LCI and LCIA data and models for comparing different products and systems that involve the use of agricultural pesticides, specifically comparing different pesticide application, pest management and agricultural practices in LCA.

Case Studies

A consistent set of selected realistic case studies covering different soil, climate and crop archetypes will be define and execute to test and evaluate data and models for pesticides in LCA against selected monitoring data or other models, also from non-LCA communities, to demonstrate that we are able to perform reliable human and ecotoxicity assessments.

Pesticide consensus in LCA

The OLCA-Pest project builds on recommendations from a global Pesticide Consensus in LCA effort. Details about the process and findings of this effort are found HERE.

Publications (scientific output)

• Ryberg, M.W., Rosenbaum, R.K., Mosqueron, L., Fantke, P., 2018. Addressing bystander exposure to agricultural pesticides in life cycle impact assessment. Chemosphere 197, 541-549. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.01.088
• Steingrimsdottir, M.M., Petersen, A., Fantke, P., 2018. A screening framework for pesticide substitution in agriculture. Journal of Cleaner Production 192, 306-315. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.266
• Fantke, P., 2019. Modelling the environmental impacts of pesticides in agriculture. in: Weidema, B.P. (Ed.). Assessing the Environmental Impact of Agriculture. Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing, Cambridge, United Kingdom. http://doi.org/10.19103/AS.2018.0044.08
• Peña, N., Knudsen, M.T., Fantke, P., Antón, A., Hermansen, J.E., 2019. Freshwater ecotoxicity assessment of pesticide use in crop production: Testing the influence of modeling choices. Journal of Cleaner Production 209, 1332-1341. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.257
• Peña, N., Antón, A., Kamilaris, A., Fantke, P., 2018. Modelling ecotoxicity impacts in vineyard production: Addressing spatial differentiation for copper fungicides. Science of the Total Environment 616-617, 796-804. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.243
• Gentil, C., Fantke, P., Mottes, C., Basset-Mens, C., 2020. Challenges and ways forward in pesticide emission and toxicity characterization modeling for tropical conditions. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 25, 1290-1306. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-019-01685-9
• Crenna, E., Jolliet, O., Collina, E., Sala, S., Fantke, P., 2020. Characterizing honey bee exposure and effects from pesticides for chemical prioritization and life cycle assessment. Environment International 138, 105642. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105642
• Pang, N., Fan, X., Fantke, P., Zhao, S., Hu, J., 2020. Dynamics and dietary risk assessment of thiamethoxam in wheat, lettuce and tomato using field experiments and computational simulation. Environmental Pollution 256, 113285. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113285
• Gentil, C., Basset-Mens, C., Manteaux, S., Mottes, C., Maillard, E., Biard, Y., Fantke, P., 2020. Coupling pesticide emission and toxicity characterization models for LCA: Application to open-field tomato production in Martinique. Journal of Cleaner Production 227, 124099. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124099
• Luo, L., Dong, L., Huang, Q., Ma, S., Fantke, P., Li, J., Jiang, J., Fitzgerald, M., Jane Yang, Jia, Z., et al., 2021. Detection and risk assessments of multi-pesticides in 1771 cultivated herbal medicines by LC/MS-MS and GC/MS-MS. Chemosphere 262, 127477. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.127477

Period and main contact

Jun 2017 - Dec 2020. Main contact for this project is Peter Fantke.