TEMPEST - A Task Exposure Matrix for Pesticides

TEMPEST Worked example 1

TEMPEST worked example for Scottish soft fruit (raspberry) farmer

The following is a worked example to demonstrate exposure reconstruction using the TEMPEST database.

An individual who reported being a soft-fruit (raspberry) farmer between 1955 and 1989 is likely to have applied pesticides for weed, insect and fungi control.

The query is run to look for records with "rasp" (for raspberries) in the task description. An examination of database indicates that pesticides were generally only introduced in this sector from the 1970’s onwards, so we only need to consider in detail the individual’s exposure from 1970 to 1989 (in TEMPEST, the two decades 1970 and 1980). The query is filtered to exclude rows other than those for the 1970's and 1980's.

The results of this selection are shown below. They can be sorted by decade, Task, pesticide, etc.

A customised query that may be useful again in the future can be Saved As from the File menu, and re-run later from the main database window

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If desired the results may be grouped better or tabulated in an Access pivot table, or be copied and pasted or exported to excel for further tabulation as demonstrated below.

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In the TEM for the three tasks in these two decades extracted from TEMPEST the most common pesticide group used for insect control in raspberries in the 1970s was the ‘Other’ group of insecticides (71% of applications) with Pyrethrins being the example pesticide for this category. This changes to Organophosphate (OP) based insecticides (99% of applications) by the 1980s.

The inhaled exposure level is rated at 3 for Pyrethins during the 1970s, with no additional contribution from dermal exposure as this group of insecticides are generally unlikely to be absorbed across the skin barrier. Inhaled exposure is also rated as a 3 for the OP based insecticides used in the 1980s with dermal exposure and uptake also rated as a 3 during this decade.

A similar exercise can be carried out for the other raspberry pesticide applications for fungi and weed control. With information on how often these tasks were carried out per year an estimate can be made of the cumulative exposure experienced by the individual over their working lifetime.