Aquatic ecotoxicity for common crop protection aids

Crop protection aids, used in the agriculture phase, contribute a great deal to the environmental impact of food products. An adequate inclusion of those substances in life cycle assessment is usually hampered by the lack of relevant equivalency factors. In this paper rough equivalency factors are given for 65 frequently used herbicides and pesticides. Those factors are calculated according to the methodology, originally developed by EPA, which was used by CML in 1992. It is acknowledged that equivalency factors, derived in this way, have a limited value. They only indicate potential impacts, ignoring the fate of such substances. However, as long as better data are lacking, these figures provide a useful approximation.