Pollinator Risk Assessment: an International Workshop

The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) is a professional science organization that supports workshops designed to address important science issues SETAC held a workshop in January 2011 and brought together 48 experts from government, industry, and academic and non-governmental organizations representing a range of expertise including toxicologists, statisticians, bee biologists, modelers, beekeepers, risk assessors and risk managers from North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and Africa.

The conference participants:

• Developed methods to measure exposure from both systemic and non-systemic pesticides.
• Identified consistent methods to identify and measure toxic effects of pesticides to bees.
• Developed a risk assessment process for pollinator species.
• Evaluated whether the methods for assessing risks to honey bees are adequate to estimate risk to other types of insect pollinators.

The SETAC conference provided us with important scientific groundwork for the White Paper we submitted to the SAP in 2012. An executive summary of the SETAC workshop, Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators: Summary of a SETAC Pellston Workshop (PDF) is now available.