On 11 April 2019, the ANSES published a notice on the evaluation of the relevance of pesticide metabolites in water intended for human consumption.
Pesticides contained in plant protection products and biocidal products are released into the environment through their use.
These substances and their metabolites can therefore be found in raw water used for the production of water for human consumption (EDCH) but also in tap water.
The presence of pesticide residues and their metabolites in water is regulated by the European Directive 98/83/EC on the quality of water for human consumption.
This text requires the search for pesticides and their relevant metabolites and sets quality limits in EDCHs at 0.1µg/L per individual substance and 0.5µg/L for the sum.
However, the Directive does not provide criteria for identifying the relevance of a metabolite.
The lack of a precise definition leads to different strategies from one Member State to another.
The notion of relevance in the EDCH is not defined in the French regulations, the current position is to consider that all detected pesticide metabolites are relevant.
The DGS therefore asked the Anses to define and specify the criteria for evaluating the relevance of pesticide metabolites in the EDCH, in particular on ESA alachlor, OXA alachlor, ESA acetochlor, OXA acetochlor, ESA acetochlor, ESA metolachlor, OXA metolachlor, ESA metazachlor and OXA metachlor.
As part of this notice, the ANSES Working Group (WG) provided:
- a definition of the notion of "relevance to EDCH": "
A pesticide metabolite is considered relevant to EDCH if it could be considered to pose (itself or its transformation products) an unacceptable health risk to the consumer".
- a process to determine whether a pesticide metabolite detected in EDCH is classified as "relevant to EDCH" or "not relevant to EDCH".
The WG has put in place a decision process to determine the relevance of pesticide metabolites for EDCH according to the following steps:
1) Examination of the biological activity known as "pesticide" activity
2) Examination of genotoxic potential
3) Review of toxicological data on
