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Glossary

Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHP)

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) define highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) as follows: They must have a particularly high level of acute or chronic health or environmental hazards. What this means is defined by eight criteria. There is no definitive international list of highly hazardous pesticides, but criteria that categorise plant protection products or active substances as such. There is no such thing as "the" highly hazardous pesticides. Each country decides independently which pesticides are authorised - based on agronomic, economic and climatic requirements. NGOs also draw up lists of HHPs. However, they do not base their lists on the eight FAO and WHO criteria or use their own criteria that are not recognised by international bodies. They often only focus on the inherent toxicity of an active ingredient - i.e. whether it is potentially toxic. Because practically all active ingredients are potentially toxic, it is not surprising that the HHP lists of the NGOs are very extensive and do not take into account the fact that ready-formulated plant protection products usually only contain small quantities of an active ingredient.

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