Critique of the paper: Could pesticide toxicology studies be more relevantto occupational risk assessment? (by Ross et al., 2001)

The toxicology studies required for the registration of a pesticide are not necessarily well adapted to user safety assessment. This problem can be ov ercome in some cases by improving the guideline studies. In other cases the guidelines are based on animal models which are poor models for man; the m ost obvious example is rat percutaneous penetration. In other cases it may simply be impractical to have a model which can be extrapolated to all expo sure situations. This is the case for intermittent exposure which is infini tely variable. The general conclusion is that the entire data package shoul d be re-examined to make it more relevant to risk assessment. (C) 2001 Brit ish Occupational Hygiene Society, Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.