Consumer Health: internalities of food in economics and I-eco-costs

Pesticides

Consumer health in TCA is about unhealthy components in food like pesticides. It are the so-called ‘internalities’ of products, which differ from the ‘externalities’ in E-LCA. Externalities of products is the damage to third parties; internalities is unintended damage to people who buy the products. See Fig. 6.4.
There are 5 important issues related to Fig. 6.4: (1) the emissions to air and soil are the so-called externalities in E-LCA: this indirect flow via air and soil/water is affecting consumers that are not benefitting from the direct product flow, (2) the direct flow together with the product are not dealt with in E-LCA (3) this direct flow with the food product, causing the (unexpected) internality, is an important issue in TCA, (4) the internality is relatively more important than the externalities, see Fig. 6.4b, except from tubers and roots (5) however, the internalities appears to be small (as will be shown below) as long as the strict governmental regulations are adhered to.

Figure 6.4a. The Flow of pesticides in the food chain

The fact that pesticides are an invisible threat, especially pollution via the air, makes the consumer extra alert (Hofmann, 2020). The importance of direct field measurements is underlined by the fact that spreading of pesticides is a rather complex issue that is influenced by many variables, so that theoretical calculations are inherently not very accurate (Fantke, Jolliet, 2016).
A special problem in calculations on pesticide flows is the decay time of the product (depending of many

Content

Figure 6.4b. The importance of the internalities (‘crop’) in TCA, compared to the externalities (‘air’ and ‘soil’) in the common E-LCA; figure from (Fantke, Joliet 2016).

variables). This implies that the data for TCA must be based on measurements of pesticides in the end-products (i.e. the fresh fruit and vegetables, and the processed products).
The toxicity of some important pesticides in DALY/kg and eco-costs/kg is shown in Table 6.4. Similarly, toxicity data of a list of 423 pesticides is given in the eco-costs toxicity pesticide excel file. The best way to deal with pesticides in TCA is to measure the pesticide per kg food product and apply the data in the excel table.

In many situations, however, measurement is not available in practice. The most accurate way to estimate the eco-costs in such cases, is to assume that the food product contains the maximum allowed amount, which is called the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL). Data are available for the USA for the EU, and there are global norms of the FAO. Within the EU it is rather safe to assume that the MRL is not surpassed, but it is advised to be alert when vegetables and fruit are imported from countries outside the EU.
These MRL levels can be regarded as Performance Reference Points for the supply chains. The corresponding eco-costs can be found in the eco-costs toxicity pesticide excel file.

The best way to deal with pesticides in TCA is:

apply E-LCA to deal with the externalities (the eco-costs), by applying standard LCI data in standard LCI databases on fruit and vegetables (like the Agri-foodprint database or the World Food LCA database) for the production, and the Ecocosts2022 Midpoint tables for the emissions at the farm. See Note 2.
add the direct toxicity internalities of pesticides, i.e. the i-eco-costs.
The weight of pesticides in the food is determined: (1) either by measurement of the pesticide content, (2) or by applying the MRL data for the food-pesticide combination (the Performance Reference Point).
The weight of the pesticide(s) in kg must then be multiplied by the toxicity (cases/kg) and the monetization factor (euro/case) to arrive at the i-eco-costs, see the eco-costs toxicity pesticide excel file.
Note 1. In this excel table we apply the sum of cancer and noncancer toxicity. Cancer toxicity data are more accurate than noncancer data, since cancer dose-effect curves go though the origin (Vallero, 2010), which is formally required in LCA and TCA calculations. Noncancer dose-effect curves have a toxicity threshold.

pesticide	toxicity (DALY/kg)	eco-costs (euro/kg)
Chlorothalonil Dimethenamid Epoxiconazole Folpet Glyphosat MCPA Metolachlor Pendimethalin Prothioconazol Tebuconazole	0,04625 0,0513 0,2295 0,01242 0,01107 0,81 0,02295 0,00999 0,02457 0,0405	3700 4104 18360 994 886 64800 1836 799 1966 3240

Table 6.4. Toxicity data of some important pesticides in the EU. Data from (Fantke, Jolliet, 2016)

Note 2. Figure 6.4b shows that the eco-burden of pesticide emissions in E-LCA (‘soil’ and ‘air’) are much lower than the internalities of pesticides in the product (‘çrop’), except from tubers and roots, like potatoes. In the calculations of Fig.6.4b, ‘soil’ is the area at the farm, and ‘air’ is blowing away from the farm. Eventually, this ‘air’ fraction will deposit in the soil around the farm. In E-LCA it is common practice to assume that the total quantity of a pesticide that is applied, will end up in the soil in and around the farm (e.g. in the World Food LCA Database). The fraction that leaves the farm in the product is neglected (a realistic safe-side assumption). This assumption seems to be in contradiction with Fig. 6.4b, but is not: the reason is that pesticides decay quite rapidly (with a common half-life of a few days, maximum weeks, but not month). The small fraction of pesticide in the product reaches the human body much faster than the main fraction does via the soil.

General E-LCA data on production and emissions at the farm can be found in:
excel table ‘ecocosts pesticide production and emissions’
E-LCA data on specific emissions (from UseTox V1.12 tables) can be found in:
excel table ‘ecocosts pesticide emissions’
Note that the main eco-burden of pesticide emissions in this list is related to eco-toxicity (rather than human toxicity).

References

Fantke P, Jolliet O. Life cycle human health impacts of 875 pesticides. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2016) 21:722–733

Hofmann 2020. Pestizid-Belastung der Luft. Eine deutschlandweite Studie,

EU Pesticides database – European Commission (europa.eu)

Pesticide Network, North America. What is on my Food. United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) Pesticide Data Program (PDP)

e-CFR, Title 40, Part 180, Subpart C (= USA regulations and data on MRL of pesticides)

Codex Alimentarius International Food Standards (International data on MRL of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, FAO)

Vallero DA. Environmental Risks of Biotechnologies. (2010) Environmental Biotechnology. In Science Direct.

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Recommended Calculation Sheets and Required Data from Farmers

Data for Pesticides