Global occurrence of acute pesticide poisoning is estimated to be around three million every year, making it a worldwide public health problem (Damalas and Koutroubas 2016; Yáñez et al. 2002). The pesticide poisoning and related environmental problems in developing countries are more frequent, considering the high trade rate of pesticides in response to the boom in agricultural activities and the associated high prevalence of inappropriate handling, distribution and use (Mengistie et al. 2016; Mormeta et al. 2019). The main reason for this fact is lack of effective and functional regulatory bodies with appropriate policies, rules and regulations together with pesticide risk quantification and management systems, that support the pesticide registration and control mechanisms (Mengistie et al. 2016; Negatu et al. 2016). The safe use of the pesticides is ensured by performing registration and post-registration monitoring of the pesticides via considerations of the administrative, scientific and laboratory evaluations of the active ingredients and the formulated products of the pesticides (Handford et al. 2015).
The main objective of making registration and post-registration surveillance of a pesticide is minimizing the unacceptable risks to human or environment, by pre-determining the risk through risk assessment and determining the actual situation on the ground from the post registration surveillance results, as applied products are toxic to many non-target organisms in the nature (Fargnoli et al. 2019; Beketov et al. 2013; Hallmann et al. 2014). Many countries adopt model-based risk assessment as a method for evaluating the impacts of the pesticides to non-target organisms. The experience of EU (European Union) is the one which worth to be mentioned and taken as an example to many pesticide regulatory bodies around the world, keeping in mind that the model-based risk assessment has its own limitations and strengths. Thus, this method is widely applied to assess the fate and the effects of the pesticides for the registration purposes in Europe (Schäfer et al. 2019; FOCUS, 2001).
In general, it is believed that the PRIMET_Registration_Ethiopia_1.1 model, which was developed for the integrated fate, effects, and risk assessment, took the current registration system in Ethiopia and in the continent of Africa one step forward. Unlike other similar trials by an older version of PRIMET that only focus on simple risk assessment purposes (Ansara Ross et al. 2010 and Malherbe et al. 2013), PRIMET_Registration_Ethiopia_1.1 is a tool capable of risk assessment for a decision making of pesticide registration, so that it helps both in registration and monitoring purposes. This tool is developed and modified to consider specific scenarios in Ethiopia and can be taken as a pioneer among other countries with similar geographical characteristics (Wipfler et al. 2014).
This study focused on to make a trial risk assessment using PRIMET model on registered pesticides in Ethiopia. Results are believed to show the applicability and appropriateness of the tools like PRIMET for the registration and post-registration purposes in developing countries like Ethiopia. Therefore, the objectives of present study are to evaluate randomly selected active ingredients of the pesticides registered in Ethiopia using PRIMET and to investigate the applicability of the model-based risk assessment for the registration of pesticides in developing countries like Ethiopia, as an example for other countries with similar geographical characteristics.