Development of an improved pesticide properties database for risk assessment.

There is a need for a single authoritative comprehensive database of pesticide properties that is available as both an online resource and in a portable electronic format suitable for embedding in or interrogating from other software applications such as risk assessment systems. This paper introduces the Pesticide Properties Database that holds physicochemical, environmental fate, ecotoxiciological and human health data for, currently, over 700 pesticides and 350 associated metabolites. The results from a comparison exercise between this database and other commonly used resources are reported and information on current usage statistics is also provided.