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The overall goal of the project is to assist AgBioResearch with its mission of engaging in applied research that ensures the appropriate use of agricultural and natural resources to enhance the quality of life in Michigan, the nation and the world. This will be accomplished by working closely with MSU Extension, state and federal agencies and commodity groups. <P> This project directly relates to the target areas of: 1.Food and Health - chemical food safety, 2. Environmental Stewardship and Natural Resource Policy and Management, and 3. Enhancing Profitability in Agriculture to reduce dependency on chemicals. <P> The specific objectives are: 1. Investigate pesticide misuse data and incidences and develop mitigation programs for corrective actions to reduce exposures to people and the environment. This project will investigate several misuse, complaint and violation databases to determine the major areas and causes of misuses that lead to human and environmental exposures. <P> 2. Provide leadership for and facilitate efforts on national, regional and state levels to understand and explain appropriate pesticide use policies and procedures to ensure human and environmental safety and deliver that information to appropriate groups. Many laws and regulations have been promulgated to reduce pesticide exposure risks to humans and the environment. We will conduct research to better to understand the laws and regulations created to reduce risk and develop educational materials to clarify them for better adoption. Our program will be involved in committees and task forces to help inform regulators developing new requirements to make sure they are not overly burdensome to applicators and make sense. <P> 3. Conduct exam analysis to improve the reliability and discrimination and overall fairness of the Michigan Certified Crop Adviser and Core pesticide certification exam. To assist Certified Crop Advisers and pesticide applicators we will initiate a process to perform a statistical analysis and test item assessment for these two exams on a routine basis. This is critically needed to validate the certification programs. This analysis will also pinpoint what content is most frequently missed and where training programs should be improved. The outputs of the project include: the applied research will assist applicators to protect the environment and themselves by understanding and complying with the laws and regulations; opportunities for participation in and leadership on committees and task forces to help inform regulators developing new requirements to make sure they are not overly burdensome to applicators and make sense while meeting regulatory goals; and revise certification exams to improve them and validate that the certification programs are meeting their objectives.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:<BR> There continues to be issues with the negative effects of pesticides on the environment and on human health. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1972 to address these issues and reduce and manage those negative impacts. Many laws and regulations have been promulgated to reduce those risks as a result of their continuing efforts. Our program has conducted research to interpret the laws and developed educational materials to explain them in understandable terms to applicators. These have helped applicators, including farmers, commercial users and home owners, to manage how they use pesticides if needed to limit the negative impacts and comply with the laws and regulations. We will continue to conduct this applied research to assist applicators to protect the environment and themselves by understanding and complying with the laws and regulations. In spite of all these efforts by EPA and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), there continues to be misuse of pesticides that cause negative impacts. This project will investigate several misuse, incidence and complaint databases to determine the major areas and causes of misuse, and then take leadership to develop and deliver on national, state and local scales information and materials to assist applicators to better understand the pesticide laws and regulations and learn how to appropriately apply pesticides to better protect themselves, and improve food and environmental safety. The project will do this by cooperating with the MDARD, Michigan Department of Community Health, Michigan Poison Control Centers and MSU's Department of Human Medicine Occupational and Environmental program. Data bases maintained by these groups will be accessed to identify pesticide misuse, complaint and violation records to determine when and where additional education should to be conducted to reduce these unwanted exposures. Further, this project will be involved with the NCERA-197 Agricultural Safety and Health Research and Extension group to learn of and provide input into their programming. We will take leadership for the pesticide safety issues addressed by this multi-state committee. This involvement with the national experts will bring more expertise to Michigan to assist us in preventing misuse and unnecessary exposures. The overall project will assist AgBioResearch with its mission of engaging in applied research that ensures the wise use of agricultural and natural resources to enhance the quality of life in Michigan, the nation and the world. This will be accomplished by working closely with MSU Extension, state and federal agencies and commodity groups.
<P> APPROACH:<BR> 1. Investigate pesticide misuse data and incidences and develop mitigation programs for corrective actions to reduce exposures to people and the environment. This project will investigate several misuse, complaint and violation databases to determine the major areas and causes of misuse, and then take leadership to develop and deliver on national, state and local scales information and materials to assist applicators to better understand the pesticide laws and regulations and learn how to appropriately apply pesticides to reduce misuse. This will require careful investigation, reading and understanding of several databases and reports in several agency reports that are routinely provided to the MDARD Pesticide Advisory Committee which the PI serves on as MSU representative. Two of the databases to be studied are MDA Pesticide and Plant Pest Management Division "Pesticide Use Investigations" and Michigan Department of Community Health "Michigan Pesticide Illness and Injury Surveillance Project". 2. Provide leadership for and facilitate efforts on national, regional and state levels to understand and explain appropriate pesticide use policies to ensure human and environmental safety and deliver that information to appropriate groups. Our program will take opportunities for participation in and leadership on committees and task forces to help inform regulators developing new requirements to make sure they are not overly burdensome to applicators and make sense while meeting regulatory goals. Examples of groups and committees to network with to both develop and deliver this mitigation information are the EPA Region 5 Pre-SFIREG and Michigan Department of Agriculture Pesticide Advisory Committee. The primary long term indicator of success will be the reduced number of misuse complaints and legal actions and short term indicators are the number of new or revised educational materials sold, the number of times the materials were presented in training programs, and the measurement of comprehension. Data will be collected through the use of interactive response technology (Turning Point) before and after training programs. 3. Conduct exam analysis to improve the reliability and discrimination and overall fairness of the Michigan CCA and Core pesticide certification exam. To assist CCAs and pesticide applicators we will initiate a process to perform a statistical analysis and test item assessment for these two exams. Several software packages are available to conduct this analysis. The MSU Academic Technology Services Scoring office uses Grader 3 software to perform this analysis. This software can be used for item analysis of the Michigan pesticide Core exam on a fee basis. The National CCA program office has this statistical analysis conducted and provides me the printout as the state exam chair. The PI will use the printout to work with the education committee to analyze each question and distractors to improve the exam. For each exam we will incorporate pilot questions that can be substituted for poor questions or periodically added to update the exam. Our target rate of passing is 70% of the test takers receiving a passing score of 70%.