Pesticides in France: Ten years of combined exposure to active substances in land, air and surface water

Spatial and temporal fine-scale data of exposure to pesticide in the
environment are of great need to environmental and health research. The
omnipresence of pesticides in the environment is attested to by numerous
analyses, but the availability of data remains inadequate, preventing
temporal analyses on large spatial scales such as the national level,
where agricultural policies are implemented or adapted. We have compiled
data on the purchase of more than a hundred active substances with
measurements of pollution of these substances in the air and surface water
to propose a map of exposure to the most dangerous active substances
between 2013 and 2022 in metropolitan France. We provide a technical
validation of the exposure index using a dataset constructed from infield
surveys. The combined exposure index is designed to be updated annually,
and we anticipate that this dataset will provide first-rate information
for conservation and health research.