What are Highly Hazardous Pesticides or HHPs?

Pesticides are naturally hazardous or harmful, and among them, a very small number of Highly Hazardous Pesticides cause disproportionate damage to environment & human health including severe environmental hazards, high acute & chronic toxicity.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) & the World Health Organization (WHO) code of conduct (FAO & WHO in 2013) & the Guidelines on Highly Hazardous pesticides (FAO & WHO 2016) adopted the following definition;

“Highly Hazardous Pesticides or HHPs means pesticides that are recognized to present mainly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health and environment according to the internationally accepted classification systems like WHO or Global Harmonized System (GHS) or their listing in relevant binding international accords or conventions.

Additionally, pesticides that appear to cause serious or irreversible harm to health or environment under conditions of use in a nation could be considered to be & treated as highly hazardous”.