 Are you a pesticide registrar? Then you may need to review whether the product you register is a highly hazardous pesticide. The International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management defines highly hazardous pesticides or HHPs as pesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment according to internationally accepted classification systems such as WHO or GHS or their listing in relevant binding international agreements or conventions. In addition, pesticides that appear to cause severe or irreversible harm to health or the environment and the conditions of use in a country may be considered to be and treated as highly hazardous. It is estimated that most of the pesticide poisoning cases are caused by highly hazardous pesticides, particularly in lower and middle income countries. Reducing the risk of HHPs has therefore become a priority for international organizations such as FAO and WHO and in international forums such as SCICAM. Since highly hazardous pesticides may pose high risks under local conditions of use, it is in the interest of a pesticide regulator to assess products submitted for registration. Also already registered pesticides should be assessed against the HHP criteria. Pesticide products identified as an HHP may require particular attention by the registrar with respect to their risks, needs and mitigation measures. HHPs are covered as a special topic in the Toolkit. This is where more information can be found. The HHP special pages are to a large extent based on the FAO and WHO guidelines on highly hazardous pesticides. These were published in 2016 to assist countries to reduce the risk of HHPs. You can download the guidelines from this introduction page. Pesticide regulators can evaluate whether a pesticide product is a highly hazardous pesticide at different points in time. First, when an application is done for the registration of a new pesticide product, in particular when it contains an active ingredient that has not yet been authorized before. Second, as a one-off activity, the registrar can decide to review the entire list of registered products to obtain a current status of authorized pesticides. And third, pesticides can be assessed against the HHP criteria whenever a registration has to be reviewed or renewed. The HHP identification and risk management process follows three steps. First, the identification step is intended to answer the question whether the pesticide is considered a highly hazardous pesticide or not. During step two, the assessment step, the likelihood of the HHP causing unacceptable risks to human health or the environment is evaluated. During this step, you should also assess whether such high-risk pesticides are really needed in the country. During the third risk mitigation step, the regulator identifies what risk mitigation measures can and should be taken to reduce the risks of using the HHP in the country. Let's have a closer look at these three steps. The identification page lists the criteria that are used to identify a highly hazardous pesticide. These criteria have been published in the FAO WHO guidelines on HHPs referred to earlier. By clicking on the information button, more information on each criteria is provided. For instance, we may want to know more about GHS carcinogenicity categories 1a and 1b, one of the criteria that identifies a highly hazardous pesticide. The information page provides the official definition of the criteria, as well as some guidance on the identification procedure. Furthermore, you will find links to reputable data sources where pesticides have already been evaluated against one or more of the HHP criteria. These data sources are important because there is no international database of highly hazardous pesticides. Instead, the registrar will need to assess whether each pesticide he or she is evaluating meets the criteria of an HHP. For instance, the European Chemicals Agency classifies pesticides based on the GHS. Clicking on ECA takes you to the part of the toolkit that describes the ECA classification and labeling inventory, and links you to their database. From the identification page, you can also download a spreadsheet that can be used to document the HHP assessment. The spreadsheet is very useful if you wish to evaluate a set of already registered pesticides. The second step is the HHP assessment. The assessment page provides guidance on how to conduct risk and needs assessments of the HHP. The risks of HHPs are addressed in the same way the risks of other pesticides are evaluated, as explained in the assessment methods module. You can get more information on this module in its instruction video. In addition, you might also want to do a needs assessment to answer the question to what extent the product is actually needed, what specific benefits it provides, and whether effective alternatives that pose less risk might be available. Finally, the risk mitigation page helps the registrar to assess which types of risk mitigation measures are best taken to reduce the risk of HHPs. Risk mitigation measures can take many forms. Examples are placing precautionary statements on the label, or acquiring specific personal protective equipment, or restricting the use of an HHP to particular crops, or to licensed users. If it is concluded that no realistic mitigation message can be applied in the country, a registrar may decide to cancel the registration of the pesticide product, or even ban the active ingredient. In this respect, the International Court of Conduct states that prohibition of the importation, distribution, sale, and purchase of highly hazardous pesticides may be considered if, based on risk assessment, risk mitigation measures or good marketing practices are insufficient to ensure that the product can be handled without unacceptable risk to humans and the environment. More information on this topic can be found in the risk mitigation module, which again has an instruction video to facilitate its use. We have now briefly gone through the special topic on highly hazardous pesticides. You've seen the three-step process that is recommended to reduce the risks posed by highly hazardous pesticides. We invite you to use these pages when you need to assess whether a pesticide is an HHP and what measures a regulator can take to reduce its risks. The pesticide registration toolkit is work in progress. We will continue to update the special topic section, so check back regularly.