Towards acceptability criteria of probabilistic risks of plant protection products

The risk assessment of plant protection products in the EU has started from a relatively simple basis using risk quotients. In the past years probabilistic approaches have been developed to quantify the inherent variability and uncertainty of exposure and effects. Probabilistic risk outcomes can, in our view, only change the conclusions of a deterministic risk outcome provided that regulators are willing to develop more differentiated (i.e. contextualised) risk acceptability criteria. This paper contributes to the discussion by providing questions for more differentiated risk acceptability criteria and by presenting the relationship between deterministic and probabilistic risk outcomes.