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Email: tgarner@pdsolutions.ca ☰

This presentation will provide information on the public’s knowledge and misinformation with respect to pesticides and pesticide use in Canada as determined by ongoing surveys conducted by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency.  Knowing the key areas where the public may lack key information or have misinformation can help applicators anticipate questions or concerns and be prepared to have effective discussions. Information on the benefits of pesticide use in specific applicator classes and answers to concerns the public may have regarding pesticide use will be discussed. In addition, approaches to starting and maintaining effective conversations will also be discussed.

This webinar discusses herbicide characteristics, soil types and environmental conditions that affect the leaching of herbicides. It focuses on herbicide solubility, persistence and adsorption and how these factors influence the leaching of herbicides. In addition, herbicide toxicity in water is discussed and its impact on aquatic life, terrestrial plants and human and animals.

This session is not meant to make you climatologists or TV forecasters. This session is meant to help you understand the drivers of air movement (applied at the work location) and to anticipate when that air movement may help you or hinder you in your efforts to get your treatment product through the air to your treatment target. Successful completion of this session, it will make your job easier and improve the percentage of product that makes it to the target. It will also reinforce your awareness of how critical this is to our industry.

You must take part 1 before taking part 2 This session is designed to help you apply the fundamentals of weather (from part 1) to 10 common application situations that we all face, but that are so localized that no public forecast could possibly alert you to them. It is meant to help you understand the movement of air and to anticipate when that air movement may help you or hinder you in your efforts to get your treatment product through the air to your treatment target (and more importantly, ONLY your treatment target).

This presentation reviews the re-evaluation status of glyphosate in Canada as conducted by Health Canada through the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). It also includes the following, designation, studies and lawsuits and the implications for applicators: - the World Health Organization - International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) assignment of a hazard classification for glyphosate as "Probably carcinogenic to humans" - several studies reporting the presence of glyphosate in cereal products and in breast milk -lawsuits involving glyphosate causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Lastly, the presentation summarizes the PMRA (and U.S.A. Environmental Protection Agency) evaluations of the potential hazards of the use of glyphosate for the applicator, bystanders and the environment.

Some pesticides can last a long time in the environment. Join Tim as he defines and gives examples of half-life, bioaccumulation and biomagnification. As pesticide applicators we need to be aware of the properties of the pesticides we are using and know how they breakdown and move in the environment. If we know the environmental impact of certain pesticides, we then adjust our IPM programs accordingly.

It is important to understand the hazards associated with handling pesticides. Many things that are common sense to an experienced applicator are overlooked when training new applicators. This seminar will look at developing a hazard assessment and rating the risks associated with handling pesticides.

This topic integrates a number of important aspects of spraying at a range of travel speeds in the same field, including nozzle selection, effect of pressure on pattern uniformity and spray quality, and pesticide performance with various spray qualities. There will be some overlap with topic #1, but this talk emphasizes practical issues encountered with a modern high-clearance sprayer.

As more pressure is put on pesticide usage, applicators must look to an IPM program when dealing with unwanted vegetation. We may need to divide areas into different categories as far as what is acceptable and not acceptable. We need to be able to count or measure plant populations in order to decide the solution required. Monitoring of vegetation will be discussed. Thresholds will be defined and discussed. A look at various control measures will be examined included guidelines for selecting appropriate herbicides.

Definition of IPM and a discussion on the principles of IPM: Pest identification; Monitoring; Threshold levels; Control measures and Evaluation. An example will be used to illustrate the principles.