Pesticide usage in Scotland: rodenticide use by local authorities 2015

Appendix 4 - Definitions and notes

1) Rodenticide is used throughout this report to describe a substance used to kill or control rodents.

2) An active substance is any substance which has a general or specific action against harmful organisms. In this report an active substance refers to a substance which has a detrimental effect on rodents.

3) The term product is used to describe a marketed rodenticide product which contains active substances, bait and other co-formulants.

4) The term formulation(s) is used to describe an active substance or mixture of active substances formulated together in a product.

5) Rodenticides are classified in this report as anticoagulant (which prevent the synthesis of blood clotting factors resulting in rodent death by haemorrhage) or non-anticoagulant compounds. The anticoagulant rodenticides are broken down further into first and second generation compounds ( FGAR s and SGAR s respectively). The FGARs, which were the first anticoagulant compounds to be developed, are generally less acutely toxic than SGARs.

6) The rodenticides approved for use in the UK during the 2015 survey period were: FGARs (coumatetralyl and warfarin), SGARs (brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone and flocoumafen) and non-anticoagulant rodenticides (alphachloralose, aluminium phosphide and powdered corn cob). The rodenticides encountered in this survey were; brodifacoum, bromadiolone, coumatetralyl, difenacoum, difethialone and flocoumafen.

7) In this survey, local authorities were asked to report their rodenticide use in four different settings: agricultural, domestic, industrial and sewer. In some cases it was not possible for LAs to easily split domestic and industrial use from their records and some use was recorded as domestic/industrial.

8) When collecting information regarding seasonal use of rodenticides, local authorities were asked to report seasonal baiting patterns. The definition of season may vary among respondents. Where exact dates of use were provided these were assigned to season as follows: spring (March, April, May), summer (June, July, August), autumn (September, October, November) and winter (December, January, February).

9) The rodenticide stewardship scheme was implemented in April 2016. It covers professional use of rodenticides outside buildings ⁶.

10) Due to rounding, there may be slight differences in totals both within and between tables.