Pesticide usage in Scotland: Rodenticide use by Local Authorities 2023

Glossary

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 (AR) (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 (FGARs and SGARs 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 2023 survey period were: FGARs (coumatetralyl and warfarin), SGARs (brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone and flocoumafen) and non-anticoagulant rodenticides (alphachloralose, cholecalciferol, and aluminium phosphide). All but aluminium phosphide were encountered during this survey

7. In this survey, local authorities were asked to report their rodenticide use in four different settings: agricultural, domestic, industrial and sewer. Industrial use includes all non-domestic use not described by other categories. 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. Local Authorities are abbreviated to LAs throughout the document

10. The rodenticide stewardship scheme was implemented in April 2016 to reduce risks to wildlife and the environment from anticoagulant rodenticides. By mitigating these risks to the environment, the scheme aims to provide the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) with the confidence it requires to permit the continued authorisation of anticoagulant rodenticides for rodent pest management. It covers professional use of rodenticides⁽⁷⁾.