Hjälpredan - a tool for determining safety distances
Table of contents:
As a user of plant protection products, you are responsible for ensuring that your spraying does not cause harm or negatively impact the surrounding environment. Hjälpredan is a tool to help you comply with the legislation on adjusted safety distances. Since 1 July 2024, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemikalieinspektionen) provides Hjälpredan, as the Swedish Safe Pesticide Management (Säkert växtskydd) has closed down.
Hjälpreda for agricultural boom sprayers
Hjälpreda for air-blast sprayers in orchards
Why Hjälpredan exists
Hjälpredan is a tool to help users comply with legislation on adjusted safety distances. Hjälpredan is also a common condition of use for many plant protection products. Sweden is the only EU member state that applies this flexible approach when calculating safety distances, which Hjälpredan enables. The alternative to using Hjälpredan is to apply only fixed safety distances predetermined for each product. These fixed distances are often longer than those calculated using Hjälpredan.
You are obliged to keep the safety distances needed to protect the surrounding environment. Fixed safety distances are in place to protect water resources and always apply as the minimum required distance. In addition, adjusted safety distances are used to protect water and other areas. These adjusted safety distances are determined by several factors and can never be less than the fixed ones. They depend on the environmental conditions at the time of spraying and the presence of objects in the surroundings. Hjälpredan is the tool that helps you determine what safety distance you need at the time of spraying.
Determining adjusted safety distances with Hjälpredan
The adjusted safety distance depends on weather conditions, which can change rapidly. Therefore, the safety distance should be determined just before spraying and directly on-site. In your spraying journal, you document data on the spraying. Hjälpredan includes tables that specify the minimum required safety distance depending on the temperature, wind speed, and sprayer settings.
To determine an adjusted safety distance, you will need:
- Hjälpredan
- A thermometer
- A wind speed meter
- A wind direction indicator
The dose affects the safety distance
The amount of plant protection product that drifts outside the treated field depends on the dose used. If you use half dose in the field, there will also be half dose in the drift. Hjälpredan provides guide values for safety distances when using full, half, and quarter doses. The full dose refers to the maximum dose stated on the label or information leaflet for each product. For tank mixtures, the size of the dose is calculated based on the product that is used at the highest dose relative to the maximum dose specified on its label.
Amendments to Hjälpredan
The collaborative organisation Swedish Safe Pesticide Management (Säkert växtskydd), which has so far provided Hjälpredan, has closed down during the first half of 2024. Therefore, the Swedish Chemicals Agency now provides Hjälpredan on our website. The information in Hjälpredan published on our website does not include data from different manufacturers on nozzles and drift-reducing equipment. The nozzle tables previously included in Hjälpredan provided examples of different nozzle brands available on the market. As an authority, we cannot provide complete information on all nozzles on the market that meet the requirements. Therefore, we will not publish these tables. To access this information, you as a user can contact the manufacturer of the equipment directly.
Questions and answers on adjusted safety distances and Hjälpredan
Adjusted safety distances must be calculated when there is no wind. There are more factors than the wind that affect the adjusted safety distance, for example the droplet size, temperature and boom height. It is unusual that no wind at all can be measured. Most often you can see in which direction the air is moving. However, if this is not possible, you can not know where a possible drift will end up if there is a gust of wind during spraying. If the wind is very light, you can use the values in Hjälpredan for the lowest wind speed (1.5 meters per second) as a starting point to determine how large adjusted safety distance is needed, and check it against other parameters. The safety distance determined should never be shorter than Hjälpredans minimum adjusted safety distance, that is 2 meters.
To determine adjusted safety distances, it is allowed to use all the tools available on the market that provide the same results and protection as the Swedish Chemicals Agency's version of Hjälpredan.