Meeting in Switzerland debates unprecedented study, carried out in a spraying simulator booth installed in Jundiaí/SP

A meeting of ISO – International Standardization Organization – scheduled for the 29th and 30th of this month, in Switzerland, will have at the center of the debate one of the standards for assessing the quality of agricultural PPE – personal protective equipment –, ISO 17491-4. The global entity will evaluate the set of results from new trials carried out globally in the area, including one that was coordinated by Brazilian researcher Hamilton Ramos, in the São Paulo city of Jundiaí.

According to the researcher, his work focuses, above all, on the similarity between 'spray tips', in addition to their relationship with the quality and resistance of protective clothing or PPE, the 'clothes' used in rural work applying agricultural pesticides .

Spray tips are accessories that determine the amount of pesticide to be applied to a crop area, as well as the uniformity of coverage of this chemical treatment, according to Ramos. He is the current director of the Engineering and Automation Center (CEA), of the Agronomic Institute (IAC), an entity of the Secretariat of Agriculture and Supply of SP in the city of Jundiaí.

The 'points', says Ramos, are essential to the effectiveness of the ISO 17491-4 PPE resistance tests. “They define parameters such as the flow rate of agricultural pesticides, the spectrum of drops and the distribution of the jet emitted during spraying. Such variables interfere with the assessment of the reliability of personal protective equipment and consequently the safety of rural workers”, he summarizes.

According to the researcher, several issues related to the spraying system used in the research - such as the non-uniformity in the distribution of chemical products and the equivalence of results with spray tips of identical models, but from different commercial brands - were raised by Brazil some time ago. years.

“With the conclusion of the Brazilian research and other studies, carried out in partnership with other countries, the ISO 17491-4 standard will be revised. This measure should improve the quality standards of spray tips and PPE produced globally”, says Ramos.

Brazilian cabin

According to Ramos, to carry out the complex IAC-Quepia study, the program invested in the construction of a cabin over more than ten years of research. The equipment, installed at the CEA-IAC headquarters, in Jundiaí (SP), allows the simulation of worker exposure to agricultural pesticide applications, under different technical conditions.

“The equipment has resources to analyze the compliance of spray tips and their relationship with possible contamination of agricultural protective clothing (PPE) used in rural work.”

An initiative that unites CEA-IAC with the private sector, the IAC-Quepia program has existed for more than 16 years and is based on a state-of-the-art technological structure. Since its creation, Ramos highlights, “Quepia” has been responsible for a significant reduction in the quality rejections of agricultural protective clothing manufactured in Brazil, which were on the order of 80% of the amount analyzed by the program, in 2010, to less than 20% .