Agronomists are in regular contact with farm environments and Plant Protection Product (PPP) storage areas. Although it’s not typically part of the agronomist’s direct duties to manage chemical incidents, situations may arise where immediate action is necessary.

While the role is advisory, presence on site during a PPP-related emergency may place an agronomist in a position where they are the only person able to respond or raise the alarm.

This course provides practical knowledge and situational awareness to help prevent escalation and ensure safety when emergencies involving chemicals occur.

In this course, you will:

• Be reminded how to respond to emergency situations involving PPPs
• Understand what mitigations should be in place should you need to highlight any concerns about your own personal safety or that of other staff
• Assess how to respond to a fire when chemicals might be involved
• Understand what steps to take if an animal is exposed to pesticides or is poisoned
• Know who to contact in an emergency.

This course is intended as a general guide and does not replace formal health and safety training provided by a qualified professional. Agronomists should always ensure they have received appropriate, up-to-date training and should never place themselves at risk, only engaging in emergency situations when it is safe and within their competence to do so.

There are two lessons which include various links to other useful websites as well as PDF downloads for further information and future reference. At the end of the final lesson there is an end of course test. You must complete all the lessons and then achieve 80% in the test to earn two BASIS/NRoSO points. If you do not answer enough of the test questions correctly the first time, you will be able to retake the test until you do. Just click the restart test button.

You will need to follow the lessons in order and complete all the in-lesson quizzes to finish the course. The in-lesson quizzes do not count towards your final score. Follow the prompts at the end of each page to move through the course to the final test.

If you log out of the course at the end of a lesson, having completed it, it will save your progress up to that point for when you return.

Once you have completed the course and passed the test at the end, the course will show as 100% complete and we will then send your points to BASIS and/or NRoSO for you. This course is worth 2 points.

(If your progress is slow to update having completed each lesson, please refresh your browser)

If you get ‘lost’ at any point in the course, simply click on the start of the progress bar at the top of the page, which will bring you back to this page, where you can check below in the course grid, where you have got to and you can navigate from here.

To start, simply click on the first lesson in the course grid below: