Carrying the Country's Pesticide Labels in Your Back Pocket

Trying to remember the re-entry interval of a herbicide you just sprayed? Or wondering what personal protective equipment (PPE) to pack? Or maybe you just want to know if your insect repellant protects against black flies or ticks? Health Canada has an app for all of those things.

It’s called Pesticide Labels, and allows users to quickly search and download pesticide labels.

“This is a useful tool to help farmers incorporate best management practices in real time,” said Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lawrence MacAulay, at the time of the app’s release. “The app will provide accurate and readily available information on pesticide use to producers, helping them continue to be good stewards of the land.”

Though one user reviewed it as the “Worst app,” it does offer some functionality above that of a simple google search. Most of all, it narrows the search results to include only labels, and only those registered in Canada, regardless of whether you search the product name, active ingredient or pest targeted.

There are a few different ways to find the label you’re after, but if you’re going the straight text route, Health Canada has some recommendations to help specify your search:

• Use the and operator to search for documents that contain at least one occurrence of each of the search terms. For example, cats and dogs.
• Use the or operator to search for documents that contain at least one occurrence of any of the search terms. For example, cats or dogs.
• Use the not operator to search for documents that contain one query term and not another. For example, animals not dogs.
• You must use the wildcard (%) if you want to widen the search. For example, cat will search cat, whereas cat% will search cat, cats, catch, and so forth.

Give it a go, and worst case scenario, delete it and you’ll get yourself a refund — it’s free.

Hey #CdnAg! Download @HealthCanada’s Pesticide Label app to learn if your insect repellant protects against ticks: https://t.co/JPEMdjD6iN

— AAFC Canada (@AAFC_Canada) May 26, 2016

Amazon | Apple App Store | Google Play