Beleid en debat

Die EU-Länder müssen aus Sicht der EU-Kommission mehr tun, um den Einsatz giftiger Pflanzenschutzmittel so weit wie möglich einzudämmen. Die Umsetzung der entsprechenden Richtlinie sei ungenügend, moniert die Brüsseler Behörde. Deutschland kommt aber bei der Überprüfung vergleichsweise gut weg. Viele Menschen sorgten sich wegen Rückständen der Pestizide im Essen und in der Natur, erklärte EU-Gesundheitskommissar Vytenis Andriukaitis. Diese Sorgen nehme man ernst. Die Umsetzung der entsprechenden Richtlinie sei ungenügend, moniert die Brüsseler Behörde.

Le miel nord-américain, y compris le miel québécois, est le plus contaminé aux pesticides néonicotinoïdes au monde, d’après une analyse internationale qui s’inquiète des effets cumulatifs sur la santé. Les néonicotinoïdes sont les pesticides les plus répandus au monde. Depuis quelques années, scientifiques et apiculteurs les accusent de décimer les colonies d’abeilles et de menacer la santé humaine. On retrouve des traces de ces substances dans la plupart des fruits et légumes, mais aussi dans les céréales et dans l’eau.

A new study from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research has revealed a potential link between professional pesticide treatments in the home and a higher risk of children developing brain tumours. Published this week in the international journal Cancer Causes & Control, the study found that exposure by parents to professional pesticide treatments prior to conception could increase the chances of a child developing a brain tumour.

Historian Heiko Stoff has recently sketched a fascinating controversy in the 1950’s on chemical risk assessment. Two renowned scientists in the Farbstoffkommission (Dye Committee) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Community), pharmacologist Hermann Druckrey and biochemist (and Nobel Prize winner) Adolf Butenandt, were advocates of a preventive risk approach. Only substances with a reversible mechanism of action and dose-dependent toxicology were acceptable in their eyes because safe exposure concentrations below a threshold of toxicity could be defined.

The annual arrival of the river herring signifies the official arrival of spring. It draws many of us to the run, to witness the upward migration of these beloved fish, who after surviving several years at sea, return to spawn in the same exact lake or pond where they were born. River Herring [Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and Blueback Herring (Alosa aestivalis)] are referred to as a “keystone species” as they are a vital part of the marine, estuarine, and freshwater food webs.

More than 15 southern waterways appear on a list of rivers "lost or in noticeable decline" as public trout fisheries. The list was coordinated by NZ Federation of Freshwater Anglers executive member Steve Gerard. Southern waterways appearing on the list include the Pomahaka, Oreti, Makarewa, Mokoreta, Upukerora, Whitestone and Mararoa rivers, and the Waipahi, Otamita, Waimea, Lora, Otapiri, Dunsdale, Hedgehope, Titipua, Waimatuku, Orauea and Mimihau streams. Gerard said New Zealand's trout fisheries were "going downhill".

Frogs, toads and salamanders often fall through the cracks of scientific study, but according to recently published research from Montana State University, they play a role so important they should be incorporated into strategies for conserving freshwater fisheries. In his first peer-reviewed paper as sole author, Niall Clancy, 22, said that native fish populations continue to decline around the world despite advances in management practices. Therefore, fisheries managers might want to add new approaches to the old.