Beleid en debat

In 2010, my life changed when Dr Henk Tennekes and I traded books. His was: The systemic insecticides: a disaster in the making and ours was: The Year of the Bumblebee: Observations in a small Nature Reserve. Dr Henk Tennekes, an independent toxicologist based in the Netherlands, was the first researcher to recognise the extreme toxicity of low levels of systemic neonicotinoid insecticides that have become widespread in the environment.

New monitoring in the Bay Delta shows that the water is a soup of urban and agricultural insecticides, herbicides and fungicides. When combined, pesticides at sublethal levels can have deadly synergistic effects on fish. “The Sacramento River and San Joaquin River have been monitored for years, but historically there has been little monitoring in the Delta itself,” says Michelle Hladik, an environmental chemist who leads the USGS Pesticide Fate Research Group.

Der Schutz der Tiere, Pflanzen und ihrer Lebensräume im Kanton Zürich reicht trotz einigen Erfolgen nicht aus. Die Fachstelle Naturschutz kann zwar laufende Massnahmen weiterführen. Für mehr fehlen ihr jedoch meist die Mittel. Der durchaus naturverbundene Baudirektor Markus Kägi hob an der Präsentation hervor, der Mensch sei nicht nur Geniesser und Nutzer, sondern habe eine Verpflichtung gegenüber der Natur.

Neonicotinoid insecticides are widespread in surface waters across the agriculturally intensive Midwestern United States. We report for the first time the presence of three neonicotinoids in finished drinking water and demonstrate their general persistence during conventional water treatment. Periodic tap water grab samples were collected at the University of Iowa over 7 weeks in 2016 (May−July) after maize/soy planting. Clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam were ubiquitously detected in finished water samples at concentrations ranging from 0.24 to 57.3 ng/L.

One of the most dangerous pesticides, neonicotinoids, has been found in drinking water, a new study reveals. Neonicotinoids, most of which were released in the 1990s, were designed to be the most environmentally-friendly chemicals on the market and soon became the most widely used, especially in the Midwest. The compounds don't just coat leaves and stems but work their way into plant tissue, meaning fewer sprays are needed. But the neonics, as they are nicknamed, became reputable for being something else - a bee killer, wreaking havoc on insect nervous systems.

Umweltorganisationen haben vom Bundesrat angesichts der alarmierenden Resultate der Gewässeruntersuchungen einen wirkungsvollen Pestizidreduktionsplan gefordert. Denn über die Nahrungsmittelkette sei auch der Mensch vom giftigen Pestizidcocktail betroffen. Pro Natura spricht von alarmierenden Zuständen. Der Unmut in der Bevölkerung über den Pestizidmix in den Bächen sei gross, schreibt die Naturschutzorganisation in einer Mitteilung vom Dienstag. Dies zeigten auch zwei kürzlich lancierte Volksinitiativen für sauberes Trinkwasser und gegen synthetische Pestizide.

Small watercourses are contaminated with large numbers of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. A study commissioned by the Federal Office for the Environment and published today shows that the legal requirements specified for water quality are not met in any of the five Swiss streams investigated. Indeed, thresholds for acute toxicity to aquatic organisms were also exceeded. Bioassays indicate that biological communities are adversely affected by mixtures of substances.

Current admission policies for pesticides follow a controlled experimental tiered risk assessment approach, giving results that are difficult to extrapolate to a real-world situation. Later analyses of compounds such as DDT and neonicotinoid pesticides clearly show that the actual chemical impacts frequently affect many more components of an ecosystem than a priori suggested by risk assessment. Therefore, to manage the actual risks for ecosystems imposed by manufactured compounds, it is proposed that current admission policies for chemicals be enriched by using postregistration monitoring.