The value of soil biodiversity has long been underestimated, although it plays an essential role in healthy functioning of our ecosystems. Soil organisms contribute to nutrient cycling and carbon storage in soils, mix soil layers and help retain rainwater. However, numerous factors, such as soil contamination, unsustainable land use and climate change, have impacts on […]
Low-risk pesticides including biopesticides consisting of plant extracts, semiochemicals such as pheromones and allelochemicals, and microbial pesticides are gaining ground in the global market, where they have started to substitute synthetic pesticides. In addition, phages, protists, microbial consortia and double-stranded (ds)-RNA pesticides are emerging low-risk solutions that are expected to reach the market in coming […]
PRORISK is a European Training Network funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It creates a platform for training early-stage researchers in the field of advanced environmental risk assessment. Environmental risk assessment procedures are nowadays changing, incorporating for instance mechanistic, ecological, and socio-economic information. Consequently, risk assessments are becoming more comprehensive. […]
The European List of Wastes (Decision 2000/532/EC, amended by Decision 2014/955/EC) contains a list of waste types: absolute hazardous entries (wastes that are hazardous without further assessment), absolute non-hazardous entries (wastes that are non-hazardous without further assessment) and mirror entries (wastes that can be classified as either hazardous or non-hazardous, depending on their properties). A waste is defined as hazardous, if it displays at least one of 15 hazard properties or contains certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in concentrations above the specified limit values. The hazard property ‘ecotoxic’ (HP 14) can be evaluated using a calculation approach based on the content of hazardous substances in a waste sample or using ecotoxicity tests with the respective waste sample or waste sample eluate…
The European Commission has imposed a stringent regulatory scheme for pesticide authorisation, which includes an assessment of potential risks for aquatic organisms and terrestrial macro-organisms. However, the assessment of the toxicity of pesticides on soil microorganisms relies on a protocol that does not identify effects on key microbial functions and on microbial diversity. As acknowledged […]
The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project ‘Prioritisation and risk evaluation of medicines in the environment’ (PREMIER) aims to develop a centralised, user-friendly and transparent digital assessment system accessible for all relevant stakeholders such as regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical industry, water managers and environmental non-governmental organisations. Furthermore, PREMIER will explore the options to incorporate environment considerations earlier […]
The project objective was to identify and quantify uncertainties that occur in the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of pesticides, specifically for the soil compartment. The project was based on the assessment that the general approach of employing surrogate species and experimental setups to assess the effects of pesticides has certain shortcomings that affect the outcome […]
According to EU Directive 2001/18/EC, genetically modified organisms (GMO) must be assessed for potential risks to human health, animal and plant life, nature, and the environment prior to experimental release or market authorization. The concepts and methods used for this purpose must correspond to the state of the science and technology and consider the specific issues and characteristics of the testing of GMO […]
The first aim of the project was to assess whether the existing OECD test guidelines for ready biodegradability of chemicals (OECD test guidelines 301 A–D and 310) can be harmonized. The gained insights were discussed at an international expert workshop in April 2019. Laboratory experiments were performed for five test substances to verify the impact […]
Germany lacks a nationwide and standardised survey of soil organisms, although a comprehensive infrastructure for such a survey is available with approx. 800 permanent soil monitoring sites (Bodendauerbeobachtungsflächen, BDF). Not all federal states conduct their own soil biology surveys on their permanent soil monitoring sites. The most important reason for this is probably the time-consuming […]
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S. Jänsch
Ralf Ketelhut
Premier
D. Leib
K. Duis
T. Junker
University of Aarhus