News

Logo of the project ‘Risk Assessment Innovation for Low-Risk Pesticides’ (RATION)

New project started: RATION

Low-risk pesticides including biopesticides such as plant extracts, semiochemicals and microbial pesticides shall play a large role in substituting synthetic pesticides according to the Green Deal initiative of the European Union. Further low-risk solutions (phages, protists, microbial consortia, and double-stranded RNA pesticides) are expected to reach the market in the next years. There are ongoing efforts by the European Commission to establish specific risk assessment schemes for such low-risk pesticides…

New publication: Minimizing experimental testing on fish for legacy pharmaceuticals

Lead by Anja Coors, a team of partners in the IMI-funded project ‘Prioritisation and risk evaluation of medicines in the environment’ (PREMIER) developed and recently published a decision tree that shall help to minimize animal testing within PREMIER and beyond. The risk-driven decision tree uses a combination of experimental testing with non-vertebrates and a fish-specific […]

Report ‘Soil monitoring in Europe’ now published

A tremendous effort has been invested in soil monitoring in Europe, at country- as well as EU-level. However, there is so far no comprehensive and updated state of knowledge to identify healthy soils and those requiring protection. For the last few years, the European Topic Centre on Urban Land and Soil Systems (ETC/ULS) has followed […]

Report published on further development of screening tests for the evaluation of potential PBT substances

Different ready biodegradability tests (OECD 301 series and OECD 310) are currently used for evaluating if a substance is readily biodegradable and for identifying potentially persistent substances. Although the methods differ considerably, the test results are considered equivalent. In persistency assessments under REACH, enhanced ready biodegradability tests with an extended test duration (up to 60 […]