ISBM-12 - Communication award for Nina Wieland

The 12th International Symposium on Biological Monitoring in Occupational and Environmental Health (ISBM-12), Next Generation Biomonitoring, took place in Porto, Portugal, from the 21th to 23th of June. This Congress was all about a multidisciplinary and holistic view of the latest developments in the Human Biomonitoring (HBM) sciences, bringing together world’s leading scientists, experts, and students. State of the art developments in different topics of HBM (e.g., biomarkers, risk assessment, and regulation), new methodologies and developing expertise were covered in different presentation formats (keynote lectures, oral and poster sessions).

EFSA assessment finds ‘no critical area of concern’ for glyphosate use

Glyphosate’s approval for use in the EU is set to expire at the end of the year. EFSA has conducted a review of an assessment by four member states – France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden - of the risks proposed by 23 uses of glyphosate.  They found no health or environmental concerns that affects “all proposed uses of the active substance” and concluded that glyphosate presents ‘no critical area of concern’ that would prevent renewing its approval. A concern is defined as critical when it affects all proposed uses of the active substance under evaluation (e.g. pre-sowing uses, post-harvest uses etc.),

However, the review did identify “a high long-term risk to mammals” in 12 of the proposed uses of glyphosate, but was not able to draw “firm conclusions” on the potential impact on biodiversity, citing a “lack of harmonised methodologies and agreed specific protection goals”.  It also identified a number of data gaps in the assessment of consumer dietary risk and the impact on aquatic plants due to a lack of information on how they are exposed to glyphosate from spray drift.  These data gaps are to be considered by the European Commission and Member States in the next stage of the renewal of approval process.

The full assessment document will be published at the end of July 2023.  The summary findings can be found here.

5th of July - An important day for soils!

Yesterday, the 5th of July 2023 the EU proposal for Soil monitoring law came out, which aims to restore EU soil health by 2050. The proposal, for the first-ever EU legislation on soils, provides a harmonised definition of soil health, puts in place a comprehensive and coherent monitoring framework and fosters sustainable soil management and remediation of contaminated sites.

The EU estimates that 60% to 70% of soils are in unfavourable or poor condition, and that over 50 billion euro's a year is lost to soil degradation.  Soils currently do not receive the same level of legal protection in the EU as air and water. The European Parliament, other EU institutions, stakeholders and citizens have therefore called on the Commission to develop an EU legal framework for the protection and sustainable use of soil. 

The proposal also requests that Member States address unacceptable risks for human health and the environment due to soil contamination, guided by the polluter pays principle. Member States will need to identify, investigate, assess and clean up contaminated sites.

Do you want to read more about it, you can visit the question and answer section or read the press release! 

On the same day, the results of the Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey (LUCAS) soil module came out. The LUCAS project the largest study providing a comprehensive characterisation on the extent of residues of active ingredients from pesticides in the soils of the EU. This work establishes an initial EU baseline, and project a future assessment of the effectiveness of EU policies and regulations targeting pesticides use and soil pollution. The main findings of this study allowed understanding that, pesticide use and residues in soils are widespread in the European agricultural lands (74.5%), whereas most of the sites (57.1%) present mixtures of substances. Additionally, an indicator of the ecotoxicological impact for soil organisms was developed, identifying areas at higher risk (1.7%), for which also was possible to estimate increase in ecotoxicological risk when compared with a previous assessment. The full report can be downloaded here.