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The SPRINT team were recently lucky enough to visit the Saint Emilion region of Bordeaux, France, where we learnt about how winegrowers here are prioritising the environment through mandatory certification.

Since February 2023, growers who wish to use the reputable ‘Saint Emilion’ name on their wine have to take part in a certification process which proves that they are meeting certain environmental standards. This system is tiered, with growers able to pick which accreditations they would like to follow. Once they either reach level 2 or become fully organic, they are then able to use the prestigious name, thus making their wine more attractive to customers.

In addition, there are 6 pillars involved in the Saint-Emilion environmental approach, each of which affect, or are affected by, pesticides:

  1. Soil biodiversity
  2. Biocontrol
  3. Living landscapes
  4. Water use and quality
  5. Climate change
  6. Human intervention

Read more about the vines of Saint-Emilion here.

 

Wednesday 27th September 2023, 09:30-12:30 EDT / 15:30-18:30 CET.

SPRINT will be presenting our emerging findings from a sampling field campaign to identify the presence of pesticide residues in Europe and Argentina at this hybrid event, in New York and online during our session, "Pesticide Residues in the Ecosystem and humans across Europe: linking SPRINT field data to health risks". 

We will be revealing the extent of pesticide residues in ecosystems and people across Europe and Argentina, and offering significant new knowledge needed to solve the urgent question of reducing pesticide risk as a base for transitioning to sustainable agriculture.

To join remotely, sign up to the Science Summit UNGA78 event, and then subscibe to our session here https://sciencesummitunga78.sched.com/event/1Nr8k/pesticide-residues-in-the-ecosystem-and-humans-across-europe-linking-sprint-field-data-to-health-risks.

The summit aims to develop and launch science collaborations and promote scientific discoveries amongst policy makers to support the attainment of the UN SDGs, Agenda 2030 and Local2030. The meeting will also prepare input for the United Nations Summit of the Future, which will take place during UNGA79 beginning on 12 September 2024.

Join us to hear our latest findings!

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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).

SPRINT was nicely represented at the ISBM-12 symposium by several consortium members (Hans Mol, Paul Scheepers and Nina Wieland). Nina Wieland gave a talk in the session "the never ending story of pesticides" entitled: "Human biomonitoring of pesticides in ten European countries and Argentina - preliminary results from the SPRINT study". In her presentation she focussed on the field study of SPRINT and explored pesticide content in blood of Farmers, Neighbours and Consumers. With her presentation she won the Best Oral Communication Award, out of more than 60 presentations. 

We would like to congratulate Nina on behalf of the whole consortium with this great achievement!

                           

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EFSA Glyphosate

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.