Environmental Sciences Europe最新文献

Background

The European Union (EU) promotes the use of plant protection products with lower environmental and human health risks. Low-risk active substances (LRAS) are proposed as alternatives to conventional synthetic chemical compounds (ScC) and substances considered candidates for substitution (CfS). However, we are still lacking solid science-based evidence for assigning pesticide compounds into these categories. We aimed to identify whether specific data used in environmental risk assessment can be used as effective descriptors of the three different pesticide categories. To achieve this, we conducted a meta-analysis based on environmental fate (DT₅₀ soil and water/sediment) and ecotoxicological data (EC₅₀ and LC₅₀ values for algae, higher plant, aquatic invertebrate and fish) collected from peer-reviewed regulatory documentation of chemical pesticide active substances currently approved in the EU.

Results

Our meta-analysis showed that LRAS exhibited the shortest median DT₅₀ values in soil (1.78 days) and water/sediment (7.23 days) and the highest median toxicity thresholds for aquatic organisms, particularly for P. subcapitata (EC₅₀ = 10.3 mg/L) and L. gibba (EC₅₀ = 100 mg/L), compared to ScC (DT₅₀ 19.74 days, EC₅₀ 1.094 mg/L and 1.1 mg/L) and CfS (DT₅₀ 80.93 days, EC₅₀ 0.147 mg/L and 0.154 mg/L). The latter showed significantly higher persistence and ecotoxicity from LRAS and ScC in most cases supporting the regulatory decision for withdrawal from the EU market.

Conclusions

Overall ecotoxicological threshold values like EC₅₀ values for algae and aquatic plants were good indicators distinguishing LRAS with conventional chemical compounds (ScC and CfS). Our findings constitute a first significant step that upon enrichment with more input data on LRAS, as more products from this group are coming in the market, and chronic ecotoxicity threshold values could establish a set of indicators that could support early-stage identification of new LRAS and extend to prioritize pesticide authorizations, streamline renewal or amendment procedures with reduced data requirements, and facilitate extension requests for existing approvals by focusing on LRAS.

Background

Bisphenol A (BPA) and its replacements bisphenols S and F (BPS and BPF) are synthetic compounds commonly used in plastics and epoxy resins. Their endocrine-disrupting properties are of concern due to the broad use of plastic materials in everyday life. This study utilizes Czech cohorts from DEMOCOPHES-CZ (116 mothers and 118 children) sampled in 2011–2012 and CELSPAC (195 school-aged children, 299 teenagers, and 305 young adults), sampled in 2019–2020, to assess the distribution of bisphenols in human urine and to examine time-related patterns in response to changing regulations. Several regulatory actions have taken place between the sampling periods, including a restriction on the use of BPA in plastic baby bottles, a reduction of the tolerable daily intake or a restriction of BPA in thermal paper.

Results

Statistically significant decreases in BPA concentrations were observed over time, with a 28.6% reduction in adults and 47.5% in children. Conversely, BPS concentrations significantly increased, with a 121.1% rise in adults and 90.0% in children. BPA levels were significantly higher in children than in adults in both cohorts. A moderate correlation was found between BPA concentrations in mothers and their children (ρ = 0.34), suggesting common household exposure. Higher levels of BPA were found in smokers in the CELSPAC adults and children had higher levels of BPA in the warm season of the year. In addition, females had higher BPS levels compared to males. There was no effect of education on bisphenol concentrations. Reference values for children, adolescents and young adults were calculated for the Czech population. All BPA values exceeded the BPA health-based guideline value (GV) of 0.0115 µg/L and 1–8% of BPS values exceeded the GV of 1 µg/L depending on cohort and age.

Conclusions

While BPS and BPF levels remain relatively low, the decrease in BPA and the increase in BPS over time may reflect a response to legislation. Higher bisphenol levels in children indicate greater exposure in this group and highlight the importance of continued monitoring. Hence, human biomonitoring studies are essential for evaluating the impact of regulations and supporting future efforts to reduce bisphenol exposure.

Graphical Abstract

Background

Accuracy, along with reproducibility and transferability, are essential attributes of modern in vitro inhalation exposure systems to reliably assess the hazard potential of complex aerosols and remain aligned with advancements in molecular and cellular biology. Although in vitro lung exposure models are continually being refined, no standardized or harmonized methodologies have yet been established or universally accepted. This study addresses the existing gap by evaluating a novel exposure system designed to generate physiologically relevant in vitro inhalation data. The system is based on a high-throughput 96-well platform operating under continuous-flow air–liquid interface conditions, enabling controlled, reproducible, and scalable aerosol exposures. To evaluate exposure system performance, reference cigarette smoke (1R6F) was applied and subsequently compared with heated tobacco aerosol (IQOS) using an alveolar epithelial cell model (A549). The study aimed to demonstrate the reliability of the high-throughput exposure technology and its applicability for emission prioritization using a tiered in vitro test battery. 

Results

The high-throughput exposure system (HTES) delivers aerosols to cell based test systems cultured at the air–liquid interface (ALI) in 96-well insert microplates, facilitating the acquisition of consistent and interpretable dose–response relationships. It provides 11 aerosol concentration levels in a single batch, including a vehicle control and eight technical replicates per level, yielding 96 data points. The consistency between nominal dose metrics and induced biological responses, evaluated through a predictive assay panel (cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, immunomodulation), confirms both accuracy and reproducibility. A comparative evaluation of 1R6F and IQOS emissions, supported by chemical analyses, demonstrated the method's applicability across aerosol types and enabled the determination of relative potency equivalents, which facilitate the ranking of tobacco products. 1R6F smoke exhibited a substantially higher acute potency than IQOS aerosol, although both caused genotoxic effects. Additionally, the successful implementation of high-content assays, such as in situ γ-H2AX analysis, highlights the system’s potential for applications beyond traditional hazard screening.

Conclusions

By combining precise conditioning and uniform dosing of native aerosols with notably low background noise, the HTES enables the generation of valuable dose–response data. The results indicate a close approximation to physiological lung conditions—an outcome that is not inherently expected from a continuous-flow exposure system operating in a novel microplate format.

Green economy requires enterprises to comply with environmental regulations, which increases the enterprises risk-taking level and ultimately affects the investment decision of enterprises. By constructing multiple linear regression equations with four dimensions of enterprise risk-taking level as dependent variables and three types of environmental regulations as independent variables, the data of listed chemical companies in China are used for the empirical test. Empirical results show that command environmental regulation has a significant promoting effect on the risk-taking level of capital, talent, and product, but has no significant impact on the technology risk-taking level. Market environmental regulation can effectively enhance the risk-taking level of capital and talent, but has no significant impact on the risk-taking level of technology and product. Voluntary environmental regulation only has a significant effect on enhancing the capital risk-taking level. The existing environmental regulation system can be optimized, focusing on the driving function of environmental regulation on the technology risk-taking level, activating the role of voluntary environmental regulation, and ultimately improving the enterprise risk-taking level.

Background

Heavy rainfall causes not only high water levels and discharge but can also lead to the mobilization of sediments and pollutants to rivers. In contrast, droughts with low discharge can impair water quality due to minimized dilution. Both extremes—heavy rainfall as well as droughts—are aggravating under climate change; thus, it is important to understand the processes as well as the meteorological and hydrological preconditions that lead to elevated concentrations of sediments and pollutants. This study aimed at identifying event types that cause high discharges, and increased concentrations in suspended sediment and changing pollutant concentrations in a large river. We use a long-term (2010–2022) data set of high-resolution precipitation, discharge, suspended sediment concentrations as well as 14-day composite sample concentrations of six organic micropollutants (OMPs) in the central European Moselle River.

Results

By means of principal component analysis and cluster analysis, we identified typical as well as atypical events with high suspended sediment concentrations. The cluster analysis clearly identified a cluster of high-magnitude events with high discharge, precipitation amounts and high suspended sediment concentrations, which mainly occurred in winter. However, single atypical high-magnitude events such as the one associated with the July 2021 floodings in Western Europe also occurred in summer. For OMPs, the cluster analysis showed less clear results. Yet, general differences in concentrations dynamics related to high discharge regimes were identified for the herbicide metabolite metazachlor ESA and the pharmaceutical carbamazepine.

Conclusions

Our results show that the methodology is a powerful tool for the identification and characterization of high-magnitude suspended sediment transport and discharge events. However, it is limited by data availability for most OMPs. Nonetheless, the data set helped us to identify relevant time periods of high OMP concentrations in line with observations made in smaller catchments or for shorter observation periods.

This paper discusses the need for regulatory measures to include persistence and mobility of chemicals as hazard criteria to better protect freshwater, groundwater and drinking water. In the EU, the hazard criteria persistence and mobility are, regulatorily speaking, still new. These criteria have been included in environmental hazard classes in Regulation 1272/2008 on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures in 2023 (Commission Delegated Regulation 2023/707). Even though these substances may not be classified as toxic under existing criteria, their persistence and mobility pose potential hazards to the environment and human health. We show the perspective of the German stakeholder dialogue on trace substances and how chemicals are assessed in this national framework. Persistence and mobility criteria should also be integrated into regulatory approaches, namely the derivation of environmental quality standards for surface water and in the hazardousness definition of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive 2024/3019. To ensure regulatory consistency, we support harmonized criteria as laid down in Regulation 2023/707 for persistent and mobile substances across different legislative frameworks.

Background

Increasing numbers of chemicals with little-known adverse effects are released into the marine environment. The present study addresses the lack of marine-specific prioritisation schemes by developing a prioritisation tool for organic contaminants. This tool supports decision-making processes regarding which chemicals to study further in terms of their occurrences and biological effects in the marine environment. It was supported by a database containing approximately 1.13 million chemicals, developed within the PikMe project. Criteria for chemical prioritisation were identified by a comprehensive literature review, then selected using the outcomes of a survey among experts. The prioritisation tool consists of filtering chemicals in the PikMe database using three parallel schemes—persistence and bioaccumulation, toxicity, and persistence and mobility characteristics (step 1)—followed by scoring based on modes of action, occurrence, and emission (step 2) and ranking by the final score (step 3).

Results

Around 8000 chemicals were selected by filtering (step 1). The top 100 resulted from step 3 comprises 6PPD as the highest-ranked compound and other chemicals with high diversity of uses, e.g. pharmaceuticals as the predominant category of use, industrial chemicals, personal care products, flame retardants, and plastic additives. These chemicals were ranked in the top 100 due to dominant influence of diverse prioritisation criteria.

Conclusions

Using the hazard-based approach that encompasses different adverse effects that contaminants of emerging concern can exert, the marine-specific prioritisation tool can guide decision-making in monitoring, ecotoxicological studies, and regulations regarding contaminants of emerging concern in the marine environment.

The increasing prevalence of anthropogenic trace substances and organic micropollutants in wastewater necessitates advanced treatment stages in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) to effectively remove these pollutants. Ozonation has proven to be an effective method for this purpose but poses the risk of generating toxic by-products like bromate, especially when treating bromide-containing wastewater at high ozone dosages. Bromate is classified as a possible human carcinogen (IARC Group 2B) and presents both acute and chronic health risks, along with various ecotoxic effects. With the new European Union Urban Wastewater Directive (2024/3019) mandating advanced treatment for micropollutant removal, the occurrence and monitoring of bromate will gain increasing relevance. Although no threshold value for bromate in wastewater has yet been established, the proposed environmental quality standard indicates ongoing regulatory efforts, resulting in the need to monitor bromate concentrations in WWTPs effluents to safeguard public health and the environment. This review systematically examines the toxicological and ecological relevance of bromate and evaluates existing analytical approaches for its detection in wastewater. Methods developed for drinking and surface waters, such as ion chromatography (IC) with conductivity (CD) or post-column reaction and ultraviolet detection (PCR-UV), as well as mass spectrometry (MS)-based techniques, have been applied to wastewater matrices with varying levels of success. Reported quantification limits range from 70 µg/L using IC-CD to as low as 0.1 µg/L using IC-MS/MS. Wastewater presents a significantly more complex matrix than drinking water, introducing interferences from dissolved organic matter, anions, and fluctuating compositions. These challenges reduce accuracy, reliability, and reproducibility of results. However, none of these methods have been standardized by ISO, ASTM, or CEN or validated through interlaboratory trials for wastewater analysis. Among the evaluated methods, IC-PCR-UV as well as IC-MS-based approaches appear most suitable to provide the required sensitivity and robustness. Developing a harmonized methodology tailored to wastewater matrices is essential for regulatory compliance, environmental protection, and safeguarding public health.

The contamination of groundwater systems by industrial activities represents a pervasive global issue threatening water quality and safety. This study investigated the hydrogeological characteristics of the chemical park along the Yangtze River, by employing MODFLOW and MT3DMS to construct numerical models for groundwater flow and solute transport; the migration path and spatial extents of representative contaminants [ammonia nitrogen (NH₃–N), manganese (Mn), 1,2-dichloroethane, and volatile phenols] were analyzed. The multi-year results indicated that after 20 years, the contaminant extent in the study area was further expanded. Under natural rainfall scenarios, the area of the contaminant plume increased by 88.55–249.38% compared to the initial state, while under heavy rainfall scenarios, the increase ranged from 72.03 to 222.62%. Contaminants migrated with groundwater flow to the Yangtze River coast and Huangmaotan River, with a faster migration rate observed during heavy rainfall scenarios. It is necessary to implement source treatment and pollution control at surface water boundaries to ensure the safety of the Yangtze River water quality. This method can also be used to assess the potential pollution of similar projects along the Yangtze River and aid decision makers and managers.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have a major impact on the environment, human health, and climate change. In addition, methane (CH₄) is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas in the world, after carbon dioxide (CO₂).This study investigates how methane emissions vary and are distributed throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular emphasis on how agricultural methods, animal production, waste management, and energy generation interact. The objective is to determine the main causes of methane emissions so that environmental management strategies can be informed. Using data from 85 observations, we evaluated the associations between methane emissions, animal production, fertilizer use, and agricultural land use using pooled OLS, random effects, and fixed effects models. The average methane emissions were 201.8 Mt CO₂e, according to the results, with agriculture and livestock production accounting for the largest shares (80.3 Mt CO₂e and 246 Mt CO₂e, respectively). With 243.7 Mt CO₂e, Nigeria was the largest emitter, primarily due to agriculture (50.33%) and substantial animal rearing (index: 106.1). Ethiopia came next with a livestock production index of 106.0 and 101.9 Mt CO₂e. Tanzania and Uganda, on the other hand, showed more sustainable practices with lower emissions (38.56 Mt CO₂e and 53.27 Mt CO₂e, respectively) and livestock indices of 98.8 and 99.8. Furthermore, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data on worldwide methane emissions, the energy sector which includes bioenergy and abandoned facilities contributes significantly to total emissions, whereas agriculture is responsible for about 137,270.61 kt of emissions. Notably, fugitive emissions from oil and natural gas infrastructure are substantial; by 2024, onshore oil venting is expected to produce 19,180.82 kt of pollutants. These results highlight the need for coordinated approaches that support better waste management, sustainable farming methods, and increased energy efficiency. In order to successfully reduce methane emissions, comprehensive strategies linking various sectors to effectively mitigate methane emissions.