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In Croatia, imidacloprid is increasingly used in olive growing areas against the olive fruit fly. Experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between soil properties, imidacloprid concentration and soil sorption capacity. The linear and the Freundlich model adequately described the imidacloprid sorption. Better sorption was observed at lower imidacloprid concentrations and in soils with higher organic carbon and clay content, but organic carbon content was predominant factor influencing sorption. Thus, for soils with lower sorption capacity a greater potential mobility of imidacloprid in the soil profile is expected, indicating a need for regular monitoring and strategy development against groundwater pollution.

The contemporary interpretation of Paracelsus's famous declaration “the dose makes the poison”, for which he is often called the father of toxicology, is that dose and effect move together in a predictably linear fashion, and that lower exposures to a hazardous compound will therefore always generate lower risks. This idea is not just a philosophical abstraction; it is the core assumption underlying the system of chemical-safety testing that arose in the mid-twentieth century. Risk assessors typically look for adverse effects of a compound over a range of high doses and, from there, extrapolate downwards to establish health standards — always assuming, like Paracelsus, that chemicals toxic at high doses are much less risky at lower, real-world levels. But what if the Paracelsian presumption is wrong? On the basis of conventional high-dose testing, regulators have set maximum acceptable levels for each of them that assume all doses below that level are safe. But academic researchers who have studied a wider range of doses, including very low ones found in the everyday environment, say that their experiments usually do not generate the tidy, familiar 'ski-slope' dose-response graphs of classic toxicology.

The FOrum for the Co-ordination of pesticide fate models and their USe
(FOCUS) exposure models are used to predict the frequency and magnitude of pesticide surface water concentrations within the European regulatory risk assessment. The predictions are based on realistic worst-case assumptions that result in predicted environmental concentrations (PEC). Here, we compared for the first time a larger data set of 122 measured field concentrations (MFC) of agricultural insecticides extracted from 22 field studies to respective PECs by using FOCUS steps 1−4. While FOCUS step 1 and 2 PECs generally overpredicted the MFCs, 23% of step 3 and 31% of step 4 standard PECs were exceeded by surface water MFCs, which questions the protectiveness of the FOCUS exposure assessment. Using realistic input parameters, step 3 simulations underpredicted MFCs in surface water and sediment by 43% and 78%, respectively, which indicate that a higher degree of realism even reduces the protectiveness of model results. The ratios between PEC and MFC in surface water were significantly lower for pyrethroids than for organophosphorus or organochlorine insecticides, which suggests that the FOCUS predictions are less protective for hydrophobic insecticides. In conclusion, the FOCUS modeling approach is not protective for insecticide concentrations in the field.

Of all European countries, the Netherlands has the greatest bee mortality. Conservationists are very concerned about the impact this has on our food chain. Most independent scientists and beekeepers from all over the world regard pesticides as the main cause of bee-mortality. But the pesticide companies deny any causal link. In the Netherlands, the government's chief advisers in this field, from Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), deny absolutely that pesticides are a major cause of bee mortality.
This film reveals that their judgement is affected by the massive funding that the University receives from pesticide manufacturers. Because of the vast financial interests at stake, the connection between the death of the bees and the use of pesticides is a very sensitive political issue at The Hague. Can the honeybees be saved? This video documentary by Holland's famous Zembla TV Channel explores the murky world of pesticide politics. http://omroep.vara.nl/media/175032

According to a hypothesis proposed by the U.S. Geological Survey and collaborators at National Institutes of Health, bats recovering from white-nose syndrome show evidence of immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS), a condition that was first described in HIV-AIDS patients. IRIS is a syndrome in which an organism's immune system, which has been suppressed, reactivates and, perceiving a serious infection around it, goes into overdrive resulting in severe inflammation and tissue damage in infected areas. In both human patients with HIV-AIDS and bats with WNS, the functioning of the immune system is severely reduced. For humans, this occurs when the HIV virus attacks the patient's white blood cells. In bats, this occurs during normal hibernation. IRIS can be fatal to both humans and bats.
"The potential discovery of IRIS in bats infected with white-nose syndrome is incredibly significant in terms of understanding both the reasons for bat mortality and basic immune response," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "This discovery could also prove significant for studies on treatment for AIDS."

It's not just domesticated bees that are in trouble. Many wild pollinators -- from the rusty patch bumblebee to the Karner blue butterfly -- are also declining in number, and some are in far worse shape. In a recent study of Midwest cornfields, University of Minnesota entomologist Karen Oberhauser linked the widespread use of Roundup and the disappearance of milkweed to an 81 percent drop in eggs of the monarch butterfly, the gaudy insect in mysterious decline across the country. The threats to these species are numerous and complicated, but biologists say the encroachment of chemical-intensive agriculture on the native prairie is certainly one of them.

Children are far more susceptible to chemicals and pollutants than adults and the increased rate of childhood illnesses is cause for alarm. Children are exposed to a variety of environmental hazards, including indoor and outdoor air pollution, solvents, pesticides, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. These contribute to certain childhood diseases, such as asthma and leukemia, and to some learning disabilities. For the past 15 years, an epidemic of childhood asthma has been occurring in the United States. Asthma, leading chronic illness in children of the United States, rates have increased 160% in the past 15 years in children under 5 years of age. The impact of increased exposure to adverse environmental factors must be considered as a contributor to the observed increase in chronic diseases and health problems.

The study, “Traumatic brain injury, paraquat exposure, and their relationship to Parkinson disease,” published in the journal Neurology surveyed more than 1,000 adults ages 35 and older who lived in central California. Some 357 of the participants were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Participants with the disease were nearly twice as likely as those without the disease to report having had a head injury in which they lost consciousness for more than five minutes. Forty-two Parkinson’s patients, or 12 percent of that group, reported receiving a head injury that knocked them unconscious for five or more minutes, as compared to 50 people in the non-Parkinson’s group, or seven percent. The Parkinson’s patients are nearly twice as likely to have had such injuries. Using a geographical tracking system, the researchers also found that those with Parkinson’s disease were also more likely to live within 500 meters of a spot where the herbicide paraquat was used.

Fearing that the Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus) might go extinct in as little as two years, wildlife advocates have begun pressing federal officials to approve an emergency effort to capture some of the birds and breed them in captivity.The Central Florida bird is a subspecies of the grasshopper sparrow found only in vast, treeless prairies south of the Orlando area, including the Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area in Osceola County, where the largest group of the sparrows clings to survival. "We consider this the most endangered bird in the continental United States," warns a letter sent last week to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by Audubon of Florida; Archbold Biological Station; and a University of Central Florida ecologist, Reed Noss. "In light of population levels possibly below 200 individuals and very rapid recent declines of [the sparrow], … we conclude that the risk of delay exceeds the risk of mistakes," the letter states. The bird is small, elusive and hard to study. One of the things it is well known for is being closely related to the dusky seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus nigrescens) of east Central Florida. That bird suffered a sharp decline in numbers because of mosquito-control projects decades ago that wrecked the ecological health of the marshes where it lived.

New figures show that the number of house sparrows (Passer domesticus) in the region has fallen by 50 per cent while starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) have declined by 30 per cent and the song thrush (Turdus philomelos) by 55 per cent, in the past two decades. The figures from The Wildlife Trust of Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside come on the back of a report called ‘State of the UK's Birds 2012’ carried out by the RSPB which showed that nationally the bird population in the UK had declined by 44 million since 1966.