Beleid en debat

Austin Bradford Hill's landmark 1965 paper contains several important lessons for the current conduct of epidemiology. Unfortunately, it is almost exclusively cited as the source of the "Bradford-Hill criteria" for inferring causation when association is observed, despite Hill's explicit statement that cause-effect decisions cannot be based on a set of rules. Overlooked are Hill's important lessons about how to make decisions based on epidemiologic evidence. He advised epidemiologists to avoid over-emphasizing statistical significance testing, given the observation that systematic error is often greater than random error. His compelling and intuitive examples point out the need to consider costs and benefits when making decisions about health-promoting interventions. These lessons, which offer ways to dramatically increase the contribution of health science to decision making, are as needed today as they were when Hill presented them.

Pesticide contamination and agricultural intensification threaten 24 percent of Europe’s bumblebees, according to research conducted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and funded by the European Commission. The study is part an ongoing project called European Red List of pollinators, with contribution from experts of the “Status and Trends of European Pollinators” (STEP) project, which assesses the conservation status of all bees —approximately 2000 species— occurring throughout Europe. The study concludes that almost half of the 68 species in the European Union (EU) are in decline, including those at risk of extinction. Of these, a total of 16 species are listed as at risk according to the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, which represents the world most trusted authority on the conservation status of species. In comparison, only 13 percent of bumblebee populations are increasing. “We are very concerned with these findings. Such a high proportion of threatened bumblebees can have serious implications for our food production,” says Ana Nieto, European Biodiversity Officer of IUCN and coordinator of the study. “Protecting bumblebee species and habitats, restoring degraded ecosystems and promoting biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices will be essential to reverse the negative trends in European bumblebee populations.”

The study from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has chronicled the fortunes of our seabirds and found that last summer a single pair in Larne Lough laid at least one egg, but no young are known to have fledged. It comes after the species suffered a "near-terminal decline" in the 1980s, according to the first annual Northern Ireland Seabird Report 2013, which charts the changing fortunes of the seabirds making their homes on our coastal habitats. BTO spokesman Shane Wolsey said roseate terns (Sterna dougallii) used to breed in good numbers in some coastal colonies here but stopped breeding on Mew Island in the Copelands in the early 1960s, and left Green Island in Carlingford Lough in the early 1990s. "It's been a long time coming. Roseate terns have just declined over donkey's years. The last ones have been breeding for some time in Larne Lough," he said. "We have one pair in Larne Lough. You only need something to happen to one of those birds and that is the end of that."

During the neurodevelopmental period, the brain is potentially more susceptible to environmental exposure to pollutants. The aim was to determine if neonatal exposure to permethrin (PERM) pesticide, at a low dosage that does not produce signs of obvious abnormalities, could represent a risk for the onset of diseases later in the life.

You hear a lot these days about genetically modified organisms, with many people arguing that they’ll be a necessity in the not-so-distant future, as climate change stresses agriculture, and as a growing, and increasingly affluent, population consumes more food, and more inefficient animal-based foods. Others argue that we’ll need GMOs to reduce global warming emissions, harm to biodiversity from pesticides, pollution from fertilizers (such as coastal “dead zones”), and overuse of scarce resources like fresh water by industrial agriculture. You might have seen one such argument a few months ago from David Rotman, the editor of MIT Technology Review, in his feature called “Why We Will Need Genetically Modified Foods.” But all these arguments rest on certain assumptions, and these assumptions are flawed, at best. Rotman, for example, argued that we’ll need GMOs because simpler, less controversial options such as breeding are simply too slow. He thinks breeding doesn’t give growers access to enough genetic diversity to allow adaptation to climate challenges and to sufficiently increase yields. Many breeders and molecular biologists disagree.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether Roundup® (a glyphosate-based herbicide) leads to neurotoxicity in hippocampus of immature rats following acute (30min) and chronic (pregnancy and lactation) pesticide exposure. Maternal exposure to pesticide was undertaken by treating dams orally with 1% Roundup® (0.38% glyphosate) during pregnancy and lactation (till 15-day-old). Hippocampal slices from 15 day old rats were acutely exposed to Roundup® (0.00005-0.1%) during 30min and experiments were carried out to determine whether glyphosate affects 45Ca2+ influx and cell viability. Moreover, we investigated the pesticide effects on oxidative stress parameters, 14C-α-methyl-amino-isobutyric acid (14C-MeAIB) accumulation, as well as glutamate uptake, release and metabolism. Results showed that acute exposure to Roundup® (30min) increases 45Ca2+ influx by activating NMDA receptors and voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels, leading to oxidative stress and neural cell death.

Neonicotinoids currently dominate the insecticide market as seed treatments on Canada's major Prairie crops (e.g., canola). The potential impact to ecologically significant wetlands in this dominantly agro-environment has largely been overlooked while the distribution of use, incidence and level of contamination remains unreported. We modelled the spatial distribution of neonicotinoid use across the three Prairie Provinces in combination with temporal assessments of water and sediment concentrations in wetlands to measure four active ingredients (clothianidin, thiamethoxam, imidacloprid and acetamiprid). From 2009 to 2012, neonicotinoid use was increasing; by 2012, applications covered an estimated ~11 million hectares (44% of Prairie cropland) with >216,000 kg of active ingredients. Thiamethoxam, followed by clothianidin, were the dominant seed treatments by mass and area. Areas of high neonicotinoid use were identified as high density canola or soybean production. Water sampled four times from 136 wetlands (spring, summer, fall 2012 and spring 2013) across four rural municipalities in Saskatchewan similarly revealed clothianidin and thiamethoxam in the majority of samples.

On March 18, a majority of Dutch parliament rallied behind a motion of the Animal Welfare Party for a national ban on the use of all neonicotinoid insecticides in agriculture and retail sales. The Party for Animal Welfare has been campaigning for many years against the neonicotinoids. In early 2013 a parliamentary majority endorsed a motion of Esther Ouwehand for a European ban on the pesticides. Due to this motion the use of three types of neonicotinoids: imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam is now restricted in all 27 countries of the EU. However, the European ban on neonicotinoids only applies to selected crops which are attractive to bees like sunflowers, canola and maize; this means that as much as 80 % of crops which are treated with neonicotinoids in the Netherlands remain unaffected by the EU ban. Dutch Parliament now forced Secretary of State Dijksma to take further action. A majority of political parties: PvdA , SP, GL , D66 , 50 + and Freedom Party, endorsed a ban on ALL neonicotinoids in the Netherlands for all uses in agriculture, domestic gardens and landscape uses. The motion which was passed also demanded a complete ban on a related systemic pesticide, fipronil.