The SETAC 13th Young Environmental Scientists (YES) meeting took place from the 11th to the 14th of August in York, United Kingdom. Katharina Wifling and I, Verónica Rodriguez, attended the conference to present our research. Katharina presented a poster based on her RPC, while I presented a poster on my master’s thesis.
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Every day, we inhale and exhale without a second thought. Why? Because we believe we breathe fresh air. The fresh air we hope to breathe consists of a mixture of simple gases, mainly oxygen and nitrogen. However, this air can be polluted with very different tiny particles emitted from natural sources and human (anthropogenic) activities in our day-to-day life, which might be harmful to our health. These tiny particles are known as nanoparticles. This blog post explains how nanoparticles are released in our environment, their sources, how they end up in the air we breathe, the nanoparticle cocktail in urban and rural areas, and their potentially harmful effects on humans and the environment.
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Pesticides on the peaks: Alpine study made the Top 25 of 2024 in Communications Earth & Environment.
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A new meta-analysis of 159 studies and 350 experimental observations offers key insights on the impact of chemical pollution on freshwater ecosystem functions
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A new study on water monitoring data from a six decade period, highlights the challenges and opportunities of large-scale chemical monitoring and data analysis to assess environmental risks.
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Master’s Student Tithi Paul walks us through the ETX1 Excursion that students take part in during the first semester. This excursion offers an interdisciplinary exploration of pesticide exposure, biodiversity conservation, and freshwater ecology through direct interaction with stakeholders and ecosystems.
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Surface waters are polluted with a variety of contaminants, including synthetic pesticides. A study by Franziska Fiolka and colleagues from the RTG SystemLink in Landau, recently published in the journal “Chemosphere”, is the first to examine if repeated flood events lead to an increase in pesticide concentration in the riparian zone, including plant-feeding insects. It shows that pesticide concentrations in soil and nettle increase with an increase in flooding frequency, and further, that aphids feeding on contaminated riparian plants are able to take up these pesticides.
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Modern agro-ecosystems are extensively contaminated with pesticides, but the effects of these chemicals on insect biodiversity are poorly understood. Jan Erik Sedelmeir reports in this blog post about a new study, carried out at the Department of Applied Entomology at the University of Hohenheim under the direction of Georg Petschenka.
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“Insects and other arthropods are disappearing at an alarming rate all over Europe and pesticides play a major role.” Recently the European Pesticide Action Network (PAN) interviewed Professor Dr. Carsten Brühl, specialist in ecotoxicology.
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Landau, 12.03.2025 – A new study by the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, published in Communications Earth & Environment, shows extensive pesticide contamination in the landscape of the Upper Rhine Region. Pesticides disperse across the entire landscape, contaminating soil, vegetation, and water far beyond agricultural zones. The findings shed new light on the potential environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. According to the researchers, pesticide use must be reduced urgently in order to protect non-target areas around fields, orchards and vineyards.
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