“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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France has passed a new law that will ban PFAS in several products including clothing and cosmetics.
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Landau, 21.01.2025 – In conventional agriculture, synthetic chemical pesticides are used in various crops such as arable farming, vegetable growing and viticulture. A study by the RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, recently published in the journal “Scientific Reports”, is the first to examine pesticide contamination over the course of a year. It shows that substances can be detected not only during the spraying periods in the fields, but also throughout the year and in adjacent meadows. The impact of these chronically detected complex pesticide mixtures on the environment has not been sufficiently investigated and could be significant.
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On the 12th of December 2024, the Winter Mingling took place, as every year, organized by the International Office & Welcome Center at RPTU Campus Landau, to welcome the new international students and celebrate the start of the winter semester. Janna, a student, tells us about it.
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With this third and last part of our series ‘Highlights of 2024’ we finish saying goodbye to 2024 and we welcome a new year of studying and research. Today we welcome a new member to the EcotoxBlog, and recap studies on riparian soil and macroinvertebrates.
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In this second part of the ‘Highlights of 2024’, we recap the projects and fieldwork conducted by the research teams at Uni Landau this year.
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In the first part of the ‘Highlights of 2024’, we give our readers a recap of the scientific publications we covered this year.
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The year 2024 is coming to a close and we want to take a moment to express our gratitude to each of you, for your interest, engagement and participation, that make the EcotoxBlog a vibrant community.
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In this blog post, Franziska Fiolka and colleagues discuss their study investigating flooding as a vector for organic pesticides, linking aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They assessed regularly and rarely flooded riparian plant contamination profiles in small streams around the Upper Rhine valley and found more and higher concentrations of organic pesticides in regularly flooded riparian soil and plants.
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