Tag Archives: pesticides

AMEO experience: IRET-UNA in Costa Rica – Lukas Reinhard (2022)

In this blogpost, Lukas Reinhard shares his internship experience at the Central American Institute of Studies on Toxic Substances (IRET) of Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica. Students of the Environmental Pollution Management (Ecotoxicology)  Program complete an 8-week internship each year, the so-called “AMEO”. The AMEO is performed either at an external university, governmental or industrial research institute  where students learn to apply the competences achieved during their study. Students also use this opportunity to travel and explore not only Germany, but also other countries.

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Actually protected? Pesticides in nature conservation areas

In this blogpost, Jakob Wolfram talks about his recent study “Pesticide occurrence in protected surface waters in nature conservation areas of Germany”. In the study, he analyzed millions of records detailing the occurrence of pesticides in surface waters. The study showed that pesticides frequently occur in strictly protected nature conservation areas and could jeopardize their ecological integrity. 

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Glimpse of 2022 (Part 2)

In this second installment of the ‘Glimpse of the year 2022’ series, we give our readers a glance of another 3 most visited posts in this year. 

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Glimpse of 2022 (Part 1)

In the first part of the ‘Glimpse of the year 2022’ series, we give our readers a glance of 3 most visited posts about scientific publications in this year. 

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Excursion to Mals in South Tyrol: Pesticide monitoring along an altitudinal gradient

In May 2022, a couple of M.Sc. Ecotoxicology students along with Carsten Brühl went to South Tyrol (Italy) to investigate the distribution of pesticides in alpine environments. A part of the group were students from the module Methods in Ecotoxicology, that includes a block lecture and a laboratory test and this year also a field part to perform exposure measurements. The Landau group met with Johann Zaller from BOKU Vienna, author of Daily Poison.

In this blogpost, two of those students, Ken Mauser and Nina Engelhard, present the reason for going to South Tyrol, some brief details about the study and their experience.

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How will insecticides affect streams under climate change?

How climate change will alter the effects of toxicants is a key concern in the 21st Century. Rising water temperature can increase the toxicity of some contaminants to stream-dwelling animals in laboratory conditions, as has been shown for the most widely used insecticides in the world – the neonicotinoids. But until this study, whether this translates to more realistic environmental scenarios remained to be tested. In this blogpost, Sam Macaulay talks about his mesocosm experiment studying the effects of rising water temperatures and neonicotinoids on stream invertebrate communities.

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Why coffee makes you alert after a heavy lunch: Mixture neurotoxicity explained through the lens of zebrafish behaviour

In this blogpost, Fola Ogungbemi talks about the effects of mixtures of neuroactive substances. Risk assessment of chemicals is usually conducted for individual chemicals whereas mixtures of chemicals occur in the environment. Considering that neuroactive chemicals are a group of contaminants that dominate the environment, it is then imperative to understand the effects of mixtures of neuroactive substances.

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