86,760 research outputs found
Biological Monitoring for Pesticide Risk Assessment in Farmers and Rural Population with a Tiered Protocol
No full textOBJECTIVES:
The assessment of exposure and of exposure-related risk for pesticides is a burdensome and expensive task. Since farmers are often exposed to many active substances, several times per year, at different working and environmental conditions, and their families, including children pregnant and breastfeeding women, the elderly, share the same environment, biological monitoring is the most promising technique for this purpose. However, there is still a difficulty to use the actual results of biological monitoring to assess individual risk, mainly due to the lack of suitable exposure limits.
METHODS:
To overcome this knowledge gap, the ICRH is currently establishing provisional Equivalent Biological Exposure Limits (EBELs) for priority pesticides. This multi-tiered approach exploits the extensive, although scattered information available in the scientific literature, in the authorization documents available from regulatory bodies, and the analysis of results from field studies.
RESULTS:
The established theoretical and computational basis and examples of the employed approach will be presented. In particular, it is possible to discriminate occupational exposure from agricultural tasks, including re-entry into treated fields, repair of agricultural equipment, from that of everyday life, from drinking water and from food. As proof-of-principle, the proposal of provisional EBELs for some priority pesticides, and an application to different agricultural tasks performed by Italian wine growers will be demonstrated.
CONCLUSIONS:
The establishment of a robust protocol for the determination of EBELs will allow individual risk assessment for farmers, for their families and for the general population of rural areas with moderate effort and cost.
REFERENCES:
Rubino FM, Mandic-Rajcevic S, Colosio C. et al. Toxicol Lett. 2012 Apr 25;210(2):189-97.
Colosio C, Rubino FM, Alegakis A, Mandic-Rajcevic S, et al. Toxicol Lett. 2012 Aug 13;213(1):49-56
From Field Studies to Scenario-Based Risk Assessment: an Online Pesticide Risk Assessment Platform
No full textRisk assessment for applicators, among other categories, is required by law before an active substance is put on the market, and this process is usually done using the German model or the EURO-POEM. Nevertheless, real-life use of Plant Protection Products may differ substancially from the scenarios covered by the pre-market risk assessment, as many field studies have revealed, but pesticide exposure and risk assessment remains one of the most burdensome, expensive and rarely done activity in rural areas. Many scientific exposure studies have been done up to date, but their outputs and results are rarely used after the work has been published in scientific journals. At the International Centre for Rural Health (ICRH), we have been developing methods, namely “Exposure and Risk Profiles”, in order to use the pesticide exposure and risk measurements done by our institution for higher tier exposure and risk assessment without additional laboratory analysis.
Our studies are based on a standardized questionnaire developed at the ICRH specifically for this activity, as well as a collection protocol for personal and biological exposure monitoring. We standardized all our results to typical work-days’ exposure, controlling for work characteristics and personal protective devices.
Based on a study of 37 work-days of mancozeb application, we have developed exposure and risk profiles for closed (with air filters) and open tractor application. For mancozeb as the active substance, median risk was 0.12% of AOEL saturation, 0.10% for closed, and 0.28% for open tractors. Considering all use scenarios, the risk never exceeded 50% of AOEL saturation for mancozeb, and extrapolating to other active substances showed a risk only for substances with a very low AOEL together with high dermal absorption and use rate, most of which have been taken off the market.
We propose a multi-level, multi-tier approach. The first tier approach would offer risk assessment done using the German model. The user would then request the exposure and risk estimate using our field data (higher tier), adjusted of course, for the active substance of the user’s choice. As a final step, the user can receive an analysis of most exposed regions, as well as the preventive measures which could reduce the exposure the most, the multi-level analysis
Light, sediment, temperature, and the early life-history of the habitat-forming alga Cystoseira barbata
No full textRecruitment is essential for the maintenance of populations, but far more is typically known about the more easily-observed adult stages than their smaller, often microscopic early life-history counterparts. This discrepancy can be particularly problematic for populations of foundation species that create biogenic habitat for a multitude of other taxa, but are themselves prime candidates for exploitation, fragmentation, and loss, and therefore become the focus of restoration efforts partly or fully dependent on recruitment. The purpose of this study was to improve ecological understanding for early life-history stages of the habitat-forming marine alga Cystoseira barbata (Stackhouse) C. Agardh (Fucales: Sargassaceae), member of a genus that has experienced considerable fragmentation and population decline on European coasts. Using experimental manipulations of water temperature, light intensity, and sediment accumulation, we observed that sediment virtually precluded recruitment of C. barbata, and greatly impacted the survival of recently settled germlings (up to ~83% mortality). Stronger intensities of light facilitated the growth of germlings, including the capacity for ~50% of them to outgrow detrimental sediment and survive. Temperature (10 vs. 16°C) had no effect on early recruitment, survival, or growth. This information helps to identify likely causes and locations of recruitment failure, and by extension, the conditions needed (either naturally or through human intervention) to facilitate recruitment and possible habitat restoration. Ultimately, this knowledge can increase our capacity to predict population persistence and the likely success of restoration efforts.Andrew D. Irving, David Balata, Francesco Colosio, Guillaume A. Ferrando and Laura Airold
Palliative treatment with covered, self-expandable nitinol stent of transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of urethra: a treatment potentially applicable to human
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Colonization patterns of epibenthic invertebrates on subtidal hard bottoms in the northern Adriatic Sea
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