Defining pesticide water quality standards for multi-use water resources to protect human health.

Regulatory agencies worldwide established water quality standards (WQS) for pesticides primarily based on human exposure via drinking water ingestion. However, pesticide exposure varies by water use. This study defined six water usage types (drinking water, recreational waters, fisheries and aquaculture, natural reservations and conservation areas, rural water uses, and urban water uses) and derived corresponding WQSs based on pathway-specific and aggregated human exposure and associated health risks.

Occurrence of pesticide residues in harvested products of various crops from European conventional and organic farming systems.

The occurrence of 192 pesticide residues was analysed in harvested products from conventional (CF) and organic farms (OF) across European countries, focusing on vineyards, orchards, vegetables, oilseeds, and cereals. Pesticide residues were detected in 85.7 % of CF samples, with 71.

Calibrating Predicted Mixture Toxic Pressure to Observed Biodiversity Loss in Aquatic Ecosystems.

Unlike practices in applied ecology, assessing the impact of chemical pollution on biodiversity depends on species sensitivity data from laboratory toxicity effect tests. There are ~12,000 chemicals with such data, enabling quantification of a metric that characterizes the magnitude of the toxic pressure of chemical mixtures on aquatic organisms. However, the calibration between this lab-based metric and biodiversity effects in the field is lacking.

Pesticides in soils as a source of residues in food after two years conversion to organic farming.

Pesticide residues in organic food can stem from non-intentional contamination or from fraudulent practices. The purpose of this study is to develop a pattern that allows to differentiate soil-derived pesticide residues in organic food from other sources. Using datasets from Germany for 90 pesticides, we tested four hypothesis concerning the statistical connection between sold quantities of pesticides, residues in soil and food, and chemical properties of the concerned substances.

Assessing human toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts of agricultural pesticide use in Iran based on the USEtox model.

The human health and ecotoxicity impacts of agricultural pesticide use in Iran in 2022 were estimated. The impacts of agricultural pesticide use in Iran by pesticide, crop, and province were assessed based on the USEtox model in terms of disability-adjusted life year (DALY) for human health and potentially disappeared fraction of freshwater ecosystem species (PDF) for ecotoxicity. The annual mass of agricultural pesticide use in Iran in 2022 was 17,188 tons, consisting of herbicides (46.

Uptake and translocation of pesticides in pepper and tomato plants.

Background: In this study, field and greenhouse experiments were done with spray application of the insecticides acetamiprid, indoxacarb, deltamethrin, λ-cyhalothrin, spinosad, chlorantraniliprole on pepper and tomato plants. Results were interpreted with numerical modeling.

Results: Observed fruit concentration dynamics could be described overall well by modeling.

Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture.

Agriculture's global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture's environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change-reinforcing feedback loop.

Characterizing Freshwater Ecotoxicity of More Than 9000 Chemicals by Combining Different Levels of Available Measured Test Data with In Silico Predictions.

Ecotoxicological impacts of chemicals released into the environment are characterized by combining fate, exposure, and effects. For characterizing effects, species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) estimate toxic pressures of chemicals as the potentially affected fraction of species. Life cycle assessment (LCA) uses SSDs to identify products with lowest ecotoxicological impacts.

Data-Driven Characterization of Genetic Variability in Disease Pathways and Pesticide-Induced Nervous System Disease in the United States Population.

Background: Genetic susceptibility to chemicals is incompletely characterized. However, nervous system disease development following pesticide exposure can vary in a population, implying some individuals may have higher genetic susceptibility to pesticide-induced nervous system disease.

Objectives: We aimed to build a computational approach to characterize single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) implicated in chemically induced adverse outcomes and used this framework to assess the link between differential population susceptibility to pesticides and human nervous system disease.

Challenges and opportunities when moving food production and consumption toward sustainable diets in the Nordics: a scoping review for Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023.

The terms 'Nordic countries' or 'The Nordics' include the five countries Denmark, Finland, Island, Norway, and Sweden. This review includes evaluation of the Nordic countries against Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)/World Health Organizations' (WHO) guiding principles for healthy, sustainable diets with respect to environmental impact (principles #9 - #13) and sociocultural aspects (principles #14 - #16). A food systems perspective is taken to summarize and discuss the most important challenges and opportunities for achieving sustainable diets.

Two-Stage Machine Learning-Based Approach to Predict Points of Departure for Human Noncancer and Developmental/Reproductive Effects.

Chemical points of departure (PODs) for critical health effects are crucial for evaluating and managing human health risks and impacts from exposure. However, PODs are unavailable for most chemicals in commerce due to a lack of toxicity data. We therefore developed a two-stage machine learning (ML) framework to predict human-equivalent PODs for oral exposure to organic chemicals based on chemical structure.

Near-field exposures and human health impacts for organic chemicals in interior paints: A high-throughput screening.

Interior paints contain organic chemicals that might be harmful to painters and building residents. This study aims to develop a high-throughput approach to screen near-field human exposures and health impacts related to organic chemicals in interior paints. We developed mass balance models for both water- and solvent-based paints, predicting emissions during wet and dry phases.

Quantifying pesticide emissions for drift deposition in comparative risk and impact assessment.

Estimating emissions of chemical pesticides used in agriculture is an essential component in evaluating the potential toxicity-related impacts on humans and ecosystems in various comparative risk and impact assessment frameworks, such as life cycle assessment, environmental footprinting, absolute environmental sustainability assessment, chemical substitution, and risk prioritization. Emissions related to drift deposition-usually derived from drift experiments-can reach non-target areas, and vary as a function of crop characteristics and application technique. We derive cumulative drift deposition fractions for a wide range of experimental drift functions for use in comparative and mass-balanced approaches.

Potential for Machine Learning to Address Data Gaps in Human Toxicity and Ecotoxicity Characterization.

Machine Learning (ML) is increasingly applied to fill data gaps in assessments to quantify impacts associated with chemical emissions and chemicals in products. However, the systematic application of ML-based approaches to fill chemical data gaps is still limited, and their potential for addressing a wide range of chemicals is unknown. We prioritized chemical-related parameters for chemical toxicity characterization to inform ML model development based on two criteria: (1) each parameter's relevance to robustly characterize chemical toxicity described by the uncertainty in characterization results attributable to each parameter and (2) the potential for ML-based approaches to predict parameter values for a wide range of chemicals described by the availability of chemicals with measured parameter data.

Including the bioconcentration of pesticide metabolites in plant uptake modeling.

Although several models of pesticide uptake into plants are available, there are few modeling studies on the bioconcentration of metabolites in plants. Ignoring metabolites in plant uptake models can result in an underestimation of the parent compound's overall impacts on human health associated with pesticide residues in harvested food crops. To address this limitation, we offer a metabolite-based plant uptake model to predict the bioconcentration of the parent compound and its metabolites in plants.

Micro- and nanoplastics in soil: Linking sources to damage on soil ecosystem services in life cycle assessment.

Soil ecosystems are crucial for providing vital ecosystem services (ES), and are increasingly pressured by the intensification and expansion of human activities, leading to potentially harmful consequences for their related ES provision. Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs), associated with releases from various human activities, have become prevalent in various soil ecosystems and pose a global threat. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a tool for evaluating environmental performance of product and technology life cycles, has yet to adequately include MNPs-related damage to soil ES, owing to factors like uncertainties in MNPs environmental fate and ecotoxicological effects, and characterizing related damage on soil species loss, functional diversity, and ES.

System Approach for Characterizing and Evaluating Factors for Occupational Health Impacts Due to Nonfatal Injuries and Illnesses for the Use in Life Cycle Assessment.

Occupational injuries and illnesses are major risk factors for human health impacts worldwide, but they have not been consistently nor comprehensively considered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods. In this study, we quantified occupational health impacts as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for nonfatal injuries and illnesses in all US industries. We further applied an economic input-output model of the US economy to develop a new data set of characterization factors (CFs) that links direct and indirect occupational health impacts to product life cycle final demand.

FAIR environmental and health registry (FAIREHR)- supporting the science to policy interface and life science research, development and innovation.

The environmental impact on health is an inevitable by-product of human activity. Environmental health sciences is a multidisciplinary field addressing complex issues on how people are exposed to hazardous chemicals that can potentially affect adversely the health of present and future generations. Exposure sciences and environmental epidemiology are becoming increasingly data-driven and their efficiency and effectiveness can significantly improve by implementing the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles for scientific data management and stewardship.

Probabilistic Points of Departure and Reference Doses for Characterizing Human Noncancer and Developmental/Reproductive Effects for 10,145 Chemicals.

Background: Regulatory toxicity values used to assess and manage chemical risks rely on the determination of the point of departure (POD) for a critical effect, which results from a comprehensive and systematic assessment of available toxicity studies. However, regulatory assessments are only available for a small fraction of chemicals.

Objectives: Using experimental animal data from the U.

Modernizing persistence-bioaccumulation-toxicity (PBT) assessment with high throughput animal-free methods.

The assessment of persistence (P), bioaccumulation (B), and toxicity (T) of a chemical is a crucial first step at ensuring chemical safety and is a cornerstone of the European Union's chemicals regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals). Existing methods for PBT assessment are overly complex and cumbersome, have produced incorrect conclusions, and rely heavily on animal-intensive testing. We explore how new-approach methodologies (NAMs) can overcome the limitations of current PBT assessment.

Advances and opportunities in integrating economic and environmental performance of renewable products.

There is a growing global need to transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy to produce fuels, chemicals, food, and materials. In the specific context of industrial biotechnology, a successful transition toward a sustainable development requires not only steering investment toward a bioeconomy, but also responsibly introducing bio-based products with lower footprints and competitive market prices. A comprehensive sustainability assessment framework applied along various research stages to guide bio-based product development is urgently needed but currently missing.