22
Apr
Editor’s Note: The board and staff at Beyond Pesticides wish you a Happy Earth Day 2026! Click here or the banner below to honor today, a day of education and action that embodies the power of people in their communities engaging to advance changes in policies and practices that meet the environmental and public health challenges of the day! (Beyond Pesticides, April 22, 2026) A study of the effects of flooding on aquatic-terrestrial pesticide transfer, published in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, finds heightened risks to riparian zone ecosystems as flooding frequency continues to increase with climate change. Riparian zones, recognized as biodiversity hotspots, “are increasingly subjected to various stressors, including chemical contaminants such as pesticides,” the authors state. As transportation of these compounds can occur not only through surface runoff but through flooding events, the frequency and duration of floods can greatly impact the cumulative effects of pesticides on soil health and organisms within ecosystems. In analyzing pesticide residues following simulated flooding within a controlled experiment, the researchers find: “[S]ix pesticides were detected exclusively in riparian root-zone soil following four repeated flooding events. Our findings indicate that both longer flood durations and repeated flooding events tend to increase […]
Posted in acetamiprid, Agriculture, Aquatic Organisms, Azoxystrobin, Beneficials, Biodiversity, boscalid, Climate, Climate Change, contamination, Earth Day, Ecosystem Services, fluopyram, Germany, Metalaxyl, Metolachlor, Pesticide Drift, Pesticide Mixtures, Pesticide Residues, soil health, spiroxamine, Water, Wildlife/Endangered Sp. | No Comments »
28
Mar
(Beyond Pesticides, March 28, 2025) The Rhine Valley in southwestern Germany is renowned for the agricultural bounty it has provided for centuries. Today, the area is home to dense wine, vegetable, fruit, and cereal cultivation. However, a study shows that current regulation of pesticides, even in the relatively progressive European Union, is inadequate to protect humans and all the other organisms that produce the environment necessary for human life and civilization. The study goal was to determine how far—and which—pesticides traveled beyond the croplands of vegetables, fruit orchards, and cereals, as well forested lands, into nontarget areas that should serve as refugia for plants, animals, and invertebrates not considered pests. Based at the Landau Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, the researchers used innovative methods to measure the types, concentrations, and distribution of pesticides. They took samples from three landscape categories—vegetation, topsoil, and surface water—at 78 sites distributed along six transects, each reaching from the valley floor to the tops of the mountains on either side. Samples were taken from grasses, shrub leaves, and topsoils along each transect, together with water samples from rivers, small streams, ponds, and puddles. They tested for 93 current-use pesticides (CUPs). There […]
Posted in Agriculture, boscalid, Chemical Mixtures, Clothianidin, cyflufenamid, Drift, European Union, fluopyram, Fungicides, Germany, Imidacloprid, International, metazachlor, pirimicarb, pyraclostrobin, spiroxamine, tebufenozide, thiacloprid, Uncategorized | No Comments »
