Toward pesticidovigilance:Can lessons from pharmaceutical monitoring help to improve pesticide regulation?

Agricultural pesticides are an important component of intensive agriculture and, therefore, of global food production. In the European Union, ∼500 active substances used in pesticides are approved, including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and plant growth regulators. When used at industrial scales, pesticides can harm the environment (1), but there is a trade-off between this effect and the need to produce food. Recent uncertainties about the health and environmental effects of glyphosate herbicide and neonicotinoid insecticides underline the need for regulation to be sensitive to this trade-off (2, 3). Better regulation is needed to control how pesticides are used and affect the environment at a landscape scale.PostprintPeer reviewe

Quality assessment tools for evidence from environmental science

Assessment of the quality of studies is a critical component of evidence syntheses such as systematic reviews (SRs) that are used to inform policy decisions. To reduce the potential for reviewer bias, and to ensure that the findings of SRs are transparent and reproducible, organisations such as the Cochrane Collaboration, the Campbell Collaboration, and the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, recommend the use of formal quality assessment tools as opposed to informal expert judgment. However, there is a bewildering array of around 300 formal quality assessment tools that have been identified in the literature, and it has been demonstrated that the use of different tools for the assessment of the same studies can result in different estimates of quality, which can potentially reverse the conclusions of a SR. It is therefore important to consider carefully, the choice of quality assessment tool. We argue that quality assessment tools should: (1) have proven construct validity (i.e. the assessment criteria have demonstrable link with what they purport to measure), (2) facilitate inter-reviewer agreement, (3) be applicable across study designs, and (4) be quick and easy to use. Our aim was to examine current best practice for quality assessment in healthcare and investigate the extent to which these best practices could be useful for assessing the quality of environmental science studies. The feasibility of this transfer is demonstrated in a number of existing SRs on environmental topics. We propose that environmental practitioners should revise, test and adopt the best practice quality assessment tools used in healthcare as a recommended approach for application to environmental science. We provide pilot versions of quality assessment tools, modified from the best practice tools used in healthcare, for application on studies from environmental science.</p

Acompañar a las nuevas voces en la publicación sobre migraciones forzadas

El feedback recibido de los autores que participaron en un nuevo programa de mentoría ofrece percepciones útiles sobre cómo aumentar la inclusión de las perspectivas infrarrepresentadas en las publicaciones sobre migraciones forzadas

The public health implications of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study.

BACKGROUND: nationally determined contributions (NDCs) serve to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of staying "well below 2°C", which could also yield substantial health co-benefits in the process. However, existing NDC commitments are inadequate to achieve this goal. Placing health as a key focus of the NDCs could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realise health co-benefits. We modelled scenarios to analyse the health co-benefits of NDCs for the year 2040 for nine representative countries (ie, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the USA) that were selected for their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and their global or regional influence. METHODS: Modelling the energy, food and agriculture, and transport sectors, and mortality related to risk factors of air pollution, diet, and physical activity, we analysed the health co-benefits of existing NDCs and related policies (ie, the current pathways scenario) for 2040 in nine countries around the world. We compared these health co-benefits with two alternative scenarios, one consistent with the goal of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (ie, the sustainable pathways scenario), and one in line with the sustainable pathways scenario, but also placing health as a central focus of the policies (ie, the health in all climate policies scenario). FINDINGS: Compared with the current pathways scenario, the sustainable pathways scenario resulted in an annual reduction of 1·18 million air pollution-related deaths, 5·86 million diet-related deaths, and 1·15 million deaths due to physical inactivity, across the nine countries, by 2040. Adopting the more ambitious health in all climate policies scenario would result in a further reduction of 462 000 annual deaths attributable to air pollution, 572 000 annual deaths attributable to diet, and 943 000 annual deaths attributable to physical inactivity. These benefits were attributable to the mitigation of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the commensurate actions that reduce exposure to harmful pollutants, as well as improved diets and safe physical activity. INTERPRETATION: A greater consideration of health in the NDCs and climate change mitigation policies has the potential to yield considerable health benefits as well as achieve the "well below 2°C" commitment across a range of regional and economic contexts. FUNDING: This work was in part funded through an unrestricted grant from the Wellcome Trust (award number 209734/Z/17/Z) and supported by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant (grant number EP/R035288/1)

The public health implications of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study.

BACKGROUND: nationally determined contributions (NDCs) serve to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of staying "well below 2°C", which could also yield substantial health co-benefits in the process. However, existing NDC commitments are inadequate to achieve this goal. Placing health as a key focus of the NDCs could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realise health co-benefits. We modelled scenarios to analyse the health co-benefits of NDCs for the year 2040 for nine representative countries (ie, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the USA) that were selected for their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and their global or regional influence. METHODS: Modelling the energy, food and agriculture, and transport sectors, and mortality related to risk factors of air pollution, diet, and physical activity, we analysed the health co-benefits of existing NDCs and related policies (ie, the current pathways scenario) for 2040 in nine countries around the world. We compared these health co-benefits with two alternative scenarios, one consistent with the goal of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (ie, the sustainable pathways scenario), and one in line with the sustainable pathways scenario, but also placing health as a central focus of the policies (ie, the health in all climate policies scenario). FINDINGS: Compared with the current pathways scenario, the sustainable pathways scenario resulted in an annual reduction of 1·18 million air pollution-related deaths, 5·86 million diet-related deaths, and 1·15 million deaths due to physical inactivity, across the nine countries, by 2040. Adopting the more ambitious health in all climate policies scenario would result in a further reduction of 462 000 annual deaths attributable to air pollution, 572 000 annual deaths attributable to diet, and 943 000 annual deaths attributable to physical inactivity. These benefits were attributable to the mitigation of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the commensurate actions that reduce exposure to harmful pollutants, as well as improved diets and safe physical activity. INTERPRETATION: A greater consideration of health in the NDCs and climate change mitigation policies has the potential to yield considerable health benefits as well as achieve the "well below 2°C" commitment across a range of regional and economic contexts. FUNDING: This work was in part funded through an unrestricted grant from the Wellcome Trust (award number 209734/Z/17/Z) and supported by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant (grant number EP/R035288/1)

The three-peat challenge : business as usual, responsible agriculture, and conservation and restoration as management trajectories in global peatlands

FundingThis work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council [grant numbers NE/X015238/1; NE/ V006444/1; NE/V018760/1], the Royal Geographical Society (RBEA 02.21), the Royal Society (RGS\R2\202229), and Growing Health (BB/X010953/1) BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The marine isotope stage 1–5 cryptotephra record of Tenaghi Philippon, Greece:Towards a detailed tephrostratigraphic framework for the Eastern Mediterranean region

The iconic climate archive of Tenaghi Philippon (TP), NE Greece, allows the study of short-term palaeoclimatic and environmental change throughout the past 1.3 Ma. To provide high-quality age control for detailed palaeoclimate reconstructions based on the TP archive, (crypto)tephra studies of a peat core ‘TP-2005’ have been carried out for the 0–130 ka interval. The results show that the TP basin is ideally positioned to receive tephra fall from both the Italian and Aegean Arc volcanic provinces. Two visible tephra layers, the Santorini Cape Riva/Y-2 (c. 22 ka) and the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI)/Y-5 (c. 39.8 ka) tephras, and six primary cryptotephra layers, namely the early Holocene E1 tephra from the Aeolian Islands (c. 8.3 ka), the Campanian Y-3 (c. 29 ka) and X-6 tephras (c. 109.5 ka), as well as counterpart tephras TM-18-1d (c. 40.4 ka), TM-23-11 (c. 92.4 ka) and TM-33-1a (c. 116.7 ka) from the Lago Grande di Monticchio sequence (southern Italy), were identified along with repeatedly redeposited Y-2 and CI tephra material. Bayesian modelling of the ages of seven of the primary tephra layers, 60 radiocarbon measurements and 20 palynological control points have been applied to markedly improve the chronology of the TP archive. This revised chronology constrains the age of tephra TM-18-1d to 40.90–41.66 cal ka BP (95.4% range). Several tephra layers identified in the TP record form important isochrons for correlating this archive with other terrestrial (e.g., Lago Grande di Monticchio, Sulmona Basin and Lake Ohrid) and marine (e.g., Adriatic Sea core PRAD 1-2 and Aegean Sea core LC21) palaeoclimate records in the Mediterranean region