Researches on the contamination by pesticides of marine organisms within coral reef trophic webs in French Polynesia

Researches addressed in this paper have been carried out in the framework of a survey of the pollution levels by pesticides in French Polynesia coral reefs. A ubiquitous contamination has been shown up of critical organisms from various levels of the trophic web. Such a contamination occurs even in remote areas such as for example some atolls from the Tuamotu Archipelago where agricultural activities are very restricted. On one hand, the occurrence of organochlorine insecticides is shown widespread. Especially worrying is our finding of chlordecone (képone®) widely present in all organisms investigated, particularly in fishes, which are commonly consumed by the local inhabitants. Some concerns arise from these data as the average residence time of chlordecone in sediment numbers in thousands of years. On the other hand, analyses have demonstrated a pervasive contamination of coral reefs trophic webs by various major families of herbicides, namely chloroacetamide and triazine derivatives, as well as diuron. These findings are worrying with respect to the coral reefs ecosystems health, especially since their functioning is strongly dependent on the Symbiodinium zooxanthellae symbiosis with hermatypic coral, as the Symbiodinium Dinoflagellates that have proven especially sensitive to these families of herbicides. These can partially inhibit their photosynthetic activity at concentrations lower than one part per billion in seawaterÀ la suite des résultats déjà publiés sur la contamination par les pesticides d'organismes de récifs coralliens de Tahiti et de Moorea en Polynésie française, l'objectif de nos investigations a été d'étendre nos connaissances sur une éventuelle contamination dans d'autres îles et sur d'autres espèces. Une contamination ubiquiste de divers organismes majeurs des réseaux trophiques récifaux a été mise en évidence même dans des biotopes reculés comme certains atolls des Tuamotu où les activités agricoles sont très réduites voire inexistantes. La présence d'insecticides organochlorés, en particulier du lindane est quasi permanente. Particulièrement préoccupante est la présence généralisée de chlordécone dans tous les types d'organismes analysés, notamment dans les poissons, qui constituent une part importante de la nourriture des populations locales. Par ailleurs, nos recherches montrent une contamination étendue des organismes des réseaux trophiques récifaux par les herbicides dérivés de l'acide trichloracétique, des dérivés des triazines et par le diuron, une urée substituée. Cette contamination est inquiétante pour la santé future des écosystèmes coralliens et leur fonctionnement, tout particulièrement pour les coraux hermatypiques fortement dépendants de leur symbiose avec les zooxanthelles, Dinoflagellés du genre Symbiodinium. Des travaux antérieurs ont, en effet, démontré que leur activité photosynthétique pouvait être partiellement inhibée par des concentrations de ces herbicides dans l'eau de mer, inférieures à la partie par milliard

Wildlife ecological risk assessment in the 21st century: Promising technologies to assess toxicological effects

Despite advances in toxicity testing and the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) for hazard assessment, the ecological risk assessment (ERA) framework for terrestrial wildlife (i.e., air‐breathing amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) has remained unchanged for decades. While survival, growth, and reproductive endpoints derived from whole-animal toxicity tests are central to hazard assessment, nonstandard measures of biological effects at multiple levels of biological organization (e.g., molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organism, population, community, ecosystem) have the potential to enhance the relevance of prospective and retrospective wildlife ERAs. Other factors (e.g., indirect effects of contaminants on food supplies and infectious disease processes) are influenced by toxicants at individual, population, and community levels, and need to be factored into chemically based risk assessments to enhance the “eco” component of ERAs. Regulatory and logistical challenges often relegate such nonstandard endpoints and indirect effects to post-registration evaluations of pesticides and industrial chemicals and contaminated site evaluations. While NAMs are being developed, to date, their applications in ERAs focused on wildlife have been limited. No single magic tool or model will address all uncertainties in hazard assessment. Modernizing wildlife ERAs will likely entail combinations of laboratory‐ and field‐derived data at multiple levels of biological organization, knowledge collection solutions (e.g., systematic review, adverse outcome pathway frameworks), and inferential methods that facilitate integrations and risk estimations focused on species, populations, interspecific extrapolations, and ecosystem services modeling, with less dependence on whole‐animal data and simple hazard ratios

Scientific Opinion about the Guidance of the Chemical Regulation Directorate (UK) on how aged sorption studies for pesticides should be conducted, analysed and used in regulatory assessments

Abstract The EFSA Panel on Plant Protection Products and their Residues reviewed the guidance on how aged sorption studies for pesticides should be conducted, analysed and used in regulatory assessment. The inclusion of aged sorption is a higher tier in the groundwater leaching assessment. The Panel based its review on a test with three substances taken from a data set provided by the European Crop Protection Association. Particular points of attention were the quality of the data provided, the proposed fitting procedure of aged sorption experiments and the proposed method for combining results obtained from aged sorption studies and lower‐tier studies on degradation and adsorption. Aged sorption was a relevant process in all cases studied. The test revealed that the guidance could generally be well applied and resulted in robust and plausible results. The Panel considers the guidance suitable for use in the groundwater leaching assessment after the recommendations in this Scientific Opinion have been implemented, with the exception of the use of field data to derive aged sorption parameters. The Panel noted that the draft guidance could only be used by experienced users because there is no software tool that fully supports the work flow in the guidance document. It is therefore recommended that a user‐friendly software tool be developed. Aged sorption lowered the predicted concentration in groundwater. However, because aged sorption experiments may be conducted in different soils than lower‐tier degradation and adsorption experiments, it cannot be guaranteed that the higher tier predicts lower concentrations than the lower tier, while lower tiers should be more conservative than higher tiers. To mitigate this problem, the Panel recommends using all available higher‐ and lower‐tier data in the leaching assessment. The Panel further recommends that aged sorption parameters for metabolites be derived only from metabolite‐dosed studies. The formation fraction can be derived from parent‐dosed degradation studies, provided that the parent and metabolite are fitted with the best‐fit model, which is the double first‐order in parallel model in the case of aged sorption

Investigation into experimental toxicological properties of plant protection products having a potential link to Parkinson's disease and childhood leukaemia

In 2013, EFSA published a literature review on epidemiological studies linking exposure to pesticides and human health outcome. As a follow up, the EFSA Panel on Plant Protection Products and their residues (PPR Panel) was requested to investigate the plausible involvement of pesticide exposure as a risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD) and childhood leukaemia (CHL). A systematic literature review on PD and CHL and mode of actions for pesticides was published by EFSA in 2016 and used as background documentation. The Panel used the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) conceptual framework to define the biological plausibility in relation to epidemiological studies by means of identification of specific symptoms of the diseases as AO. The AOP combines multiple information and provides knowledge of biological pathways, highlights species differences and similarities, identifies research needs and supports regulatory decisions. In this context, the AOP approach could help in organising the available experimental knowledge to assess biological plausibility by describing the link between a molecular initiating event (MIE) and the AO through a series of biologically plausible and essential key events (KEs). As the AOP is chemically agnostic, tool chemical compounds were selected to empirically support the response and temporal concordance of the key event relationships (KERs). Three qualitative and one putative AOP were developed by the Panel using the results obtained. The Panel supports the use of the AOP framework to scientifically and transparently explore the biological plausibility of the association between pesticide exposure and human health outcomes, identify data gaps, define a tailored testing strategy and suggests an AOP’s informed Integrated Approach for Testing and Assessment (IATA)

A review of constraints and solutions for collecting raptor samples and contextual data for a European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility

The COST Action ‘European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility’ (ERBFacility) aims to develop pan-European raptor biomonitoring in support of better chemicals management in Europe, using raptors as sentinel species. This presents a significant challenge involving a range of constraints that must be identified and addressed. The aims of this study were to: (1) carry out a comprehensive review of the constraints that may limit the gathering in the field of raptor samples and contextual data, and assess their relative importance across Europe; and (2) identify and discuss possible solutions to the key constraints that were identified. We applied a participatory approach to identify constraints and to discuss feasible solutions. Thirty-one constraints were identified, which were divided into four categories: legal, methodological, spatial coverage, and skills constraints. To assess the importance of the constraints and their possible solutions, we collected information through scientific workshops and by distributing a questionnaire to stakeholders in all the countries involved in ERBFacility. We obtained 74 answers to the questionnaire, from 24 of the 39 COST participating countries. The most important constraints identified were related to the collection of complex contextual data about sources of contamination, and the low number of existing raptor population national/regional monitoring schemes and ecological studies that could provide raptor samples. Legal constraints, such as permits to allow the collection of invasive samples, and skills constraints, such as the lack of expertise to practice necropsies, were also highlighted. Here, we present solutions for all the constraints identified, thus suggesting the feasibility of establishing a long-term European Raptor Sampling Programme as a key element of the planned European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility.This paper is based on work from COST Action European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility (COST Action CA16224) supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), including a grant for a short-term scientific mission awarded to the lead author. COST is funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. Silvia Espín was financially supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación postdoctoral contract, IJCI-2017-34653).Peer reviewe

A review of constraints and solutions for collecting raptor samples and contextual data for a European raptor biomonitoring facility

The COST Action ‘European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility’ (ERBFacility) aims to develop pan-European raptor biomonitoring in support of better chemicals management in Europe, using raptors as sentinel species. This presents a significant challenge involving a range of constraints that must be identified and addressed. The aims of this study were to: (1) carry out a comprehensive review of the constraints that may limit the gathering in the field of raptor samples and contextual data, and assess their relative importance across Europe; and (2) identify and discuss possible solutions to the key constraints that were identified. We applied a participatory approach to identify constraints and to discuss feasible solutions. Thirty-one constraints were identified, which were divided into four categories: legal, methodological, spatial coverage, and skills constraints. To assess the importance of the constraints and their possible solutions, we collected information through scientific workshops and by distributing a questionnaire to stakeholders in all the countries involved in ERBFacility. We obtained 74 answers to the questionnaire, from 24 of the 39 COST participating countries. The most important constraints identified were related to the collection of complex contextual data about sources of contamination, and the low number of existing raptor population national/regional monitoring schemes and ecological studies that could provide raptor samples. Legal constraints, such as permits to allow the collection of invasive samples, and skills constraints, such as the lack of expertise to practice necropsies, were also highlighted. Here, we present solutions for all the constraints identified, thus suggesting the feasibility of establishing a long-term European Raptor Sampling Programme as a key element of the planned European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility

Intoxications des bovins par les pesticides (analyse statistique des données du CNITV (1995-2004) et conséquences pratiques pour le vétérinaire)

LYON1-BU Santé (693882101) / SudocTOULOUSE-EN Vétérinaire (315552301) / SudocSudocFranceF