E-scooters are linked with injuries and hospital visits, but we can't say they are riskier than bikes yet

by Milad Haghani and Clara Zwack, The Conversation

 FEBRUARY 4, 2024

Data source: Royal Automobile Club of Queensland. Credit: CC BY-SA

E-scooters are a popular new feature of urban mobility, offering an eco-friendly solution with zero exhaust emissions and agility in city spaces. They make an attractive option for "last-mile" commuting—bridging the gap between public transport and final destinations.

Tourists like them, too, as a convenient way to explore new cities.

Launched in Singapore in 2016, the global electric scooter market is valued at more than US$33.18 billion (A$49 billion) and is growing each year by around 10%.

More than 600 cities globally have embraced e-scooter sharing programs, yet reactions to these micro-mobility vehicles vary, making them a contentious urban planning issue.

Cities such as San Francisco and Madrid initially banned e-scooters, citing safety and public space concerns, but later introduced regulations for their use. Paris conducted a referendum, resulting in an e-scooter ban.

In Australia, the response has been more welcoming, though regulations differ across states and territories. What do we know about how safe e-scooters are? And what can we learn from other cities?

More e-scooters means more injuries

The growing popularity of e-scooters worldwide, including in Australian cities, has been mirrored by a significant rise in related injuries and hospital admissions.

Most of these incidents involve males in their late 20s or early 30s, commonly sustaining head, face and limb injuries. There is consistently low helmet use in those injured. Also, about 30% of people who go to hospital with e-scooter injuries have elevated blood alcohol levels. Crashes involving riders under the influence of alcohol are associated with more severe head and face injuries.

A study examining data from the Royal Melbourne Hospital reported 256 e-scooter-related injuries in the year to January 2023—including nine pedestrians—with a total hospitalization cost of A$1.9 million.

In Queensland, e-scooter-related presentations to hospitals rose from 279 in 2019 to 877 in 2022. By September of 2023, this figure had already reached 801 (full-year figures weren't available yet). Similar trends are seen in almost every city that has introduced e-scooters.

But are e-scooters riskier than other transport?

All modes of transport come with inherent safety risks. While trauma patient records in Western Australia show an almost 200% annual increase between 2017 and 2022 in e-scooter related admissions, these figures still remain well below those for cyclist injuries.

We need to understand the relative risk of e-scooters—a newcomer to the mobility market—and compare it to other established forms of transport. A proper assessment also considers exposure—the total number of trips and the distance covered.

A study in the United Kingdom, incorporating exposure factors using data from an e-scooter rideshare operator and hospital admissions combined, indicates that although hospital presentations increased during the e-scooter trial period, the injury rate was comparable to that of bicycles.

But it might be a different story when it comes to the severity of injuries. Some studies suggest a higher incidence of severe trauma among e-scooter users compared to cyclists. One study of more than 5,000 patients treated at a major trauma center in Paris found that, while the mortality rate from e-scooter crashes wasn't higher than that of bicycles or motorbikes, the risk of severe traumatic brain injuries was slightly higher than bicycles (26% compared to 22%).

There is evidence e-scooter riders tend to engage in significantly more risky behavior than cyclists. Compared to injured bicyclists, those injured while riding e-scooters:

• tend to be younger
• are more frequently found to be intoxicated
• exhibit a lower rate of helmet use
• and are more commonly involved in accidents at night or on weekends.
• Provided by The Conversation This article is republished from 
• The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why children should not ride e-scooters

Parisians vote in anti-SUV parking and pollution referendum

by Pierrick YVON, Marie DHUMIERES

 FEBRUARY 4, 2024

Cars weighing more than 1.6 tonnes would be slapped with swingeing parking charges if

 the vote passes.

Polling stations opened in Paris on Sunday for a referendum on tripling parking costs for hefty SUV-style cars, a campaign that has drivers' groups up in arms against city hall.

Some 1.3 million Parisians are eligible to cast their ballot on the change, which would see cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more charged 18 euros ($19.50) per hour for parking in central areas, or 12 euros further out.

Fully electric cars would have to top two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities would all be exempt.

"The bigger they are, the more they pollute," Paris' Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo said in December to justify the step.

On her watch, the city has pedestrianized many streets, including the banks of the river Seine, and built a network of cycle lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful transport emissions.

Environmental group WWF has dubbed SUVs an "aberration", saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and purchase.

City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are "twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car" in an accident.

The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space—whether on the road or while parked—than others.

Paris authorities say the average car has put on 250 kilograms (550 pounds) since 1990.

Hidalgo, whose city will this summer host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the center.

35 mn euros per year

But drivers' groups have attacked the scheme, with Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France saying the "SUV" classification is "a marketing term" that "means nothing".

He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would however hit family-sized coupes and estate cars.

Conservative opposition figures on the Paris council say this imprecise targeting of the referendum "shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government".

Even among fuel-burning cars, "a new, modern SUV... does not pollute more, or even pollute less, than a small diesel vehicle built before 2011", said a drivers' group 40 million automobilists.

Maud Gatel, an MP from the centrist MoDem party, said that "if this was really about limiting pollution, there would be a distinction made between internal combustion and hybrid or electric vehicles".

The wide range of exemptions would leave almost 27 percent of SUVs in Paris unaffected by the higher parking fees, she added, citing figures from research firm AAA Data.

Hidalgo's transport chief David Belliard, of the Green party, says around 10 percent of vehicles in Paris would be hit by the higher parking fees, which could bring in up to 35 million euros per year.

Paris's anti-SUV push has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in France, with the Green party mayor in Lyon planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.

The last city referendum in Paris, on banning hop-on, hop-off rental scooters from the capital's streets, passed in an April 2023 vote—but only drew a turnout of seven percent.

© 2024 AFP

Paris plan targeting SUVs hits bumpy road

 

Big oil companies continue to expand fossil fuel extraction worldwide, finds study

by Autonomous University of Barcelona

TotalEnergies total fuel extraction and petroleum product sales by region in 2022

. *Not including international trading (2012 kb/d) and bulk refining sales (411 kb/d)

. Source: TotalEnergies Universal Registration Document 2022. 

Credit: Energy Research & Social Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103434

Despite the growing social and political discourse in favor of energy transition and the greening of the industry, big oil companies continue to rely almost exclusively on fossil fuels to perpetuate their function of obtaining and concentrating energy.

A study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) shows that, far from choosing new alternative and sustainable energy sources, the companies are relentless in their efforts to expand their extractive operations. To do so, they deploy new technologies and seek politically favorable locations in the world to perpetuate oil and gas extraction.

The research, recently published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, is based on the analysis of 50 socio-environmental conflicts caused by the extractivist industry around the world documented in ICTA-UAB's Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas).

The report reveals the significant social and environmental costs of this industrial activity. "The relentless growth of the global economy and the inexorable dissipation of energy drive oil and gas companies to constantly expand their operations in the world's peripheries to meet the demand of industrial economies," says Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, ICTA-UAB researcher and first author of the study, who notes that these companies continue to rely on oil and gas because of its high energy density and easy transportation and storage.

The growing need for fossil resource extraction requires the constant expansion of extraction frontiers, and the exploitation of the environment and of local and indigenous communities in unindustrialized areas. This gives rise to numerous conflicts where local organizations fight for the preservation of their lives, livelihoods and culture, while companies defend their profits.

"This is evident, for example, in the cases of conflicts generated by the French company TotalEnergies over the extraction of fossil fuels in the Global South, where indigenous peoples fight against these activities that are so harmful to their environment and way of life," explains Llavero-Pasquina, who points out that oil companies thus become vectors of an oppression that links societies enjoying the benefits of lavish energy with those that suffer the impacts of extraction.

The research was carried out in collaboration with ICTA-UAB researchers Joan Martinez-Alier, Roberto Cantoni and Grettel Navas. According to Llavero-Pasquina, the analysis of these socio-environmental conflicts reveals how Western states and private oil and gas giants mutually benefit from each other.

"In the case of TotalEnergies, we see how French diplomatic and military relations pave the way for oil extraction in former French colonies. Arguably, through oil diplomacy, the company extends French post-colonial influence throughout the African continent and beyond," he says.

The findings make it clear that "governmental environmental regulation alone will not force fossil fuel companies to change their business model, so a deeper political change that challenges the postcolonial and extractive nature of modern Western states is needed to spell the end of the fossil fuel era," he concludes.

More information: Marcel Llavero-Pasquina et al, The political ecology of oil and gas corporations: TotalEnergies and post-colonial exploitation to concentrate energy in industrial economies, Energy Research & Social Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103434

Provided by Autonomous University of Barcelona 

Extractive and industrial development projects threaten the future of Indigenous Peoples: Study

Alpine ibex becoming more nocturnal as temperatures rise

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A team of biologists and veterinary scientists from the University of Sassari, Parc Naziunal Svizzer, Gran Paradiso National Park, and the University of Ferrara reports that Alpine ibex have been altering their grazing habits over the past several years in response to rising temperatures. In their study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B,, the group tracked the behavior of Alpine ibex living in a part of the Alps over the years 2006 to 2019.


Alpine ibex are a species of goat in the Alps. They feed primarily on grass, and typically do so by moving lower down the mountains during daylight hours to grassy areas so they can forage. In this new effort, the research team noted that temperatures in Gran Paradiso National Park, in the Italian Alps, have been slowly rising as part of global warming. That made them wonder how the Alpine ibex that live in the park were responding to the changes. To find out, they captured 47 of the goats in 2006 and attached motion sensing collars to track their movements.

The team found that on warmer days, the ibex became less active during the day, and more active at night. They noted that the move made sense as attempting to stay cool during hot days would use more energy than attempting to stay warm during the cool summer nights.

But it also came with a severe downside. Ibex are far more likely to fall prey to wolves when grazing at night because they are not as protected in grassy areas and cannot see the wolves approaching. The researchers suggest that the move to a more nocturnal lifestyle is not a viable behavioral change for the Alpine ibex over time due to wolf predation. As climate change progresses, the ibex are likely to become increasingly nocturnal, putting their survival at great risk.

The research team suggests that work like this demonstrates that some responses by wildlife may be overlooked by models that attempt to predict changes in environment due to global warming because of subtle behavioral changes.

More information: Francesca Brivio et al, Seeking temporal refugia to heat stress: increasing nocturnal activity despite predation risk, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.1587

Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

© 2024 Science X Network

The surprising reason insects circle lights at night: They lose track of the sky

by Samuel Fabian, Jamie Theobald and Yash Sondhi, The Conversation

FEBRUARY 3, 2024

The effect of reflected light was strongly dependent on whether it came from below or above the insect. Credit: Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44785-3

It's an observation as old as humans gathering around campfires: Light at night can draw an erratically circling crowd of insects. In art, music and literature, this spectacle is an enduring metaphor for dangerous but irresistible attractions. And watching their frenetic movements really gives the sense that something is wrong—that instead of finding food and evading predators, these nocturnal pilots are trapped by a light.

Sadly, centuries of witnessing what happens have produced little certainty about why it happens. How does a simple light change fast, precise navigators into helpless, flittering captives? We are researchers examining flight, vision and evolution, and we have used high-speed tracking techniques in research published in Nature Communications to provide an answer.

Moths to a flame?

Many old explanations for this hypnotic behavior have not fully panned out. An early notion was that the insects might be attracted to the heat of a flame. This was interesting, as some insects really are pyrophilic: They are attracted to fire and have evolved to take advantage of conditions in recently burned areas. But most insects around a light are not in this category, and cool lights attract them quite well.

Another thought was that insects were just directly attracted to light, a response called phototaxis. Many insects move toward light, perhaps as a way to escape dark or entrapping surroundings. But if this were the explanation for the clusters around a light, you might expect them to bump straight into the source. This theory does little to explain the wild circling behavior.
Credit: FIU

Still another idea was that insects might mistake a nearby light for the moon, as they attempted to use celestial navigation. Many insects reference the moon to keep their course at night.

This strategy relies on how objects at great distance seem to hover in place as you move along a straight path. A steady moon indicates that you have not made any unintentional turns, as you might if you were buffeted by a gust of wind. Nearer objects, however, don't appear to follow you in the sky but drift behind as you move past.

The celestial navigation theory held that insects worked to keep this light source steady, turning sharply in a failed attempt to fly straight. An elegant idea, but this model predicts that many flights will spiral inward to a collision, which doesn't usually match the orbits we see. So what's really going on?


Turning their backs to the light

To examine this question in detail, we and our colleagues captured high-speed videos of insects around different light sources to precisely determine flight paths and body postures, both in the lab at Imperial College London and at two field sites in Costa Rica, CIEE and the Estación Biológica. We found that their flight patterns weren't a close match for any existing model.
Artificial light at night interrupts the normal flight patterns of insects. This compilation video shows an orbiting behavioral motif in which insects circle the light.

Rather, a broad swath of insects consistently pointed their backs toward the lights. This is a known behavior called the dorsal light response. In nature, assuming that more light comes down from the sky than up from the ground, this response helps keep insects in the proper orientation to fly.

But pointing their backs toward nearby artificial lights alters their flight paths. Just as airplanes bank to turn, sometimes rolling until the ground seems nearly straight out your window, banking insects turn as well. When their backs orient to a nearby light, the resulting bank loops them around the light, circling but rarely colliding.

These orbiting paths were only one of the behaviors we observed. When insects flew directly under a light, they often arched upward as it passed behind them, keeping their backs to the bulb until, eventually flying straight up, they stalled and fell out of the air. And even more compelling, when flying directly over a light, insects tended to flip upside down, again turning their backs to the light but then abruptly crashing.
Why have a dorsal light response?

Although light at night can harm other animals—for example, by diverting migrating birds into urban areas—larger animals don't seem to lose their vertical orientation. So why do insects, the oldest and most species-rich group of flyers, rely on a response that leaves them so vulnerable?

Three different observed turning behaviors in which flying insects turn their backs to artificial light. Credit: Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44785-3

It may have to do with their small size. Larger animals can sense gravity directly with sensory organs pulled by its acceleration, or any acceleration. Humans, for example, use the vestibular system of our inner ear, which regulates our sense of balance and usually gives us a good sense of which way is down.

But insects have only small sensory structures. And especially as they perform rapid flight maneuvers, acceleration offers only a poor indication of which way is down. Instead, they seem to bet on the brightness of the sky.

Before modern lighting, the sky was usually brighter than the ground, day or night, so it provided a fairly reliable cue for a small active flyer hoping to keep a steady orientation. The artificial lights that sabotage this ability, by cueing insects to fly in circles, are relatively recent.
The growing problem of nighttime lighting

As new technology spreads, lights that pervade the night are proliferating faster then ever. With the introduction of cheap, bright, broad-spectrum LEDs, many areas, such as large cities, never see a dark night.



Insects aren't the only creatures affected. Light pollution disrupts circadian rhythms and physiological processes in other animals, plants and humans, often with serious health consequences

But insects trapped around a light seem to get the worst of it. Unable to secure food, easily spotted by predators and prone to exhaustion, many die before the morning comes.

In principle, light pollution is one of the easiest things to fix, often by just flipping a switch. Restricting outdoor lighting to useful, targeted warm light, no brighter than necessary, and for no longer than necessary, can greatly improve the health of nocturnal ecosystems. And the same practices that are good for insects help restore views of the night sky: Over one-third of the world population lives in areas where the Milky Way is never visible.

Although insects circling around a light are a fascinating spectacle, it is certainly better for the insects and the benefits they provide to humans when we leave the night unlit and let them go about the activities they so masterfully perform under the night sky.


More information: Samuel T. Fabian et al, Why flying insects gather at artificial light, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44785-3


Journal information: Nature Communications


Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Explore furtherAre insects drawn to light? New research shows it's confusion, not fatal attraction

Training an animal? An ethicist explains how and why your dog, but not your frog, can be punished

by Jon Garthoff, The Conversation

FEBRUARY 3, 2024

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

People talk to their pets every day: offering praise when they're good, reassurance when they're confused and affection when they're cuddling. We also speak to animals when they misbehave. "Why did you do that?" someone might ask their dog. Or we might scold the cat—"Don't touch that!"—as we move a family heirloom across the room.

But is it ever appropriate to punish or rebuke an animal?

When people talk about "punishment," this implies more than a loss of privileges. The term suggests someone is being asked to learn a lesson after breaking a rule they can understand. But an animal's understanding is different from a human's, which raises questions about what lessons they can learn and what, if any, rebukes of animals are ethical.

These issues involve what researchers know about different animals' cognition. But they also go beyond this by raising questions about what kind of moral standing animals have and how people who interact with animals should train them.

As an ethical theorist, I've explored these and related questions, including with some of my colleagues in psychology and anthropology. I would argue it is important to distinguish three types of learning: conditioning, instruction and education.

Conditioning

One type of learning, called "classical conditioning," was popularized by the psychologist Ivan Pavlov just after the turn of the 20th century. By repeatedly ringing a bell while presenting food, Pavlov famously induced dogs to salivate from the bell ring alone. Such learning proceeds merely from associating two types of stimuli: a sound and a snack, in this case.

When scientists talk about punishment, they normally mean "operant conditioning," which was popularized by the psychologists Edward Thorndike and B. F. Skinner shortly thereafter. In operant conditioning, positive or pleasurable stimuli are used to reinforce desired behavior, and negative or painful stimuli are used to deter undesired behavior. We may give a dog a treat, for example, to reward it for following a command to sit.

The kind of learning that operant conditioning aims to achieve, however, lacks a crucial ingredient of human punishment: responsibility. When people punish, it is not just to discourage an undesired behavior. They are trying to drive home that someone has transgressed—that the individual's behavior merits punishment.

But can nonhuman animals transgress? Do they ever deserve rebuke? I would argue they do—but with key differences from human wrongdoing.

Instruction

Training for many animals, such as horses and dogs, goes beyond conditioning. It involves a more sophisticated kind of learning: instruction.

One important way instruction differs from conditioning is that an instructor addresses their trainee. Pet owners and animal trainers speak to cats and dogs, and though these animals have no knowledge of grammar, they can understand what many human words refer to. Caretakers also often listen to their animals' vocalizations in an attempt to understand their meaning.

To be sure, people condition cats and dogs—consider spraying a cat with water when it nibbles on a houseplant. The goal is for the cat to associate an off-limits snack with an unpleasant experience, and so to leave the plant alone.

But training pets can go beyond changing their behavior. It can aim to improve animals' ability to reason about what to do: a trainer teaches a dog how to navigate an agility course, for example, or how to get through a new pet door. Instruction involves understanding, whereas learning based on mere conditioning does not.

An animal's ability to be instructed stems from the nature of their mental life. Scientists do not know exactly which animals' cognition involves understanding, genuine problem-solving and the ability to reason or infer.

But research on perception—on how humans and other animals convert sensory information into mental representations of physical objects—has helped philosophers and psychologists distinguish thought from more basic mental capacities such as vision and hearing.

It is extremely likely that some nonhuman animals—including dolphins, apes and elephants—do think, as philosopher Gary Varner argued in the 2012 book "Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition." My research suggests the distinction between thinking and nonthinking animals tracks well with the distinction between animals that can be instructed and those that can, at most, be conditioned.

This difference is crucial to how different pets should be treated. An owner should have concern for their pet frog, of course, and care for its needs. But they do not need to recognize the frog the same way they should recognize a dog: by addressing it, listening to it and comforting it.

Though an owner may rebuke the dog to hold it responsible for its actions, they must also hold themselves responsible to the animal, including by considering how the pet has interpreted events.

Education

Some nonhuman animals have demonstrated impressive cognitive abilities in experimental settings, such as recognizing their bodies in mirrors and recalling past experiences. Some birds, for example, display sensitivity to details about food they have cached, such as its perishability and how long ago it was stored.

Still, scientists do not possess strong evidence that animals have critical thinking abilities or a concept of self, the key requirements for genuine education. Unlike conditioning and instruction, education aims to enable a learner to explain the world, to evaluate and debate rationales for decisions. It also prepares people to ask—and to try to answer—ethical questions like, "How should I live" and "Was that action justified?"

A cat or dog cannot pose these questions. Much of the time, human beings do not concern themselves with these questions, either—but they can. In fact, caretakers pay great attention to these matters during child-rearing, as when they ask children, "How would you like it if someone did that to you" or "Do you really think it's OK to act that way?"

Assuming that animals do not reflect and criticize, and therefore are not capable of education, I would say that they have no moral obligations. It is fair to say a pet has transgressed, since animals such as dogs and cats can come to understand how to act better. But morally speaking, an animal cannot commit wrongdoing, for it lacks a conscience: It may understand some of its behavior, but not its own mind.

In my view, addressing an animal and acting with an understanding of how it interprets events is central to the ethical training of pets. But if someone treats an animal as though it were responsible for justifying itself to us, as though it could offer excuses and apologies, they anthropomorphize the animal and ask too much of it. Pet owners often do this in a mock way, saying things like, "Now you know you shouldn't have done that"—the same phrases they might use with a child.

Unlike a child, however, the animal's transgression is not a failure to fulfill a moral obligation. In human relationships we aspire to relations of mutual justification, where reasons are exchanged and excuses and apologies evaluated. But that's not the nature of our relationships with our pets—however tempted we may be to think otherwise.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do dog 'talking buttons' actually work? Does my dog understand me? Here's what the science says

Handwashing is a major source of pet pesticide pollution in UK rivers, finds study

by Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London

 FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new study reveals that handwashing in the weeks after spot-on flea and tick treatments is the largest source of pet pesticide pollution in rivers.

The paper is published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

The study's authors, from the University of Sussex and Imperial College London, are calling for a review of the regulatory framework and prescribing practices to address toxic pet pesticides washing into rivers.

Fipronil and imidacloprid are highly toxic pesticides that are no longer approved for use in outdoor agriculture, but continue to be widely used in pet flea treatments, typically applied to the back of the pet's neck (known as spot-ons).

The researchers found that wastewater from sewage treatment works is a major source of fipronil and imidacloprid pollution in rivers. They conclude that pesticides used in flea products on domestic pets are washing down household drains, in concentrations exceeding safe limits for wildlife.

Significant source of contamination

The researchers collected samples from 98 dogs treated with spot-on fipronil or imidacloprid and evaluated the contribution of owner handwashing, dog bathing and washing of dog bedding to household sewage and subsequent wastewater pollution. The research found that washoff of pesticides occurred across all three pathways.

Owner handwashing was the largest source of emissions with fipronil or imidacloprid detected in all tests on pet owners for at least 28 days after a spot-on application to their pet. Current guidelines advise that owners should not touch pets in the 24 hours following product administration, but this research shows that pollution is occurring continuously for the entire duration of action of the product.

First author Rosemary Perkins, a Ph.D. student and veterinary surgeon from the University of Sussex, said, "This research confirms that fipronil and imidacloprid used in spot-on flea products are important surface water pollutants. With around 22 million cats and dogs in the UK, we urgently need to rethink how these products are regulated and used."

Co-author Professor Guy Woodward, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said, "Despite these chemicals being banned from outdoor agricultural use for several years, we are still finding them in UK freshwaters at levels that could harm aquatic life. This paper shows how domestic pet flea and tick treatments, a largely overlooked but potentially significant source of contamination, could be polluting our waterways

Reviewing practices

This study builds on previous research conducted by the Sussex researchers, which found that fipronil was detected in 98% of freshwater samples, and imidacloprid in 66%, and a paper by the Imperial researchers that showed these chemicals are reaching urban rivers in concentrations that are known to harm aquatic life.

The researchers are now calling for a review of regulatory and prescribing practices, as current pet flea products do not consider the extent of river pollution from down-the-drain washoff prior to regulatory approval. The research has demonstrated that even when product instructions are followed, substantial emissions to the aquatic environment are still generated.

The British Veterinary Association has recently issued a policy statement recommending that veterinary businesses should avoid blanket year-round parasite treatment policies and instead empower individual vets to have informed discussions with their clients.

Professor Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex, who supervised the research, commented, "These two chemicals are extremely potent neurotoxic insecticides and it is deeply concerning that they are routinely found on the hands of dog owners through ongoing contact with their pet. Pet owners will also be upset to learn that they are accidentally polluting our rivers by using these products."

More information: Rosemary Perkins et al, Down-the-drain pathways for fipronil and imidacloprid applied as spot-on parasiticides to dogs: Estimating aquatic pollution, Science of The Total Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170175

Provided by Imperial College London Pesticides commonly used as flea treatments for pets are contaminating English rivers

 

Silent fields: A cocktail of pesticides is stunting bumblebee colonies across Europe

by Charlie C. Nicholson, Jessica Knapp and Maj Rundlöf, The Conversation

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The European Parliament voted against a proposal to curb the use of agricultural pesticides in November 2023. These chemicals, designed to protect crop yield from pest insects and other organisms, can contaminate the water and air and threaten the people and wildlife that maintain the vitality of our landscapes.

In some respects, Europe and its governing bodies lead the world in setting and achieving sustainability goals. The EU parliament's failure to restrict pesticide use stands in contrast to this notion, not to mention international pledges.

Our research shows that efficient use of pesticides in farming will be essential to maintaining the health of bumblebees in particular—one of the most important pollinators of crops and wildflowers.

Lab results vs the real world

Decades of laboratory experiments have tested thousands of pesticides to show that they can be individually fatal to bees. Such toxicity tests evaluate the potential harm of these compounds before they are used to inform pesticide regulations.

But do the effects documented in laboratory tests represent what happens when these chemicals are used in the environment? Field-based tests of pesticides are rare and, like laboratory tests, they typically look at single compounds. This is a problem because field-based monitoring has shown that bees are actually exposed to multiple compounds through their foraging across agricultural landscapes.

Many different pesticides, including those highly toxic to bees, have been found in bee bodies, their food and the structures that make up their nests, like wax and soil.

Although it may seem logical to assume that chemicals shown to be toxic in the lab will have similar effects in the field, we know that where chemicals end up and persist in the environment varies and that the impact on bees can differ depending on numerous social and ecological factors.

Until now, it was unclear how exposure to multiple pesticides across landscapes affected how pollinators grow, survive and reproduce. Our new work shows that this real-world exposure significantly threatens the health of bumblebees.

Colonies at risk

We placed more than 300 commercially-reared bumblebee colonies at 106 sites on farmland in eight European countries. We collected pollen samples from the colonies and screened them for 267 pesticides.

We found that the pollen that bumblebees collected and stored in their nests was contaminated with multiple pesticides, an average of eight different compounds per colony—the most contaminated colony contained 27 different compounds. We calculated the risk posed by pesticides to each colony by accounting for the amount and toxicity of different pesticides found in their pollen.

We also tracked the performance of bumblebee colonies by weighing them before, during and after they were deployed in agricultural landscapes and by counting all the bees at the end of the experiment.

Colony growth, measured as the change in a colony's weight over time, was lower in colonies with a higher pesticide risk. Bumblebees also produced fewer offspring in these colonies than in those with a low pesticide risk. These effects were worse in landscapes with lots of cropland, demonstrating the importance of semi-natural habitats and other flower-rich areas for pollinator populations.

To protect pollinators, a proposal from the European Food Safety Authority would ensure that bumblebee colonies do not lose more than 10% colony strength, measured as the number of bees in a colony, due to pesticide use. Yet, over the course of our study, 64% of the bumblebee colonies we studied lost more than this compared to colonies in the least risky places.

Despite having among the most stringent pesticide regulatory processes in the world, our study showed that the EU is failing to protect the organisms these chemicals are not supposed to target, like bees.

Monitor pesticides like drugs

The proposal struck down in late 2023 may go for a second reading in the European Parliament. But with 299 MEPs having previously voted against it, we are not optimistic about its chances. Instead, we draw hope from ongoing efforts to improve environmental risk assessments of farming chemicals and developments at COP28, the most recent UN climate change conference in Dubai.

Pesticide risk assessments can benefit from lessons learned regulating pharmaceuticals. Like pesticides, pharmaceuticals undergo pre-approval testing with phased pre- and clinical trials before they are licensed for use. But once a drug has been licensed, long-term monitoring safeguards against unexpected effects when used at scale. This type of post-approval monitoring under real-world conditions is urgently needed for pesticides.

This shouldn't replace pre-approval testing. Our experience has simply shown that pesticides that clear laboratory tests, such as neonicotinoids, are only revealed to be harmful through post-approval field testing using bees other than honeybees, which are unusual for their large colony sizes and complex social behavior. Our approach for monitoring pesticides and their effects on non-target species could be part of future pollinator risk assessments.

Of course, it would be better to change the way pesticides are used in agriculture altogether and lessen the demand on farmers to use them. We are tentatively optimistic about commitments made at COP28, including a US$17 billion fund to develop methods of farming that are resilient to climate change and less reliant on chemicals.

One of the largest initiatives, with partners including The Nature Conservancy, Google, and the Brazilian state of Para, would encourage regenerative farming practices, such as reduced tillage and lower pesticide use.

This, we hope, is progress.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bees are still being harmed despite tightened pesticide regulations, study shows

U$A

West's 'hot drought' is unprecedented in more than 500 years

by Alan Halaly, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

There's no precedent in at least five centuries for how hot and dry the West has been in the last two decades, new research asserts using analysis of tree rings.

The study, published in late January, adds to an ever-growing slew of research that suggests human-caused climate change is warming the earth in ways never seen before. It furthers other research like one study, published last year, that showed the West's conditions over the last 20 years are the driest in 1,200 years because of climate change.

Extreme heat and dry conditions amplify one another—a positive feedback loop climate scientists call "hot drought."

Findings show, however, that hot drought has never been this severe, making future projections and mitigation measures more unclear, said Karen King, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville assistant professor and lead author of the study.

These conclusions have important implications for Nevada, the nation's driest state that largely depends on the shrinking availability of the Colorado River, and the Southwest as a whole.

"When you have these compound extreme climatic events, the consequences are also compounded," King said. "With this increased association of heat and drought, it almost makes it more uncertain: Are we going to be able to predict when this mega-drought ends?"

Scientists looked at how long and wide tree rings are to catch a glimpse into temperatures dating back to 1553. Denser rings generally signal warmer temperatures, while less dense rings show cooler ones, she said.

Recent technological advancements in the field of dendrology, or the study of tree rings, made the study possible. Rather than using expensive and time-consuming X-rays to measure ring density as developed in the '90s, researchers can now manipulate light to do so.

Recording the amount of reflected blue light in each annual ring gives scientists a better picture of density—a much safer, easier and less costly method.

"Where we could do better is trying to understand how the frequency of compound climate extremes in the modern century compares to the past," King said. "This is a good step forward."

The study is just the start of understanding temperature changes throughout history, said David Meko, professor of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, who wasn't involved in the study.

Though there's much in the field left to explore, he said, the study expands previous understanding of hot drought with the help of new technology.

"This is something that, without having any kind of triggering variable, can give us input on temperature and let us understand the climate footprint of these droughts," Meko said.

In the future, Meko said, scientists will work toward finding ways to understand winter temperature lows and gather an idea of how much snowmelt there may have been across centuries.

Historical heat analysis, though, is vital to help people grasp how human-caused climate change is affecting temperatures today, he said.

"Whatever stress is caused by low precipitation or even mildly low precipitation is going to cause greater stress on the planet because of rising temperatures," Meko said.

More information: Karen E. King et al, Increasing prevalence of hot drought across western North America since the 16th century, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj4289

Journal information: Science Advances 

2024 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Study shows hot droughts in the western US have become more common over the past five centuries