Survey of 12 European countries reveals the best and worst for smoke-free homes

European Respiratory Society

 

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Map of Europe showing best and worst for smoke-free homes

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Credit: ERJ Open Research / Olena Tigova

Seven out of ten homes in Europe are smoke-free, according to a major survey published today (Thursday) in ERJ Open Research [1]. However, some countries have come further than others in protecting children and adults from second-hand tobacco smoke in the home.

 

Greece came out bottom of the 12 countries in the survey, with smoking allowed in more than half of homes. In Romania, Bulgaria and Spain more than four in ten homes allow smoking to take place. England scored the highest out of the 12, with more than eight in ten homes smoke-free, with Ireland, Latvia and Italy following next.

 

The researchers say that the proportion of smoke-free homes is growing but progress is too slow, and more work is needed to protect children and adults from the health effects of breathing second-hand smoke in the home.

 

The study's author is Olena Tigova from the Tobacco Control Unit of the Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain. She said: “Exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke, in any setting, is harmful to both adults and children. Since 2004, many European countries have introduced smoke-free regulations in public places. However, private settings, particularly homes, remain common sites for smoking and tobacco-smoke exposure. With this research, we wanted to examine the home smoking rules across the general population in Europe. Although some national surveys have taken place, there has been no multi-country survey in Europe since 2010.”

 

Around 1,000 people were surveyed in each of the 12 countries taking part in the research (11,734 people in total). These people were carefully selected to represent the population of each country and were interviewed face-to-face in 2017-18. They were asked whether smoking was allowed anywhere inside their homes and, if so, whether there were any restrictions on smoking indoors.

 

The survey showed that around 70% of all people interviewed do not allow smoking anywhere in their homes. A further 18% said they have some rules but are not completely smoke-free. Surprisingly, about 13% of homes where there are no smokers living in the house, still allow visitors to smoke.

 

The proportion of smoke-free homes according to country from highest to lowest was:

1. England 84.5%
2. Ireland 79.4%
3. Latvia 78.9%
4. Italy 75.8%
5. Germany 75.0%
6. Portugal 74.0%
7. Poland 69.6%
8. France 65.1%
9. Spain 57.6%
10. Bulgaria 56.6%
11. Romania 55.2%
12. Greece 44.4%

 

“Countries in Northern Europe have more smoke-free homes, while Eastern Europe and less affluent countries have more homes with partial smoking rules, allowing smoking in specific areas or on certain occasions,” Olena Tigova said.

 

The researchers also looked at other factors that seem to influence rules on smoking in the home. They found that women, older people, people with a higher level of education and those living with children are more likely to have smoke-free homes.

 

Tigova added: “Our findings suggest that smoke-free homes are gradually increasing in Europe by about 1% each year. However, at this slow rate, it could take another 30 years for all homes in Europe to be smoke-free. To speed things up, stronger tobacco control measures are essential. Expanding smoke-free laws in workplaces, public spaces, and some private areas like cars, combined with new strategies to reduce smoking at home, will help make more European homes smoke-free sooner.”

 

The researchers plan to broaden their study to examine levels of vaping in European homes and exposure to second-hand smoke and vape fumes in cars. They are also studying how best to encourage people to make their homes smoke-free.

 

Dr Filippos Filippidis is Chair of the European Respiratory Society Tobacco Control Committee, a reader in public health at Imperial College London, UK, and was not involved in the research. He said: “While it’s good to see that more homes are becoming smoke-free, this survey reveals that there are countries that are lagging far behind, and that progress is too slow.

 

“Across Europe, millions of people still smoke and millions more are exposed to second-hand smoke. Making our homes smoke-free protects children and adults from second-hand smoke and it can help smokers to cut down or quit too.

 

“The cost of smoking in Europe, both to the public purse and to public health, it too high. We need comprehensive smoke-free laws and freely available support to help people quit.”

Photo of researcher Olena Tigova

Photo of the research team

Credit

ERJ Open Researcj / Olena Tigova

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Journal

ERJ Open Research

DOI

10.1183/23120541.00950-2024 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Prevalence and determinants of smoke-free homes in 12 European countries: the TackSHS Survey

Article Publication Date

28-Nov-2024

 

Oceans emit sulfur and cool the climate more than previously thought

University of East Anglia

 

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Scientists have managed to quantify methanethiol emissions in the oceans on a global scale for the first time.

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Credit: Rafel Simó (ICM-CSIC)

Researchers have quantified for the first time the global emissions of a sulfur gas produced by marine life, revealing it cools the climate more than previously thought, especially over the Southern Ocean.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that the oceans not only capture and redistribute the sun's heat, but produce gases that make particles with immediate climatic effects, for example through the brightening of clouds that reflect this heat.

It broadens the climatic impact of marine sulfur because it adds a new compound, methanethiol, that had previously gone unnoticed. Researchers only detected the gas recently, because it used to be notoriously hard to measure and earlier work focussed on warmer oceans, whereas the polar oceans are the emission hotspots.

The research was led by a team of scientists from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry (IQF-CSIC) in Spain. They included Dr Charel Wohl, previously at ICM-CSIC and now at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK.

Their findings represent a major advance on one of the most groundbreaking theories proposed 40 years ago about the role of the ocean in regulating the Earth's climate.

This suggested that microscopic plankton living on the surface of the seas produce sulfur in the form of a gas, dimethyl sulphide, that once in the atmosphere, oxidizes and forms small particles called aerosols.

Aerosols reflect part of the solar radiation back into space and therefore reduce the heat retained by the Earth. Their cooling effect is magnified when they become involved in making clouds, with an effect opposite to, but of the same magnitude as, that of the well-known warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide or methane.

The researchers argue that this new work improves our understanding of how the climate of the planet is regulated by adding a previously overlooked component and illustrates the crucial importance of sulfur aerosols. They also highlight the magnitude of the impact of human activity on the climate and that the planet will continue to warm if no action is taken.

Dr Wohl, of UEA’s Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and one of the lead authors, said: “This is the climatic element with the greatest cooling capacity, but also the least understood. We knew methanethiol was coming out of the ocean, but we had no idea about how much and where. We also did not know it had such an impact on climate.

“Climate models have greatly overestimated the solar radiation actually reaching the Southern Ocean, largely because they are not capable of correctly simulating clouds. The work done here partially closes the longstanding knowledge gap between models and observations.”

With this discovery, scientists can now represent the climate more accurately in models that are used to make predictions of +1.5 ºC or +2 ºC warming, a huge contribution to policy making.

“Until now we thought that the oceans emitted sulfur into the atmosphere only in the form of dimethyl sulphide, a residue of plankton that is mainly responsible for the evocative smell of shellfish,” said Dr Martí Galí, a researcher at the ICM-CSIC and another of the main study authors.

Dr Wohl added: “Today, thanks to the evolution of measurement techniques, we know that plankton also emit methanethiol, and we have found a way to quantify, on a global scale, where, when and in what quantity this emission occurs.

“Knowing the emissions of this compound will help us to more accurately represent clouds over the Southern Ocean and calculate more realistically their cooling effect.”

The researchers gathered all the available measurements of methanethiol in seawater, added those they had made in the Southern Ocean and the Mediterranean coast, and statistically related them to seawater temperature, obtained from satellites.

This allowed them to conclude that, annually and on a global average, methanethiol increases known marine sulfur emissions by 25%.

“It may not seem like much, but methanethiol is more efficient at oxidising and forming aerosols than dimethyl sulfide and, therefore, its climate impact is magnified,” said co-lead Dr Julián Villamayor, a researcher at IQF-CSIC.

The team also incorporated the marine emissions of methanethiol into a state-of-the-art climate model to assess their effects on the planet's radiation balance.

It showed the impacts are much more visible in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is more ocean and less human activity, and therefore the presence of sulfur from the burning of fossil fuels is lower.

The work was supported by funding from organisations including the European Research Council and Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

‘Marine emissions of methanethiol increase aerosol cooling in the Southern Ocean’, Charel Wohl, Julián Villamayor and Martí Galí et al, is published in Science Advances on November 27.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adq2465 

Article Title

Marine emissions of methanethiol increase aerosol cooling in the Southern Ocean

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2024

PALEONTOLOGY

Fossil dung reveals clues to dinosaur success story

Uppsala University

 

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A duo of sauropodomorphs; one munching on the newly evolved plants in a wet Early Jurassic environment whilst the other is looking up as if there was something hiding in the vegetation. Illustration: Marcin Ambrozik.

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Credit: Marcin Ambrozik

In an international collaboration, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to identify undigested food remains, plants and prey in the fossilised faeces of dinosaurs. These analyses of hundreds of samples provide clues about the role dinosaurs played in the ecosystem around 200 million years ago. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

“Piecing together ‘who ate whom’ in the past is true detective work,” says Martin Qvarnström, researcher at the Department of Organismal Biology and lead author of the study. “Being able to examine what animals ate and how they interacted with their environment helps us understand what enabled dinosaurs to be so successful.”

Palaeontologists from Uppsala University, in collaboration with researchers from Norway, Poland and Hungary, have examined hundreds of samples using advanced synchrotron imaging to visualise the hidden, internal parts of the fossilised faeces, known as coprolites, in detail. By identifying undigested food remains, plants and prey, they have recreated the structure of the ecosystems at the time when dinosaurs began their success story.

The study focused on a previously underexplored region, Polish Basin, located in the Late Triassic time in the in the northern parts of the then supercontinent Pangea. The researchers built up a comprehensive picture of the Triassic and Jurassic ecosystems (from about 230 to 200 million years ago) by combining the information from the coprolites with climate data and information from other fossils: plants, bite marks, vomit, footprints and bones.

“The research material was collected over a period of 25 years. It took us many years to piece everything together into a coherent picture,” says Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, researcher at the Department of Organismal Biology and the study’s senior author. “Our research is innovative because we have chosen to understand the biology of early dinosaurs based on their dietary preferences. There were many surprising discoveries along the way.”

The coprolites contained remains of fish, insects, larger animals and plants, some of which were unusually well preserved, including small beetles and semi-complete fish. Other coprolites contained bones chewed up by predators that, like today’s hyenas, crushed bones to obtain salts and marrow. The contents of coprolites from the first large herbivorous dinosaurs, the long-necked sauropods, surprised the researchers. These contained large quantities of tree ferns, but also other types of plants, and charcoal. The palaeontologists hypothesise that charcoal was ingested to detoxify stomach contents, as ferns can be toxic to herbivores.

The research addresses a significant gap in current knowledge: the first 30 million years of dinosaur evolution during the Late Triassic period. Although much is known about their lives and extinction, the ecological and evolutionary processes that led to their rise are largely unexplored. The study results in a five-step model of dinosaur evolution that the researchers believe can explain global patterns.

The team emphasises that understanding how the first dinosaurs achieved their success can offer valuable insights into prehistoric ecosystems and evolutionary processes in general. The results show that dietary diversity and adaptability were crucial survival traits during the environmental changes of the Late Triassic.

“Unfortunately, climate change and mass extinctions are not just a thing of the past. By studying past ecosystems, we gain a better understanding of how life adapts and thrives under changing environmental conditions,” says Qvarnström.

“The way to avoid extinction is to eat a lot of plants, which is exactly what the early herbivorous dinosaurs did. The reason for their evolutionary success is a true love of green and fresh plant shoots,” Niedzwiedzki concludes.

s from a large fish with spiral gut (hence the spirals in the coprolite), showing fish scales indicative of diet. Illustration:  Martin Qvarnström

CaptionLarge coprolite with fish remains: A coprolite fragment densely packed with fish bones, likely produced by the phytosaur Paleorhinus. Illustration: Martin Qvarnström

Fossil faeces of the bone-crushing archosaur Smok, with a Smok reconstruction in the background. (IMAGE)

Uppsala University

Coprolite from Smok: Fossil faeces of the bone-crushing archosaur Smok, with a Smok reconstruction in the background. Illustration: Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-08265-4 

Article Title

Digestive contents and food webs record the advent of dinosaur supremacy

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2024

World’s oldest lizard wins fossil fight

University of Bristol

 

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Photo of the inside of the skull and lower jaw on the right and CT scan of the outside of the same bones on the left image. The images show the left side of the skull and lower jaw

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Credit: 3D imagery by Sofia Chambi Trowell, photograph by David Whiteside

A storeroom specimen that changed the origins of modern lizards by millions of years has had its identity confirmed.

The tiny skeleton, unearthed from Triassic-aged rocks in a quarry near Bristol, is at least 205 million years old and the oldest modern-type lizard on record.

Recently, the University of Bristol team’s findings came under question, but fresh analysis, published today in Royal Society Open Science, proves that the fossil is related to modern anguimorphs such as anguids and monitors. The discovery shifts the origin of the whole lizard-snake group, called Squamata, back by 35 million years.

In the original study, Dr David Whiteside, Dr Sofia Chambi-Trowell and Professor Mike Benton, named the little critter Cryptovaranoides microlanius, meaning ‘hidden lizard, small butcher’ because of its identification as a lizard and its sharp teeth, probably used for cutting up prey animals for food. The Bristol team identified many anatomical features of the skull and skeleton that allowed them to place it well within Squamata, and even close to the Anguimorpha.

“We knew our paper would be controversial,” explained Dr Whiteside. “But we were confident that we had looked at every possible feature and compared it with everything we could.”

Professor Benton said: “We were therefore surprised, perhaps even shocked, that in 2023 another team of academics suggested that Cryptovaranoides was not a lizard or even a lizard relative, but in fact an archosauromorph, more closely related to crocodilians and dinosaurs.”

In checking their original work, and the questions posed in the rival paper, the Bristol team explored all the data, including the original specimen as well as the X-ray scans that show the details hidden within the rock. “We had the marvellous images from those CT scans as well as further access to the fossil which enabled us to check all their suggestions,” said Dr Chambi-Trowell. “We found that most of the concerns raised were wrong.”

Professor Benton added: “All the details of the skull, the jaws, the teeth, and the limb bones confirm that Cryptovaranoides is a lizard, not an archosauromorph.

“In our new paper, we provide great detail of every criticism made and we provide more photographs of the specimen and 3D images from the scans, so everyone can check the detail.”

Dr Whiteside concluded: “The result of all this had to be tested by a phylogenetic analysis.

“This is where we code hundreds of anatomical features in Cryptovaranoides and other modern and fossil lizards, as well as various archosauromorphs.

“We ran the analysis time after time, and it gave our original result, that the little Bristol reptile is indeed the world’s oldest modern-type lizard.”

The paper

Whiteside DI, Chambi-Trowell SAV, Benton MJ. 2024 Late Triassic †Cryptovaranoides microlanius is a squamate, not an archosauromorph. R. Soc. Open Sci. 11: 231874. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231874

Life restoration of the earliest lizard, Cryptovaranoides microlanius 

Credit

Lavinia Gandolfi

Journal

Royal Society Open Science

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Cryptovaranoides microlanius is a squamate, not an archosauromorph

Article Publication Date

26-Nov-2024

 

Discovering the traits of extinct birds

Analysis by Utah biologists found birds endemic to islands, lacking flight, with large bodies and sharply angled wings were more likely to disappear first

University of Utah

 

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A critically endangered ‘Akikiki that study lead author Kyle Kittelberger photographed on Kauai in 2022.

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Credit: Kyle Kittelberger

Looking to inform the conservation of critically endangered bird species, University of Utah biologists completed an analysis identifying traits that correlate with all 216 bird extinctions since 1500.

Species most likely to go extinct sooner were endemic to islands, lacked the ability to fly, had larger bodies and sharply angled wings, and occupied ecologically specific niches, according to research published this month.

While some of these findings mirror previous research on extinct birds, they are the first to correlate bird traits with the timing of extinctions, said lead author Kyle Kittelberger, a graduate student in the School of Biological Sciences.

“I’ve been very interested in extinctions and understanding the species that we’ve lost and trying to get a sense of how we can use the past to better inform the present and future,” said Kittelberger, who is completing his dissertation on how the bodies and wings of certain species of migratory songbirds have changed in response to climate change.

His team’s analysis tapped into BirdBase, a dataset of ecological traits for the world’s 11,600+ bird species compiled by U biology professor Çağan Şekercioğlu and the Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology Lab at the U. The team simultaneously analyzed a broad range of biogeographical, ecological and life history traits previously associated with extinction and extinction risk for bird species that have gone extinct as well as those that lack recent confirmed sightings and have therefore disappeared.

“Importantly, we examine biological correlates of bird extinctions through the lens of when birds went extinct, providing a novel extinction timing element that helps better inform why birds with certain traits disappeared when they did,” Kittelberger wrote in a series of posts on X. By identifying traits that most predispose birds to extinction, the findings can help guide conservation efforts of hundreds of species that are at peril.

“One of the strengths of the approach that we use is we compared all of these traits simultaneously against each other, whereas a lot of previous studies in the literature just look at traits in isolation.”

While only around 2% of the world’s bird species have gone extinct since 1500, the year Kittelberger’s analysis begins, even more had already disappeared by then. Before 1500, however, there is not as reliable a record of the birds that went extinct and data on their traits and characteristics.

This timing coincides with the rise of scientific observation, resulting in a systematic documentation of plant and animal life. It is also the time when European exploration took off, leading to the disruption of ecosystems around the globe as a result of colonization and introduced species.

Today, 1,314 bird species are at risk of extinction, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, or about 12% of the total.

Many species, such as the ‘Akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi), endemic to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, are so rare that they are functionally extinct. Kittelberger photographed the pictured ‘Akikiki, also called Kauai’s creeper, in the Alaka‘i Wilderness Preserve in 2022, when it was believed around 70 or so remained in the wild; today, only one individual remains.

The proportion of 216 bird species globally extinct or likely lost since 1500 that were endemic to a region, found solely on islands, and were either flightless or partially flightless, as well as the breakdown of species by primary habitat or diet.

As with many other Hawaiian bird species, the main threat to the ’Akikiki comes in the form of introduced species, principally malaria-carrying mosquitoes and habitat-wrecking livestock, according to Hawaii’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife.

The single most critical trait associated with extinction is insularity, those species endemic to islands. Other traits that appear to increase extinction risk, such as body size, wing shape and ecological specialization, are also associated with island insularity.

Pacific islands are home to a vast array of endemic species, many of which are now on the IUCN list. No archipelago has seen more loss of avian biodiversity than Hawaii, which accounts for 34 post-1500 extinctions, according to the study.

The bird family that experienced the most extinctions is Rallidae, or rails, which are globally distributed medium-sized semi-amphibious bird species. This family lost 26 members, while the entire line of the Mohoidae family, small nectar-sipping songbirds commonly known as Hawaiian honeyeaters, is completely gone (the only bird family to go fully extinct in modern times). The family’s last member, the Kauai O’o (Moho braccatus), was last observed in 1987.

The finding that did surprise Kittelberger’s team was the correlation of wing shape to extinction. They found that bird species with a larger hand-wing index, that is more pointed wings, were more likely to have vanished earlier. Since pointier wings indicate stronger flying and dispersal abilities, the team predicted such birds would be better equipped to respond to environmental pressures than those with rounder wings.

Yet birds with rounder wings, those with smaller hand-wing ratios, proved to be more resilient.

“It likely ties with the fact that a lot of these birds that went extinct were on islands. For these species or their ancestors to have arrived at these islands to begin with, they would’ve needed the ability to fly across large, open distances. So a lot of these birds on islands have, not necessarily longer, but more pointed wings,” Kittelberger said. “Think of a swift or a swallow or a bird like an albatross that flies over the ocean. They have really pointy wings that allow them to fly really well, whereas birds in dense tropical rainforests are not flying these large distances, so they have rounded wings because they’re just moving in their local habitat patches.”

Ecological specialists, as opposed to generalists, face great challenges when their specific ecological niche is altered, so they tend to be less able to respond and adapt to disturbances, like invasive species or disruption of a food source.

In other findings, the study concluded more than 87% were endemic to islands; nearly two-thirds inhabited forests; 45% ate primarily insects and other invertebrates; and 20% were completely or partially flightless. Finally, species with big bodies were overly represented on the extinct list.

“Heavier birds have been more likely to be targeted for hunting, with several well-known examples of birds being hunted to extinction in part for food, including the Dodo, Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), and Spectacled Cormorant (Urile perspicillatus),” the study said. “Body mass has also been linked with a species’ inhabitance of islands, as island birds tend to be larger than mainland species.” Of the 43 species whose average body weight exceeded 500 grams, or 1.1 pounds, three-quarters were endemic to an island.

The decade of the 1890s saw the highest number on extinctions, with 21 recorded. The 1980s was another bad decade for bird loss with 20 species, including the Kauai O’o. This latter decade “is noteworthy since focused and targeted conservation efforts were already underway globally before and during this period,” the study said. “Though the rate of extinction declined in the subsequent decades, the number of globally threatened species has only increased.”

The study, “Correlates of avian extinction timing around the world since 1500 CE,” was published Nov. 7 in the journal Avian Research. The research team included Colby J. Tanner, Amy N. Buxton, Amira Prewett and Çağan Şekercioğlu. Support for this research came from the University of Utah’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

The number of bird extinctions by decade since 1500, representing 216 species that have disappeared or have likely disappeared over the past five centuries. IUCN Status rankings consist of EX (Extinct), EW (Extinct in the Wild), CR (PE) (Critically Endangered but Possibly Extinct), and CR (Critically Endangered).

A map of global bird loss since 1500, including species confirmed
extinct and those likely to have disappeared. 

The proportion of 216 bird species globally extinct or likely lost since 1500 that were endemic to a region, found solely on islands, and were either flightless or partially flightless, as well as the breakdown of species by primary habitat or diet.

Credit

Kyle Kittelberger, University of Utah

Credit

Kyle Kittelberger, University of Utah

Journal

Avian Research

DOI

10.1016/j.avrs.2024.100213 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Correlates of avian extinction timing around the world since 1500 CE

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2024

 

Chemical replacement of TNT explosive more harmful to plants, study shows

University of York

The increased use of a chemical compound to replace TNT in explosive devices has a damaging and long lasting effect on plants, new research has shown.

In recent years, TNT has started to be replaced with DNAN, but until now very little was known about how this substance impacts the environment and how long it can remain in the soil.

Researchers at the University of York have been studying the environmental impact of the explosive, TNT, for more than a decade. They have shown that the chemical compound, which is used by the military around the world, remains in the roots of plants where it inhibits growth and development.

Now a new study, led by Professor Neil Bruce at the University of York’s Department of Biology and Director of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP), however, has shown that DNAN has similar effects to TNT, but accumulates throughout the plant and lingers for longer.

Professor Neil Bruce said: “Similarly to TNT, DNAN reacts with a key plant enzyme, generating reactive superoxide, which is highly damaging to cells.  Over the course of our research we have genetically engineered plants to successfully detoxify land contaminated with munitions.

“Unfortunately DNAN is a very different story to TNT, as it accumulates in the above ground parts of the plant. While plants can use natural processes to reduce the toxicity of TNT, our studies found that plants appear to have no natural way of fighting off the toxic effects of DNAN, meaning that it persists in the plant and is toxic at much lower concentrations.”

Researchers warn that as DNAN is present throughout the plant and not just the root system, as is the case with TNT, there is a greater risk of animals eating the infected plant, introducing the toxin into the food chain. 

In previous studies by the York team, genetically modified grass was grown on land contaminated with military explosives, which successfully degraded contaminants to non-detectable levels in their plant tissues, but as yet there is currently no such method to remove or reduce DNAN.

The US is estimated to have over 10 million hectares of military land contaminated with constituents of explosives and the US government estimates that remediation of unexploded ordinances on US military training ranges alone will cost $16-165 billion. 

Dr Liz Rylott, co-author of the study from the University of York’s Department of Biology, said: “Recent years have seen an escalation in military explosives due to global conflicts, and so we are potentially looking at vast scales of pollution, which means there is an urgent need, and interest in, developing sustainable plant-based remediation strategies.

“We also don’t know what the limits of DNAN toxicity are in humans, so our hope is that our latest research will highlight that more work is urgently needed to understand its effects.” 

This research, published in the journal Nature Plants, was funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) of the U.S. Department of Defense and was in collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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Journal

Nature Plants