Environmental risks, growing

At the practical level, an ideal mechanistic biomarker should be simple to use, sensitive, relatively specific, stable, and usable on material that can be obtained by nondestructive sampling (e.g., blood or skin). A tall order, no doubt, and no biomarker yet developed has all of these attributes. However, the judicious use of combinations of biomarkers can overcome the shortcomings of individual assays. The main point to emphasize is that the resources so far invested in the development of biomarker technology for environmental risk assessment has been very small (cf the investment in biomarkers for use in medicine). Knowledge of toxic mechanisms of organic pollutants is already substantial (especially of pesticides), and it grows apace. The scientific basis is already there for technological advance it all comes down to a question of investment. 

Like many data, emission and exposure data are presented as constant values, often a mean with standard deviation. In environmental risk assessment, however, awareness is growing that a stochastic or probabilistic approach is more suitable to obtain insight in the possible risk of chemicals. This also requires expressing exposure data as statistical, probabilistic distributions. Also in this case, the focus should be extended to mixtures. 

Inclusion in the annual report. Some companies provide information on their sustainability goals and performance in their annual reports. In many cases, this information is limited to statements of sustainability objectives and information on environmental risks and liabilities. However, a small but growing number of... 

In February 1985, the Cornell University Ecosystems Research Center issued one of the first comprehensive overviews of what was possible and what was lacking to adequately assess the environmental risks of new biotechnology products. The findings of that report are still quite remarkable, and underscore how little we know about microorganisms—how they survive, how they are dispersed in the environment, why some grow rapidly, and why others do not. 

If regulatory concerns are subordinated to commercial concerns by industry, then a restrictive legislative/public backlash will probably occur, particularly if there are perceived health or environmental risks. Conversely, if there are restrictive regulatory burdens, then the agricultural biotechnology industry will not grow and may move to less restrictive countries. In this situation both the U.S. economy and the public will suffer. Obviously, there must be a balancing of interests and needs. 

In the last few decades, with the growing public concerns about fire hazardous, environmental risks, cleaner surrounding and safe/healthy life style, considerable efforts have been made to develop an eco-friendly/green new generation of flame retardants to replace the restricted hazardous or banned ones [3,4,49, 50]. 

Currently, the active ingredients and adjuvants of the products used for crop protection in agriculture are nonrenewable (generally of petrochemical origin) and present industrial and environmental risks [79]. The role of surfactants in modifying pesticide behavior has been reviewed on a number of occasions over the past 25 years [References in Ref. 80]. Many published reports have shown that the incorporation of surfactants into pesticide sprays improved efficacy [80]. Since most surfactants used in pesticide formulations are petroleum based, it is conceivable that the growing propensity toward products that are environmentally friendly will work in favor of PBS as potential replacements. 

Environmental risk from partners is a powerful driver for restructuring the supply chain. There is growing recognition that issues of environmental pollution should be coordinated with the supply chain processes. Many European countries have enforced legislation that hold manufactures responsible for used-products and waste (Robeson et al. 1992 Fleischmann et al. 1997). Therefore, issues such as recycling, waste disposal, and control of industrial pollution must be addressed in an integral fashion (refer to Chap. 9). 

Biorational approaches have proven useful in the development of classes of herbicides which inhibit essential metaboHc pathways common to all plants and thus are specific to plants and have low toxicity to mammalian species. Biorational herbicide development remains a high risk endeavor since promising high activities observed in the laboratory may be nullified by factors such as limitations in plant uptake and translocation, and the instabiHty or inactivity of biochemical en2yme inhibitors under the harsher environmental conditions in the field. Despite these recogni2ed drawbacks, biorational design of herbicides has shown sufficient potential to make the study of herbicide modes of action an important and growing research area. 

There is a growing need to better characterize the health risk related to occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides. Risk characterization is a basic step in the assessment and management of the health risks related to chemicals (Tordoir and Maroni, 1994). Evaluation of exposure, which may be performed through environmental and biological monitoring, is a fundamental component of risk assessment. Biomarkers are useful tools that may be used in risk assessment to confirm exposure or to quantify it by estimating the internal dose. Besides their use in risk assessment, biomarkers also represent a fundamental tool to improve the effectiveness of medical and epidemiological surveillance. 

For acute releases, the fault tree analysis is a convenient tool for organizing the quantitative data needed for model selection and implementation. The fault tree represents a heirarchy of events that precede the release of concern. This heirarchy grows like the branches of a tree as we track back through one cause built upon another (hence the name, "fault tree"). Each level of the tree identifies each antecedent event, and the branches are characterized by probabilities attached to each causal link in the sequence. The model appiications are needed to describe the environmental consequences of each type of impulsive release of pollutants. Thus, combining the probability of each event with its quantitative consequences supplied by the model, one is led to the expected value of ambient concentrations in the environment. This distribution, in turn, can be used to generate a profile of exposure and risk. 

In this chapter we have explained several system-inherent factors of organic fruit growing that can improve fruit quality. However, with the intensification of organic fruit production currently under way worldwide (e.g. more intensive nitrogen application on horticultural crops), there is a risk of quality decrease. Therefore, technical progress in organic farming should be closely and scientifically monitored for (side) effects on food quality, possibly in a holistic view that also includes environmental, social and human health criteria. 

The public interest in safe and healthy products or at least products not hampered by scandals is growing. In the area of environmental protection the first chemicals pioneer period , which was perceived almost completely positively by the public, has long since past and a strict level of regulation - at least for averting hazards and also as an initial step to taking precantions against risks - has generally been estabhshed. 

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report Intolerable Risk Pesticides in Our Children s Food focused on the increased risk of the adverse effects of pesticides on children. This was in part because of the smaller size of the child relative to the adult and because of different food consumption practices. Relative to their size, children eat, drink, and breathe more than adults in part because they are growing. The use and regulation of pesticides illustrate the complexities of risk analysis and risk management and the difficulties in determining an acceptable level of exposure with acceptable risks. In the United States approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides (with about 600 different active ingredients) are used annually in the agricultural sector, and worldwide approximately 4 billion pounds are used. There are a range of human health and environmental health effects associated with the use of pesticides. 

Researchers are working to produce recombinant proteins from viruses in plants so that the leaves, fruit, or root (such as potatoes) would be edible forms of vaccine. A vaccine that is eaten may be more appealing and suitable than injections, particularly in poor parts of world with limited access to skilled health-care professionals. But there are barriers to the development of plant vaccines. First, there are technical issues. For example, would conditions within the stomach allow the immune system to respond to the protein to provide protection Additionally, some people are concerned about the environmental and health risks of growing vaccine-producing plants in fields. Could the food be safely processed and shipped While the development of plant-based vaccines has been a research success since first reported in 1992, it remains uncertain whether this form of biotechnology will eventually have a major impact on public health. 

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