This explainer video introduces viewers to the EU-H2020 funded SPRINT project. The aim of the project is to develop a Global Health Risk Assessment Toolbox to assess the impacts of Plant Protection Products (PPPs) on the environment and human health. We will then use this to inform regulators and help farmers/landowners transition towards more sustainable pesticide use.

JOB OPPORTUNINTY

SPRINT is searching for an experienced, multidisciplinary, innovative and highly motivated scientist to join our team at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. 

The research topic is “integrated risk assessment of pesticides”, combining environmental chemistry and modelling, toxicology and ecotoxicology, geographical information systems, crop protection and pesticides, databases and big-data processing, human health risks assessment and ecological risk assessment. The prospective scientist will develop tools for the integrated risk assessment of pesticides from the national to European level. He or she will elaborate large data on plant protection products use and properties, model and predict their inputs to the environment, their fate and distribution, their exposure, effects, impacts and risks.

Learn more about this exciting opportunity and apply here. 

Interested in what we are doing within SPRINT? There will be frequent updates about for instance the WP2 sampling campain in the different Case Study Sites. But also other interesting activities such as  SPRINT plenary meetings will be announced. Click here to go to the "Project Activities". 

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In the Dutch TV show Eenvandaag, an item about plant protection products (pesticides) Paul Scheepers (SKU) and Violette Geissen (WU) were interviewed about the SPRINT project. 

What the mix of the many agents do to us and to the environment is still barely known. The NVWA is working with RIVM to develop a method to measure the "cocktail effect" of pesticides. The European Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (EFSA) has also recently presented an action plan for this, but specific research is lacking.

Research being carried out at the universities of Wageningen and Nijmegen is therefore awaited with great interest. In this so-called SPRINT research, researchers are looking at the effects of the combination of substances. "It is difficult to predict the behavior of mixtures. You have to test what those mixtures do and that is what we are going to look at more closely in SPRINT," says Paul Scheepers, toxicologist at Radboud UMC.