Fant 10464 publikasjoner. Viser side 10 av 419:
New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) are gaining significant momentum globally to reduce animal testing and enhance the efficiency and human relevance of chemical safety assessment. Even with substantial EU commitment from regulatory agencies and the academic community, the full regulatory adoption of NAMs remains a distant prospect. This challenge is further complicated by the fact that the academic world, oriented toward NAMs development, and regulatory agencies, focused on practical application, frequently operate in separate spheres. Addressing this disconnect, the present paper, developed within the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC), provides a clear overview of both the available non-animal tests and current evaluation practices for genotoxic and carcinogenic hazard assessment, while simultaneously highlighting existing regulatory needs, gaps, and challenges toward greater human health protection and the replacement of animal testing through NAMs adoption.
The analysis reveals a complex landscape: while the EU is deeply committed to developing and adopting NAMs, as outlined in its Chemical Strategy for Sustainability and supported by initiatives like PARC, prescriptive regulations such as Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) and Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) still heavily mandate in vivo animal data for hazard classification, particularly for germ cell mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. This reliance creates a “too-short-blanket-problem,” where efforts to reduce animal testing may impact human health protection because of the current in vivo-based classification criteria. In contrast, sectors such as cosmetics and certain European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)-regulated products demonstrate greater flexibility toward progressive integration of NAMs. While the deep mechanistic understanding of genotoxicity and carcinogenicity has significantly advanced the integration of alternatives to animal tests into regulatory chemical hazard assessment, their broader and full implementation faces considerable challenges due to both scientific complexities (i.e., the development and validation of fit-for-purpose NAMs) and existing legislative provisions.
2026
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a well-known air pollutant, mostly elevated by car traffic in cities. To date, small, reliable, cost-efficient multipollutant sensors with sufficient power and accuracy for community-based atmospheric studies are still lacking. The HAPADS (highly accurate and autonomous programmable platforms for providing air pollution data services) platforms, developed and tested in real conditions, can be a possible approach to solving this issue. The developed HAPADS platforms are equipped with three different NO2 sensors (7E4-NO2–5, SGX-7NO2, MICS-2711 MOS) and a combined ambient air temperature, humidity, and pressure sensor (BME280). The platforms were tested during the driving test, which was conducted across various roads, including highways, expressways, and national and regional routes, as well as major cities and the countryside, to analyse the environmental conditions as much as possible (Poland, 2024). The correlation coefficient r was more than 0.8, and RMSE (root mean squared error) was in the 3.3–4.3 μg/m3 range during the calibration process. The results obtained during the driving tests showed R2 of 0.9–1.0, which proves the ability of HAPADS platforms to work in the hard environmental conditions (including high rain and snow, as well as sun and a wide range of temperatures and humidity).
2026
2025
Transboundary particulate matter, photo-oxidants, acidifying and eutrophying components
Norwegian Meteorological Institute
2025
2025
Physics-Informed Deep Learning for Wind Downscaling over Oslo
Running a numerical weather model such as WRF at kilometre or sub-kilometre grid spacing over a regional domain is computationally expensive. We present physics-informed deeplearning models that ingest a single 9km WRF wind field and simultaneously predict two finer-scale wind fields at 3 km and 1 km resolution via dual decoder heads. Four representative architectures are benchmarked-Deep Residual U-Net (DeepRU), DEVINE, a bespoke 3-D Transformer, and a Fourier Neural Operator (FNO)-each trained with divergence-free, vorticity, and Navier-Stokes residual constraints plus Charbonnier and gradient perceptual losses. We train and validate our models on the city of Oslo for the year 2018. DeepRU achieves R2=0.94 (RMSE =0.050) at 3km and R2=0.89(RMSE=0.065) at 1 km. DEVINE, Transformer 3-D, and FNO yield 3 km scores of 0.91−0.93, with 1km scores lower by 0.02−0.08, illustrating the increased difficulty of finer-scale reconstruction. Physicsinformed losses improve all models compared to MSE-only baselines, and the residual architecture (DeepRU) remains most effective for this dual-scale task.
2025
Characterization of German SF6 Emissions
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a highly potent greenhouse gas with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 24,700 over 100 years and is globally mainly used as an electrical insulator in switchgear. Several measurement networks have tracked SF6 for many years and their European data reveal significant emissions in southern Germany. This study focuses on German SF6 emissions (2020–2023), using atmospheric measurements from 22 European sites, offering high spatial and temporal resolution for robust emission assessments. While German UNFCCC inventory bottom-up emission estimates report a major source of SF6 through the disposal of soundproof windows, the spatial distribution of German SF6 emissions derived on top-down inversion techniques (InTEM and Flexinvert+) reveals a different picture: The continuous pattern of high emissions from a particular region is responsible for one-third of total SF6 emissions in Germany. Despite this, total German SF6 emissions have decreased from 112 ± 26 t in 2020 to 89 ± 15 t in 2023 (InTEM), with estimates from all methods (both bottom-up and top-down) showing similar trends. Our findings suggest that the emissions from soundproof windows are overestimated, while industrial sources - particularly from SF6 production and recycling in the focus region - are likely underestimated.
2025
2025
2025
2025
2025
2025
2025
2025
Anthropogenic particles in surface waters from Adventfjorden (Svalbard)
The ubiquitous presence of microplastics and other anthropogenic compounds in the marine environment are unfortunately not surprising anymore. Recent publications are revealing the occurrence of those synthesized particles in even remote and/or pristine areas in different marine matrices like biota, water and sediment. Nevertheless, the knowledge about sources and transport mechanisms of those anthropogenic particles (APs) is still lacking, especially in the Arctic. In this study we investigated surface waters from Isfjorden and the branching Adventfjorden, where Longyearbyen the largest settlement of Svalbard is located. Here, untreated wastewater is released into the fjord system. At two sample sites upstream and two sample sites downstream, three replicates at each location have been collected in June 2021. APs larger than <50μm were investigated regarding size, shape, and polymer type via μFTIR spectroscopy. At each sampling station, APs were present. The highest concentration of APs was found upstream and downstream Isfjorden; whereas lower concentrations were found within Adventfjorden, closest to the wastewater outlet. Additives and polypropylene showed the highest frequencies. Besides local sources like the untreated wastewater, freshwater inputs, ship traffic or the northwards long-range transport from the south into the Arctic needs to be considered.
2025
MIKRONOR 2024 Monitoring of microplastics and tyre wear particles in the Norwegian environment
The 2024 MIKRONOR campaign, coordinated by NIVA and NILU on behalf of the Norwegian Environment Agency, signifcantly expanded the national monitoring framework for microplastics (MPs) to encompass diverse environmental compartments, including surface waters (Oslofjord and Lake Mjøsa), urban runoff, marine sediments, atmospheric deposition, and coastal beach sediments. Urban stormwater runoff was identifed as a predominant source of MPs, particularly tyre wear particles (TWP). Sediment samples from stormwater traps in Oslo exhibited high TWP concentrations up to 240 mg/g, constituting approximately 25% of the total sediment mass. Corresponding runoff water samples revealed MP concentrations as high as 733 ± 142 particles/L, indicating substantial episodic fuxes of MPs into receiving aquatic or marine systems. Inner Oslofjord sediments contained 0.6–3.5 % TWP by mass, confrming the high levels found in 2023. Microplastic concentrations in surface waters were generally low, ranging from 0 to 0.6 MP/m³. However, two hydrodynamic accumulation zones within the Oslofjord exhibited anomalously high concentrations, with levels approximately two orders of magnitude greater than outside the accumulation zones. One net tow recovered >7,000 fragments of expanded polystyrene, highlighting localized retention. Atmospheric deposition peaked in urban Sofenbergparken (1514 µg/m²/d; 68 % TWP) and showed a clear urban-to-remote gradient. Beach sediments at Akerøya remained low in MPs, with most samples below detection limits. The findings highlight urban runoff, especially TWP, as a dominant source to the Oslofjord, and reveal critical hotspots in both water and air pathways.
Norsk institutt for vannforskning (NIVA)
2025
NO-Hur: the fate of a forest in trouble
An update on the carbon gains and losses at Hurdal
2025