
Study points to pesticides as the cause of doubled concentrations
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The study evaluated official data from the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture. The results have so far only been published on the preprint server ChemRxiv and have not yet been peer-reviewed.
In Austria, the contamination of the groundwater with the toxic trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) has increased in several places, and significantly so: the concentrations of the fertility-damaging substance have doubled on average and tripled at one measuring point.
This is the conclusion reached by the authors of a study that evaluated official data from the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture. However, the study has not yet been reviewed and is currently only available for discussion on the preprint server ChemRxiv.
The scientists involved, including those from the University of Vienna and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, suspect that the increase is due to pesticides.

In Germany, around 11 million tonnes of food waste is generated every year, 58 percent of which comes from private households. Despite voluntary strategies since 2019, the reduction has been small. France has implemented a food donation law with tax benefits since 2016 and has halved per capita waste from 108 to 58 kilos, while Germany has stagnated at 75 kilos per capita.

King Frederik X opened a CCS plant in Esbjerg that stores liquefied CO2 at a depth of 1,800 meters under the North Sea. The 'Greensand' project is considered a milestone for industrial CO2 capture in the EU.

The US government under President Donald Trump has published a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, according to which the unintentional killing of endangered animals is no longer considered a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The regulation follows a July change to the definition of “harm” and is intended, for example, to make the felling of trees containing live, protected bats exempt from punishment as long as there is no intent to kill. Environmental groups warn against easier clearing and construction projects, while the government defends the changes as restoring the original intent of the law.

King Frederik X officially opened the Greensand CO2 storage project in Esbjerg. Since 2023, CO2 from the depleted Nini West oil field has been stored in the Danish North Sea. In the future, up to 400,000 tons of CO2 are to be stored annually, with the potential for up to eight million tons. The project is considered the first industrial-scale CO2 storage project in the EU. Experts see CCS as necessary for emissions that are difficult to avoid, but criticize the high costs and warn about a lack of incentives to reduce emissions at the source.

The Saxon state parliament has passed a law that makes it easier to shoot wolves by transferring population management to the hunting authorities. Saxony is thus implementing federal regulations and reacting to 200 farm animals killed this year, with Environment Minister von Breitenbuch describing the decision as a step towards the ability to act.
An international team of researchers led by ETH Zurich and the Vrije University of Brussels has presented an interactive map that visualizes the dramatic global glacier retreat for over 200,000 glaciers and shows the consequences of climate change.