2021, Jakob, Martina Carola, Santa, Dushica, Holte, Kari Anne, Sikkeland, Inger Johanne, Hilt, Bjorn, Lundqvist, Peter

Introduction and objective: Agriculture and forestry are among the most dangerous professions in Europe, with a high level of accidents affecting the sustainability and viability of the sector. International conventions, EU directives and national legislation build the fundamental basis for prevention. The aim of the study is to describe and categorize national mechanisms of occupational safety and health (OSH) for agricultural workers in Europe, to assess the extent of implementing safety regulation, the body in charge, and to give examples of health and safety initiatives. Material and methods: Results of a questionnaire-survey on basic safety regulations on farms sent by e-mail to the representatives of 30 participating European countries in the context of the Sacurima COST action network (CA 16123) are presented. Due to the complexity, only selected countries are described in this study highlighting the regulative bodies, occupational health services or specific training offers, as well as the complexity of the mechanisms. Results: One of the most serious issues and deficits of EU OSH regulation is the exclusion of self-employed farmers who compose nearly 90% of the farming population. This leads to serious under-reporting of accidents, and because one of the most common measures for the performance of health and safety initiatives are the injury and ill health statistics, better registration systems are urgently needed in almost all countries as a basis for preventive efforts. Conclusions: The results of the study provide a basis for raising awareness about the current OSH systems in Europe, and the importance of developing sector specific OSH strategies. The proposed activities should assist in tackling high accident rates and poor occupational health for self-employed farmers.

2021, Skiba, Ute, Medinets, Sergiy, Cardenas, Laura M., Carnell, Edward John, Hutchings, Nick, Amon, Barbara

Atmospheric NOx concentrations are declining steadily due to successful abatement strategies predominantly targeting combustion sources. On the European continent, total NOx emissions fell by 55% between 1990 and 2017, but only modest reductions were achieved from the agricultural sector; with 7.8% from 20 Eastern European countries and 19.1% from 22 Western European countries. Consequently, the share of agricultural NOx emissions for these 42 European countries have increased from 3.6% to 7.2%. These values are highly uncertain due to serious lack of studies from agricultural soils and manure management. The emission factor (EFNO 1.33%), currently used for calculating soil NOx emissions from European agricultural categories ‘N applied to soils’ and ‘manure management’ was evaluated here by including recently published data from temperate climate zones. The newly calculated EFNO (average 0.60%, 0.0625th%/0.5475th%, n = 65 studies) is not notably different from the current value, given the large uncertainties associated with the small pool of studies, and therefore continued use of EFNO (1.33%) is recommended until more data become available. An assessment of the contribution of agricultural and non-agricultural NOx sources found that of the 42 European countries, the 8 most populated countries achieved considerable reductions (1990–2017) from categories ‘non-agricultural sources’ (55%), ‘N applied to soils’ (43%) and ‘manure management’ (1.2%), compared to small reductions from the remaining 34 countries. Forests are also large sources of soil NOx. On average, emissions from Eastern European forests were 4 times larger than from ‘N applied agricultural soil’, whereas Western European NOx emissions from ‘N applied agricultural soil’ were two times larger than from forest soils. Given that non-agricultural sources of NOx continue to decline, soil related emissions from agriculture, forests and manure management become more important, and require rigorous investigation in order to improve atmospheric pollution forecasts.