 Hello everybody, welcome to the second press conference of the EGU General Assembly 2024. My name is Hazel Gibson, I'm the EGU's Head of Communications and I'd like to welcome you all today to our second press conference PC2 titled Food Security, Water Wows and Tired Lettuce. We are very grateful to have three amazing speakers joining us today, both here on site in Vienna and online. We will be possessing through their presentations and then moving to the questions and answers period after all of the presentations have ended. So if you are joining us virtually at this time, please can you mute your microphones until the end of the presentations when we will be able to take your answers directly in the room. We have, as I say, we are joined by three excellent speakers today, it was a difficult task to choose the presentations we wanted to select for this year's General Assembly as it is the largest General Assembly that we have ever had with just about 20,000 abstracts submitted earlier this year. So choosing the cream of the crop for our press conferences was a difficult task but one that we found very exciting. So I would like to introduce our three speakers for today. The first is Marian Kulpen from the Environmental Science Group Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. The second is Paloma Esteve, who is from the Department of the Agronomia Agaria. This is very Spanish and I apologize for my terrible Spanish pronunciation from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in Spain. And the third is Thilo Hoffman, who is from the Centre of Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science from the University of Vienna here in Austria. I will hand over to our speakers now and we will carry on with the presentation. So we will start with Marian. Thank you so much. I hope I'm not too close. The slides should be up in just a second. Okay. Yes. So welcome. Thank you that I can be here today. I will present our research on tracking real-time impacts of climate variability and trade disruptions on water and food security. My name is Marijn Kulpen and also my colleagues Hesse Biemans and Ipe van der Velder are here in the room and we work also with Christian Siderius in his base in Australia. I work at Wageningen University in Research and yeah, maybe like this, the microphone just try. Yeah. I think we all recognize these types of headings in which we see that extreme events of weather events have effect on food production and water security in countries themselves but also having effect far beyond the country in other countries because they are interlinked with each other via trade. This means that there is a complicated interplay between biophysical and non-biophysical factors when it comes to food security but also water security. For example, in 2022 after a heat wave in India the government decided to ban exports of wheat to other countries to keep food security for their own country safe and this could have effects for countries that are actually normally depending on this exports. And also in Indonesia last January we saw that there was lower rise production because of heat and droughts and now they are depending probably this year more on imports from other countries and of course we know that these events are happening and that they are interlinked with each other but we most of the time only know it when it's happening or when it's already happened and not we don't trigger it beforehand. So we feel like the global picture is missing. We would like to rethink that the picture of what of which regions and countries are depending on other regions or countries is yet missing under current climate events or water risks and therefore we developed a hydrology production trade model with open access data and models that we already used but also newly developed models. So in this presentation I would tell you the basics of this model and then highlight a few examples of which we have found with this model and the challenges that we have faced to to be as accurate as possible and ambitions that we have. So this model is is fed with climate data which is which we download monthly from the Comperonicus data store and this is input for our global production and hydrology model and this model includes several crops including wheat, mice and rice. It's a device between irrigated crops and rain fed crops and with this model we can actually answer what crops are affected by the weather events and what water challenges will come up with this in terms of water quantity and this is then the output of this model is then production numbers and this is used for our trade model in which we actually could analyze what does a lower production mean for another region or country. And this is for the first time that we try to combine the biophysical model of the food and water with the trade model and actually simulate the current situation and the near future situation and we think it's important because we cannot depend on historic data anymore and historic trends because climate change is increasing the events and at the same time also trade patterns are changing all the time. And also we feel like we can do it currently because there is more data available and also on a more recent data like for example the climate data is available every five days is available with a lack of five days, sorry I have to say it like that. So I would like to give some examples of what we have been done. We started two years ago with developing this train of data and models and since the end of 2023 we actually started to analyze specific events so we saw for example the heat impact after a really cold winter in India and what in the north of India and what this could mean for the wheat production and this because if the spring is shorter after a cold winter the chances high that wheat production will maybe partly fail or so we're trying to get a grip on this so this temperature differences also snow patterns are changing in central Asia for example this year there was not much snow and this is this means that also downstream especially downstream there will be more effects felt but then the eventually there came a lot of snow so we saw that it was maybe partly yeah less of a hazard than we could maybe have got into and currently we are looking into the ongoing droughts in South East Asia and what this can mean for the rice production there here you see for example the climate data that we use so you can see on the on the right or the left for you the temperature and that already in 2024 the other blue dots the temperature is relatively high compared to other years and also compared to 2023 and also the precipitation is already quite low in 2000 or actually relatively low compared to other years for 2024 so this is ongoing progress and we are still getting trying to get a grip on this and that actually brings me to my next slide because we face some challenges to to come as close as possible to reality we have to simulate and understand the variability as good as possible because if we do long-term modeling we can we look more at the averages of multiple years and now we really have to look in what is happening in one specific year we validate our model with foul studs but they always show two years later or are having a lack of two years so we really need to get a grip of what's happening now we have to handle the bias and uncertainty in using the latest data like the climate data that I mentioned before we have to have our results quite fast and also understandable because we would like to be in front of a climate risk or food security risk so that there is also still time to actually handle or to take action and at the same time reality catches up early because we are working at the current system we will have our data will be validated quite quick and this is actually also a benefit because we can yeah really easily then also think or really relatively easy then also validate our chain of data and models so our ambitions are that we would like to support early anticipation of potential food and water security by identifying emerging stresses on a national level and also have better and quicker understanding of this complexity of trade but also biophysical components to understand this dynamic global food and water system and we would like to provide knowledge required for national food and water security and also for policies because you can be depending on your own as a country on your own food food production or you are depending on another country's food production but understanding how this really works with the climate hazards that can come we we would like to have more knowledge and provide this as well so thank you this was my presentation thank you very much we will now move to our next speaker Paloma Esteve who is our online participant please give us a couple of minutes to change the slides thank you for your patience okay please proceed Paloma okay thank you very much so I'm Paloma Esteve I am a professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in the department of agricultural economics and the research I'm presenting is titled challenges and opportunities of use in reclaimed water for agricultural irrigation in Spain a hydroeconomic analysis and it has been developed together by colleagues here at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain and colleagues from from the Stockholm environmental Institute and Stockholm University so the research I'm presenting today is a part of an ongoing project the reclamo project in which we are exploring the role of reclaimed water reuse this is treated with with water that is given an additional treatment so that it can be reused for different purposes in these cases irrigation so next slide please so the key messages we got from this part of the research are that reclaimed water reuse can contribute to mitigate the negative impacts of water scarcity for farmers especially in areas of big population concentrations where wastewater treatment plants have a high capacity and especially when this water is used to irrigate high value added crops however the contribution of reclaimed water reuse is limited it can be a part of the solution but only a part of the solution and also it may entail some negative impacts for downstream demands so next slide please so what is the relevance of these results well reclaimed water reuse is growing rapidly being agricultured its main user and currently there is an important push from public policies to promote wastewater reuse and it is considered well it is considered within the sustainable development goal six targets and it is also considered an important issue within circular economy approaches so for example it can contribute to nutrient recycling or it can contribute to improve water quality and improve ecological status due to more strict water treatment and at the same time it provides an additional non-conventional water resource that can be used for different purposes and that can be really key in in arid and semi arid areas where water scarcity is a problem so Spain is living in a country in terms of water reuse in Europe about half of water reuse in the european union comes from Spain but at the same time we are quite far from reaching our potential so only about 10 percent of of treated with water is is reused so in this context and next please and in this context we are developing the reclamo research project which is funded by the Spanish ministry of science and this project is exploring the role of reclaim water reuse for irrigation but we are focusing in two very distinct cases so one is the most typical one in coastal areas but the other one is in an inland basin where water reuse has started to be implemented to substitute groundwater extractions next please so this inland case is the case of the upper guadiana basin in central spain and in this basin during the second half of the 20th century there was a large expansion of irrigation agriculture triggered partially by by agricultural policies and this large development was mainly based on groundwater resources so this led to the over exploitation of the upper fair below and the degradation of of the associated wetlands of Las Dalas de Daimiel which have or had a high ecological value so since the end of the 20th century next please different policies and management plans have been developed to to control resource to control and reduce water abstractions aiming to recover the aquifer and the wetlands so within these policies the most important measure has been the implementation of a water abstraction regime which implies a reduction a large reduction of water allotments for irrigation for farmers and also these allotments are revised annually so as long as the water levels in the aquifer continue decreasing these allotments are reduced for farmers so next please and next again sorry so these plans which were mainly based on on promoting a more efficient use of water and to reduce allotments have not really succeeded in avoiding over exploitation so in this context some irrigation communities have started to reduce treated with water for irrigation or pudicrops in this case mainly vineyards and even if these farmers are just a minority at the moment there there is an increase an increase in interest and increasing demands from other farmers and users to further develop in this area reclaimed water reuse so current regulation in the basin allow reclaimed water reuse but only when it substitutes groundwater extraction rights so so that the total amount of water use doesn't change so in this context we question what is the potential of reclaimed water reuse in this area what can be the impacts but also what can be what what can be sorry the impacts for farmers but also what can be the impact on aquifer recovery next please so we started analyzing economic feasibility so previous research within this project showed that a project viability depends on location and on the type of crops so there is a net benefit of reclaimed water reuse in areas close to high capacity water treatment plants and and especially when reclaimed water is used to regained high value added crops which is not always that way in this in this basin so particularly when woody crops are irrigated as vineyards and olives there's a clear net benefit on on implementing this kind of projects so considering this next please considering this we developed first an economic model that allows to simulate or to represent farmers decisions regarding what crops to grow and what water resources to use so it's an optimization model in which we assume farmers maximize their try to maximize their their farm income so this model allowed us to compare farm income under different conditions so first we had the baseline conditions where water consumption is above sustainable levels then we simulated full compliance with the current water abstraction regime where income would decrease by a five percent and finally when farmers are given access to reclaim water reuse so in this case average the average farm income showed an increase of about 12 percent so what determines this this impact or this positive impact of reclaim water reuse so first the cost of water and so here we consider the prices that currently farmers are paying for reclaim water reuse in the small project that it's already been implemented there so in this case the cost of reclaim water is similar or even a bit lower than the than the cost of pumping water from the output first so this is crucial there so there there's a there arises the question of the role that public funding and subsidizing water treatments are crucial for the for the viability of these kind of projects next please so then building or or after seeing economically it's positive or it can be positive for farmers and then we we question what is the impact on the water system on the hydrology system so for being able to explore the impact of these changes on the water system and on the aquifer we couple a hydrology model in which we could simulate how different land uses different property patterns provided by different water allotments and access to reclaim water reuse could impact on aggregated water demand and on aquifer water storage next please so results showed that reclaim water reuse would contribute to stabilization of water levels in the aquifer and despite its role is small it's an additional effort on top of a water extraction regime also the changes in land use result on irrigation demands that are more easily satisfied when reclaim water is available next please and however the distribution of impacts on surface water bodies is uneven across the basin and there can be negative impacts on downstream wetlands therefore it's necessary to that reclaim water reuse is developed with caution and more research is needed regarding the hydrological dynamics of the wetlands and that's all thank you very much thank you very much we will now move to our last presentation which is with Thilo Hoffman give us a couple of minutes just to switch the slides thank you for your patience thank you very much for the opportunity to present our work here this is a joint project between the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem it fits perfectly to the talk before and you will see in a minute why thank you so much that's perfect so the issue of the presentation is about tires you know that tires they're highly designed they contain a lot of chemicals and they're designed to abrade because you want to keep your car on the track so they need to abrade they need to have frictions and it is no surprise that tire contain additives because what a tire is doing nowadays it's high-tech and this doesn't basically depend on the rubber itself it depends on the additives inside the tire and what has been overlooked over a few decades now that of course these additives end up in the environment e-mobility will not change this picture to the contrary e-mobility has a higher weight and also abrasion of the tires might be a little bit higher so e-mobility does not change this just to get a rough idea about this it's about one kilogram per capita per year so this is massive and this is about a 50 percent of the global microplastics so it's it's a big number what we have seen from other studies over here is this is a paper and science two years ago that these tire wear additives might be really toxic to fish so for example after a street wash road wash events in seattle basically a salmon was swimming upside down in the river so it's it's pretty toxic this tire wear additives like to move this slowly here and here we get the exact link to the last presentation so how do why do these tire wear additives reach the farmland soil normally you wouldn't expect to throw your tires hopefully not to a farmland soil point is that you have three big routes the one road is biosolids and here you have a map of the european union and you see for example in spain it's about 72 percent or here in france 76 percent of the sewage sludge called biosolids which because it sounds better and this is brought to the fields basically for being a fertilizer because we have a limit and some areas of organic carbon but mainly phosphorus and that's also why we used a cooperation with israel because in israel basically all of the biosolids are used and this is increasing globally so most countries in the world use increasingly biosolids and these biosolids of course contain all the road wash from the roads including the abraded tire wear and the second route is exactly irrigated wastewater so this is reclaimed wastewater as we just heard from spain this is increasing in the e u this is also increasing globally in israel for example up to 100 percent of the wastewater is reclaimed treated and then irrigated to the field and this is the two major pathways why the additives from the tire can then reach basically farmland soil and the third part is wind so if a motorway over here of course wind can basically have an input here that you get the tire wear directly onto your farm field now it does not work at all oh i have to bring the mouse back so we had three different studies and what we wanted to show is that the additives on the tire wear leach into the environment they're taken up by plants and they enter the food chain so first step is we did a hydroponic study so just in the lab to see and understand the mechanism the second step was a monitoring study so we checked all around europe basically if you go to the grocery and buy this from spain or the netherlands or from where whatsoever what do we find here in stock and then the study we report today is the flutian hemmeli who's here in the audience as a greenhouse study so we wanted to look under realistic growing conditions basically what happens here experimental setup has been very simple here the pots in the greenhouse nice lettuce you just have seen the pictures we dose the fertilizer we dose the compounds over here we were running these experiments 21 days and then basically we extracted the salad we extracted the soil and measured this at high resolution mass spec to identify these compounds you don't need to know these structures by heart even if you're a journalist of course you will do so later i know but just look to how nice they look and that's exactly what we did we wanted to look to the structure we selected by purpose very different structures because then you can extrapolate this to different compounds and we also look to a parameter called hydrophobicity how much they love water or they love fat so these compounds here very different that this gives us a little bit an idea what is the driving mechanisms and it gives you a little bit of prediction what would happen with other compounds why because in Atari you can have up to 1000 of these compounds and it's impossible to test the tox and the uptake of all of these compounds second producers like Contier Michelin or Pirelli they will never tell you what's in the tire that is the secret and it's not regulated by the way which is interesting and might change in the next years and plant uptake and metabolism it's important so the first step is basically you need a root uptake so your compound and with this fancy structures that's not easy the compound has to pass basically the root being taken up and different compounds behave very different then you have a distribution in the plant and then plant actually wants to get rid of it it does a metabolism basically so it has detox mechanisms and this metabolism produces a lot of other compounds what we see is one of these compounds HMM basically so it is taken up in the plant the concentration increases over time 14 days and then it decreases again so you have a metabolism of the plant the say the same for the Guanadine DPG so it's taken up over here and then the concentration again decreases so you have metabolism that's the work what Lucia did it's it's a little bit a lot of explaining here with the error bars but when we talk to the plant guys they tell us well that's nature if you have a lot of different plants that it just looks different what you can see is for the take-home message so some compounds here you don't find them a lot in the plant later but degradation products of this compounds this is by the way the toxic one which kills the salmon 6 ppd and the key known is basically the product which is later produced in the environment they are taken up by the plant and then also DPG and HMM are taken up the message here is very simple these compounds are taken up under realistic growing conditions the compound availability in the soil so how much of this compound you have this option behavior as well as the plant uptake processes govern the concentrations in the leaf so it's it's getting complex and then the soil composition of course this is a no-brainer that's no surprise if you have a lot of clay you have less but you don't grow salad and clay so the soil composition of course significantly influences the compound uptake for all the study tire direct compounds and with this I would like to show the team over here so Lucia and Emily he really did most of the work in Israel actually until October 8th then he need to fly back he is here in the audience and Anja Sherman she is PhD student in my department and this postdoc Torsten Hoefa and me and then the team from Israel Benny Feffetz he's at the moment in LA and I got tar and I would like to close with a few takeaway facts your sharing is encouraged of course because it's a press conference so I as a braid very simple one kilogram per year globally it's massive tire particles contain a plethora of potentially toxic additives tire particle additives enter the farmland where biosolids recycled wastewater as we just heard and wind these additives lead into the soil we have shown they're taken up by plants and enter the food chain and under realistic conditions compound structure and soil availability to control this uptake and then it's my personal statement here the risk to human health is not fully known but please guys we don't want wildlife with PFAS DDT and the others until we see the risk we need to act now and restrict chemical plastic pollution that's really of major importance thanks thank you very much so now we have some time for questions I'm able to open the room for questions both sorry yes open the room for questions both in the room and online if you are in the room if you want to ask a question please raise your hand and I'll bring the microphone to you if you are online you can either use the raise hand feature in zoom or type your question into the chat and I will ask it on your behalf so does anybody have any questions for us because yes thanks so much for your presentations I am curious about the tire emissions so I'm from Oregon, Portland Oregon and I saw all those headlines with the salmon a couple of years ago what are the worst compounds in from the coming from the tires that that you know of and did I understand correctly that you said up to a thousand chemicals are in tires but we don't know what those are it's a very good question so what is known from Oregon for example is six ppd six ppd key known but all the seven ppds are now regulated so for example epa california does a lot of regulation on this so there's a big debate both in the us as well as here in europe which of these compounds might be banned for substitutes my concern here is that we have seen this substitution very often for example if you look to bpa and you can go to the supermarket in Oregon and buy bpa free bottles beautiful and there is bps inside it's not better long chain PFAS have been banned and substituted by next generation PFAS for shorter chain PFAS because they are thought to be safer they're not safer so I would go the other way around I would go to the positive list here I would really regulate this and go to a positive list and say these are additives which are allowed it sounds maybe a little bit naive but I don't think it is naive if you look to the problems coming up in the last decade better understanding that it is simply impossible to talk test all compounds not possible need to go the other way around so of the three uptake my mechanisms that you identified biosolids wind and irrigation water which of those is the most concerning yeah very good question not not easy because it's a wicked problem the wicked problem is is biosolids contain of course fertilizer so it's used a lot for example in the U.S. Canada China increasingly on the other side it is basically the sewage loss with all the compounds which humans emit so in Europe there is a strong movement to ban sewage loss for example this is done in Switzerland already UK uses a lot but in Germany Austria it's banned in future they move out of this what you can do is you can paralyze it or temperature no oxygen to bring it as a biochar basically to the field that's one option recycled wastewater same wicked problem we just had a talk from Spain water shortage it's increasing not in Oregon maybe in some parts but that's a big problem so you need the recycled wastewater but then you need very intensive treatment which which is a problem for the cost the biggest problem might be next to road directly in the first 10 to 20 meters next to the road basically from the wind so there are a few techniques collecting these tire wear particles directly in this I don't know the term I would know it in German but not in English directly where the tire is inside this thing in the car where you can collect it and to try to first minimize abrasion of the tire that's possible greener editors and then minimum emission from the tires that that's really key I have one last question I'm just curious if you notice any policymakers that are interested or moving forward on trying to do something related to tire pool based pollution and and if there's a difference between us and Europe this is happening heavily and interestingly it is getting at the same speed while I would say us was 10 years ahead of PFAS and 10 years slow in plastics for tire wear both like us and Europe is moving at the same speed so I know from because we're in contact with regulators from EPA in California it's going exactly at the same speed like regulation here in Europe in the next European norm for cars seven tires will be included and chemicals will be included soon so yes it's moving forward people are aware of this this compound should not be there thank you very much do we have any other questions either in the room or online can I ask just a basic question first of all are these compounds you're talking about the most microplastics sometimes also as additives so are these are these all actual they actually types of plastic or they are the chemicals what what exactly are we talking about here very in very principle like every plastic it's formed out of a monomer then you have a polymoral copolymer but that's not plastic that's the polymer to make out of a polymer a plastic you add additives there's no such thing like plastic without additives spinning anti uv anti oxidants whatsoever vulcanization additives and tires so whatever your plastic you have in your hand or whatsoever you have additives inside we're talking of the chemicals which make basically out of the polymer the product you have of the versatility so I would pitch here that chemical pollution stemming from all plastics not only tires but also PVC and whatsoever is maybe even the bigger problem than just mechanically having the plastic there so all plastics contain additives and this has nothing to do with size so it's of micro or micro or nano just from the nano it leaches out faster than from the macro and then I can also ask how big a problem is this in terms of how much of this is in our food is anyone actually testing for it do we have any idea of sort of quantities or types or anything like that um we tested this inside from Spain Italy um Austria um Switzerland and Israel and the concentrations have been very low for the few additives we tested so concerning food I would say too early to say there's no risk or high risk but food at the moment this might change in the next five years it's not my highest concern inhalation is different because if you're living next to a road or we just debated here before because we are both climbers or bordling if you go to a climbing mall for example then you evade the soles of your climbing shoes and inside a climbing hole basically the concentration in air of plastics is quite high and you inhale this so that's what we are testing right now in a current project how much basically these additives influence your gut and your lung microbiome what are the impacts of the humans so what would it take to establish an effect I mean you know the these low concentrations here that sounds like maybe we shouldn't be worried I mean what what point to say this is a serious problem or not I would say if I have a compound and I'm just going back one row to Oregon if I have a compound which kills after rain events salmon in a river for me the debate is over you need to regulate this it is toxic to fish and this was just the start and then we don't understand the mechanism so we have seen that for one species of trout it's not toxic but the next species it is toxic so people are working now what is the exact mechanism why is it so different from the talk from species to species if I would say we have seen this for let's say maybe 10 species at the moment that is really highly toxic for the environment I would say that that's enough stop it you're just there to say it is a major problem I just I'm curious knowing that the plastic treaty negotiations are underway and this seems like a huge percentage of the plastics that we need to be concerned about is it is a discussion specifically on tires happening with the plastics treaty do you are you aware of that near 5.2 there's a specific discussion about this and at the last step also which I'm very happy about chemicals came into a near 5.2 which is really important I'm sorry just about the uh how much how much more serious this problem is becoming I have you got any sort of figures for how much the levels of these is increasing over time if we're using more biosolids if wastewater has been recycled how much more of a problem has this become in yeah unfortunately I have to say the data I have seen is terribly bad so we have seen first reports from crack me two years ago in California that 80% of the plastics in air 80% is tire wear we have seen from data University of Vienna that um tire particles can be transported over hundreds of kilometers in the atmosphere but sampling is not easy detection is not easy and I would say we we honestly don't have the data for this at the moment but just to be clear you think the problem is getting worse it is yes with the basically more cars being produced and more tires being abraded it is very simple you can do this and back on the envelope calculation you know how much cars and lorries are out there this is an increasing number as I said immobility is changing zero here you still have tires on the road so the problem is increasing and it's accumulating and so you're just a reminder for anybody online feel free to raise your hand if you want to ask a question or drop it into the chat and any last questions in the room no just checking okay so thank you very much to all of our panelists today for joining us in this press conference this is the second of seven press conferences that we have this week the next one is taking place tomorrow morning at 10 a.m which is pc3 unveiling Antarctica's secrets new research brings us one step closer to predicting the future of the icy continent so please feel free to join us either here in the room or online for that 10 o'clock in the morning tomorrow all that remains to say is if you wish to have any additional conversation with any of our three speakers they will be available immediately after the press conference for additional conversation and if you need any help or assistance with other media materials during the course of the General Assembly please visit media.egu.eu for additional resources and support and lastly I would like you to join me in thanking our three speakers today for the excellent presentations thank you very much