NNs were first introduced in the UK during the early 1990s and their usage has since spread to include oilseed rape, cereals, linseed, sugar beet and maize. A recent EU-moratorium has prohibited NN usage on flowering crops like oilseed rape but these pesticides are still widely used on cereals and sugar beet.
Evidence is growing of detrimental impacts of NNs on a wide range of non-target organisms particularly pollinating insects like honey bees and bumblebees. Exposure of bees through pollen and nectar has been shown to affect their homing behaviour, foraging ability and colony size, while contamination of soils and water is probably affecting a wide range of non-target invertebrates.
NNs are mainly applied at the time of sowing as coatings to crop seeds. Birds are potentially vulnerable to NN exposure when NN-coated seeds are left exposed on soil surfaces after crop sowing operations.
A small-scale survey of recently sown fields in Cambridgeshire (autumn 2013), indicated that pink-coloured NN-coated cereal grains are widespread in the arable landscape both as a thin scattering over entire fields, and as dense spillages on field headlands and margins.