A French team conducted experiments using sparrow chicks and write in Environmental Research that their tests led to slower growth, with females impacted most.
They targeted the common fungicide tebuconazole, popular on food crops because it can stop everything from necrotic ring spot to blights, mildews, and smuts. They compare it to the popular weedkiller glyphosate, which they claim has caused a decline in birds in Europe, despite scientists showing the top reason for bird population changes in various areas has been land use changes and not the use of pesticides lacking an Organic™ label.
They bred domestics sparrows and exposed a control group to high concentrations of tebuconazole but data show no effect on the health, breeding period, number of eggs laid or hatching success of birds so they pivoted to being an observational study.
Using subjective criteria that places this in the EXPLORATORY pile rather than the science one, they declared chicks in the exposed group, and in particular females, showed reduced growth, they were 10% smaller, and a higher mortality rate after leaving the nest - 47% compared to 20% in the control group). It's not as unconvincing as fellow Europeans Gilles-Eric Seralini or Andrew Wakefield but it isn't compelling.
Regardless, they demand more funding to find new ways to declare the potentially harmful physiological effects of science, but the culture war really only shows why France is the most anti-science, even anti-vaccine, country in the world.
