(Beyond Pesticides, May 22, 2026) On Memorial Day, those who served and died in the armed forces are remembered for their ultimate sacrifice. And the victims of war are memorialized. Of critical note are the effects of war, that extend beyond the battlefield to those who return home or remain in the aftermath with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and ultimately take their lives by suicide, as well as those exposed to deadly chemicals that caused premature death.

A 2022 study finds, “ VA [Veteran Affairs] patients with current or past diagnosis of PTSD have been found to have an unadjusted rate of 50.7 deaths by suicide per 100,000 person years of risk, compared to a rate of 13.2 in the general adult population.” This statistic can be evaluated in the context of a recent observational cohort study to be in print in August 2026 that focuses on exposure to toxic substances and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) through the analysis of data from 248,926 U.S. veterans enrolled in the Million Veteran Program (MVP). In comparing self-reported exposures to nine toxicants, including Agent Orange, chemical/biological weapons, anthrax vaccine, solvents/fuels, petroleum combustion products, lead, other metals, pesticides, and open-air burn pits, and mental health records, the researchers find that military veterans with higher toxic exposures are more likely to have STBs. The study, reviewed in Daily News, will be published in Psychiatry Research,

Exposure to organophosphates, used as a chemical weapon in the Gulf War, is linked to suicide. A study published in August 2024 in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety has found that exposure to organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) is correlated with increased suicidal thoughts in some people. This study is just the latest in a long line of studies from around the world that have linked pesticide exposure to mental health conditions, including sleep disorders, depression, and suicidal ideation (SI). Research finds a strong causal evidence that Gulf War Illness (GWI) is the result of exposure to sarin gas, an organophosphate nerve agent used as a chemical weapon during the Gulf War.

Findings, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, have important implications for the hundreds of thousands of American service members suffering from a constellation of chronic symptoms. “Quite simply, our findings prove that Gulf War illness was caused by sarin, which was released when we bombed Iraqi chemical weapons storage and production facilities,” said Robert Haley, MD, lead author of the study and epidemiologist at University of Texas Southwestern. (See Daily News.)

A literature review of military personnel links their toxic exposure to poorer mental health outcomes. The review, written by medical professionals and researchers throughout the U.S. and published in Medical Care, analyzes the existing literature on associations between military environmental exposures (MEEs) to contaminants, including pesticides, and mental health (MH) outcomes. “We used evidence mapping methodology to systematically search MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and PTSDpubs for studies of toxic exposure during military service and psychiatric outcomes, which included psychiatric diagnoses, psychiatric symptoms, and neurocognitive functioning,” the authors explain. The 49 studies in the review, covering chemical exposures for military members, involve chemical munitions from the Gulf War era and Agent Orange (the weed killer or defoliant) from the Vietnam War era that are associated with symptoms of depression, PTSD, and anxiety, among others. “Overall, available evidence suggests that veterans reporting environmental toxic exposures may report relatively high levels of mental health needs,” the researchers report.

Exposure to toxic chemicals also can lead to death after service members return home or victims remain in the aftermath of war. In passing The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (PACT Act), Congress recognized that chemical exposure through burn pits used during the Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas of the Southwest Asia theater of military operations, caused deadly diseases. In fact, President Biden attributed his son’s death from brain cancer in 2015 to his exposure to burn pits in Iraq during the war. Burn pits, a common practice, were open-air combustion of chemicals, tires, plastics, medical equipment, and human waste, according to the VA. The Department of Defense says it has closed most burn pits and is planning to close the remainder. PACT Act has a long list of presumptive conditions for deadly diseases, including but not limited to (see Military.com for expansive list here): Cancers of the brain, head, neck, and nervous system; Brain and nervous system disorders (i.e., Parkinson’s Disease); Sarcomas; Spinal cord cancers; Gastrointestinal cancers; Kidney cancers; Lymphomas; Melanomas; Pancreatic cancers; Reproductive cancers; Respiratory cancers; and, various non-cancer conditions (High blood pressure/hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary fibrosis, among others.)

From the Veterans Administration: Help Prevent Suicide; Know about suicide prevention resources:

• Visit the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline website.
• Call 988.
• For the Veterans Crisis Line, dial 1 after being connected.

While helping a suicidal person can be a difficult process, remember that the assistance you provide could save someone’s life. If you think someone may be suicidal, you can directly ask him or her. Contrary to popular belief, asking someone if they are suicidal will not put the idea in their head.

Often the most difficult part of obtaining treatment is the initial call to a mental health professional. It is usually easier for a suicidal individual to accept professional help if they have assistance with this part of the process. For help making referrals see Get Help in a Crisis.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides; featured image attribution: JO1 Gawlowicz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 21, 2026) An important study by cancer researchers in Barcelona, Spain at once shows a path forward in illuminating the long-term, multi-generational, health damage from pesticide exposures and demonstrates how extraordinarily dilatory U.S. agricultural regulators are in protecting public health. The study, “Epigenetic fingerprints link early-onset colon and rectal cancer to pesticide exposure,” found a robust association between methylation markers (for gene expression associated with cancer) and exposure to a number of pesticides, with the herbicide picloram having the strongest link. Other pesticides with strong associations include the weedkillers atrazine, glyphosate, nicosulfuron, and insecticide esfenvalerate. Colon cancer is expected to double, and rectal cancer to quadruple, in this young age group by 2030. This sharp contrast between age groups suggests that environmental exposures, rather than strictly genetics, are involved.

The authors are concerned with the alarming rise in early onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) not only in the highly developed world but also in less-industrialized countries. This increase appears to be connected with age cohorts and the differences in lifestyle and environmental exposures between older and younger cohorts. According to a commentary on the study by researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in the U.S., the incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) declined steadily in people born between about 1890 and 1950 and then began to rise again. We are now at a point where people born after 1990 are diagnosed at two to three times the rate of those born in 1950.

Early CRC onset is defined as diagnosis before age 50, and among the known risk factors are “family history of colorectal cancer, a history of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease, and environmental and lifestyle-related factors such as lack of exercise, obesity, smoking, and alcohol consumption,” according to the Dana-Farber Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center.

The Barcelona researchers focused on methylation biomarkers to analyze the generational differences between CRC patients. Methylation is part of a complex system of gene regulation, called epigenetics, that controls which genes are switched off and on in individual cells and tissues. Epigenetic processes do not change genes themselves, but deeply influence the patterns of DNA expression. In recent years methylation status has become the target of extreme scientific interest, because too much or too little methylation in the wrong places affects cancer induction and development, along with chromosomal stability and other important genetic processes. Abnormal methylation is very common in CRC. The researchers developed methylation risk scores (MRSs) based on DNA sites known to influence cancer.

The Barcelona researchers used methylation data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, an archive of cell samples from 33 types of cancers. The archive contains genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data. The depth and breadth of this data are extremely useful, because while tissue samples over time from conception to adulthood are rarely available, “the epigenome accumulates damage beginning in the gamete’s preconception, continuing through fertilization, prenatal development, and longitudinally throughout the lifetime of an individual,” according to a review by researchers at the University of Michigan. This provides an unparallelled forensic record whose potential is just being realized.

The current study includes MRSs for lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption, smoking, obesity, birthweight, cannabis use, and education level. Environmental factors include exposures to air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide, PCBs, and particulates) and 14 herbicides and insecticides. The researchers then compare the scores between a set of EOCRC patients and a group of late-onset colorectal cancer (LOCRC) patients.

The data analysis produced 63 MRSs for comparison between age groups. Positive associations emerge between EOCRC and exposure to four pesticides, PCBs, and particulates. In particular, the herbicide picloram stands out, and the significant association with early onset cancer holds up through numerous validation processes. The researchers note that their analysis supports the reliability of using the MRSs as “proxies for true pesticide exposure,” meaning that this method can now be applied with confidence to capture evidence of pesticide exposures that are currently difficult to reach.

In addition, the study examines pesticide use intensity together with EOCRC incidence rates using population data from seven states and found 27 pesticides with significant associations to EOCRC. This gives the researchers an independent measure to compare with and refine the epigenomic data.

Picloram is used mostly on pastures and rangeland to kill plants that compete with food for grazing animals, as well as on wheat, barley and oats, and in forests, rights-of-way, and other noncrop areas. According to EPA’s 2021 Interim Registration Review Decision, about 650,000 pounds of picloram were applied to about fiv million acres a year between 2014 and 2018. Pasture and rangeland accounted for 95% of those acres.

EPA’s only concern with picloram is the possibility that it may be contaminated with the carcinogen hexachlorobenzene. The EPA review found “no acute or chronic risks of concern for mammals” and no acute risk for birds, reptiles or adult honey bees. It did express some concern about chronic risk for bee larvae and birds, but merely notes the need for further studies. The review also reports numerous instances of compost contamination from used animal bedding and manure, with adverse consequences for ornamental plants and some food plants such as sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumber, soybeans and sugar beets. And while the review notes that “picloram and its salts are mobile and persistent,” it finds “no risks of concern” for fish, marine invertebrates or aquatic plants. EPA characterizes picloram as being of moderately to low toxicity to marine life. However, the chemical is not fully evaluated as mixture of chemicals that make up the formulation, as noted by the Australian and New Zealand “Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality.” The guideline report points to a matter of ongoing exposure, stating: “Picloram does not bind strongly to soil (KOC values of 0.026–100 L/kg). This property (combined with its low volatility, high solubility and high persistence) means picloram has a high potential to leach to groundwater and enter surface water (USEPA 1995, EFSA 2009, Tu et al. 2001, APVMA 2015, NCBI 2020). Once picloram has reached groundwater, it is unlikely to degrade, even over several years (USEPA 1995).” On a historical note, a  4:1 mixture of the 2,4-D and picloram herbicides, known as Agent White, was used as a jungle defoliant in Viet Nam war, along with Agent Orange (a mixture of 2,4-D and the herbicide 2,4,5-T).

Picloram was synthesized by Dow Chemical Company chemists in the early 1960s and first registered by EPA in 1964. The European Union recently extended its registration approval until 2028. Picloram acts by binding to cell receptors for the most common plant growth hormone, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), producing chaotic cell division and plant death. It is not correct to assume, as both regulators and pesticide corporates have done, that IAA pertains only to plants. IAA is ingested by mammals and produced by gut microbiota. According to a 2025 review in The FASEB Journal, IAA has numerous effects on human health, including exacerbating chronic kidney disease, liver stress and cardiovascular disease, but also has some potential protective effects against oxidative stress, inflammation and lipid metabolism. Picloram’s effects on the presence and activity of IAA in nontarget organisms are largely unknown, but as with the weed killer glyphosate’s effects on everything from cancer to reproduction to brain health, the failure to consider unintended consequences of pesticides including picloram rings loud and clear.

The coincidence of picloram and the reversal of the CRC curve in the early 1960s is highly suggestive. The Barcelona authors note that, “If the use of picloram in crops started in the mid and late twentieth century, then current patients with LOCRC were not exposed during their childhood, whereas cases of EOCRC were and have been for a longer part of their lives, which could explain our results.”

Dana-Farber experts point out in their online commentary that the study has several limitations. In its population-level analyses of pesticides, it relied on self-reported exposure data. The epigenomic data was derived from a small sample from The Cancer Genome Atlas of patients who were all males of European ancestry. Further, the MRSs for pesticide exposures are very new compared to those proven to reflect smoking exposure. However, in a parallel perspective in Nature, they wrote that the Barcelona study “lends support to the growing concerns regarding the role of pervasive environmental contaminants on early-onset cancer risk. In reality, picloram is only one of innumerable synthetic chemicals introduced during the post-World War II industrial expansion, as growth of the petrochemical industry in the 1950s drove their large-scale production and global environmental dissemination.”

It is difficult to calculate unintended consequences given that many diseases, including cancers, take decades—even generations—to manifest after early exposures to toxic chemicals. But the consequences are starting to be seen in the preserved cellular record, and with this knowledge comes the responsibility to adopt regulatory restrictions that stop causing the harms.

A further consideration in the context of this forensic resource is parallel emerging evidence that epigenetic changes to germ cells—sperm and eggs—acquired at any phase of life are transmissible to ensuing generations. Research by Michael Skinner, PhD, at Washington State University establishes that in mice exposed to the fungicide vinclozolin in the first generation produced reproductive abnormalities in the mice’s great-grandchildren. Dr. Skinner’s team has now identified 19 chemicals that produce transgenerational epigenetic damage, including eight pesticides. These changes involve DNA methylation. More ominously, Dr. Skinner’s recent work has extended the timeline to the 20^th generation, which continues to show “the generational stability of epigenetic inheritance over twenty generations in a mammalian model system; however, new pathology in later generations involving parturition abnormalities was also observed. The generational stability of transgenerational effects observed in this study has implications for human health, particularly regarding environmental toxicant exposures, reproductive health disorders, and disease susceptibility.”

Taken together, the Barcelona evidence and its innovative methodology, the existing epidemiological record, and the striking transgenerational evidence of harm by pesticides creates a moral imperative, one that the Barcelona authors call “a compelling rationale for addressing lifestyle and environmental exposures to mitigate EOCRC risk, highlighting the importance of both personal and policy-level interventions.”

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Sources:

Epigenetic fingerprints link early-onset colon and rectal cancer to pesticide exposure
Maas et al.
Nature Medicine 2026
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04342-5.pdf

Dana-Farber Experts Offer Perspective on Link Between Pesticide Exposure and Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute April 30, 2026
https://www.dana-farber.org/newsroom/news-releases/2026/dana-farber-experts-offer-perspective-on-link-between-pesticide-exposure-and-early-onset-colorectal-cancer

Studies Find Genetic and Epigenetic Effects from Pesticide Exposure, Threatening Future Generations
Beyond Pesticides, March 3, 2026
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2026/03/studies-again-find-genetic-and-epigenetic-effects-from-pesticide-exposure-threatening-future-generations/

Beyond Pesticides
Daily News Blog Archive – Epigenetics
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/category/diseasehealth-effects/epigenetic/
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/category/diseasehealth-effects/epigenetic-effects/

Epigenetics and the exposome: DNA methylation as a proxy for health impacts of prenatal environmental exposures
Colwell et al.
Exposome 2023
https://academic.oup.com/exposome/article/3/1/osad001/7008330

Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management
Beyond Pesticides
https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/pesticide-gateway

Picloram
Beyond Pesticides Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management
https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/pesticide-gateway?chemfind=picloram

Picloram
Interim Registration Review Decision
Case Number 0096
September 2021
Docket Number EPA-HQ-OPP-2013-0740
www.regulations.gov

(Beyond Pesticides, May 20, 2026) A study of two pollinator species, honey bees (Apis mellifera) and small carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata), finds oxidative stress (OX)— an imbalance between antioxidant defenses and excess reactive oxygen molecules (species), or ROS—resulting from exposure to non-living (abiotic) stressors, such as synthetic chemicals, leading to cell damage. Regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), do not routinely evaluate oxidative stress as a standalone or required endpoint in standard pesticide registration protocols. In comparing pollinator responses to different pesticides and pest control management practices, the lowest levels of OX are exhibited in organically managed systems, as described in the research published in Physiological Entomology.

Quantifying the oxidative stress levels in bees and their larval stages from three landscapes (conventional, organic, and roadside) shows that minimum exposure to agrochemicals and high traffic-related pollutants results in the lowest levels of OX. “Overall, these findings show that variation in pesticide residue profiles across landscapes is associated with different OX responses in bees,” the authors state. “Given the essential ecosystem services provided by bees, our findings underscore the urgent need for landscape-level strategies to reduce pollinator exposure to chemical stressors.”

Background
Oxidative stress occurs when there is a disruption of normal cell-signaling and molecular damage, leading to an imbalance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and free radicals (unstable oxygen molecules) that the body is unable to detoxify. When antioxidant defenses are overwhelmed, and there are too many free radicals, this causes damage to cells, proteins, and DNA. Chronic OX plays a major role in the development of many diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

A wide body of science links pesticide exposure to oxidative stress and other adverse health effects, particularly in pollinators. Bees and other species play a critical role in agriculture by providing ecosystem services, and, as a result, the threats from chemical-intensive systems directly threaten productivity. “Despite the critical role of pollinators in crop production, modern farming systems are often not designed to support their health,” the researchers state. “In the United States, farming is dominated by conventional farms that rely on chemical pest control, and organic farms utilize non-chemical methods.” Organic farming practices represent an ecological approach that protects pollinators and all wildlife. By safeguarding biodiversity, organic methods offer a sustainable, holistic solution to land management.

Studies (see here and here) also show that insect abundance and plant diversity “are typically higher on organic farms, likely due to the greater availability of floral resources.” In analyzing honey bees and small carpenter bees, this study captures the effects of different landscapes on two ecologically important pollinator species with “contrasting sociality, foraging strategies, and nesting ecology,” both of which act as indicator species of healthy ecosystems.

Methodology and Results
In the study, the authors aim to determine “the changes of OX and pesticide exposures in different farm landscapes (conventional, organic, and roadside) on pollinator health.” The experiment was performed in three farm landscapes in Central Ohio, encompassing organic farms, conventional farms, and roadside habitats. At each collection site, bee hives were installed in 2022 and 2023, and bees were collected for sampling. Pesticide residues in pollen samples were also analyzed.

As the authors note: “Our findings demonstrate a clear landscape-dependent variation in oxidative damage, with significantly elevated lipid peroxidation levels (MDA) in roadside-collected bees compared to those from organic or conventional landscapes. However, pesticide residues and diversity were higher in conventional habitats compared to other organic and roadside habitats.” This highlights how organic farms hold the lowest risk of OX in pollinators, while roadside habitats contain many abiotic factors that cause OX.

The researchers continue, saying: “The present findings were consistent across both bee species and also suggest that local environmental conditions and management intensity have measurable physiological impacts on pollinators. While the present results of OX biomarkers for both bee species provide mechanistic insight into sublethal physiological responses, the ecological implications include potential effects in survival, reproduction and pollination efficiency.”

Previous Research
Additional scientific literature highlights the effects of pesticides and other environmental contaminants on oxidative stress. As the authors highlight, studies find that exposure to various pesticides in bees increases the production of ROS that can lead to OX. (See here and here.) Research shows that exposure to the herbicide atrazine elevates OX in honey bees. In one study, the insecticides flupyradifurone and sulfoxaflor are shown to cause an increase in ROS. More research shows that in bees, the accumulation of oxidative damage contributes to senescence (the process of aging). Additionally, chronic elevations in OX biomarkers are linked to adverse effects on pollinator health, such as impaired survival, immune functioning, and reproduction. (See here, here, and here.)

A study published in Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology finds that the widely used azole fungicide, tebuconazole, has damaging impacts on the redox homeostasis (the process of maintaining balance between oxidizing and reducing reactions) and fatty acid composition in honey bees’ brains via oxidative stress. Acute, field-realistic sublethal exposure to tebuconazole decreased the brain’s antioxidant capacity, key antioxidant defense systems, and oxidative degradation and alteration of lipids (fats) in the brain. Thus, this study adds to the scientific literature on the adverse effects of chemical exposure on pollinator health, especially in sublethal concentrations.

The results show that tebuconazole has a profound impact on oxidation in the brain. It decreases antioxidant capacity, reducing the ratio of oxidized glutathione for preventing damage to important cellular components and disrupting antioxidant enzymatic defense systems, inducing lipid (fat) peroxidation (oxidative degeneration of fats) through elevated malondialdehyde levels. This alters the fatty acid profile in honey bee brains. Degenerating cognitive skills can threaten honey bee survivability, decreasing colony fitness and individual foraging success. A multitude of research attributes the decline of insect pollinators (e.g., commercial and wild bees and monarch butterflies) over the last several decades to the interaction of multiple environmental stressors, from climate change to pesticide use, disease, habitat destruction, and other factors. (See Daily News here.)

Another study published in PLOS One finds that exposure to insecticides increases cell death (apoptosis) and oxidative stress in honey bees. “The average life span of a worker honeybee is five to six weeks in spring and summer, so if you are reducing its life span by five to 10 days, that’s a huge problem,” said Ramesh Sagili, PhD, study coauthor. “Reduced longevity resulting from oxidative stress could negatively affect colony population and ultimately compromise colony fitness.” (See more here.)

Previous Daily News, entitled “Neonicotinoid Insecticide Linked to Honey Bee Decline, Threatening Reproductive Function of Hive,” covers a novel study of chronic toxicity of the neonicotinoid insecticide thiamethoxam to honey bees. The research, published in Insects, finds sublethal effects that threaten the survival of bee larvae and the health of bee colonies. “We evaluated the effects of thiamethoxam on the entire larval development cycle of reproductive bees and conducted a comparative analysis, demonstrating that thiamethoxam significantly alters ecdysone [a hormone that controls molting in insects] and juvenile hormone titers [hormones for insect growth] in both queen and drone larvae, impairing metamorphosis and reproductive development,” the authors state. The results also show that enzyme activity, particularly in those related to oxidative stress and detoxification, is impacted, with both drone and queen larvae experiencing dose-dependent decreases. The hormones related to insect development and growth also exhibit dose-dependent effects in all treatments.

The Organic Solution
To mitigate the effects documented in the research above, as well as numerous others on pollinators and other insects, Beyond Pesticides urges the widespread shift to organic agriculture and land management. Not only does this holistic solution remove the use of petrochemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, but it also protects and enhances biodiversity and mitigates both the climate change and public health crises we are currently experiencing. As shown in the current study, organic systems have the lowest levels of OX in the two bee species, providing a protective environment despite the numerous environmental contaminants that they can encounter.

To learn more about the science on pesticides and how they impact ecosystem functioning, see What the Science Shows on Biodiversity. For more information on the direct impacts of organic practices on pollinators, see Study Adds to Wide Body of Science Highlighting Benefits of Organic for Insect Biodiversity and Protecting Pollinators: Stopping the Demise of Bees. Additional health and environmental benefits are available here and here.

Spring Into Action and help make pollinator-friendly outdoor spaces. If you want to grow your own vegetables/fruits to eat or flowers for pollinators, make sure that your seeds and plants are free from harmful pesticides. Often, seeds and plants in many garden centers across the country are grown from seeds coated with toxic fungicides and bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides or drenched with them. Ensure a pesticide-free garden by planting organic seeds and plants! Learn more with the BEE Protective Habitat Guide, which provides information on creating native pollinator habitats in communities, eliminating bee-toxic chemicals, and other advocacy tools.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Briscoe, K. et al. (2026) Oxidative stress in honey bees (Apis mellifera) and small carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata) across different landscapes, Physiological Entomology. Available at: https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/phen.70046.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 19, 2026) Research continues to mount on organically managed systems, reinforcing the importance of fostering soil health to ultimately reduce dependency on increasingly expensive petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, ultimately making food more affordable.

Research published in Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition determines that long-term organic management enhances various soil health indicators to a greater degree than conventionally managed systems. The organic soil qualities include greater microbial diversity, increased microbial biomass carbon (MBC), higher dehydrogenase activity (DHA), and higher alkaline phosphatase activity (ALP), among other favorable outcomes.

The positive impacts of organic land management on soil health, microbial diversity, and biodiversity cannot be overstated, given the existential threats imposed on the planet by petrochemical-based agricultural practices.

Methodology and Main Findings

This study was conducted at the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) in Rajasthan province, India. The annual average rainfall for this region is 100 mm (about 4 inches) and 450 mm (18 inches), with nearly 90 percent of that rainfall falling between June and September.

Both the organic and conventional sites consist of loamy soils and shared agro-climatic conditions. The organic site was established in 2008 and certified by the Rajasthan State Organic Certification Study, which has been managed exclusively with organic inputs for over 14 years. To avoid water contamination by synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, 4-foot-deep trenches were dug to separate the test site from neighboring chemical-intensive fields. The baseline soil properties for both fields are similar, with the largest difference in available phosphorous 20 times higher in organic than in conventional fields, due to legacy conditions. For more details on the difference in conventional and organic land management in this study, please see page 4 under Subsection 2.2: Field Experiment.

The experiment on the study sites was organized into a “split-plot” design, with 16 plots for both the organic and conventional systems. The seasons in India support Kharif (June to July) crops requiring high heat and water during monsoon-season and Rabi (October to December) crops needing cooler climates during the winter season. The soil was tested for crop seasons starting in Rabi 2021 and ending in Kharif 2023, with samples collected from the rhizosphere zone of the system at three growth stages per crop (30 days after sowing, 60 days after sowing, and at harvest). Each experimental plot was replicated four times based on the following crop rotations:

1. T1 (Fenugreek–Mung bean–Psyllium–Sesame),
2. T2 (Fenugreek–Sesame–Psyllium–Mung bean),
3. T3 (Psyllium–Mung bean–Fenugreek–Sesame), and
4. T4 (Psyllium–Sesame–Fenugreek–Mung bean).

In terms of soil health outcomes and organic land management, researchers arrived at the following conclusions based on their analysis of the data:

• Soil health status in organic systems outperformed conventional systems across the board, including:
  • Organically managed systems consistently support higher bacterial and fungal counts, with peak microbial populations across regardless of the crop season.
  • Organic plots have 12-32 percent higher microbial biomass carbon (MBC) than conventional plots when soil samples were gathered 60 days after sowing (60 DAS), ultimately declining at harvest due to soil disruption.
  • Organic systems show higher dehydrogenase activity (DHA), increasing 6-71 percent over conventional depending on the season. DHA is significant in terms of the enzymes they produce that are vital for cellular energy production, metabolism, photosynthesis, and other biochemical processes critical to soil health.
  • The alkaline phosphatase activity (ALP) is 3-56 percent higher under organic land care relative to conventional systems. ALP is an important indicator of microbial diversity in the soil, as microorganisms mineralize (breaks down) organic phosphorus (P) into plant-available nutrients and facilitate P-cycling throughout the soil system.
  • Fluorescein diacetate hydrolytic activity (FDA) was 34-70 percent higher under organic land management depending on the season. FDA activity is used to estimate total microbial activity and functional diversity in soil samples.
• Organic management appears to stabilize microbial activity across monsoon and winter crop seasons, whereas conventional plots showed more sensitivity to seasonal climate swings. In other words, biological activity in the soil is significantly higher than conventional systems, since the baseline higher MBC provides better continuity of microbial habitats (e.g., the soil systems).
• Due to the legacy use of organic-compliant fertilizer over 14 years prior to the study, the organic plots have roughly 20 times more available phosphorus than conventional sites.

Previous Coverage

There is a wide range of previous scientific investigations highlighting the dangers of synthetic pesticide and fertilizer use for soil health, as well as the organic alternative with proven benefits.

A study of the effects of flooding on aquatic-terrestrial pesticide transfer, published in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, finds heightened risks to riparian zone ecosystems as flooding frequency increases with climate change. Riparian zones, recognized as biodiversity hotspots, “are increasingly subjected to various stressors, including chemical contaminants such as pesticides,” the authors state.  In analyzing pesticide residues following simulated flooding within a controlled experiment, the researchers find: “[S]ix pesticides were detected exclusively in riparian root-zone soil following four repeated flooding events. Our findings indicate that both longer flood durations and repeated flooding events tend to increase the total concentration of pesticides in the riparian root-zone soil. These results demonstrate that flooding promotes the movement of pesticides from streams into adjacent riparian areas. As flood frequency and intensity are expected to increase due to climate change, the significance of this transport pathway is likely to increase, with potential consequences for riparian biodiversity and habitat quality.” (See Daily News here.)

In a novel, continent-wide study of soil biodiversity throughout Europe published in Nature, researchers find 70% of the sampled sites contain pesticide residues, which “emerged as the second strongest driver of soil biodiversity patterns after soil properties,” particularly in croplands. This study, however, highlights how pesticides alter microbial functions, including phosphorus and nitrogen cycling, and suppress beneficial taxa, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and bacterivore nematodes. In analyzing 373 sites across woodlands, grasslands, and croplands in 26 European countries, and examining the effects of 63 pesticides on soil archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, arthropods, and key functional gene groups, the data reveal “organism- and function-specific patterns, emphasizing complex and widespread non-target effects on soil biodiversity.” As the authors state, “[T]o our knowledge, ours is the first study to demonstrate the relative importance of pesticides in comparison to soil properties, ecosystem type and climate at a continental scale.” (See Daily News here.) In a separate literature review and data analysis of almost 2,000 soil samples, the authors of a recent study found negative effects of pesticide exposure on the presence of plant-beneficial bacteria (PBB) in soil, particularly bacteria with plant growth-promoting traits that are essential for crop productivity. (See Daily News here.)

The intersection of the adverse effects of pesticides and fertilizers on biodiversity is also highlighted in peer-reviewed literature. A recent study of earthworms published in Environmental Science & Technology highlights how chemical mixtures can have both synergistic and species-specific effects, threatening the soil microbiome and overall soil health. In exposing two species, Eisenia fetida and Metaphire guillelmi, to the weed killer glyphosate alone and in combination with urea, a form of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the researchers find enhanced toxicity with co-exposure as well as varying health effects between the two species. These results emphasize the need to test a wide variety of nontarget organisms for impacts from environmental contaminants, since species, even within the same genus or family, can exhibit vastly different effects. (See Daily News here.) On the subject of earthworms, a study published in Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology evaluates the toxicity of environmentally relevant levels of three fluorinated pesticides (fluxapyroxad, fluopyram, and bixafen) through a 56-day soil exposure experiment. The dose- and time-dependent results reveal that effects on growth and reproduction occur at elevated concentrations, with weight loss and reduced offspring occurring from energy depletion and reproductive organ damage. Other implications escalate with concentration as well, including antioxidant system failure and DNA damage. As the authors summarize, “These findings highlight the mechanisms of fluorine-containing pesticide toxicity in earthworms, emphasizing their potential to disrupt soil ecosystems.” (See Daily News here.)

Meanwhile, research by the Rodale Institute, Ohio State University, and Tennessee State University, published in Soil Science of America Journal, documents that organic grain cropping systems contain higher concentrations of total nitrogen and soil organic carbon, exceeding those found in conventional, chemical-intensive systems. This study is an extension of the Rodale Institute’s Farming System Trial (FST), a 40-year-long field study with the overarching goal of “[a]ddress[ing] the barriers to the adoption of organic farming by farmers across the country.” (See Daily News here.) Another study published in Environmental Technology & Innovation finds that organically managed coconut farms significantly improve soil health across numerous markers when compared with conventional (chemical-intensive) plantations. (See Daily News here.) Research published in Microbiological Research finds that organic farming enhances microbial diversity in citrus orchard soil systems, both in terms of nutrient cycling and aiding in the development of more complex microbial networks pivotal to biodiversity. (See Daily News here.)

A study published in Scientific Reports highlights the benefits of organic agriculture in comparison to different farming systems over five years on four crops (maize, tomato, faba bean, and potato). “Soil carbon sequestration is a long-time storage of carbon in soil which represents 70% of the carbon in land,” the authors note. “Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the agricultural practice systems on the soil carbon sequestration and properties, productivity, water consumption, soil carbon sequestration, CO₂ emission and cost of some agricultural crops.” As a result, the experiment reveals that, compared to chemical-intensive farming, organic methods enhance soil properties, reduce water consumption, provide higher yields and higher soil carbon sequestration, reduce CO2 emissions, and achieve the highest total net profit for all four crops after five years. (See Daily News here.) In the Journal of Environmental Quality, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a noteworthy report that a 4-year organically managed corn-soybean-oat system reduces nitrogen (N) loads by 50 percent with corn and soybean yields “equivalent to or higher than conventional [chemical-intensive] in most years.” The findings from a 7-year study comparing nitrate loss in organic and chemical-intensive management found that organically managed perennial pasture reduced nitrogen loads significantly. The study, which focused on nitrate pollution in agriculture that harms biodiversity, threatens waterways, drinking water, and public health, and releases nitrous oxide (an extremely potent greenhouse gas), was conducted at USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment. (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

You can support the continuation of this critical research by calling on your elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to endorse and sponsor the newly reintroduced Organic Science and Research Investment (OSRI) Act. (See Action of the Week here.) Learn more about your potential exposure to toxic pesticides and chemicals in over 90 non-organic crops, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and related items in the Eating With a Conscience database.

You can also take action by telling EPA, FDA, and Congress that regulations must consider the effects of pesticides in the context in which they are used and with reference to the organic alternative.  

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition

(Beyond Pesticides, May 18, 2026) As the studies continue to mount on the adverse effects of exposure to low levels of organophosphate insecticides, the calls for banning the chemicals are growing. Beyond Pesticides announced an action to “Tell Congress, FDA, and EPA that it is past time to stop the manufacture and use of all organophosphate pesticides, which damage the nervous system and brain at low levels.” There are alternatives to these chemicals that support productive and profitable farming operations.

Defying the often-repeated claim that organophosphate pesticide effects occur only at high doses, a recent study by researchers at University of California, San Diego, and the Fundación Cimas del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, establishes for the first time the pattern of adverse developmental effects that low-level exposure has on healthy neurological and brain development in children. It is firmly established that widely used organophosphate pesticides in food production and other sites are severely toxic to a broad range of organisms. In what is known as their “classic” mechanism of action, they inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), particularly in neuromuscular junctions in the brain.

Organophosphates are nerve agents, originally developed by the German company IG Farben (a conglomerate that included Bayer), which was “inseparably linked with the Nazi regime” and the Auschwitz concentration camp, as described by BASF, also a part of IG Farben. The 1996 federal law, the Food Quality Protection Act, did not ban organophosphates, however, EPA negotiated many new restrictions that reduced the number of uses but still allowed widespread use and exposure. These restrictions established new risk assessment protocols that replaced the 1958 Delaney Clause’s ban on cancer-causing pesticides in processed food under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to set pesticide tolerances (acceptable residues) for food commodities. Meanwhile, in the absence of a comprehensive ban on organophosphates, states in 2018-2021 began to weigh in on an individual organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that was making national headlines because of its neurotoxic properties, adverse effects on the brain, and widespread use in food production. For example, five states used their authority to adopt more stringent standards than the federal government by banning the chemical in California, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, and New York.

Prior to state action, in 2000, EPA had negotiated chlorpyrifos’s voluntary withdrawal from the residential market with its manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences. (See more background at Pesticide Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management and here.) Internationally, the 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COPs) to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (Stockholm Convention) added chlorpyrifos to Annex A, which commits the 186 signatory countries to eliminate production and use. The United States is not a party to the Stockholm Convention because the treaty has never been ratified by Congress.

The new study showing adverse developmental effects to children’s brains builds on earlier scientific work, a call from medical practitioners in 2018, and Congressional legislation to ban organophosphates. A group of leading toxics experts, who have called for a ban on organophosphate pesticides, published a paper in the journal PLOS Medicine on their research on organophosphate exposure during pregnancy and its impacts on child development. “There is compelling evidence that exposure of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides is associated with lower IQs and difficulties with learning, memory or attention in their children,” said lead author Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, professor of public health sciences, director of the University of California Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and researcher with the UC Davis MIND Institute, according to Science Daily.

The study in PLOS Medicine evaluates current science on the risks of this class of compounds, produced by Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences); its conclusions warn of the multitude of dangers of organophosphates for children, and makes recommendations for addressing these risks. The experts conclude that: (1) widespread use of organophosphate (OP) pesticides to control insects has resulted in ubiquitous human exposures; (2) acute exposures to OPs is responsible for poisonings and deaths, particularly in developing countries; and (3) evidence demonstrates that prenatal exposures, even at low levels, put children at risk for cognitive and behavioral deficits, and for neurodevelopmental disorders.

Then there is the matter of disproportionate risk to farmworkers and farmworker children, who suffer elevated rates of harm from organophosphate pesticides, a classic example of environmental injustice or institutionalized racist public health and environmental policy. According to a 2024 study published by French and American authors in the journal Exposure and Health, not only do farmworker children test positive for organophosphate pesticides more frequently than non-farmworker children, but farmworker children also experience an increased frequency of DNA damage associated with the presence of organophosphate exposure. These results highlight the disparities in exposures and outcomes for children from vulnerable immigrant communities. Advocates note that as long as pesticides remain in use, farmworkers and their families will continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of the toxic effects of these chemicals.

A California-based population study published in BMC Public Health finds that “7.5 [percent] of all pregnant people in California who gave birth in 2021 lived within 1 km [kilometer] of agricultural fields where OP pesticides [organophosphates] had been used during their pregnancy. . .” As reported in Daily News, significant disparities are found for elevated exposure to pesticides, “with Hispanic/Latinx, young people, and residents of the predominantly fruit and vegetable growing Central Coast region being most likely to live near OP pesticide applications during pregnancy.”

U.S. Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), who is retiring from Congress at the end of the current Congress, reintroduced the “Ban All Neurotoxic Organophosphate Pesticides from Our Food Act” or ”BAN OPs From Our Food Act,” H.R. 5554, in 2023. “We’ve known for decades that organophosphate pesticides are a dangerous neurological threat to farmworkers and our children,” said Congresswoman Velázquez. “These pesticides during early life have been linked to irreversible harm to the developing brain, which can result in long-term effects like attention disorders, autism, and reduced IQ. We can no longer wait to act. I’m proud to have introduced this legislation which will finally ban the use of these hazardous pesticides.” The bill is very straightforward, free of exemptions, waivers, and special circumstances, and allowed formulations: 

“SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON USE OF ORGANOPHOSPHATES ON FOOD. Section 402 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 342) is amended by adding at the end the following: ”(j) If it bears or contains any organophosphate pesticide, including any residue of an organophosphate pesticide, or any other added substance the presence of which is primarily as a result of the metabolism or other degradation of an organophosphate pesticide, regardless of whether any tolerance or exemption with respect to organophosphate is in effect under section 408.”.

The bill has been supported by Beyond Pesticides and groups including Earthjustice and United Farm Workers, UFW Foundation, California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) Foundation, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, Farmworker Association of Florida, Farmworker Justice, GreenLatinos, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, League of United Latin American Citizens, Learning Disabilities Association of America, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pesticide Action Network North America, and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste.

The Beyond Pesticides action: Tell Congress, FDA, and EPA that it is past time to stop the manufacture and use of all organophosphate pesticides, which damage the nervous system and brain at low levels.

Letter to the U.S. Congress
Defying the often-repeated claim that organophosphate pesticide effects occur only at high doses, a new study, “Acetylcholinesterase activity from childhood to young adulthood,” by researchers at University of California, San Diego, and the Fundación Cimas del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, establishes for the first time the pattern of adverse developmental effects that low-level exposure has on healthy neurological and brain development in children. It is firmly established that widely used organophosphate pesticides in food production and other sites are severely toxic to a broad range of organisms. In what is known as their “classic” mechanism of action, they inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), particularly in neuromuscular junctions in the brain. There are alternatives to these chemicals that support productive and profitable farming operations.

Please reintroduce the “Ban All Neurotoxic Organophosphate Pesticides from Our Food Act” or ‘‘BAN OPs From Our Food Act,” H.R. 5554, last introduced by Rep. Nydia Velázquez in 2023.

Organophosphates are nerve agents, originally developed by the German company IG Farben (a conglomerate that included Bayer), which was “inseparably linked with the Nazi regime” and the Auschwitz concentration camp, as described by BASF, also a part of IG Farben. The 1996 federal law, the Food Quality Protection Act, did not ban organophosphates, however, EPA negotiated many new restrictions that reduced the number of uses but still allowed widespread use and exposure.

The new study showing adverse developmental effects to children’s brains builds on earlier scientific work, a call from medical practitioners in 2018, and Congressional legislation to ban organophosphates. A group of leading toxics experts, who have called for a ban on organophosphate pesticides, published a paper in the journal PLOS Medicine on their research on organophosphate exposure during pregnancy and its impacts on child development. “There is compelling evidence that exposure of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides is associated with lower IQs and difficulties with learning, memory or attention in their children,” said lead author Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, professor of public health sciences, director of the University of California Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and researcher with the University of California Davis MIND Institute, according to Science Daily.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a comprehensive ban on organophosphates, states in 2018-2021 began to weigh in on an individual organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that was making national headlines because of its neurotoxic properties, adverse effects to the brain, and widespread use in food production. For example, five states used their authority to adopt more stringent standards than the federal government by banning the insecticide in California, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, and New York. In 2000, EPA negotiated chlorpyrifos’s voluntary withdrawal from the residential market with its manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences. (See more background at Pesticide Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management.)

Farmworkers and farmworker children suffer elevated rates of harm from organophosphate pesticides, a classic example of environmental injustice. According to a 2024 study published by French and American authors in the journal Exposure and Health, not only do farmworker children test positive for organophosphate pesticides more frequently than non-farmworker children, but farmworker children also experience an increased frequency of DNA damage associated with the presence of organophosphate exposure.

It is past time to stop the manufacture and use of all organophosphate pesticides, which damage the nervous system and brain at low levels. Please step up and protect our families’ and children’s health.

Thank you.

Letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Defying the often-repeated claim that organophosphate pesticide effects occur only at high doses, a new study, “Acetylcholinesterase activity from childhood to young adulthood,” by researchers at University of California, San Diego, and the Fundación Cimas del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, establishes for the first time the pattern of adverse developmental effects that low-level exposure has on healthy neurological and brain development in children. It is firmly established that widely used organophosphate pesticides in food production and other sites are severely toxic to a broad range of organisms. In what is known as their “classic” mechanism of action, they inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), particularly in neuromuscular junctions in the brain. There are alternatives to these chemicals that support productive and profitable farming operations.

Please recognize the preponderance of science that calls for the banning of organophosphate pesticides by cancelling the registrations of all these chemicals. It is past time to stop the manufacture and use of all organophosphate pesticides, which damage the nervous system and brain at low levels.

Organophosphates are nerve agents, originally developed by the German company IG Farben (a conglomerate that included Bayer), which was “inseparably linked with the Nazi regime” and the Auschwitz concentration camp, as described by BASF, also a part of IG Farben. The 1996 federal law, the Food Quality Protection Act, did not ban organophosphates, however, EPA negotiated many new restrictions that reduced the number of uses but still allowed widespread use and exposure.

The new study showing adverse developmental effects to children’s brains builds on earlier scientific work, a call from medical practitioners in 2018, and Congressional legislation to ban organophosphates. A group of leading toxics experts, who have called for a ban on organophosphate pesticides, published a paper in the journal PLOS Medicine on their research on organophosphate exposure during pregnancy and its impacts on child development. “There is compelling evidence that exposure of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides is associated with lower IQs and difficulties with learning, memory or attention in their children,” said lead author Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, professor of public health sciences, director of the University of California Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and researcher with the University of California Davis MIND Institute, according to Science Daily.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a comprehensive ban on organophosphates, states in 2018-2021 began to weigh in on an individual organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that was making national headlines because of its neurotoxic properties, adverse effects to the brain, and widespread use in food production. For example, five states used their authority to adopt more stringent standards than the federal government by banning the insecticide in California, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, and New York. In 2000, EPA negotiated chlorpyrifos’s voluntary withdrawal from the residential market with its manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences. (See more background at Pesticide Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management.)

Farmworkers and farmworker children suffer elevated rates of harm from organophosphate pesticides, a classic example of environmental injustice. According to a 2024 study published by French and American authors in the journal Exposure and Health, not only do farmworker children test positive for organophosphate pesticides more frequently than non-farmworker children, but farmworker children also experience an increased frequency of DNA damage associated with the presence of organophosphate exposure.

Please step up and protect our families’ and children’s health.

Thank you.

Letter to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Commisioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Defying the often-repeated claim that organophosphate pesticide effects occur only at high doses, a new study, “Acetylcholinesterase activity from childhood to young adulthood,” by researchers at University of California, San Diego, and the Fundación Cimas del Ecuador in Quito Ecuador, establishes for the first time the pattern of adverse developmental effects that low-level exposure has on healthy neurological and brain development in children. It is firmly established that widely used organophosphate pesticides in food production and other sites are severely toxic to a broad range of organisms. In what is known as their “classic” mechanism of action, they inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), particularly in neuromuscular junctions in the brain. There are alternatives to these chemicals that support productive and profitable farming operations.

Please recognize the preponderance of science that calls for the banning of organophosphate pesticides by revoking the tolerances for all these chemicals. It is past time to stop the manufacture and use of all organophosphate pesticides, which damage the nervous system and brain at low levels.

Organophosphates are nerve agents, originally developed by the German company IG Farben (a conglomerate that included Bayer), which was “inseparably linked with the Nazi regime” and the Auschwitz concentration camp, as described by BASF, also a part of IG Farben. The 1996 federal law, the Food Quality Protection Act, did not ban organophosphates, however EPA negotiated many new restrictions that reduced the number of uses but still allowed widespread use and exposure.

The new study showing adverse developmental effects to children’s brains builds on earlier scientific work, , a call from medical practitioners in 2018, and Congressional legislation to ban organophosphates. A group of leading toxics experts, who have called for a ban on organophosphate pesticides, published a paper in the journal PLOS Medicine on their research on organophosphate exposure during pregnancy and impacts on child development. “There is compelling evidence that exposure of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides is associated with lower IQs and difficulties with learning, memory or attention in their children,” said lead author Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, professor of public health sciences, director of the University of California Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and researcher with the University of California Davis MIND Institute, according to Science Daily.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a comprehensive ban on organophosphates, states in 2018-2021 began to weigh in on an individual organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that was making national headlines because of its neurotoxic properties, adverse effects to the brain, and widespread use in food production. For example, five states used their authority to adopt more stringent standards than the federal government by banning the insecticide in California, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, and New York. In 2000, EPA negotiated chlorpyrifos’s voluntary withdrawal from the residential market with its manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences. (See more background at Pesticide Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management.)

Farmworkers and farmworker children suffer elevated rates of harm from organophosphate pesticides, a classic example of environmental injustice. According to a 2024 study published by French and American authors in the journal Exposure and Health, not only do farmworker children test positive for organophosphate pesticides more frequently than non-farmworker children, but farmworker children also experience an increased frequency of DNA damage associated with the presence of organophosphate exposure.

Please step up and protect our families’ and children’s health.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 15, 2026) As water bodies continue to be contaminated by pesticides and fertilizers used in chemical-intensive agriculture, international researchers find increasing threats to both aquatic and terrestrial food webs with insect transmission of pesticide residues from water to land. Published in Environmental Pollution, the study authors analyze insect species with complex life cycles “with an aquatic phase as larvae and a terrestrial phase as winged adults when they serve as prey for many aerial insectivores, such as bats and birds.” As the researchers explain, these insects act as vectors, transferring pesticides from water bodies into terrestrial food webs. As a result of studying feces from birds and bats that prey on these insects, the authors find residues of 16 current-use pesticides, two legacy compounds, and six metabolites (breakdown products).

The study results illustrate that pesticide contamination occurs through the ingestion of contaminated prey from aquatic systems, as all of the substances recovered in the fecal samples are detected in the water bodies within the study region. The transfer of pesticides from emerging insects to other species in the food web further threatens biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In summary, the authors state, “Our study is among the first to assess multiple pesticide contamination of three aerial insectivores that potentially feed on aquatic insects after emergence, thus the transfer of pesticides via emerging insects needs to be acknowledged as a critical contamination route in the agricultural landscape.”

These residues are noted in barn swallows (Hirundo rustica), Western house martins (Delichon urbicum), and common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula). In contrast, the researchers did not find pesticide residues in samples from the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris), which is a species that is known to feed primarily on terrestrial insects that do not have aquatic life cycles. This highlights how pesticide contamination in aquatic systems can impact various species throughout the food web and lead to bioaccumulation.

Study Importance

Insectivorous birds and bats rely on insect abundance and biomass, which have been in decline due to intensive pesticide use and the resulting “insect apocalypse.” As Dave Goulson, PhD says, this insect apocalypse that is occurring threatens all ecosystems. In an essay in Current Biology, he states, “Insects are integral to every terrestrial food web, being food for numerous birds, bats, reptiles, amphibians and fish, and performing vital roles such as pollination, pest control and nutrient recycling. Terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems will collapse without insects… we may have failed to appreciate the full scale and pace of environmental degradation caused by human activities in the Anthropocene.”

The cascading effects of insect population decline directly impact bird and bat populations, as insects exposed to pesticides, such as in contaminated waterways, can transmit contaminants to other organisms throughout the food web when preyed upon. “Birds and bats may ingest contaminated water directly via drinking, or they may face critical exposure via foraging on emerging aquatic insects, that can transport contaminants across ecosystem boundaries,” the researchers state. They continue: “Thus, insectivorous birds and bats are exposed to pesticides by their species-specific foraging strategies and the sites of resource allocation. This uptake of contaminated resources may either lead to trophic transfer (bioaccumulation or biomagnification) in organisms or to metabolism and subsequent excretion.”

An analysis of bird and bat feces is an indicator of pesticide exposure, as previous studies have documented. (See here, here, and here.) For more information about the impacts of pesticides on birds and bats, as well as the ecosystem services they provide, see Beyond Pesticides’ webpages here and here.

Methodology and Results

To assess pesticide contamination of four common insectivores, the study analyzes fecal samples from three passerine birds, known as “perching birds,” and one species of bat that all have different foraging strategies. As the study region is in northeast Germany, the fecal samples were tested for pesticides known to be used in the area for agriculture. “In total, 108 compounds were analyzed, comprising of 49 current-use pesticides, 23 metabolites, and 36 legacy compounds whose presence still affect ecosystems,” the authors share.

The study area, known as the ‘AgroScapeLab Quillow,’ is an area with predominantly agricultural fields, mixed forests, peatlands, and mesic meadows, and numerous aquatic habitats, including lakes, a small reservoir, and small water bodies called kettle holes. All of these water systems are documented as being intensively contaminated with pesticides. (See research here and here.)

The results reveal current-use pesticides, legacy compounds, and metabolites within the feces of two bird species and the bat species. The pesticide residues found most often, fungicides and herbicides banned in the European Union (EU) and banned or not registered for use in the U.S., are noted in 56% of the samples (155/278) from the four species tested. Most frequently detected is the fungicide prochloraz, found in 107 of the samples. The legacy compound dinoterb was detected in 46 samples, and the fungicide epoxiconazole was detected in 21 samples.

“Five substances detected (bixafen, diflufenican, dinoterb, prochloraz, simazine) are classified as critical in terms of their potential for bioconcentration and ten out of 18 detected pesticide active substances are classified to be of concern for mammal short term dietary uptake,” the researchers note. “The substances epoxiconazole and metribuzin detected in N. noctula feces are listed as showing high chronic toxicity towards mammals, while the substances epoxiconazole, flufenacet (only detected in D. urbicum), prosulfuron (not detected in N. noctula) and tebuconazole (only detected in D. urbicum) are listed as showing chronic toxicity towards birds.”

Previous Research

A wide body of research connects pesticide exposure to individual adverse effects in insects, birds, and bats, while the current study shines a light on the interconnectedness of pesticide contamination throughout aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Species of birds and bats provide crucial ecosystem services, including pest management. As discussed in a study featured in Daily News, entitled Nature-Based, Ecological Land Management Serves as Nonchemical Approach to Pest Suppression, researchers show how “predator-prey” relationships are established for ecological balance, and they describe the predator-pest network as a means to quantify the impact of ecosystem services. “Birds and bats consumed over 87 rice pest species in West African lowland rice fields,” according to the study published in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. The authors continue, saying, “Our findings highlight the importance of maintaining and managing a diverse community of bats and birds for network resilience.”

The impacts of pesticide use on bird populations cannot ben overstated. The latest State of the Birds 2025 report finds concerning news for bird species across the country. As the article reports: “Whether they hop around the prairie, dabble in wetlands, flit through forests, or forage along the shore, birds are suffering rapid population declines across the United States… If these habitats are struggling to support bird species, it’s a sign that they’re not healthy for other wildlife, or even humans—but working to restore them will have benefits across ecosystems.” Additionally, a 2025 study in Science of The Total Environment shows pesticide residues in birds’ nests correlate with higher numbers of dead offspring and unhatched eggs. The data reveals higher insecticide levels are linked to increased offspring mortality and threaten biodiversity.

Bats provide important ecosystem services through pollination, management of pest populations, and contributing to plant resilience and productivity. The importance of bat species and their services, particularly for crop production, is invaluable. As they are the only nocturnal insect predator in the U.S. and are one of two primary nocturnal pollinators (alongside moths), bats play a crucial role for night-flowering plants and farmers. A 2022 study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists finds that bat population declines are costing American farmers as much as $495 million each year. (See Daily News here.)

Eyal Frank, PhD, an assistant professor of the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, links increased insecticide use in croplands in the absence of bat species to a rise in infant mortality in a 2024 study. As Dr. Frank says in the study, “[B]ats do add value to society in their role as natural pesticides, and this study shows that their decline can be harmful to humans.” He continues, “As of 2024, 12 of the roughly 50 insectivorous bat species in the US are negatively affected by WNS [white-nosed syndrome].” This study calls attention to the observable and statistically significant increases in insecticide use in counties that document WNS compared to non-WNS counties, with increased infant mortality also occurring in those areas. (See Daily News here.)   

The Organic Solution

Now is the time to act to protect all species—from insects, including pollinators, to birds, bats, other wildlife, and humans. In order to safeguard the environment and public health, a wide-scale transition to organic agriculture is needed. Take action: >> Ask the U.S. Senate to hold the line and reject the House Farm Bill, pass a clean bill that extends the current law, and regroup to build a sustainable agricultural sector that respects farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and the environment.

The bill, according to advocates, is so fundamentally flawed that they are asking the Senate to reject it and extend the current law with a “clean bill,” free of all controversial amendments that have been characterized as poison pills. Overall, critics say, the House Farm Bill increases dependency on petrochemical fertilizers (which contribute to escalating toxic pesticide use), ignores hunger (despite a historically large $186 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/SNAP), dismisses the notion of a fair, responsible, and accessible family farm safety net, and rolls back successful conservation investments. (See more here.)

During these times, Beyond Pesticides urges sending a message even to those who have a record of refusing to listen. As we strive to adopt the changes essential for a livable future, we must create a record that is based on science, even when the science and the facts are dismissed by those in power. To this end, the failure of action to address the existential health, biodiversity, and climate crises by those in Congress and the administration empowers lower levels of government and some corporations to step into the void left by those whose actions or inaction threaten life.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Lorenz, S. et al. (2026) Species-specific aquatic habitat use predicts pesticide residues in feces of insectivorous birds and bats, Environmental Pollution. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749126005762.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 14, 2026) In a new report by Friends of the Earth, federal organic standards as defined by the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) are identified as a bedrock “Threshold Program” with high minimum standards that combine three core features—synthetic pesticide and fertilizer prohibitions, soil health requirements, and third-party verification and enforcement systems. In other words, the review of thirteen regenerative and regenerative organic labels and enforcement systems must be built on enforceable standards. This criterion is foundational to the growth of the U.S. organic sector to over $76.6 billion in domestic sales in 2025, expanding at a pace nearly twice the rate of growth (6.8 percent) compared to the national agricultural sector more broadly (3.4 percent).

Main Findings

The report focuses on the principles of 13 different regenerative labeling and certification systems on the market, including a comparison of federal organic standards and the U.S. National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). The main findings and features of the report include:

• “Truly regenerative agriculture must phase out dependency on agrochemicals that undermine the very ecological functions on which resilience depends.”
• The various “regenerative” agriculture labels currently on the market are significantly varied in terms of pesticide and fertilizer restrictions versus prohibitions, requirements for soil health, traceability and verification systems, and other forms of accountability mechanisms to ensure robustness of the label for consumer trust.
• The report finds that there are regenerative labels that embrace USDA organic standards as the baseline, capturing their positive impacts on microbial diversity, pollinators, and climate resilience. [As a note, the two labels that are grouped as regenerative in the report, Real Organic Project (ROP) and Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), are characterized generally as “organic-plus” labels because they require producers using the label to be certified organic under the USDA organic program.]
• There are certain “regenerative” labels that are characterized as transitional label programs, but permit the use of synthetic pesticides, have unenforceable reduction targets for drawing down pesticide use, or lack uniform safeguards and requirements.
• To be sustainable and protective of ecosystems, soil health building requirements, including the use of crop rotations, cover cropping, and other practices that foster soil fertility, must be paired with strict controls on synthetic chemical use.
• When comparing various verification systems from organic to regenerative, third-party verification is considered the most credible “[b]ecause the entity that makes the final compliance decision is independent of both the producer and the standard-setting organization, this model provides the highest level of assurance and is the norm for credible sustainability labeling.”

Previous Coverage

The publication AgFunderNews (AFN) in February 2024 published its updated “2024 list of agrifood corporates making regenerative agriculture commitments,” a who’s who of the largest food and agribusiness corporations worldwide. The list includes companies such as ADM, Cargill, Danone, General Mills, Tyson, Unilever, Walmart, and more, with commitments to millions of acres across their supply chains to practice “regenerative” agriculture, with target dates ranging from 2024 to 2050. The AFN author reporting on the “regenerative” trend states: “[O]ne big challenge is that ‘regenerative agriculture’ still has no set definition. While that still holds true, the bigger observation in 2024 is the number of companies leaning heavily on sustainability jargon to describe goals. With greenwashing pretty rampant nowadays, it will be important to check beneath the PR-friendly language at the actual acres, dates, practices and prescriptions.” For a deeper analysis of the pitfalls of loosely defined regenerative agriculture, see Daily News here.

Pesticide manufacturers and aligned industrial agriculture interests to self-identify as “regenerative,” but continue to promote and use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. An agrichemical industry-funded study published in International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability dissects the development of national organic standards and opportunities that can be applied in expanding the use of “regenerative” agriculture. The study authors offer support for integrated pest management (IPM) and reassurance of a rigorous pesticide registration review process before the chemicals are marketed. The study includes a survey of five farmers, who farm a total of 100,000 acres, but do not have extensive experience farming organically. For those practicing regenerative organic practices and organic advocates, the bottom line is that the kinds of criteria cited in the study that would be needed for a regenerative agriculture label (e.g., list of allowed substances) already exists within the standards and requirements of the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) and the National Organic Program. The study was written by four authors with varying levels of connections to CropLife America (the major agrichemical industry trade group), including academic researchers with funding from the pesticide lobbying group or direct employment. In the disclosure statement of the article, the authors indicate that the work was supported by CropLife and then say, “No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).” In fact, one author, Katie Stump, indicated that she was currently a science and policy manager at CropLife America at the time of publication.

“For a new paradigm to be successful, it will require flexibility and options to pick from in management practices that achieve the desired outcome, acknowledgment on a regional level of varying needs and practices, a clear list of certification requirements, a third-party verification system, and should be tied to a premium to reward the grower for the practices,” according to the authors. OFPA is designed to include flexibility in the adoption and continuous review of standards, and the rules require public meetings facilitated by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) twice a year with a sunset review of allowed substances on a five-year cycle to facilitate additions or subtractions to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances (which is a foundational feature that establishes a clear list of inputs allowed in certified organic production). The NOSB can be petitioned to add or remove a substance from the National List at any time. For further information, see Daily News, Industry Funded Study Diminishes Organic, Pushes Pesticides in Integrated Pest Management and Regenerative Ag.

Advocates across the country were disheartened to see that, after months of deliberations and a public comment period, the California State Board of Food and Agriculture (SBFA) on January 10, 2025, formalized a definition of “regenerative agriculture” that is being widely criticized as undermining the transition of agriculture to certified organic practices that eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers. The Board’s recommendation, accepted by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), loosely defines regenerative agriculture as “an integrated approach to farming and ranching rooted in principles of soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem resiliency.” CDFA how points to the definition, saying, “This recommendation is to inform State Agencies, Boards and Commissions on CDFA’s definition of regenerative agriculture as it relates to state policies and programs. This is not a definition for certification.” Moreover, the California agency definition fails to include specific practices or measurable outcomes, and declines to include organic certification as foundational to “regenerative.” The definition has drawn sharp criticism from organizations including Beyond Pesticides, who argue that the definition is a ‘masterwork in greenwashing.’  “Because there isn’t a definition of allowable practices and materials to which people can be held accountable, those practicing ‘regenerative agriculture’ may continue to use synthetic fertilizers, genetically engineered crops, and biosolids,” remarks Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. (See Daily News here.)

In a press release published on December 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the creation of “a $700 million Regenerative Pilot Program to help American farmers adopt practices that improve soil health, enhance water quality, and boost long-term productivity, all while strengthening America’s food and fiber supply.” The agency specifically ties the program to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), diverting resources that could be used to support organic transition and phase out pesticides that are clearly defined as prohibited by USDA’s National Organic Program under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), but allowed in regenerative agriculture programs. For additional coverage on greenwashing attempts of regenerative under the second Trump Administration, see here.

The scientific literature and field trials of regenerative organic and organic systems underscore the importance of setting baseline criteria that move beyond chemical-intensive food systems. A literature review published in Ecosystem Services by researchers at School of Advanced Studies Sant’Anna (Italy) and Rodale Institute European Regenerative Organic Center identifies the ecological and soil health benefits of regenerative organic agriculture (ROAg). In comparison to chemical-intensive farming, ROAg increases soil organic content by 22 percent, soil total nitrogen by 28 percent, and soil microbial biomass carbon by 133 percent, according to the research. (See Daily News here.)

Researchers at Prairie View A&M University in Texas published in the journal Sustainability a study of organic agricultural systems from 1960 to 2021, concluding that “the outlook for U.S. organic fruit and vegetables is encouraging, supported by expanding consumer demand, government support, and improved conditions for international trade.” While delivering upbeat findings, including health benefits, the study identifies obstacles to entry into organic farming, including the limited support for alternative pest management and pest control systems in the United States in recent modern history, compared to the assistance provided for highly subsidized, petrochemical-dependent agricultural practices. (See Daily News here.) Additionally, a 2024 study published in the journal Nature compared the impact of organic and conventional food production using eight environmental health indicators and found that organic food has a significantly lower environmental impact than conventional food production for six of the eight indicators, including a lower potential for contributing to acidification of the environment, energy use, and biodiversity loss. For the analysis, scientists reviewed 100 different “life cycle assessments” (LCA) of organic and conventionally grown food products from cradle-to-farm gate. (See Daily News here.)

As one example, research by the Rodale Institute, Ohio State University, and Tennessee State University, published in Soil Science of America Journal, documents that organic grain cropping systems contain higher concentrations of total nitrogen and soil organic carbon, exceeding those found in conventional, chemical-intensive systems. This study is an extension of the Rodale Institute’s Farming System Trial (FST), a 40-year-long field study with the overarching goal of “[a]ddress[ing] the barriers to the adoption of organic farming by farmers across the country.” (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

You can contact your members of Congress to ask them to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act, which provides a significant opportunity to reduce barriers to organic farming, strengthens organic supply chains, and ensures that farmers have the support they need to transition to and remain in organic production to meet the growing demand for organic food and grow the sector. Importantly, the bill will provide an opportunity for partners to continue the transition support and technical assistance models that are proving effective through USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which ends in 2026. 

When making decisions on which produce to buy at your local grocery store, you can learn more about your potential exposure to toxic pesticides and chemicals in over 90 non-organic crops, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and related items in the Eating With a Conscience database. More information on federal organic standards is also available in the  Keeping Organic Strong resource hub.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Regenerative Food Labels: What’s Behind the Claim?

(Beyond Pesticides, May 13, 2026) Published in Toxics, a review finds that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can heighten the risks to exposed organisms from environmental contaminants. Mixtures of these compounds can negatively impact the nervous, cardiovascular, immune, and reproductive systems, particularly in aquatic organisms, and threaten overall biodiversity. The review highlights synergistic effects (greater in combination) observed in mixtures, such as PFAS with pesticides and microplastics, that can cause enhanced oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, developmental defects, and reproductive dysfunction, among others.

“The objectives were to evaluate the toxicological effects of mixtures of the selected contaminants with PFAS on aquatic organisms to better understand biological responses in animals,” the study authors explain. “Based on our review, data suggest that PFAS can modify the toxicity of co-occurring pollutants.”

Background

PFAS were first created in the 1930s and have since been used in many industries and in the production of many products. The multitude of PFAS sources and exposure routes leads to widespread contamination of the environment and organisms. PFAS in agriculture represents a large source, as PFAS can be pesticide active ingredients, used in the plastic containers that pesticides are stored in, and as surfactants in pesticide products. Additionally, PFAS are used in many other plastic storage containers and food packaging, personal care products, nonstick cookware, cleaning supplies, treated clothing, firefighting foam, and machinery and equipment used in manufacturing—all of which contaminate food, water, soil, and the air. (See additional coverage on PFAS here.)

A previous Daily News piece, entitled “Science on ‘Forever Chemicals’ (PFAS) as Pesticide Ingredients and Contaminants Documented,” shows how and to what extent PFAS can be introduced into pesticide products, and how this impacts health and the environment. The findings are gleaned from public records requests to state and federal agencies in the U. S. and Canada, as well as from publicly accessible databases discussed in the commentary “Forever Pesticides: A Growing Source of PFAS Contamination in the Environment.” The classification of PFAS is also of concern, as the number of PFAS in the U.S. heavily depends on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) definition, based on “case-by-case” rulemakings and agency actions. The broad definition of PFAS as a compound with at least “one fully fluorinated carbon” has been adopted by many states and other authorities.

EPA continues to ignore the widely accepted definition of PFAS, supported by scientists, through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). EPA’s current scientific definition of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence, is at odds with the prevalent scientific thinking of scientists worldwide who have challenged the agency’s position and its resulting risk assessments. (See Artificially Narrow EPA Definition of PFAS Mischaracterizes Widespread Threat to Health and Environment.)

Widespread Use of PFAS and Resulting Chemical Mixtures

EPA continues to register PFAS pesticides, including the latest instance with the active ingredient tetflupyrolimet (TFP) that was declared as an “emergency.” This emergency, however, is caused by weed resistance, which is a recurring and predictable event. By definition, a chronic and routine problem does not qualify as an emergency. As shared in Beyond Pesticides’ comments, the allowance of this emergency use of an unregistered pesticide is not warranted, given the serious concern about the hazards of this herbicide and the lack of a full registration review subject to public comment. According to public health advocates, a wide body of science on the effects of PFAS supports the removal of all PFAS from production, not the approval of a PFAS for emergency use, particularly for a compound that is not registered with EPA for any current uses.

Beyond Pesticides has also commented on the increasing number of PFAS pesticide active ingredients proposed for use over the last year. The latest pesticide proposed for EPA registration, epyrifenacil (agricultural weed killer), joins cyclobutrifluram (soil fungicide/nematicide), isocycloseram (household and agricultural insecticide), diflufenican (lawn and agricultural weed killer), and trifludimoxazin (agricultural weed killer), making a total of five PFAS pesticide proposals in 2025 that have been associated with national and worldwide contamination of food, land, and water. Two of these, cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, have been approved as of last fall.

Exposure to PFAS does not occur in isolation, as many compounds are continuously encountered in complex mixtures where the combined effects can differ substantially from those predicted by examining each substance individually. In humans, these compounds can accumulate, referred to as “Body Burden,” which encompasses numerous chemicals. (See Daily News here.)

Literature Review Methodology and Results

In the current review, researchers from the U.S. and Brazil performed a literature search for scientific literature published between 2010 and 2025 involving aquatic organisms, such as fish, algae, and microorganisms, with combined exposure to PFAS and other contaminants. “Many studies to date have analyzed the biological impacts of PFAS on invertebrates and vertebrates, such as algae, fish, rodents, and humans,” the authors report. They continue: “Several PFAS, including perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), are reported to bioaccumulate within species and can contribute to a wide range of biological and physiological effects (i.e., altered metabolism, endocrine disruption, oxidative stress, reproduction disruption).”

Additional results include:

• Chlorpyrifos and the PFAS perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA) exhibit synergistic effects by increasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and upregulating neurotoxicity-related genes in zebrafish.
• PFOA and atrazine show synergy as the mixture increases the presence of malformations and oxidative stress. These compounds also cause decreased embryo hatchability in zebrafish. (See research here.)
• PFAS combined with microplastics also intensifies oxidative stress, as well as other developmental and reproductive effects.
• Zebrafish with coexposure to chlorpyrifos and PFAS experience neurotoxicity and oxidative stress.

In summary, the researchers say: “The coexistence of PFAS and other contaminants in environmental matrices is a reality, raising concerns about ecological and health risks. In vivo and in vitro studies in several aquatic organisms indicate that co-exposure can exacerbate toxicity, leading to a higher incidence of malformations, inhibition of hatching, increased oxidative stress, and alterations in metabolism and gene expression.” This review highlights the complexities of the interactions between PFAS and other environmental contaminants, further supporting the need to eliminate the use of these chemicals.

Previous Research

As shared in additional comments to EPA regarding PFAS contamination (see here and here), there is a wide body of science highlighting the adverse effects of these compounds on human and environmental health. Additionally, of serious concern are the many PFAS known to break down in the environment to other compounds such as trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), which is noted as one of the most pervasive PFAS water contaminants in the world and is the most extensively studied ultrashort-chain perfluoroalkyl acid (PFAA).

PFAS residues are pervasive in food and drinking water, with over six million U.S. residents regularly exposed to drinking water with PFAS levels above the EPA health advisory of 70 ng/L. PFAS are detectable in almost all of the U.S. population—disproportionately afflicting people of color communities—and have implications for human health. From epigenetic to immunotoxic effects, there is a wide range of health implications with PFAS exposure. Because of their ubiquitous use and exposure, studies report that PFAS compounds are detectable in infants, children, and pregnant women. Like other legacy chemicals, the effects of PFAS endure through generations—pregnant women can readily transfer compounds to the developing fetus through the placenta.

The detection of any level of PFAS is cause for concern. From widespread presence in farm fields and sewage sludge (biosolids) to contaminated water bodies throughout the U.S., PFAS have made their way into the environment and human bodies. PFAS are even present in remote environments like the Arctic, Antarctica, and Eastern European Tibetan Plateau. Numerous studies document exposure to endocrine-disrupting pesticides (EDPs), including PFAS, leading to dysfunction of the body’s endocrine system as well as additional health effects, such as cancer, brain and nervous system disorders, immune system disorders, diabetes, learning/developmental impacts, and sexual and reproductive dysfunction.

PFAS contamination is much more pervasive than previously assumed, polluting storage and transportation containers, food and water resources, and other chemical products. Not only is the public exposed to PFAS, but cumulative exposure is higher among workers, including those who work in factories that manufacture products with PFAS, and workers who use them regularly. As science continues to emerge on the enhanced effects of PFAS when combined with other contaminants, protecting health and the environment becomes increasingly important.

The Organic Solution

To avoid the use of these harmful chemicals, Beyond Pesticides recommends choosing certified organic products whenever possible. Through the Eating with a Conscience database, you can select from over 90 different common crops you regularly consume and learn about the organic difference from their conventional, chemical-intensive counterparts. See Buying Organic Products (on a budget!) and Grow Your Own Organic Food for more information.

As EPA continues to fail in its statutory duty to adequately protect the health of the environment and all organisms within it, as extensively covered by Beyond Pesticides, the call to truly safeguard ecosystems and public health with the elimination of PFAS and pesticides takes on a greater urgency. We must instead facilitate a widespread conversion to organic practices.

The holistic, systems-based organic solution for land management and agriculture offers numerous health and environmental benefits. Learn more about how to take action and have your voice heard on governmental efforts that are harmful to the environment and public and worker health, increase overall pesticide use, and undermine the advancement of organic, sustainable, and regenerative practices and policies with Action of the Week.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Valle, E. et al. (2026) Do Perfluorinated Chemicals Enhance the Toxicity of Other Contaminants in Aquatic Organisms? A Review, Toxics. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/14/5/373.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 12, 2026) Research published in Microbiological Research finds that organic farming enhances microbial diversity in citrus orchard soil systems, both in terms of nutrient cycling and aiding in the development of more complex microbial networks pivotal to biodiversity. This comes as no surprise to organic, public health, and biodiversity advocates who have tracked the scientific literature on soil health and human health benefits of organic land management systems.

Methodology and Results

The international research team for the study engaged in a comparative field study of 15 commercial citrus orchards in Sicily, including 7 organic fields and 8 chemical-intensive, conventional fields, with the prime objective of assessing the role of the farming system, as well as environmental and agronomic factors, on soil microbiome structure and function. They collected 75 samples in summer (June-July 2021) and winter (December 2021-January 2022) periods, with 150 soil samples collected in total. In each orchard, 5 trees were randomly selected, with 4 soil “cores” pooled into one composite sample per tree at a depth of roughly 20-30 centimeters to assess interactions with tree roots and at a distance of 40-100 centimeters from the tree trunk.

The researchers assessed water content (pH levels), total carbon, total nitrogen, organic carbon and inorganic carbon, carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C:N ratio), and soil texture (sand, silt, or clay). In terms of microbiome analysis, researchers targeted bacteria (16S rRNA) and fungi (ITS1) to extract DNA from rhizosphere soil. For more details on the microbial network, functional analysis, and statistical analysis, please see pages 5 and 6 of the study PDF.

The main results/findings from this study include:

• Organic land management does shape microbial communities, with bacterial (~3.9%) and fungal (~2.24%) variance relative to chemical-intensive management.
• Organic systems harbor more complex and diverse microbial communities in their soils, as evidenced by higher fungal alpha diversity in organic soils and higher species richness under organic land care.
• Organic management promotes various nutrient cycling capacities (inorganic nitrogen consumption and organic phosphorus assimilation) and soil fertility functions (carbon content and carbon fixation).
• The microbiomes of organically managed soil systems can be characterized as more structured and ecologically stable, given higher co-exclusion network patterns.
• Fungal communities, regardless of land management system, were influenced by season.

Previous Coverage

The issue of pest management in citrus orchards is also an issue that plagues farmers in the United States. In 2024, scientists moved forward in testing an agroecological method of “push-pull” pest management (reducing the attractiveness of the target organism and luring pest insects towards a trap) to fight the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) in Florida orange groves, as it spreads a plant disease known as the pathogenic bacteria huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening, which is deadly to citrus trees. The disease is spread by the pathogenic bacteria Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). The chemical-intensive, or conventional, citrus industry is under intense pressure to find alternatives, as synthetic antibiotic use for this purpose has been successfully challenged in court. (See Daily News here.)

In a novel, continent-wide study of soil biodiversity throughout Europe published in Nature, researchers find 70% of the sampled sites contain pesticide residues, which “emerged as the second strongest driver of soil biodiversity patterns after soil properties,” particularly in croplands. As soil biodiversity is key for ecosystem functioning, agricultural and land management practices that safeguard biodiversity are imperative. This study, however, highlights how pesticides alter microbial functions, including phosphorus and nitrogen cycling, and suppress beneficial taxa, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and bacterivore nematodes, and adds to a wide body of science that links pesticide residues in soil to adverse effects on biodiversity. In analyzing 373 sites across woodlands, grasslands, and croplands in 26 European countries, and examining the effects of 63 pesticides on soil archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, arthropods, and key functional gene groups [essential to the nutrient cycling], the data reveal “organism- and function-specific patterns, emphasizing complex and widespread non-target effects on soil biodiversity.” As the authors state, “[T]o our knowledge, ours is the first study to demonstrate the relative importance of pesticides in comparison to soil properties, ecosystem type and climate at a continental scale.” (See Daily News here.)

Through a literature review and data analysis of almost 2,000 soil samples, the authors of a 2025 study find pesticide exposure associated with negative effects on the presence of plant-beneficial bacteria (PBB) in soil, particularly bacteria with plant growth-promoting traits that are essential for crop productivity. The study, published in Nature Communications, by researchers at China’s Shaoxing University and Zhejiang University of Technology, adds to scientific literature documenting the effects of pesticides on soil health. “Pesticides not only reduce PBB diversity as individual factors, but they also exert synergistic negative effects with other anthropogenic factors… further accelerating the decline in PBB diversity,” the researchers state. They continue, “Increased pesticide risk also leads to a loss of functional gene diversity in PBB about carbon and nitrogen cycling within essential nutrient cycles, and a reduction in specific amino acid and vitamin synthesis.” (See Daily News here.)

Non-target pesticide and fertilizer drift combine to wreak havoc on our soil systems. A study of earthworms published in Environmental Science & Technology highlights how chemical mixtures can have both synergistic and species-specific effects, threatening the soil microbiome and overall soil health. In exposing two species, Eisenia fetida and Metaphire guillelmi, to the weed killer glyphosate alone and in combination with urea, a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the researchers find enhanced toxicity with co-exposure as well as varying health effects between the two species. These results emphasize the need to test a wide variety of nontarget organisms for adverse impacts from environmental contaminants, since species, even within the same genus or family, can exhibit vastly different effects. (See Daily News here.) In a similar vein, published in Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, a study of earthworms (Eisenia fetida) evaluates the toxicity of environmentally relevant levels of three fluorinated pesticides (fluxapyroxad, fluopyram, and bixafen) through a 56-day soil exposure experiment. The dose- and time-dependent results reveal that effects on growth and reproduction occur at elevated concentrations, with weight loss and reduced offspring occurring from energy depletion and reproductive organ damage. Other implications escalate with concentration as well, including antioxidant system failure and DNA damage. As the authors summarize, “These findings highlight the mechanisms of fluorine-containing pesticide toxicity in earthworms, emphasizing their potential to disrupt soil ecosystems.” (See Daily News here.) For additional coverage on agrichemical threats to the soil microbiome, please see here.

Meanwhile, organic and regenerative organic agriculture are paving the way forward for what is possible. A literature review published in Ecosystem Services by researchers at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and Rodale Institute European Regenerative Organic Center identifies the ecological and soil health benefits of regenerative organic agriculture (ROAg). In comparison to chemical-intensive farming, ROAg increases soil organic content by 22 percent, soil total nitrogen by 28 percent, and soil microbial biomass carbon by 133 percent, according to the research. While further long-term comparative research is needed to compare regenerative organic with conventional, chemical-intensive systems, as well as more precisely quantifiable benefits of regenerative organic farming on soil health, researchers were able to determine that regenerative organic agriculture “has significant positive impacts on soil health and ecosystem service delivery.” (See Daily News here.) A study published in Environmental Technology & Innovation finds that organically managed coconut farms significantly improve soil health across numerous markers when compared with conventional (chemical-intensive) plantations. The main findings of this study conclude that, across numerous soil health properties, the organic farms significantly outcompete chemical-intensive coconut plantations:

• Organic plots have better porosity and bulk density, meaning lower compaction and better aeration to support air and water movement through the soil system;
• Organic coconut plots have higher nutrient availability and fertility across the board, including for SOM, total nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium;
• The total bacteria and nutrient-cycling bacteria (cellulose-decomposing bacteria) are higher in organic plots;
• Organically managed coconut soil systems have higher biological activity and metabolic intensity, as denoted by dehydrogenase activity;
• In terms of microbial bacterial community composition, it is higher in organically managed plots;
• Organic plots show higher abundance of plant-growth-promoting and nutrient-cycling microbes, including Acidobacteriota, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Chloroflexi, among a handful of others; and,
• At a system-level, organic plots show stronger correlations between organic matter, nutrients, microbes, and enzyme activity relative to chemical-intensive coconut plots. (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

The Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting is being held today through (May 12) through Thursday (May 14) in Omaha, NE, and virtually, May 12-14, 2026.  Watch/Listen to the meeting virtually (use the same link for all three days): Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Android device: Please click this URL to join: https://www.zoomgov.com/s/1617918296
Webinar ID: 161 791 8296.

You can also contact your members of Congress to ask them to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act, which provides a significant opportunity to reduce barriers to organic farming, strengthen organic supply chains, and ensure that farmers have the support they need to transition to and remain in organic production to meet the growing demand for organic food and grow the sector. Importantly, the bill will provide an opportunity for partners to continue the transition support and technical assistance models that are proving effective through USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which ends in 2026. 

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Microbiological Research 

(Beyond Pesticides, May 11, 2026) As studies stack up on adverse synergistic effects of chemical mixtures, serious deficiencies in the regulatory review of pesticides have come into sharp focus. As the hazards are shown to escalate and the regulatory review process is shown to fall short, public health advocates are telling Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services that they must consider the effects of pesticides in the context in which they are used and with reference to the organic alternative. 

A recent study in Toxics reviewed the current literature on pesticides, microplastics, or metal exposure in combination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates, finding that PFAS can modify, including intensify, the toxicity of co-occurring pollutants.  

A commentary in Frontiers in Toxicology, by  Maricel Maffini, PhD, and Laura Vandenberg, PhD,  notes, “Current approaches also rely on the assumption that testing chemicals one at a time is appropriate to understand how chemicals act under real-world conditions. Numerous mixture studies, including ones that demonstrated cumulative effects, have disproven this assumption.”  

As noted by the naturalist, writer, and conservationist John Muir, known as the “Father of the National Parks,” and those before and after him, including the English poet John Donne, who wrote “No Man is an Island” in 1624, all life is interconnected. As a result, synergism is the rule, rather than the exception. John Muir put it succinctly: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”  

Examples of synergistic effects of pesticides abound.  

• The presence of Varroa mites in combination with the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid increases the risk of bee mortality and disrupts the larval gut microbiome, according to a study of the synergy between the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and imidacloprid. An article in Entomology Today, a publication of the Entomological Society of America, highlights the important findings of a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Insect Science. While there has been debate on whether neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticides or Varroa mites are more detrimental to the survival of bees, evidence suggests that neonicotinoids are not only harmful individually but can increase vulnerability to parasitism from mites in western honey bees (Apis mellifera). 
   
• A review in Clinical and Experimental Obstetrics & Gynecology analyzes studies linking exposure to environmental contaminants with adverse effects to women’s reproductive health. The chemical classes within the review include plasticizers, PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), microplastics, quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), many of which are related to chemical-intensive land management and can exacerbate health effects through additive or synergistic effects, like microplastics when in contact with petrochemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
   
• The scientific literature shows that microplastics (MPs) and pesticides, both ubiquitous throughout the environment, have synergistic effects that threaten aquatic organisms. The most recent study to demonstrate this, published in Ecotoxicology, focuses on the impacts of MPs and chlorpyrifos (CPF), a widely used organophosphate insecticide, on cladocerans, a group of microcrustaceans. A literature review of over 90 scientific articles in Agriculture documents that MPs increase the bioavailability, persistence, and toxicity of pesticides used in agriculture. In analyzing the interactions between neonicotinoid pesticides (NNPs) and MPs, a recent study in The Science of The Total Environment finds that neonicotinoids, such as thiacloprid (THI), become more bioavailable in soils containing traditional and biodegradable plastics. Increased bioavailability, which quantifies the extent to which organisms are exposed to chemicals in soil or sediment, puts soil microbiota at risk, and leaves all consumers susceptible to adverse effects in contaminated food crops.
   
• A study in Royal Society Open Science shows intraspecific differences (between individuals of a species) in wild bumblebees (Bombus vosnesenskii) exposed to an herbicide (glyphosate), a fungicide (tebuconazole), and an insecticide (imidacloprid), with gut microbiome health as a factor. The authors conclude, “These findings suggest that site-specific factors influence pesticide sensitivity and should be considered in ecotoxicological studies of wild bees.” 
   
• Researchers studying a mass mortality event of approximately 200 monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) in Pacific Grove, California, point out that there are additional issues in assessing risks to species since “available toxicity values are based on exposure to a single active ingredient, whereas all the sampled monarchs contained residues of multiple pesticides.” Exposure to multiple pesticides can result in additive or synergistic effects, which then enhance toxicity, as has been demonstrated in many studies of pollinator species. 
   
• A common soil arthropod has clearly illustrated how this convergence creates synergistic effects: warming increases pesticide toxicity; pesticide toxicity triggers antibiotic resistance; antibiotic resistance spreads through horizontal gene transfer (movement through the environment to people), and predation.  
   
• Published in Environmental Pollution, a study of commercial dry pet products finds dietary pesticide residues in dog and cat food, “highlighting the urgent need for improved regulatory frameworks to address the presence of non-approved pesticides in pet food.” Additionally, the researchers point out: “Current regulatory frameworks primarily assess the toxicity of individual pesticide compounds, yet real-world exposure involves complex mixtures that may lead to additive or synergistic effects. The presence of multiple residues in a single sample suggests that companion animals may be subjected to combined toxicological burdens that are not yet fully understood.” 
   
• A recent study published in Foods assesses the ability of the fungicide azoxystrobin (AZX) and naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi, known as mycotoxins, to display effects of cytotoxicity (cell damage). These effects were evaluated using three common mycotoxins found in food, including ochratoxin A, deoxynivalenol, and T-2 toxin as mixtures with AZX within human hepatocarcinoma cell cultures. In analyzing combinations of these compounds at sublethal concentrations, the authors find modified toxicological behavior and synergistic effects that highlight the complexities of chemical mixtures, and potential threats to liver health through dietary exposure to both toxicants and toxins, which are not adequately regulated for their interactions. 
   
• Study results published in Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology “suggest that combined [pesticide] exposure may further amplify the toxicity and compromise the intestinal barrier.” 
   
• A study in GeoHealth of pediatric cancers in Nebraska links exposure to agricultural mixtures with the occurrence of these diseases. The authors find statistically significant positive associations between pesticide usage rates and children with cancer, specifically brain and central nervous system (CNS) cancers and leukemia. 
   
• A study in Chemosphere, conducted by researchers from the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Germany, reveals the varied lethal and sublethal effects of different mixtures of the weed killer glyphosate through tests on the South African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. After exposing embryos to four glyphosate formulations, mortality, morphological defects, altered heartbeat rate, and impaired heart-specific gene expression are observed. 
   
• In their recent publication in Environmental Pollution, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, find the greatest synergistic effects when Daphnia magna are subjected to the insecticide esfenvalerate under conditions experienced with climate change. 
   
• In a study published in Biomedicines, the authors conduct a multi-behavioral evaluation of the effects of three pesticides, both individually and as mixtures, on larvae. The authors state, “Even at low concentrations, pesticides can negatively affect organisms, altering important behaviors that can have repercussions at the population level.” By analyzing effects on individual zebrafish with single compounds and mixtures, this study shows the dangers of pesticides in aquatic systems regarding synergy and the ripples created throughout entire ecosystems. 

Other studies highlight the need for a broader overhaul of the current regulatory review to address critical flaws in EPA’s current ecological risk assessment process.

• A November 2023 European study published in Nature demonstrates that relying on testing one active ingredient in a laboratory setting misses real-world impacts of pesticides on bees, nontarget pollinators; and, a “landscape-level” study finds that typical risk assessment reviews used by EPA and European regulators fail to “safeguard bees and other pollinators that support agricultural production and wild plant pollination.” The authors’ conclusions challenge “the current assumption of pesticide regulation—that chemicals that individually pass laboratory tests and semifield [contained outdoors] trials are considered environmentally benign” and call into question EPA’s current regulatory assessments based on the western honey bee and its failure to adequately regulate mixtures of chemicals to which organisms are exposed in the real world as well as the actual devastating impacts to pollinators from the ubiquitous neonicotinoids. 
   
• A study published in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, exposes critical shortcomings in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ecological risk assessment (ERA) process for modeling the risks that pesticides pose to bees and other pollinators. For the study, “Risk assessments underestimate threat of pesticides to wild bees,” researchers conducted a meta-analysis of toxicity data in EPA’s ECOTOX knowledgebase (ECOTOX), an EPA-hosted, publicly available resource with information on adverse effects of single chemical stressors to certain aquatic and terrestrial species. The meta-analysis found that the agency’s approach, which relies heavily on honey bee data from controlled laboratory studies, drastically underestimates the real-world threats from neonicotinoid insecticides (and likely other pesticides) to native bees and other pollinators. The study “challenges the reliability of surrogate species as predictors when extrapolating pesticide toxicity data to wild pollinators and recommends solutions to address the (a)biotic interactions occurring in nature that make such extrapolations unreliable in the ERA process.”  

Since interactions and synergism are the rule, pesticides cannot be evaluated on the basis of single-chemical, single-species tests. Public health advocates maintain that they must be evaluated in context—that is, the system of chemical-dependent management of crops, landscapes, and structures must itself be questioned. They also point to the availability of an alternative system—regenerative organic production and land management—that is both successful and a suitable standard of comparison, saying the only way to truly protect pollinators, insects, birds, and other species, as well as the biosphere as a whole, is to stop the use of toxic pesticides completely. Continuing, they say that converting the world’s agricultural systems to organic would have a tremendous positive impact on threatened populations. 

Beyond Pesticides is urging the public to: Tell EPA, FDA, and Congress that regulations must consider the effects of pesticides in the context in which they are used and with reference to the organic alternative.

Letter to the U.S. Congress
Please urge EPA and FDA to use their registration and tolerance-setting authority, respectively, to set regulatory standards with an assessment of pesticide mixtures, considering their additive and synergistic effects. A recent study in Toxics reviewed the current literature on pesticides, microplastics, or metal exposure in combination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates, finding that PFAS can modify, including intensify, the toxicity of co-occurring pollutants. 

Varroa mites in combination with a neonicotinoid insecticide increases the risk of bee mortality and disrupts the larval gut microbiome, suggesting that neonicotinoids are not only harmful individually but can increase vulnerability to parasitism from mites in western honey bees.

Women’s reproductive health is adversely affected by exposure to environmental contaminants, many of which are related to chemical-intensive land management and can exacerbate health effects through additive or synergistic effects.

Microplastics (MPs) and pesticides have synergistic effects that threaten aquatic organisms. MPs increase the bioavailability, persistence, and toxicity of pesticides used in agriculture, putting soil microbiota and consumers at elevated risk.

Individual wild bumblebees differ in their response when exposed to an herbicide (glyphosate), a fungicide (tebuconazole), and an insecticide (imidacloprid), with gut microbiome health as a factor. 

A mass mortality event of about 200 monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove points to additional issues in assessing risks to species since “available toxicity values are based on exposure to a single active ingredient, whereas all the sampled monarchs contained residues of multiple pesticides.” 

A common soil arthropod demonstrates synergistic effects: warming increases pesticide toxicity; pesticide toxicity triggers antibiotic resistance; antibiotic resistance spreads through horizontal gene transfer and predation. 

The presence of multiple residues in a single sample of dog or cat food suggests that they are subjected to combined toxicological burdens that are not fully regulated.

The interaction of a fungicide and naturally occurring mycotoxins shows synergistic effects, highlighting the complexities of chemical mixtures and potential threats to liver health through dietary exposure to both toxicants and toxins that are not regulated for their interactions.

Combined pesticide exposure may further amplify the toxicity and compromise the intestinal barrier.

Agricultural mixtures are linked to the occurrence of pediatric cancers, specifically brain and central nervous system cancers and leukemia.

Different glyphosate mixtures produce varied lethal and sublethal effects–mortality, morphological defects, altered heartbeat rate, and impaired heart-specific gene expression—on the South African clawed frog.

Daphnia magna experienced synergistic effects when subjected to the insecticide esfenvalerate under conditions of climate change.

Studies highlight the need for a broad overhaul of EPA’s risk assessment process. A November 2023 European study published in Nature challenges “the current assumption of pesticide regulation—that chemicals that individually pass laboratory tests and semifield trials are considered environmentally benign.”

Since interactions and synergism are the rule, pesticides cannot be evaluated based on single-chemical, single-species tests. They must be evaluated in context—that is, the system of chemical-dependent management must itself be questioned. Fortunately, there is an alternative system—regenerative organic production and land management—that is a suitable successful standard of comparison. 

Please ensure that EPA and FDA consider effects of pesticides in the context in which they are used and with reference to the available organic alternative.

Thank you.

Letter to the Administrator of Environmental Protection Agency
To adequately protect public health and the environment in pesticide registration review, the agency must consider the effects of chemical mixtures. A recent study in Toxics reviewed the current literature on pesticides, microplastics, or metal exposure in combination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates, finding that PFAS can modify, including intensify, the toxicity of co-occurring pollutants. 

The presence of Varroa mites in combination with a neonicotinoid insecticide

the risk of bee mortality and disrupts the larval gut microbiome, suggesting that neonicotinoids are not only harmful individually but can increase vulnerability to parasitism from mites in western honey bees.

Women’s reproductive health is adversely affected by exposure to environmental contaminants, many of which are related to chemical-intensive land management and can exacerbate health effects through additive or synergistic effects.

Microplastics (MPs) and pesticides have synergistic effects that threaten aquatic organisms. MPs increase the bioavailability, persistence, and toxicity of pesticides used in agriculture, putting soil microbiota and consumers at elevated risk.

Individual wild bumblebees differ in their response when exposed to an herbicide (glyphosate), a fungicide (tebuconazole), and an insecticide (imidacloprid), with gut microbiome health as a factor. 

Researchers studying a mass mortality event of about 200 monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove point to additional issues in assessing risks to species since “available toxicity values are based on exposure to a single active ingredient, whereas all the sampled monarchs contained residues of multiple pesticides.” 

A common soil arthropod demonstrates synergistic effects: warming increases pesticide toxicity; pesticide toxicity triggers antibiotic resistance; antibiotic resistance spreads through horizontal gene transfer and predation. 

The presence of multiple residues in a single sample of dog or cat food suggests that companion animals may be subjected to combined toxicological burdens that are not yet fully understood.

The interaction of a fungicide and naturally occurring mycotoxins shows synergistic effects, highlighting the complexities of chemical mixtures and potential threats to liver health through dietary exposure to both toxicants and toxins that are not regulated for their interactions.

Combined pesticide exposure may further amplify the toxicity and compromise the intestinal barrier.

Agricultural mixtures are linked to the occurrence of pediatric cancers, specifically brain and central nervous system cancers and leukemia.

Different mixtures of the weed killer glyphosate produce varied lethal and sublethal effects–mortality, morphological defects, altered heartbeat rate, and impaired heart-specific gene expression—on the South African clawed frog.

Daphnia magna experienced synergistic effects when subjected to the insecticide esfenvalerate under conditions of climate change.

Studies highlight the need for a broad overhaul of EPA’s risk assessment process. A November 2023 European study published in Nature challenges “the current assumption of pesticide regulation—that chemicals that individually pass laboratory tests and semifield trials are considered environmentally benign.”

Since interactions and synergism are the rule, pesticides cannot be evaluated based on single-chemical, single-species tests. They must be evaluated in context—that is, the system of chemical-dependent management must itself be questioned. Fortunately, there is an alternative system—regenerative organic production and land management—that is a suitable successful standard of comparison. 

EPA must consider effects of pesticides in the context in which they are used and with reference to the organic alternative.

Thank you.

Letter to Secretary of Health and Human Servicess
Under your tolerance-setting authority to protect public health from pesticide residues in food, it is critical that pesticide mixtures are evaluated, an area of health concern not currently considered. A recent study in Toxics reviewed the current literature on pesticides, microplastics, or metal exposure in combination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates, finding that PFAS can modify, including intensify, the toxicity of co-occurring pollutants. 

Study results published in Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology “suggest that combined [pesticide] exposure may further amplify the toxicity and compromise the intestinal barrier.” The researchers found that the insecticides abamectin and spirodiclofen, and the fungicide fluazinam, individually and in combination, cause serious disruption of intestinal functions caused by the interaction of pesticides in mixtures. These findings highlight the need to assess potential synergistic effects of pesticide mixtures as a part of the regulatory review process. Under memorandums of understanding with EPA, please instruct FDA to recommend tolerances based on combined exposure when pesticides are used together.

“Currently, most studies investigating the effects of pesticide residues on the barrier function of Caco-2 cells [human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells used as a model of the intestinal epithelial barrier] concentrate on the exposure to a single residue, while the potential toxic effects arising from the concurrent presence of multiple pesticide residues remain largely overlooked,” the authors say. This study exposes a mechanism for the synergistic effects of concurrent exposure to a combination of pesticides and highlights the importance of considering synergy in risk assessments and the setting of pesticide tolerance to protect health. 

Additional research referenced in the study supports the findings of intestinal damage from pesticide exposure, including disruption of the intestinal epithelial barrier by imidacloprid, enhancing the toxicity of zinc oxide to gut microbiota; disrupting the integrity of the gut barrier in mice by chlorpyrifos, resulting in increased entry of lipopolysaccharides into the body, and synergistic effects of carbendazim combined with epoxiconazole or fluazinam in Caco-2 cells. 

The findings are very troubling, since pesticide residues in food are introduced directly to the intestines. As the researchers note, “The intestinal tract functions as a congenital barrier for homeostasis, preventing pathogenic bacteria, toxins, and other harmful substances from entering the body.” They continue: “Pesticides ingested through the diet are absorbed and transported into the human body, directly interacting with intestinal epithelial cells. This exposure results in alterations to cell permeability and integrity, ultimately compromising the barrier function of these cells.”

The complex interactions among pesticide mixtures are not fully understood but represent a significant threat to human health. EPA fails to adequately regulate mixtures of chemicals to which organisms are exposed in the real world. Risk assessments have been highly criticized as inadequate in addressing the full range of adverse effects that put human health at risk. Since establishing tolerances for pesticide residues is the responsibility of FDA. I ask you to require FDA to set tolerances based on combined exposure when pesticides are used together.

Given both the known and still unevaluated effects of pesticides, including the impact of mixtures and synergistic effects, petrochemical pesticides can be better regulated through the setting of tolerances and replaced by organic land management practices, which are commercially viable and effective in both agricultural and nonagricultural uses.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 8, 2026)  A study from Ecuador establishes for the first time the developmental pattern of nervous system toxicants—still widely used in agriculture, mosquito control, and landscaping—on healthy neurological and brain development in children. It is firmly established that widely used organophosphate pesticides are severely toxic to a broad range of organisms. In what’s known as their “classic” mechanism of action, they inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), particularly in neuromuscular junctions in the brain. Not enough AChE leads to a buildup of ACh in motor neurons. Organophosphates deplete AChE, and an acute dose can paralyze the heart and lung muscles, causing death. Chronic exposures are implicated in numerous neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Beyond Pesticides’ Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management has detailed information on the organophosphates malathion, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and others.

Acetylcholine and AChE are vital biological chemicals conserved across the animal kingdom, from humans to insects and everything in between. Yet there is no established baseline for normal levels of ACh and AChE in humans. Comparing biomarkers of organochlorine exposure with normal values would be a major step forward in assessing the influence of pesticides on human body burdens and disease, particularly in populations working and living in agricultural areas.

The study, “Acetylcholinesterase activity from childhood to young adulthood,” establishes for the first time the developmental pattern of ACh and AChE levels from early childhood to late adolescence. A collaboration between scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and the Fundación Cimas del Ecuador in Quito, the study is part of the Secondary Exposures to Pesticides among Children, Adolescents and Adults (ESPINA) program, an ongoing prospective project to determine the effects of pesticide exposure on human development in Pedro Moncayo, Ecuador, a center of the flower industry. See Beyond Pesticides’ March 24 Daily News Blog reporting on ESPINA’s research showing other pesticides in the region’s drinking and irrigation water.

The authors note that “Globally, over 100 million children, adolescents, and young adults are involved in agricultural work or live in farming communities.” They followed 746 children from ages five to 25, taking samples from each child eight times over 16 years between 2008 and 2024. They accumulated 3,119 fingerstick samples, measuring AChE as units of enzyme per milliliter (U/mL) in blood. They also measured hemoglobin levels, analyzed urine samples for pesticide metabolites, and gathered data on indirect household-level sources of pesticide exposure, i.e., drift from pesticide-applied fields within 300 meters of the children’s homes and pesticides potentially carried into the homes by adult agricultural workers.

The average participant lived within 300 meters of 13,253 square meters of floricultural crops and 72% lived with an agricultural worker. The children’s AChE levels increased linearly between 5 and 11 years of age, and were very similar between males and females. After 12.5 years, or approximately puberty onset, levels between the sexes diverged. Females’ levels plateaued at 3.80 U/mL at age 15, whereas males’ levels plateaued at approximately 4.40 U/mL at age 21. Across both sexes and at all ages, children who lived nearest to the highest amount of agricultural land had the lowest levels of AChE. However, living with an agricultural worker and levels of urinary pesticide markers did not alter expected AChE levels.

The authors conclude that off-target pesticide drift was most likely the source of the lowered AChE levels among children nearest to agricultural activity. Although this study is the first to try to establish a baseline pattern of ACh and AChE development in children, it does not by itself lead to firm conclusions about the health effects of organophosphate exposure on that baseline. For one thing, the tested population lives in an intensely agricultural area and there was no control group of children living away from agriculture. Further, the amount of greenhouse cultivation in the area doubled between 2008 and 2016, which may have affected the age-related trends in the data.

Nonetheless, the results are important, because although usage of organophosphates is declining, and some are banned, there is no dearth of application, exposures, or damage to the biosphere. The authors cite data indicating 1-2 billion pounds of organophosphate pesticides are used worldwide every year—between a fifth and a third of the total amount of pesticides. In the United States, more than 16 million pounds of 14 different organophosphates are applied every year, according to Earthjustice, with California leading the pack.

Large numbers of people, including pregnant women, fetuses, and children, are exposed, and research has shown associations with numerous neurological problems, including abnormal reflexes in newborns and verbal comprehension, attention deficits and autism spectrum disorder in school-age children. Beyond Pesticides reported on a 2025 California study finding that, “Despite a 54 percent decrease in overall use of the neurotoxic insecticide chlorpyrifos in the state between 2016 and 2021, after a statewide ban on the organophosphate insecticide in 2016, researchers found that in one California county, ‘more than 50 [percent] of pregnant people lived within 1 km of [organophosphate] pesticide use.’” Only two states – California and Washington – currently require biomonitoring of pesticide applicators, including requiring workers to stop working with pesticides if their AChE and red blood counts fall below specific minimums.

A further reason for concern is that AChE is not just a controller of a neurotransmitter in specific brain regions involved in motor activity. AChE is expressed in cells and tissues far beyond the nervous system; recent research on African clawed frogs and octopuses shows that AChE plays major roles in embryonic development, especially in the intestines, in cell differentiation, and in configuring cell structural elements. It is also involved in healing and regeneration of damaged tissue. These are “non-classical” aspects of AChE, again conserved across varied biological families, that are very likely adversely affected by the presence of organophosphate pesticides. The frog researchers cite previous experiments in the same frog species in which gut malformation was produced by organophosphate insecticides malathion and chlorpyrifos, writing that “our results suggest that chemicals used to inhibit AChE esterase function (e.g., organophosphates) also perturb its in vivo morphogenetic [developmental biology] activity; therefore, environmental exposure to such compounds may be an unrecognized risk factor for intestinal malformations.”

The Ecuador study, the work on non-classical AChE processes, and the human developmental evidence, all indicate that the trend away from organophosphate use is not moving fast enough. It is worth remembering that the toxicity of organophosphates was known almost as soon as they were developed. Chemist Gerhard Schrader, PhD, is known as the “father of modern organophosphate insecticide toxicology,” having discovered from personal experience the neurological effects of an early organophosphate while working for the German chemical giant I.G. Farben in the 1930s. He went on to synthesize thousands of the compounds. During World War II, Dr. Schrader and other German scientists developed the branch of organophosphate synthesis leading to chemical weapons, including sarin gas.

By comparison, the insecticidal uses they also worked on have been considered more benign despite the clear evidence that emerged right after World War II of severe organophosphate toxicity to not only insects but mammals as well—as Dr. Schrader could easily have concluded when inhaling and tasting the first organophosphate, tetraetylpyrophosphate, which caused “a marked pressure…in the larynx combined with breathlessness…mild disturbances of consciousness, and painful hypersensitivity of the eyes to light.” That it was AChE causing these disruptions has been known for more than 75 years, having been reported in work on parathion in 1949.

In fact, organophosphates are simply so deeply and widely toxic to the biosphere that health and environmental advocates have called for their removal from the global market without delay. The move toward organic, regenerative agriculture is the most direct way to reduce everyone’s exposure to these terrible chemicals.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Sources:

Acetylcholinesterase activity from childhood to young adulthood
Suarez et al
Journal of Exposure Science & Env Epidemiology 2026
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-026-00866-7

Advances in acetylcholinesterase-based biosensing technologies for organophosphorus pesticide detection: A comprehensive review (2020–2024)
Zhang et al
Food Chemistry 2025
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030881462504021X?via%3Dihub

Organophosphate Pesticide Drift from Agricultural Fields Elevates Risk for Pregnant Farmworkers
Beyond Pesticides, October 28, 2025
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2025/10/organophosphate-pesticide-drift-from-agricultural-fields-elevates-risk-for-pregnant-farmworkers/

Organophosphate (OP) Pesticides in Agricultural Area Residents’ Urine Year Round
Beyond Pesticides, April 28, 2023
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2023/04/organophosphate-op-pesticides-in-agricultural-area-residents-urine-year-round/

Pesticide Exposure Again Linked to Neurotoxic Effects in Humans and Wildlife in Comprehensive Review
Beyond Pesticides, March 12, 2026
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2026/03/pesticide-exposure-again-linked-to-neurotoxic-effects-in-humans-and-wildlife-in-comprehensive-review/

Beyond Pesticides
Organophosphate Archives
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/category/chemicals/organophosphate/

(Beyond Pesticides, May 7, 2026) Adding to the wide body of science on pesticide-induced cancer, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Department of Environmental Medicine find that environmental and occupational exposures increase the risk of developing multiple myeloma (MM), a type of blood cancer. As published in Blood Reviews, the literature review highlights how exposure to contaminants, such as pesticides, dioxins, combustion byproducts, and ambient air pollution, can cause MM through mechanisms of oxidative stress, DNA damage, and aryl hydrocarbon receptor signaling, as well as influence disease biology through immune dysregulation.

“Earlier epidemiologic studies suggested associations between environmental exposures and disease risk, but few have used modern geospatial or exposomic [totality of environmental exposure relating to health effects] methods capable of capturing exposure complexity,” the authors write. They continue: “Advances in data integration, spatial modeling, and molecular profiling now make it possible to revisit these questions with greater precision and biological context. This review summarizes current evidence on environmental exposures in plasma cell disorders and frames a research agenda for integrating exposomic data to improve exposure resolution and evaluate plausible mechanisms in MM.”

Background

Multiple myeloma is an incurable plasma cell cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2026 about “36,000 new cases will be diagnosed (20,150 in men and 15,850 in women)” and approximately “10,850 deaths are expected to occur (5,780 in men and 5,070 in women).” As the second most common hematologic cancer in the U.S., understanding the drivers of MM is important. The precursor states of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering myeloma (SMM) also “arise from a complex interplay of genetic, immunologic, and environmental factors” that need to be considered.

In Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology, research from 2009 was the first to show an association between pesticide exposure and an excess prevalence of MGUS. The study involving 678 individuals who apply pesticides, culled from a U.S. Agricultural Health Study of over 50,000 farmers, finds that exposure to certain pesticides doubles one’s risk of developing an abnormal blood condition (MGUS) as compared with individuals in the general population. The researchers also evaluate the potential association between MGUS prevalence and 50 specific pesticides for which usage data were known. Of the chemicals studied, a significantly increased risk of MGUS is observed among users of dieldrin (an insecticide), carbon-tetrachloride/carbon disulfide (a fumigant mixture), and chlorothalonil (a fungicide). The MGUS risk for these agents increases 5.6-fold, 3.9-fold, and 2.4-fold, respectively. (See more here.)

In previous Daily News, research in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives finds that long-term exposure to the insecticide permethrin and legacy organochlorine insecticides (aldrin, dieldrin, and lindane) increase the risk of developing MGUS, a blood disease that precedes multiple myeloma, with disproportionate risks to farmers and farmworkers. This study highlights the importance of understanding how pesticide use can increase the risk of latent diseases, which do not readily develop upon initial exposure. As the researchers state, “Our findings provide important insights regarding exposures to specific pesticides that may contribute to the excess of MM among farmers… [T]he continued widespread residential and other use of permethrin and environmental exposure to organochlorine insecticides due to legacy contamination…could have important public health implications for exposed individuals in the general population.”

Another study published in Environment International finds higher rates of various cancers among agricultural workers, with multiple myeloma and melanoma (skin cancer) disproportionately impacting female farmers. Although research studies link cancer risk to genetic and external factors (e.g., cigarette smoke), there are increasing reports and scientific studies that pesticide exposure augments the risk of developing increasingly common cancers like melanoma and less common cancers like multiple myeloma. The study finds a total of 23,188 cancer cases in which melanoma of the skin and multiple myeloma instances are higher among women compared to the general population. In addition, the study finds elevated rates of prostate cancer among men compared to the general population. (See Daily News here.)

Literature Review Findings

In the current study, scientific literature was identified that evaluates environmental or contextual exposures in relation to MM, SMM, and/or MGUS. As a result, the authors find that the most consistently implicated exposures include dioxins, particularly 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). TCDD is a component of Agent Orange, an herbicide used during the Vietnam War that is classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). (See here and here for additional coverage on Agent Orange and military exposure.) Dioxins are also found as contaminants in the wood preservative pentachlorophenol used on utility poles, railroad ties, and pilings.

One study of a U.S. veteran MGUS cohort finds high TCDD exposure predicted faster progression to MM while a meta-analysis of TCDD and cancer mortality also shows increased MM risk. “Although TCDD has been banned in the United States for decades [as a result of the banning of 2,4,5-T], dioxins persist in the environment and are still emitted from industrial combustion, waste incineration, and related processes,” the authors point out. They continue, “Low-level exposure is widespread, primarily through the food chain via bio-accumulation in animal fats.”

Research on occupational exposure for agricultural workers documents that pesticide exposure is associated with higher risk of MM. One study shows that pesticide exposure for ten years or more is linked to increased MM risk, while another Canadian population-based study of lifetime uses of carbamates, phenoxy herbicides, and multiple organochlorines is associated with elevated MM odds, particularly with carbaryl and captan exposure. “The North American Pooled Project reinforced these findings, reporting increased MM risk with use of carbaryl, captan, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), with clear dose–response relationships for cumulative exposure,” the researchers state.

The persistence and ongoing threats from legacy chemicals no longer actively in use, such as DDT, shows that the health and environmental risks of pesticides is a complex issue that does not end when individual chemicals are banned. These compounds adversely impact soil, sediments, and food chains longer after use, bioaccumulating throughout the food web and impacting future generations. (See more here.) In summary, the authors state, “Together, these observations raise the possibility that environmental exposures may influence MM not only through direct cellular damage, but also through hematopoietic clonal selection and marrow microenvironmental changes.”

Previous Research

Additional scientific literature connects pesticide exposure to cancer incidence through mechanisms of oxidative stress and DNA damage. In a research article in Environmental Sciences Europe last year regarding the weed killer glyphosate, a researcher finds that the chemical persists in bones before reentering the bloodstream. The mechanisms in which this herbicide interacts with important cells for development, called hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), and breaks and rearranges DNA offers an explanation for the heightened risk of cancer, specifically blood cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), myeloma, and leukemia. This review focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which exposure to glyphosate contributes to the risk of hematopoietic cancers based on the current scientific literature. In identifying glyphosate as a genotoxic threat that lingers in bones, the study’s author, Charles Benbrook, PhD, is able to connect the compound with heightened blood cancer risks. (See Daily News here.)

A literature review of studies published between 2011 to 2020, as analyzed by the Federal University of Goias, Brazil, finds occupational exposure to agricultural pesticides increases the risk for 45 different types of cancer, with multiple myeloma, bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and prostate cancer as the most prevalent forms of cancer. This study highlights the significant role that long-term research plays in identifying potential health concerns surrounding registered pesticides. (See Daily News here.)

More recent research, as shared in an article in The New Lede, entitled Seeking answers to a cancer crisis in Iowa, researchers question if agriculture is to blame, documents case studies of cancer diagnoses linked to chemical-intensive agriculture. The New Lede article captures the experiences of individuals in Iowa on “the rising rates of cancer plaguing the state,” with a call for an investigation of “potential environmental causes for what some call a cancer ‘crisis.’” Through both personal stories of cancer patients with no other known risk factors aside from agricultural exposure, as well as comments from community members a listening session held in Indianola, Iowa, the article highlights not only the pervasiveness of cancer but the heightened risks of living in areas heavily farmed with toxic chemicals. (See more here.)

Moving Forward

With cancer as one of the leading causes of death across the globe, studies associating pesticide exposure with cancer offer insight into the underlying mechanisms that cause the disease. It is essential to recognize the health implications of pesticide use and exposure on humans, particularly if pesticides increase chronic disease risk. Thus, Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent news and studies related to pesticides through the Daily News Blog and Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the clear need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency.

One way to reduce human and environmental contamination from pesticides is buying, growing, and supporting organic. Numerous studies find that levels of pesticide metabolites within the human body are lower after switching to an all-organic diet. For more information on how organic is the right choice for consumers, see Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. Take action: >> Ask the U.S. Senate to hold the line and reject the House Farm Bill, pass a clean bill that extends the current law, and regroup to build a sustainable agricultural sector that respects farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and the environment.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

del Rosal, M. et al. (2026) Environmental exposures and multiple myeloma risk: A contemporary review of epidemiologic associations and mechanistic plausibility, Blood Reviews. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268960X26000317.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 6, 2026) Adding to the wide body of science highlighting the adverse effects of pesticides on pollinators, as extensively documented in Daily News and What the Science Shows on Biodiversity, a study published in Insects finds threats to Italian honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) following exposure to insecticides with contrasting toxicity levels. Both the high toxicity and low toxicity compounds impact honey bee gut bacteria and gut microbial composition, showing how even “reduced risk” insecticides can have sublethal effects and jeopardize pollinator health.

As the authors point out, “Honey bees depend on a small but highly specialized community of gut bacteria that help them digest food, resist infections, and cope with environmental stress.” Because of this, chemicals that disrupt the honey bee gut microbiome can threaten their survival. In the current study, the researchers analyze two compounds to determine adverse impacts on honey bees’ gut microbiota: emamectin benzoate-lufenuron (EB-LFR), an avermectin insecticide with high toxicity, and RH-5849 (1,2-dibenzoyl-1-tert-butylhydrazine), a non-steroidal ecdysone agonist (mimicking the action of the insect molting hormone) and insect growth regulator with reported lower toxicity.

The results reveal that both toxicity levels can harm gut microbial composition, with EB-LFR “associated with observed reductions in beneficial bacteria and the detection of opportunistic microbes” and RH-5849 “associated with a broader depletion of beneficial taxa.” This indicates that all insecticides, even those considered “reduced risk,” can impact honey bee health and further contribute to the already devastating population declines of pollinators. (See more on the “insect apocalypse” here.)

“[E]ven when acute mortality is limited, alterations in gut microbiota composition may contribute to reduced colony resilience over time,” the researchers note. The classification of RH-5849 as having low toxicity or “reduced risk” in the regulatory environment is solely based on acute toxicity, which does not take into account chronic and low-level exposure that can lead to destabilizing effects, including those addressed in this study.

Background

Honey bees provide essential ecosystem services with pollination in both natural and agricultural ecosystems, which support global food security and overall biodiversity. Despite their importance, many environmental contaminants, namely pesticides, threaten pollinator populations. “In the United States, managed colonies decreased from six million in 1947 to 2.5 million in 2022, with annual losses averaging 30%,” the study authors share. They continue: “Similar declines are reported in Asia, where the distribution of the Eastern honey bee (A. cerana cerana) has contracted by 60% due to habitat degradation and biological invasions. These losses arise from multiple interacting stressors, including parasites, pathogens, nutritional deficits, climate change, and pesticide exposure.”

As the honey bee gut microbiome relies on a highly specialized community of bacteria, disruptions to gut microbiota can have devastating effects on honey bee health. “This community exhibits functional resilience under moderate environmental stress, but severe perturbations can disrupt colonization dynamics, metabolic interactions, and immune signaling,” the researchers note. Research shows that pesticide exposure is a major driver of dysbiosis in honey bees and other organisms, highlighting the microbial imbalance and reduction in beneficial microorganisms that can occur with exposure to environmental contaminants.

Methodology and Results

To address previous knowledge gaps for acute toxicity and gut microbiota responses in bees for exposure to insecticides with contrasting toxicity profiles, the study authors subject honey bees to EB-LFR and RH-5849 and analyze microbiota composition 24 hours and 48 hours after oral and contact exposure. Higher mortality occurred throughout the 48 hours in many of the bees with higher doses of contact exposure as compared to oral exposure, indicating delayed toxic effects. Both exposure methods reveal gut microbiota response patterns in honey bees, but differ in the types of bacteria that are impacted.

In describing the results, the authors state: “EB-LFR, a highly toxic formulation, was associated with reductions in core symbionts and the detection of opportunistic taxa, whereas RH-5849, a low-toxicity ecdysone agonist, was associated with a broader reduction in beneficial bacteria… These observations are consistent with previous work showing that pesticide chemistry and mode of action can influence microbial homeostasis in bees, and they highlight the importance of considering sublethal microbial responses alongside mortality in pesticide risk assessment.”

These changes in the gut microbiome of honey bees can impact colony-level health. Once the gut microbiota composition changes from the delicate balance needed for processing nutrients, detoxification, and immune functioning, honey bee survival is threatened. This imbalance can also leave organisms more susceptible to other diseases and impact foraging efficiency.

Previous Research

In Daily News, Variability in Effect of Pesticides on Bumblebee Survival Tied to Gut Microbiome Health, research shows that different species of bees can have variation in their sensitivity to pesticide exposure, as shown with changes in their gut microbes. These varying levels are important to understand, as pesticides can severely threaten certain organisms while being considered safe in risk assessments. (See Study of Pesticide Risk in Wild Bee Species Highlights EPA Risk Assessment Inadequacies for more information.)

Additional peer-reviewed science connects pesticides, particularly neonicotinoid insecticides, to adverse effects on pollinator health. One study of ecotoxicity risk from neonicotinoid insecticides, published in Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, finds that chemicals in this class of pesticides increase the body temperature of honey bees and subsequently accelerate the translocation (movement) of contaminants into hives. (See Daily News here.) Another study of chronic toxicity of the neonicotinoid insecticide thiamethoxam to honey bees, published in Insects, finds sublethal effects that threaten the survival of bee larvae and the health of bee colonies. (See here.)

Beyond Pesticides continues to cover the regulatory deficiencies involving neonicotinoids and other pesticides, as evidenced in previous Daily News Study Cites Ban of Bee-Killing Pesticides in EU, Inaction in U.S. and Canada. This reviews the varied agricultural neonicotinoid insecticide regulation approaches regarding bans and exemption-based restrictions in the European Union, Canada, and the United States. Despite an ever-growing and overwhelming body of science linking neonicotinoids to adverse effects on pollinators and other nontarget species, all regulations fall short in protecting the environment and wildlife, further supporting the urgent need for a full transition to organic agriculture and land management practices that remove neonicotinoid exposure routes and subsequent health threats.

Support the Organic Solution

The tenuous balance seen in nature, with proper ecosystem functioning, relies on rich biodiversity. Insects, such as honey bees, are invaluable for pollination, which many plants depend on for survival and reproduction, including those in food production. The role of pollinators in global crop yields and biodiversity in natural ecosystems, however, is gravely threatened by environmental contaminants, as documented in the current study and a plethora of other scientific literature.

As a solution, organically managed systems can help protect and support pollinator populations. One study, published in Global Ecology and Conservation, builds on the breadth of existing research in recent years that underscores the adverse public health and biodiversity effects associated with a food system that is drenched in synthetic chemicals, as well as additional evidence of the ecological and economic benefits of organic agriculture. In investigating the biodiversity of agricultural landscapes in organic and non-organic areas in “bee hotels,” the researchers find that there is a positive correlation between organically managed fields and numerous indicators of improved pollinator health, including an increase in bee abundance, species richness, and diversity. (See Daily News here.)

For more information on the direct impacts of organic practices on pollinators, see Study Adds to Wide Body of Science Highlighting Benefits of Organic for Insect Biodiversity. Additional health and environmental benefits are available here and here. Take action to advance organic programs both locally, such as with the Parks for a Sustainable Future program, and across the U.S., or even right in your own backyard. Learn how to implement non-toxic lawns and landscapes and Spring Into Action!

Tell your U.S. Representative and Senators to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act (S. 3717/H.R. 7318). The Opportunities in Organic Act will: 

• Modernize and expand Organic Certification Cost Share, covering up to $1,500 per operation per scope, with flexibility to exceed that cap for socially disadvantaged producers or regions with higher certification costs;  

• Invest in organic transition and resilience, including funding for nonprofits to provide hands-on support, pass-through assistance to farmers, and help offset income losses during transition;  

• Strengthen organic supply chains, including processing, storage, distribution, and market access—especially in underserved regions;  

• Expand technical assistance and education, through USDA agencies, extension, universities, Tribes, and nonprofit partners, ensuring farmers nationwide can access organic expertise; and  

• Provide $50 million in annual funding initially, with an increase to $100 million in 2030-2031.

You can also join Beyond Pesticides as a member, where you add your voice to the urgent movement to eliminate fossil fuel-based pesticide use within the next 10 years, help put a stop to toxic emissions and exposure, and advocate for public health and the environment. Help us continue to raise the alarm about the climate crisis, biodiversity decline, and health challenges, and promote the solution: organic agriculture and land management. Join today to be part of the organic movement!

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Kan, Y. et al. (2026) Contrasting Toxicity Classes Differentially Affect Gut Microbiota Composition in Honey Bees, Insects. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/17/4/437.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 5, 2026) In a literature review of peer-reviewed research published in Cambridge University publication Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, researchers at Institute for Applied Agriculture Research (Germany) and Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems (Arizona State University, USA) determine that organically managed systems have better performance indicators under climate-induced stressors, emit less nitrous oxide emissions, increase overall soil organic carbon, and reduce overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The researchers also point out the potential socio-ecological benefits of organic management systems, including their potential for building local and regional food systems.

On the eve of the Spring National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting in the United States, advocates continue to call for a wholesale transition to organic and for the immediate appointment of five Board members, who the U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed to seat to fill vacancies, representing farmers, consumers, and an organic certifier.

Main Findings

This literature review is a follow-up to a 2010 literature review that evaluates the climate mitigation and adaptation potential of organic agriculture based on new science from 2010 to 2025. The research is derived from meta-analyses, peer-reviewed studies, and global reports published by sources such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO). Findings include metrics on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, soil carbon sequestration, energy use, and yields, among others, pertaining to climate resilience.

Climate Mitigation Findings

• Organically managed systems reduce indirect CO2 emissions largely due to the avoidance of synthetic fertilizers. (See cited studies here and here.)
• Organic agriculture increases soil organic matter, offering potential long-term offsets for agricultural emissions more broadly. (See cited studies here and here.)
• There are lower N₂O emissions per hectare. (See cited study here.)
• There are potential reductions in methane emissions in livestock systems due to grazing and composting. (See cited studies here and here.)
• Total GHG emissions are lower in organic versus conventional systems due to reduced agrichemical inputs and gains in soil carbon. (See cited studies here and here.)

Climate Adaptation Findings

• Organic systems improve soil fertility due to higher organic matter, which in turn supports soil structure and water retention capacity, critical under drought conditions and climate variability. (See cited studies here and here.)
• Under harsher conditions, organic systems show more stable yields compared to conventional systems. (See cited studies here and here.)
• Organic systems have been found to emphasize local seed breeds and genetic diversity, lending to climate adaptation potential relative to the chemical-intensive status quo. (See cited studies here, here, and here.)

System-Level Assessment Findings

• Organic farming alone does not guarantee climate-neutral agricultural systems, with broader transformation necessary along the lines of incentivizing integrated crop-livestock, landscape diversification and integration (agroforestry), and on-site crop diversification, among other interventions.
• A transition to plant-based diets with organically managed systems is essential, according to the researchers, in terms of GHG emissions and competing demands for land and resource use. (See cited studies here, here, and here.)
• Organically managed food systems associated with local supply chains and lower consumption of meat combine to ensure more sustainable consumption patterns. (See cited studies here, here, and here.)
• From a behavioral change standpoint, organic systems encourage an environmental ethic and strengthen cooperatives (considering many organic farmers organize in associations across the globe and the U.S.), ultimately enhancing knowledge-sharing among agricultural stakeholders. (See cited studies here and here.)

Previous Coverage

The preponderance of scientific evidence, not to mention the various field trials led by farmers themselves, demonstrates that the organic transition is necessary for ensuring climate-resilient and smart agriculture without greenwashed solutions. (See Daily News here and here for examples of greenwashing.) This is in addition to increasing findings on the synergistic nature of the climate and pesticide contamination crises.

To better understand synergistic interactions between multiple stressors, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, analyze exposure to the pyrethroid insecticide esfenvalerate with two nonchemical environmental factors: elevated temperature and food limitation. In their recent publication in Environmental Pollution, the authors find the greatest synergistic effects when Daphnia magna (D. magna) are subjected to esfenvalerate under conditions experienced with climate change, including lower food availability and increased temperature. D. magna, also known as daphnids or water fleas, are small planktonic crustaceans that represent an essential part of the food web in lakes and ponds. Impacts on populations of daphnids can lead to effects throughout multiple trophic levels that impact overall biodiversity. As the researchers state, “Global biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate in response to multiple environmental stressors… A key challenge is understanding synergistic interactions between multiple stressors and predicting their combined effects.” (See Daily News here.)

The climate crisis exacerbates pollution in communities. One recent example includes the destructive impact of Hurricane Milton, a climate-change-fueled extreme weather event that slammed into Florida in early October 2024 and led to the temporary closure of all phosphate mining facilities, integral to petrochemical fertilizer production, in the state after reported wastewater spillage, according to reporting by Tampa Bay Times. The Mosaic Company, the largest phosphate mining company in Florida, reported at least 17,500 gallons of wastewater from one of its processing plants leaked into Tampa Bay (“The Bay”), according to a company press release at the time. An analysis by Environment Florida Research & Policy Center found that the state environmental agency conservatively estimated that at least 91.65 million gallons of contaminated waterways and communities. Most of the pollution reports identify raw/partially treated sewage sludge (which has been found to include PFAS contamination), citing additional overflows from sources including a coal ash pond, ammonia, and phosphate mining wastewater. (See Daily News here.) For additional related coverage, please see here.

Another wrinkle to consider is the impact of Arctic ice melting induced by the climate crisis and the potential for additional toxic chemical and pesticide pollution. A study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment warns that thawing of permafrost (a ground that remains completely frozen for two or more years) in the Arctic region can prompt the reemergence of greenhouse gases (e.g., methane and carbon dioxide), microbes, and chemicals (e.g., banned pesticides like DDT). Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including banned and current-use pesticides, are present in snow and ice on top of Arctic glaciers, according to a study published in Environmental Science & Technology.  Included are seven industrial chemicals, which include hexachlorobutadiene, 1,2,3,4-tetrachlorobenzene, 1,2,4,5-T4CB, pentachlorobenzene, pentachloroanisole, 3,4,5,6-tetrachlorodimethoxybenene, and pesticides include heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide B, aldrin, α-and γ-hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), chlorpyrifos, trans- and cis-chlordane, 4,4′-DDE, dieldrin, dacthal (DCPA), trans-nonachlor, and α-endosulfan. Chlorpyrifos, dieldrin, and trans-chlordane dominate most Arctic areas, accounting for at least 50% of the total pesticide concentrations at each sample site. (See Daily News here. (See Daily News here.) For additional coverage, please see here.

In terms of water systems, a study of the effects of flooding on aquatic-terrestrial pesticide transfer, published in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, finds heightened risks to riparian zone ecosystems as flooding frequency continues to increase with climate change. Riparian buffers, recognized as biodiversity hotspots, “are increasingly subjected to various stressors, including chemical contaminants such as pesticides,” the authors state. As transportation of toxic compounds can occur not only through surface runoff but also through flooding events, the frequency and duration of floods can greatly impact the cumulative effects of pesticides on soil health and organisms within ecosystems. (See Daily News here.) This builds on the findings of a previous study, published through the American Chemical Society, which analyzes pesticide contamination in riparian soil and plants as a result of flooding from streams in Germany.   “[O]ur study provides evidence from the field that nontarget plant species typical for riparian stream sites receive considerable pesticide exposure via flooding events,” the authors state. This exposure, and subsequent bioaccumulation in plants, threatens the food web, as many riparian plants are a vital food source for insects. (See Daily News here.)

The research on soil systems is also detailed. Through a literature review and data analysis of almost 2,000 soil samples, the authors of a recent study find negative effects on the presence of plant-beneficial bacteria (PBB) in soil with pesticide exposure, particularly bacteria with plant growth-promoting traits that are essential for crop productivity. The study, published in Nature Communications, by researchers at China’s Shaoxing University and Zhejiang University of Technology, adds to scientific literature documenting the effects of pesticides on soil health. (See Daily News here.) For additional coverage, please see here.

In the midst of a climate crisis and a lack of government recording of atmospheric measurements of sulfuryl fluoride (SO₂F₂), a study of the estimated emissions of sulfuryl fluoride throughout the U.S. shows elevated levels being released in California. The study, performed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, University of California’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Global Monitoring Laboratory, uses measurements from the NOAA Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network and a geostatistical inverse model.  Sulfuryl fluoride is a fluoride compound and pesticide used primarily for the extermination of drywood termites and beetles—linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions and having acute exposure consequences—with little data collected or reported on the amount of sulfuryl fluoride being used and released into the atmosphere. (See Daily News here.)

Pesticide dependency and climate change exacerbate biodiversity breakdown. In the book, Biological Control Systems and Climate Change, published this month, Danilo Russo, PhD—a speaker during the first session of our 42nd National Forum, The Pesticide Threat to Environmental Health: Advancing Holistic Solutions Aligned with Nature—and other researchers add to the existing literature on the climate change threat to ecosystem services. Dr. Russo’s chapter, entitled “Impact of Climate Change on Bats Involved in Biological Control,” explains one of the lost benefits of ecological balance attributable to the climate crisis. As explained in the book: “In conservation biological control, habitats surrounding and within crops are managed to favour an increase in natural enemy populations while suppressing pest populations. These agroecological systems can be complex, and are affected by climate change.” The ability of climate change to influence the effectiveness of biological control systems is explored, showing the “effects on the large diversity of macro- and microorganisms involved in biocontrol, and the possible increase or decrease in pest outbreaks following changes in characteristics (morphology, physiology, behaviour….), distribution or phenology.” (See Daily News here.) A study published in Global Change Biology adds to research demonstrating that climate change can exacerbate the adverse impacts of pesticide exposure on managed and wild bees. Temperature can alter the sublethal effects of pesticides, particularly the neonicotinoid (neonic) imidacloprid and the sulfoximine sulfoxaflor, on bumble bee behavior tied to fitness and pollination services. Both an increase and a decrease in temperature can cause diverging thermal responses in bumblebee behavior. However, increasing temperature bears more severe behavioral abnormalities than cooler temperatures. (See Daily News here.) For additional analysis on the linkages between insect and pollinator die-offs, climate change, biodiversity, and pesticide impacts, please see here, here, and here.

When it comes to organically managed systems, emerging evidence continues to pile up in terms of their competitive edge over the chemical-intensive status quo on various climate resilience metrics. For example, a study published in European Journal of Agronomy, based on a 16-year, long-term experiment (LTE), finds that organic crops (cotton production with wheat and soybean rotations) in tropical climates are competitive with chemical-intensive (conventional) systems when evaluating systems’ resilience (to weather and insect resistance), input costs, and profitability. One of the underlying assumptions of continuous pesticide use is that the chemicals will continue to serve as effective weapons in the never-ending war against insects, weeds, and fungal diseases that threaten the economic viability and sustainability of the farming operations. While organic systems faced reduced yields due to pest pressures from pink bollworm infestations, their relative productivity decline was much smaller than that of the chemical-intensive operations. This study’s findings indicate that a different direction is not only possible, but necessary, for the long-term financial viability of farms. Farmers understand that the health of the soil is a compounding investment that will help or hurt you depending on the actions taken yesterday, today, and tomorrow. (See Daily News here.) A comprehensive study released in Journal of Cleaner Production in August 2023 identifies the potential for organic agriculture to mitigate the impacts of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the fight to address the climate crisis. In “The spatial distribution of agricultural emissions in the United States: The role of organic farming in mitigating climate change,” the authors determine that “a one percent increase in total farmland results in a 0.13 percent increase in GHG emissions, while a one percent increase in organic cropland and pasture leads to a decrease in emissions by about 0.06 percent and 0.007 percent, respectively.” (See Daily News here.)

A study published in Scientific Reports highlights the benefits of organic agriculture in comparison to different farming systems over five years on four crops (maize, tomato, faba bean, and potato). “Soil carbon sequestration is a long-time storage of carbon in soil which represents 70% of the carbon in land,” the authors note. “Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the agricultural practice systems on the soil carbon sequestration and properties, productivity, water consumption, soil carbon sequestration, CO₂ emission and cost of some agricultural crops.” As a result, the experiment reveals that, compared to chemical-intensive farming, organic methods enhance soil properties, reduce water consumption, provide higher yields and higher soil carbon sequestration, reduce CO2 emissions, and achieve the highest total net profit for all four crops after five years. (See Daily News here.)

The benefits of organic agriculture will also ensure that consumers can continue to enjoy popular products as the impacts of the climate crisis deepen. For example, organic banana production is significantly more conducive to microbial decomposition than its chemical-intensive counterparts in the Caribbean nation of Martinique, according to a recent study published in Applied Soil Ecology. “Macrofaunal decomposition was increased more (55%) than microbial decomposition (20%), indicating that organic farming removes a constraint of conventional farming, especially affecting macrofauna.” Biological activity in the soil is foundational to organic land management and critical to the cycling of nutrients that feed plant life while contributing to resiliency and soil water retention. (See Daily News here.) Additionally, In the Journal of Environmental Quality, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that a 4-year organically managed corn-soybean-oat system reduces nitrogen (N) loads by 50 percent with corn and soybean yields “equivalent to or higher than conventional [chemical-intensive] in most years.” The findings from a 7-year study comparing nitrate loss in organic and chemical-intensive management found that organically managed perennial pasture reduced nitrogen loads significantly. The study, which focused on nitrate pollution in agriculture that harms biodiversity, threatens waterways, drinking water, and public health, and releases nitrous oxide (an extremely potent greenhouse gas), was conducted at USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment. (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

For additional background and analysis on the intersection of the climate, agrichemical, and fossil fuel dependency crises, see here for a review of a poignant article published in 2024 by Tracey Woodruff, PhD, author and professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board meeting will be held in Omaha, NE, and virtually, May 12-14, 2026. As part of this process, the public is invited to submit written comments and/or provide oral comments on the Spring 2026 meeting issues. Please see the Action of the Week, Organic Must Lead the Way, with suggested comments on priority issues to copy/paste into Regulations.gov; also featured in the Daily News from April 27, 2026, “Organic Standards Open to Comment; USDA Defies Congressional Mandate to Fill Organic Board Vacancies.” The deadline to submit written comments is 11:59 pm ET on Monday, May 4, 2026. Please get them in as early as possible! More information is also available in the  Keeping Organic Strong resource hub.

You can also contact your members of Congress to ask them to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act, which provides a significant opportunity to reduce barriers to organic farming, strengthen organic supply chains, and ensure that farmers have the support they need to transition to and remain in organic production to meet the growing demand for organic food and grow the sector. Importantly, the bill will provide an opportunity for partners to continue the transition support and technical assistance models that are proving effective through USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which ends in 2026. 

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems

(Beyond Pesticides, May 4, 2026) Attention shifts to the U.S. Senate after the U.S. House of Representatives last week (April 30) passed a Farm Bill. In a bipartisan vote thought unthinkable just over a month ago when the House Agriculture Committee passed its Farm Bill, Democratic members of Congress, joined by 73 Republicans, stripped from the bill three chemical-industry authored provisions that would have severely weakened pesticide law on a vote of 280 to 142. The final bill, H.R. 7567—Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which is unacceptable to farm, farmworker, food, and environmental advocates, passed the House on a vote of 224 to 200. (See here for the vote tally.)

The Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, Senator John Boozman (R-AR) pointed to the House bill as “bipartisan” and a “significant achievement.” Fourteen Democrats voted for the House bill and three Republicans voted against the legislation, which has been widely referred to as a Republican bill since it was written by Republican lawmakers without input from Democrats. It is not clear whether Sen. Boozman will move ahead with bipartisan negotiations on Senate Farm Bill language.  

Beyond Pesticides, along with environmental, farm, farmworker, and consumer groups, is calling on the U.S. Senate to hold the line and reject the House Farm Bill, pass a clean bill that extends the current law, and regroup to build a sustainable agricultural sector that respects farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and the environment. 

The House bill, according to advocates, is so fundamentally flawed that they are asking the Senate to reject it and extend the current law with a “clean bill,” free of all controversial amendments that have been characterized as poison pills. Overall, critics say, the House Farm Bill increases dependency on petrochemical fertilizers (which contribute to escalating toxic pesticide use), ignores hunger (despite a historically large $186 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/SNAP), dismisses the notion of a fair, responsible, and accessible family farm safety net, and rolls back successful conservation investments.

The bipartisan group of House members rejected the following pesticide industry provisions that were reported out of the House Agriculture Committee on March 5:

• Immunity for chemical companies from liability and failure to warn. Prohibits lawsuits by farmers and consumers harmed by pesticides for which manufacturers failed to provide complete safety warnings (Section 10205);
• Preemption of state and local authority. Takes away the authority of local governments to protect residents and the local environment from pesticide use with local restrictions (Section 10206); and,
• Exemption of pesticides from reviews to protect water, ecosystems, and endangered species. Repeals requirements in numerous federal statutes authorized by Congress over the last 50 years to protect against local pesticide contamination that could adversely affect waterways, drinking water, federal projects, endangered species, migratory birds, and toxic waste cleanup (Section 10207).

The effort in Congress to remove these provisions was led by Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) sponsored the successful amendment on the House floor. However, it left in the bill provisions that:

• Redefine and exempt plant regulators, biostimulants, “inert” ingredients, and genetically engineered materials from proper oversight. Pesticides and related “plant incorporated protectants” as listed above would be exempted from the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) registration review requirements, as well as from tolerance setting requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) (Section 10201); 
• Further weaken and delay safety measures and environmental protections with a requirement for “harmonizing” interagency coordination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is charged with considering the economic costs of increased risk mitigation measures when up for public comment, further weakening a science-based approach to risk management that considers alternatives. The USDA Office of Pest Management Policy is mandated to coordinate with other federal agencies to consider pesticide use data, economic data of viable chemical alternatives, and likely to advance chemical-intensive practices (Section 10202);
• Weaken Endangered Species Act protections under new interagency working group regulations. The interagency working group will now require the Office of Pest Management Policy to attend, limit meeting requirements to just once a year rather than twice a year, and increase the influence of chemical companies in pesticide registration review decisions before public meetings are held (Section 10203); and, 
• Diminish the integrity of the pesticide registration review process. Repeals Section 711 of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022, which mandates that EPA complete initial registration reviews of pesticides by October 1, 2026, striking a blow to scientific integrity and the assurance that active ingredients are adequately assessed before being released into the market (Section 10204).

People wanting to voice concern can: Ask the U.S. Senate to hold the line and reject the House Farm Bill, pass a clean bill that extends the current law, and regroup to build a sustainable agricultural sector that respects farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and the environment.

Letter to U.S. Senators: 
The House-passed Farm Bill threatens the sustainability of the agricultural sector, family farms, food security, and environmental protection. It is fundamentally flawed and its provisions should be rejected. Instead, I urge you to advance a clean Farm Bill that extends the current law to allow time to negotiate truly bipartisan legislation. 

Overall, the House Farm Bill increases dependency on petrochemical fertilizers (which contribute to escalating toxic pesticide use), ignores hunger (despite a historically large $187 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/SNAP), dismisses the notion of a fair, responsible, and accessible family farm safety net, and rolls back successful conservation investments. 

The House, with bipartisan support, did remove several provisions on the House floor that would have eliminated: judicial review of chemical manufacturers‘ failure to warn about pesticide hazards; the democratic right of local governments in coordination with states to protect residents from pesticide use; and, local site-specific action to ensure protection—the safety of air, water, and land from pesticides under numerous environmental statutes.  

However, the House Farm Bill includes numerous egregious provisions that: Redefine and exempt plant regulators, biostimulants, “inert” ingredients, and genetically engineered materials from proper oversight. [Pesticides and related “plant incorporated protectants” as listed above would be exempted from the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) registration review requirements, as well as from tolerance setting requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) (Section 10201).]; Further weaken and delay safety measures and environmental protections with a requirement for “harmonizing” interagency coordination. [The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is charged with considering the economic costs of increased risk mitigation measures when up for public comment, further weakening a science-based approach to risk management that considers alternatives. The USDA Office of Pest Management Policy is mandated to coordinate with other federal agencies to consider pesticide use data, economic data of viable chemical alternatives, and likely to advance chemical-intensive practices (Section 10202).]; Weaken Endangered Species Act protections under new interagency working group regulations. [The interagency working group will now require the Office of Pest Management Policy to attend, limit meeting requirements to just once a year rather than twice a year, and increase the influence of chemical companies in pesticide registration review decisions before public meetings are held (Section 10203).]; and, Diminish the integrity of the pesticide registration review process. [Repeals Section 711 of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022, which mandates that EPA complete initial registration reviews of pesticides by October 1, 2026, striking a blow to scientific integrity and the assurance that active ingredients are adequately assessed before being released into the market (Section 10204).]   

With the current challenges to the farm economy, food security, health, and the environment, please reject the House Farm Bill provisions, adopt a clean extension, and develop a meaningful bipartisan proposal that honors the value of family farms and sustainable agriculture. 

Thank you. 

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 1, 2026) A study in Psychiatry Research, entitled “Toxic Exposure and Rates of Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among U.S. Military Veterans,” adds to the body of science linking poorer mental health among military members with exposure to environmental contaminants. While previous research focuses on mental health broadly, the current observational cohort study focuses on exposure to toxic substances and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) through the analysis of data from 248,926 U.S. veterans enrolled in the Million Veteran Program (MVP). In comparing self-reported exposures to nine toxicants, including Agent Orange, chemical/biological weapons, anthrax vaccine, solvents/fuels, petroleum combustion products, lead, other metals, pesticides, and open-air burn pits, and mental health records, the researchers find that military veterans with higher toxic exposures are more likely to have STBs.

The authors also report that these associations occur across all major service cohorts (pre-Vietnam, Vietnam, post-Vietnam, Gulf War, and post-9/11 eras). “Our work contributes to growing evidence that veterans who report more toxic exposures are more likely to have STBs, consistent with greater risk for other mental health outcomes (e.g., depression, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]),” the researchers conclude.

Importance and Background

Military members experience increased health risks with exposure to environmental contaminants, such as pesticides. This occupational exposure is similar to the increased risks associated with farmers and farmworkers, as well as vulnerable communities, who experience disproportionate risks. As Beyond Pesticides shares, pesticide exposure itself does not discriminate, as these toxic chemicals impact the health of all men, women, and children alike. However, pesticide exposure patterns tend to cause elevated rates of health disparities and disorders. (See Daily News coverage on disproportionate risks here.)

Disproportionate military exposure to environmental toxicants remains consistent over different eras of military service and geographic locations while the specific compounds vary. “For example, service during Vietnam included possible exposure to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange, whereas later operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait included risk for exposure to open air burn pits and other airborne hazards,” the authors note. (See study here.) They continue: “Acknowledgement of these exposures and the health risks that accompanied them resulted in the 2022 Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act. The PACT Act established mandatory exposure screening and coverage of illnesses presumed to be associated with toxins and increased the number of veterans eligible to receive covered care through the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) health care systems.” (See Beyond Pesticides’ coverage of the PACT Act here.)

Evidence linking exposure to environmental contaminants and poorer mental health continues to mount, as this study points to the lack of research on military veterans and STBs prior to this research. “Other mental health disorders, such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are more prevalent among veterans with toxic exposure and associated with greater risk for STBs,” the researchers state. “For example, a recent study found that post-9/11 veterans who reported more toxic exposure had worsening mental health symptoms over the next decade, suggesting that risk for STBs among veterans with toxic exposure might increase over time.” (See studies here, here, and here.)

Methodology and Results

Using data from the 248,926 veterans in the MVP cohort, this study links self-reported toxic exposure to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. “We also examined whether associations varied by service era and specific toxic exposure type, the rate of exposure for specific toxins, the categories of STBs, and the extent to which the associations might reflect a broader association between toxic exposure and mental health by accounting for PTSD and depressive symptoms,” the authors explain.

Electronic medical records were used to confirm the history of STBs in veterans, which includes suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, or death by suicide. In total, the data reveals 32,931 participants (13.2%) with STBs. As a result, veterans who reported more toxic exposures are more likely to have STBs, with “a 7.2% increased risk of STBs for each additional toxic exposure a veteran reports.” The statistical analysis shows that each additional toxic exposure translated “to a 0.7% increase in the absolute risk and a 5.9% increase in the relative risk of having STBs.”

In summary, the researchers state, “Our findings contribute to a growing literature linking toxic exposures to negative mental health outcomes, particularly among military veterans.” They continue, “[I]ncreased rates of STBs associated with toxic exposure could be interpreted as a global increase in risk for negative mental health outcomes among individuals reporting more toxic exposure. This interpretation is supported by the results for the specific categories of STBs, which showed the association between toxic exposure and STBs was largely explained by higher rates of suicidal ideation. Taken together, these results suggest higher risk for STBs among veterans with toxic exposures are likely to be accompanied by mental health diagnoses, such as depression and PTSD (and vice versa).”

Previous Coverage

In recent comments to the Department of Veterans Affairs regarding the plan to conduct an assessment of scientific literature and historical claims data as it relates to military environmental exposure and neurodegenerative outcomes, Beyond Pesticides continues to advocate for the recognition of disproportionate risks to service members and the transition to safer alternatives. Exposure to environmental contaminants, such as pesticides, asbestos, industrial solvents, smoke and toxic fumes, lead, fuel, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), occurs through various activities. The inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption of these dangerous compounds take place during deployment and training, both on and off base, as service members encounter burn pits, airborne dust and fumes from chemical warfare agents or pesticide applications, and contaminated food and drinking water. Pesticide-treated uniforms are also a direct source of dermal exposure, particularly as sweat in field conditions increases absorption. (See studies here and here.)

Unfortunately, the majority of research connects military exposure to adverse health effects many years or decades after exposure has occurred. One study, published in JAMA Neurology, connects military service to increased risks of Parkinson’s, finding that the disease incidence was 70% higher in Camp Lejeune veterans (stationed there during 1975-1985) as compared with veterans stationed at a Marine Corps base where water was not contaminated with trichloroethylene and other volatile organic compounds.

A wide body of research continues to mount on Gulf War Illness (also known as Gulf War Syndrome). One previous report shows that at least one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness, a condition caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides. In the report, a federal panel of scientific experts and veterans on the Congressionally-mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses said, “The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is the result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time.” The 450-page report was a landmark study that brough together for the first time the full range of scientific research and government investigations on Gulf War illness. (See Daily News here.)

Additional scientific literature connects exposure to “rainbow herbicides,” particularly Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War to significant health impacts. Agent Orange contained significant amounts of the synthetic contaminant dioxin (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin), often called TCDD. Dioxins are highly toxic chemicals that persist for years in the environment (especially in soils, lake and river sediments, and the food chain) and accumulate in fatty tissues of animals. Dioxins are carcinogenic, toxic even at very low exposure levels, and responsible for both acute and long-term effects. They have been proven to cause not only cancer, but also, other grave health problems, such as birth defects, extreme rashes, and severe neurological and psychological issues. Research finds that U.S. war veterans exposed to Agent Orange developed chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes. Many children of exposed veterans have also been affected by their parents’ exposure to the chemical and show a wide range of symptoms, highlighting the multigenerational effects of this exposure.

Research on pesticide-treated uniforms has established a link to Parkinson’s as well. Multiple studies, including those published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Toxicology Letters, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, and Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, show increased exposure to military service members to the synthetic pyrethroid permethrin through their uniforms. Permethrin exposure can cause neurotoxicity, carcinogenicity, and organ damage, among others, and is particularly linked to Parkinson’s. A JAMA Neurology study found that the risk of Parkinsonism doubled with increased occupational exposure to pesticides. Permethrin was associated with a more than three-fold increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. (See Daily News here.)

Aside from neurodegenerative effects, such as with Parkinson’s, military exposure is linked to other neurological implications, including poorer mental health outcomes outlined in the current study and additional research. A review, written by medical professionals and researchers throughout the U.S. and published in Medical Care, analyzed the existing literature on associations between military environmental exposures to contaminants, including pesticides, and mental health outcomes. The 49 studies in the review, covering chemical exposures for military members, involve chemical munitions from the Gulf War era and Agent Orange from the Vietnam War era that are associated with symptoms of depression, PTSD, and anxiety, among others. (See Daily News here.)

The Organic Solution

The evidence is clear that neurological impacts are disproportionately present in military service members. The solution to these disproportionate risks for military service members lies in systems-based, holistic change. Whether in the military, commercial agriculture, or home gardens, toxic pesticides and other environmental contaminants have no place. The threats to the health of entire ecosystems, wildlife, and humans are unreasonable, especially given available alternatives such as organic land management.

In adopting organic standards, which are continuously improved upon through the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), all life can be protected. Learn more about the Spring 2026 NOSB meeting, which will be held in Omaha, NE, and available virtually, May 12-14, through the Keeping Organic Strong resource page. A draft meeting agenda is available HERE. And a detailed agenda, along with the proposals, is available HERE. Written comments are due by 11:59 pm ET Monday, May 4, 2026. Beyond Pesticides launched an action to encourage public engagement with the NOSB public comment period. Click here to see and participate in the action.

Additional information about the health and environmental benefits of organic methods can be found here and here. Have your voice heard by participating in Action of the Week, which is intended to provide you, our supporters and network, with one concrete action that you can take each week regarding governmental actions that are harmful to the environment and public and worker health, increase overall pesticide use, or undermine the advancement of organic, sustainable, and regenerative practices and policies.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Bourassa, K. et al. (2026) Toxic Exposure and Rates of Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among U.S. Military Veterans, Psychiatry Research. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178126002337.

(Beyond Pesticides, April 30, 2026) On April 27, 2026, advocates—including Beyond Pesticides—from across the political spectrum came together in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to speak out against the chemical industry campaign, led by Bayer/Monsanto, the Trump administration, and Republican lawmakers, to shield chemical manufacturers from liability for failing to warn people who have been harmed by their pesticides. Their multi-pronged strategy targets the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Congress, and state legislatures.

The question of the public’s right to sue chemical manufacturers that do not warn of product hazards was heard before the Supreme Court, as Monsanto argued that people who have been diagnosed with cancer after using the weed killer glyphosate should be prohibited from suing the company for failing to warn on the product label. The chemical manufacturer argued in Monsanto v. Durnell that federal registration of a pesticide preempts legal rights afforded to people under state law under U.S. federalism. The chemical industry is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse decades of jurisprudence and shield manufacturers from liability associated with those who are harmed but not warned about pesticide adverse effects like cancer, neurological or immunological conditions, reproductive dysfunction, and other chronic illnesses.

Highlighted Quotes from the Rally

“This is a case about people who have been harmed but not warned. Is the court going to allow the chemical industry to hide behind deceptive product labeling on hazards that should have been known and disclosed? On a daily basis, my organization, Beyond Pesticides, hears from people whose health has been harmed— and they have not been warned. That’s because our weak federal law does not require disclosure of potential threats, like cancer,” said Max Sano, Beyond Pesticides’ senior policy and coalitions associate, at the Supreme Court rally. He continued: “As the son of a naturalized citizen turned small business owner, I grew up with the now fleeting notion of the American Dream. Immigrants and farmworkers, regardless of their legal status, are a cornerstone of what makes our country great. Advocates, including founders of Beyond Pesticides, are in the fight for equity and the common good, a healthy life with clean water and air, a safe workplace, a society that treats all those living within our borders with dignity and humanity.”

“Inside that building, Monsanto-Bayer will be arguing for the right to poison us and not be held accountable,” said Vani Hari, New York Times Best-Selling Author, food activist, and founder of Food Babe and Truvani. She continued: “Let’s be honest, we wouldn’t be here right now if President Trump didn’t sign that Executive Order. We wouldn’t be here right now if they weren’t inside that building arguing on Monsanto’s behalf. We wouldn’t be here right now if they didn’t submit that amicus brief and that recommendation to the Supreme Court to look at this case when they have lost all over the country.”

“I have been an organic farmer in Maine since the 1970s, and no one can tell me or the other farmers here today that we can’t grow food without all of these toxic chemicals,” said U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME). She continued: “For me, this life-long fight has been to make sure everyone has access to healthy food without toxic chemicals and every farmer has the resources that they need to farm organically and regeneratively.”

“Americans are under attack. There are four fronts to this war with the German company; they’re attacking our executive branch, our legislative branch at the state level, our legislative branch here in Washington D.C., and the courts,” said U.S. Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY). He continued: “And what do they want? They want a get-out-of-court-free card. We’re not going to give it to them. Was the EPA established to protect the environment and the people? Or was it established to protect foreign corporations when they harmed the environment and the people?”

“The pesticide industry is playing their very last card. They are begging the justices, Congress, and the administration to airlift them out of responsibility so that they can keep making us sick and make every dime they can off of our illness, says Kelly Ryerson, founder of The Glyphosate Girl. She continued: “That is the pesticide liability shield. Let’s call it what it is—its a bailout from accountability and a request to be placed above the law.”

“When this country was formed, it was formed because we gave the rights to have police power over health and safety, and gave rights to people to have access to courts. That’s a cornerstone. The 10^th Amendment is the cornerstone of this country,” says former U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). He continued: “And what Monsanto is trying to do with the help of the Justice Department and the Trump Administration is to give a special corporate carve out so that Article Six, the Supremacy Clause, will enable preemption of state laws.”

“Right now, the U.S. uses millions of pounds of pesticides every year, and it is poisoning our air, our soil, our waters, and our bodies. Pesticide companies are raking in billions while the rest of us suffer,” says Sarah Starman, food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth. She continued: “People all across the country—rural and urban, left and right—are coming together to demand healthier food and less exposure to toxic chemicals.”

“I’m here with anyone who believes that our indiscriminate use of pesticides is wrecking the environment, pushing wildlife to extinction, and creating a toxic soup of chemicals that are making us sick and polluting our water and air.” said J.W. Glass, senior EPA policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. He continued: “The science is clear—pesticides like glyphosate, atrazine, paraquat, and dozens of others that are banned in other countries but still ludicrously allowed in the United States are making us sick and pushing pollinators and wildlife to extinction.”

“Center for Food Safety has a lot of experience with the EPA, and it comes from suing them and winning cases. And for us it’s a no-brainer: EPA deserves zero trust,” said Bill Freese, science director at Center for Food Safety. He continued: “In one of our lawsuits, a federal court actually revoked EPA’s human health assessment, and it was because EPA denied glyphosate could cause cancer but at the same time it said, ‘Well, it might just cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’ It’s not just ‘might’ EPA, thousands of Roundup victims can tell you glyphosate causes cancer.”

Call to Action

Please see here to see a recording of the speech at the rally delivered by Max Sano, senior policy and coalitions associate at Beyond Pesticides.

Alongside the rally, Beyond Pesticides and Center for Food Safety hosted a webinar analyzing in real-time the oral arguments and questions from the bench in Monsanto v. Durnell before the Supreme Court. For additional information, please see our backgrounder document. For more information on the issues before the U.S. Congress, see Advocates Call on Congress To Reject House Agriculture Committee Farm Bill and Extend Current Law.

JUST RELEASED: The webinar, Monsanto v. Durnell—Real-Time Analysis with George and Jay, a critique with audio from the Supreme Court session on one of the most foundational cases on pesticides in decades, Monsanto v. Durnell, can be viewed at [Click here or watch below] U.S. Supreme Court Analysis of Oral Arguments in Monsanto Case.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Backgrounder Document

(Beyond Pesticides, April 29, 2026) A study published in Environmental Technology & Innovation finds that organically managed coconut farms significantly improve soil health across numerous markers when compared with conventional (chemical-intensive) plantations. This comes as no surprise to public health and environmental advocates, including farmers, who have seen firsthand the importance of transitioning to land management systems that are in sync with nature.

Methodology and Results

The research took place in Ben Tre Province of Vietnam across 12 organically managed farms in Mo Cay Nam and 12 chemical-intensive farms in Mo Cay Bac. The organic farms were managed under organic criteria for at least three years, while the conventional farms had been under chemical-intensive farming practices for over 20 years, including synthetic fertilizers and the use of various herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.

Ten soil samples were collected and combined into composite soil samples across all 4 farms. Soil analyses were conducted for microbial life as well as physical and chemical properties. Physical properties include bulk density and soil porosity to assess soil compaction, aeration, and water retention. Chemical properties include pH levels, nutrients (ammonium, nitrate, phosphorus, potassium), as well as soil organic matter (SOM). In terms of the microbial analysis, data was gathered on total bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, as well as various “functional groups” including nitrogen-fixing, phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria, potassium-solubilizing bacteria, silicate-solubilizing bacteria, and cellulose-decomposing bacteria. For further information on the methodology utilized to assess soil enzyme activity, molecular analysis of microbial communities, microbial diversity analysis, and statistical analysis, see pages 4 and 5 of the study.

The main findings of this study find that, across numerous soil health properties, the organic farms significantly outcompete chemical-intensive coconut plantations:

• Organic plots have better porosity and bulk density, meaning lower compaction and better aeration to support air and water movement through the soil system;
• Organic coconut plots have higher nutrient availability and fertility across the board, including for SOM, total nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium;
• The total bacteria and nutrient-cycling bacteria (cellulose-decomposing bacteria) are higher in organic plots;
• Organically managed coconut soil systems have higher biological activity and metabolic intensity, as denoted by dehydrogenase activity;
• In terms of microbial bacteria community composition, it is higher in organically managed plots;
• Organic plots show higher abundance of plant-growth-promoting and nutrient-cycling microbes, including Acidobacteriota, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Chloroflexi, among a handful of others; and,
• At a system-level, organic plots show stronger correlations between organic matter, nutrients, microbes, and enzyme activity relative to chemical-intensive coconut plots.

Previous Coverage

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in peer-reviewed literature and field trials, conducted both in the U.S. and abroad, on the competitiveness and ecological benefits/tradeoffs of organically managed farmland for a variety of crops.

Researchers at Prairie View A&M University in Texas published in the journal Sustainability a study of organic agricultural systems from 1960 to 2021, concluding that “the outlook for U.S. organic fruit and vegetables is encouraging, supported by expanding consumer demand, government support, and improved conditions for international trade.” While delivering upbeat findings, including health benefits, the study identifies tremendous obstacles to entry into organic farming, including the limited support for alternative pest management and pest control systems in the United States in recent modern history, compared to the assistance provided for highly subsidized, petrochemical-dependent agricultural practices. (See Daily News here.)

For example, a study published in Horticultural Plant Journal provides additional evidence on the viability of organically managed farmland based on tomatoes cultivated through traditional plant breeding and regional varieties. The authors of the research find that, “Despite the positive trend of the organic sector’s development in Europe, the number of tomato varieties bred for organic farming is still limited since efforts have been mainly focused on high input conditions.” They continue: “As a result, the existing cultivars may not suit to organic production [ ] as cultivars chosen for conventional [chemical-intensive] systems often respond well to chemical fertilizers to improve crop output, but they might not maximize nutrient uptake in organic systems where minor external inputs are provided.” In this context, the marketplace is not maximizing the potential productivity of organic systems due to the limited availability of seeds and plant material best suited to conditions in sync with local ecosystems. (See Daily News here.)

A study published in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment finds organic rice paddies in the Mediterranean region have greater ecosystem biodiversity, including increased presence of aquatic microorganisms and insects, than their chemical-intensive counterparts. Typically, compost builds biological life in the soil and contributes to a drawing down (or sequestering) of atmospheric carbon. As EPA notes, “[C]omposting lowers greenhouse gases by improving carbon sequestration in the soil and by preventing methane emissions through aerobic decomposition, as methane-producing microbes are not active in the presence of oxygen.” (See Daily News here.) Additionally, a study published in European Journal of Agronomy, based on a 16-year, long-term experiment (LTE), finds that organic crops (cotton production with wheat and soybean rotations) in tropical climates are competitive with chemical-intensive (conventional) systems when evaluating systems’ resilience (to weather and insect resistance), input costs, and profitability. (See Daily News here.)

Coffee is a staple of morning routines for millions around the nation—and as the demand for coffee remains high, so goes the surge in certified organic coffee, offering space for coffee lovers to enjoy the drink and lower their carbon footprint, according a study in Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy.  “The results indicate that the average emissions for the production units classified as in transition are equivalent to 1.11 kg CO₂e per kilogram of green coffee, while for the organic production units, the average emissions associated with 1 kg of green coffee are equivalent to 0.68 kg CO₂e.” The data for this study was based on ten farms (a.k.a “production units/PUs” in the study) that are members of an organic coffee cooperative located in Cajamarca, Peru. Five of the farms are “organic” and the other five farms were “in transition,” meaning that some practices and principles are applied but are not subject to inspection and certification. The researchers conducted a life cycle assessment, analyzing the carbon footprint of each farm through an iterative process in alignment with the International Organisation for Standardization principles and framework, followed by researchers internationally (see here and here). (See Daily News here.)

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report, in a study published in  that a 4-year organically managed corn-soybean-oat system reduces nitrogen (N) loads by 50 percent with corn and soybean yields “equivalent to or higher than conventional [chemical-intensive] in most years.” The findings from a 7-year study comparing nitrate loss in organic and chemical-intensive management found that organically managed perennial pasture reduced nitrogen loads significantly. The study, which focused on nitrate pollution in agriculture that harms biodiversity, threatens waterways, drinking water, and public health, and releases nitrous oxide (an extremely potent greenhouse gas), was conducted at USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment. (See Daily News here.) In a sixteen-year field trial based in Central Kenya, researchers have found higher crop yield stability in low-input organic systems with previously degraded soil than in high-input organic and nonorganic agricultural systems. This long-term field trial, published this year in European Journal of Agronomy, was conducted at two sites in Central Kenya—Chuka (lower soil fertility) and Kandara (higher soil fertility)—between 2007 and 2022.  Both Chuka and Kandara share bimodal rainfall (two wet seasons split up with distinct dry seasons) and consist of two growing seasons in a given calendar year. There were six crop rotation cycles for the maize, which included various legumes, vegetables, and root crops depending on the input level and farming system. (See Daily News here.)

There is also the consideration of the intersecting climate crisis and food insecurity. A study published in European Journal of Agronomy finds that “organic farming equals conventional yield under irrigation and enhances seed quality in drought, aiding food security. The researchers tested twelve common bean genotypes of Phaselous vulgaris L., with eight local [Basque Country] landraces (defined by Oxford Language as “a local cultivar [plant] or animal breed that has been improved by traditional agricultural methods”), which are “generally grown under rainfed conditions.” The other four landraces are commercial varieties commonly cultivated in Spain and the European Union. “Under rainfed conditions, the common bean seeds received only minimal water at the beginning of the season to ensure the seedlings’ survival (Table 1),” say the authors in describing the distinction between the two watering protocols. (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

The Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board meeting will be held in Omaha, NE, and virtually, May 12-14, 2026. As part of this process, the public is invited to submit written comments and/or provide oral comments on the Spring 2026 meeting issues. Please see the Action of the Week, Organic Must Lead the Way, with suggested comments on priority issues to copy/paste into Regulations.gov; also featured in the Daily News from April 27, 2026, “Organic Standards Open to Comment; USDA Defies Congressional Mandate to Fill Organic Board Vacancies.” The deadline to submit written comments is 11:59 pm ET on Monday, May 4, 2026. Please get them in as early as possible! More information is also available in the  Keeping Organic Strong resource hub.

You can also contact your members of Congress to ask them to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act, which provides a significant opportunity to reduce barriers to organic farming, strengthen organic supply chains, and ensure that farmers have the support they need to transition to and remain in organic production to meet the growing demand for organic food and grow the sector. Importantly, the bill will provide an opportunity for partners to continue the transition support and technical assistance models that are proving effective through USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which ends in 2026.  

When making decisions on which produce to buy at your local grocery store, you can learn more about your potential exposure to toxic pesticides and chemicals in over 90 non-organic crops, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and related items in the Eating With a Conscience database.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Environmental Technology & Innovation

(Beyond Pesticides, April 28, 2026) In Chemical Research in Toxicology, researchers from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Catalonia, Spain highlight the threats to human and environmental health with “combined exposures to multiple chemical toxicants, including industrial chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).” As these compounds are encountered in mixtures in real-world settings, the resulting interaction can have additive or synergistic effects that risk assessments fail to adequately capture.

As the authors point out: “This leads to a systematic underestimation of health risks, particularly for vulnerable populations. Despite robust evidence on mixture toxicity, major regulatory frameworks such as the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the EU’s [European Union] REACH program continue to assess chemicals in isolation.”

Importance and Background

Environmental toxicants are ubiquitous throughout nature and within all organisms. In humans, these compounds can accumulate, referred to as ‘Body Burden’, which encompasses numerous chemicals such as pesticide mixtures. “Critically, organisms are rarely exposed to a single chemical in isolation,” the researchers note. “Rather, they continuously encounter complex mixtures of contaminants whose combined effects may differ substantially from those predicted by examining each substance individually.”

As the authors explain, regulatory agencies underestimate “the true burden attributable to chemical exposures since regulatory risk assessments and epidemiological studies have traditionally evaluated compounds one at a time.” They continue, “This single-substance paradigm fails to capture the synergistic, additive, or antagonistic interactions that arise when multiple toxicants co-occur, a phenomenon collectively referred to as mixture toxicity, leaving a critical gap in the understanding of real-world chemical risk.” The effects of chemical mixtures present disproportionate risks for vulnerable populations, including “infants and children, pregnant women, the elderly, and low-income or marginalized communities, who may experience heightened biological sensitivity alongside disproportionate exposure burdens.” (See studies here and here.)

As shared in Daily News, entitled Report Describes Complex Cumulative Risk Assessment Proposal to Implement California Law, Beyond Pesticides notes that risk assessment methodology, unless it is considered in the context of a rigorous alternatives assessment, begins with the mostly false assumption that petrochemical pesticides are needed (or are essential) to achieve cost-effective pest management, agricultural productivity and profitability, and quality of life, when, in fact, this is not the case. Therefore, improved risk calculations, while important to characterizing the harm and the gaps in fully assessing adverse effects associated with pesticide use, still impose some level of harm deemed by the government to be acceptable.

Even worse, the adverse effects of exposure cannot be fully characterized because of incomplete assessments or a lack of data on harmful endpoints, as is the case currently with endocrine-disrupting pesticides not fully evaluated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), or other regulatory bodies. The lack of regulatory review persists despite the robust science that shows endocrine-disrupting pesticides to induce cancer, reproductive harm, infertility, biodiversity decline, and other life-threatening, often multigenerational, effects.

The basic standard in federal pesticide law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), requires protection against “unreasonable adverse effects” to people and the environment, a standard that should not, but does currently, allow for hazards or uncertainties when less- or non-toxic alternatives are available. Even so-called health-based standards reliant on risk assessments, such as the tolerance setting process in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), accept a level of harm and uncertainty despite the availability of practices and products that eliminate the identified risk. Beyond Pesticides urges better assessment of harm, full disclosure of what is not known, and in-depth alternatives assessments that consider changes in practices so that clear-eyed decisions can be made to take meaningful precautionary steps, now available, to meet pest prevention and management challenges and tackle the current existential health, biodiversity, and climate crises.

Literature Review Methodology and Results

Within the current literature review, the researchers examine current regulatory approaches regarding toxicant mixtures. The analysis aims to “(1) evaluate the limitations of prevailing single-substance approaches, (2) highlight the scientific basis for mixture-focused risk assessment, (3) illustrate potential health and environmental consequences of limited mixture consideration, and (4) propose evidence-based policy recommendations for reform.”

The literature search, for peer-reviewed studies, official reports, and policy documents, was conducted for the timeframe of January 1, 1980 to July 31, 2025. As a result, the authors state: “Despite decades of evolving chemical safety legislation and a growing scientific understanding of the complexities of chemical exposures, most national and international regulatory systems remain firmly anchored to a paradigm that assesses and manages chemicals as isolated, individual entities. This single-substance focus inherently fails to account for the common reality of concurrent exposures to multiple chemicals and their potential interactions.” (See research here and here.)

They continue: “This siloed, chemical-by-chemical approach across various regulatory domains fails to capture the reality of multimedia and multi-pathway exposures that characterize modern life, potentially leading to an underestimation of overall chemical risk. This persistent focus on single toxicants creates challenges in regulatory oversight, that may leave the public and the environment inadequately protected from the combined effects of the chemicals to which they are exposed daily.”

These approaches fail to consider how humans, wildlife, and ecosystems encounter chemical mixtures in the real world, thus not adequately capturing the extent of harm they present in risk assessments. “This single-substance paradigm, therefore, may create a false sense of security and potentially lead to an underestimation of true public health and environmental risks,” the researchers share.

Additionally, there is “significant inconsistency” between countries, or even within the same country, for chemical standards and risk assessment methodologies. As an example, the artificially narrow definition of PFAS by EPA mischaracterizes the widespread threat to health and the environment. The definition of PFAS used by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) encompasses a wide variety of fluorinated compounds (containing the element fluorine) and is “scientifically grounded, unambiguous, and well suited to identify these chemicals,” as described by scientists in a commentary published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. As the researchers describe, excluding certain fluorinated chemical subgroups does not properly represent the scope of PFAS, which they estimate to include millions of theoretical structures, but more practically, several thousand that are actually manufactured. (See Daily News here.)

In summary, the current study authors write: “The analysis presented in this review identifies a significant misalignment between the scientific understanding of toxicant mixture exposures and the prevailing regulatory paradigms worldwide. The evidence suggests: humans and ecosystems are ubiquitously exposed to complex mixtures of chemicals, not isolated substances. These mixtures can interact in additive, synergistic, or antagonistic ways, often leading to health and environmental outcomes that are not predictable from single-substance assessments alone… Addressing this challenge will require more than incremental adjustments to existing frameworks; it necessitates a paradigm shift.”

Previous Research

A wide body of science continues to emerge on the effects of pesticide mixtures. In a recent study covered in Daily News, researchers analyze the effect of multiple climate stressors and pesticides in the environment and published their disturbing findings of elevated harm in “Double trouble: The synergistic threat of environmental stressors and pesticide mixtures.” The authors document synergism that is up to 70 times stronger than for a single chemical assessment. This work is a follow-up to a previous study covered in Daily News in 2024.

Dire Pediatric Cancer Risk Linked to Pesticide Mixtures, Laws To Protect Children Found To Be Lax highlights a study of Nebraska pesticide use and pediatric cancer incidence by researchers from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences where they found positive associations between pesticides and overall cancer, brain and central nervous system cancers, and leukemia among children (defined as under age 20). The authors’ emphasis on evaluating mixtures, and their innovative technical methods for doing so, highlight the direction environmental health research and regulation must take. Studying pesticides singly is an inadequate approach, according to the authors, because pesticides are not applied individually anymore, but very often in mixtures of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides in spray tanks.

Daily News, entitled Study of Chemical Mixtures at Low Concentrations Again Finds Adverse Health Effects, find synergistic relationships in chemical mixtures, even with low concentrations. The findings come as no surprise to advocates who have urged an assessment of the potential synergistic impacts of pesticide mixtures in the regulation of pesticides. Additionally, a novel study mapping pesticide mixtures and cancer risk, published in Nature Health, “reveals a robust spatial association between environmental pesticide exposure risk and cancer incidence.” The team of international researchers incorporates pesticide risk modeling with Peruvian National Cancer Institute (INEN) registry data to map pesticide-induced cancer clusters in Peru, finding significant associations between pesticide mixtures and cases of carcinogenicity. The study analyzes 31 active ingredients to identify pesticide-associated cancer hotspots, none of which are classified as carcinogenic on their own by international standards. When combined as pesticide mixtures, as experienced in real-world environments, heightened risks and synergistic effects are noted. (See here.)

A Holistic Solution

While many researchers stress the need for enhanced risk assessments, this fails to acknowledge that there is not adequate information available for accurate risk assessments that include all possible cumulative, additive, and synergistic effects from pesticide mixtures for all possible health effects including cancer and endocrine disruption. Because of that, many advocates call for the adoption of the precautionary principle to protect health and the environment. (See here and here.)

As regulatory bodies are unable to sufficiently analyze the threats from environmental contaminants like pesticides, a holistic solution is urgently needed. Given the efforts captured by this paper, taken together with the extensive research in the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database and the daily tracking of scientific studies linking pesticides to cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders, endocrine disruption, sexual and reproductive dysfunction, learning and developmental effects, and nervous system implications, among others, the public can take no comfort in ‘acceptable’ levels of pesticides in the environment.

A widespread transition to organic agriculture and land management is the path forward. Visit the Eating with a Conscience database to learn more about why food labeled “organic” is the right choice!

The Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board meeting will be held in Omaha, NE, and virtually, May 12-14, 2026. As part of this process, the public is invited to submit written comments and/or provide oral comments on the Spring 2026 meeting issues. Please see the Action of the Week, Organic Must Lead the Way, with suggested comments on priority issues to copy/paste into Regulations.gov; also featured in the Daily News from April 27, 2026, “Organic Standards Open to Comment; USDA Defies Congressional Mandate to Fill Organic Board Vacancies.” The deadline to submit written comments is 11:59 pm ET on Monday, May 4, 2026. Please get them in as early as possible! More information is also available in the  Keeping Organic Strong resource hub.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Domingo, J. and Nadal, M. (2026) Mixture Toxicity in Human Health: Integrating One Health, Exposomics, and Modern Risk Assessment Strategies, Chemical Research in Toxicology. Available at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.chemrestox.5c00375.

(Beyond Pesticides, April 27, 2026) The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—a stakeholder board created by Congress to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on organic standards under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and manage the list of allowed materials in organic production, is accepting public input  through May 4, 2026. Today, April 27, is the final day to sign up for oral comments that will be received on a May 5 and 7 webinar.  For a complete discussion on all the issues before the NOSB, see Keeping Organic Strong and the Spring 2026 Beyond Pesticides’ issues webpage.

The NOSB meeting is taking place at a time when the Trump administration has been dismantling government programs and defied a Congressional mandate to replace board members whose terms expired in January.  While the remaining board members continue to meet, the Secretary of Agriculture has left empty five appointees to the board—creating an imbalance that violates a statutory mandate to ensure that the board membership reflects the range of voices and perspectives that are important to the viability and growth of the organic sector—a sustainable alternative to chemical-intensive agriculture reliant of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers. The terms of five board members that expired in January have not been replaced. As a result, the board has lost two organic farmers, two public interest/consumer representatives, and one certifier, creating a serious imbalance that appears to violate the rules governing the NOSB and the National Organic Program.

✅  Sign up by April 27 for a 3-minute comment on the webinar or in person to let the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) know how important organic is. Written comments must be submitted through Regulations.gov by 11:59 pm EDT on Monday, May 4. Links to the virtual comment webinars will be provided approximately one week before the webinars. Registration for oral comments closes April 27, and sign-ups fill up fast. ➡️ Sign up for Oral Comments here.

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) of 1990 created the NOSB at 7 U.S.C. §6518. Under the law, the Secretary has a statutory duty to create and maintain the board as follows:

Sec. 2119 [7 U.S.C. 6518] National Organic Standards Board.

(a) In General—The Secretary shall establish a National Organic Standards Board (in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App. 2 et seq). . .to assist in the development of standards for substances to be used in organic production and to advise the Secretary on any other aspects of the implementation of this title.
(b) Composition of Board.—the Board shall be composed of 15 members, of which—
(1) four shall be individuals who own or operate an organic farming operation, or employees of such individuals;
(2) two shall be individuals who own or operate an organic handling operation, or employees of such individuals;
(3) one shall be an individual who owns or operates a retail establishment with significant trade in organic products, or an employee of such individual;
(4) three shall be individuals with expertise in areas environmental protection and resource conservation;
(5) three shall be individuals who represent public interest or consumer interest groups;
(6) one shall be an individual with expertise in the fields of toxicology, ecology, or biochemistry; and
(7) one shall be an individual who is a certifying agent as identified under section 6515 of this title.

Nevertheless, the NOSB is going ahead with its Spring meeting and addressing issues important to organic integrity and, ultimately, public trust in the USDA organic label. Given that organic offers a path to mitigating current health, biodiversity, and climate crises, public involvement in the NOSB decision-making process and the public comment period is especially important, according to organic advocates.  

The NOSB is responsible for guiding USDA in its administration of the Organic Foods Production Act, including the materials allowed to be used in organic production and handling. The statute gives authority to the NOSB to manage the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.

A draft meeting agenda is available here.  And a detailed agenda, along with the proposals, is available here. Written comments are due by 11:59 pm ET Monday, May 4, 2026, but since the meeting begins on May 12, you must get them in early in order to be heard.

Beyond Pesticides launched an action to encourage public engagement with the NOSB public comment period. Click Here to see and participate in action. In the action, the organization has highlighted the following issues:

1. Microplastics should not be broadcast into organic crops and orchards. Pear ester is a chemical kairomone (chemical signals) synthesized to be structurally and functionally identical to a volatile substance emitted by mature and ripening pears and other fruits. It attracts codling moths and is used in various ways to control them. Pear ester should be added to the National List with an annotation that describes its use and prohibits use of a product microencapsulated in plastic: “use of pear ester is limited to passive traps/monitors and not for use in microencapsulated formulations.” 
2. Chitosan is a material in search of a market in organic. It is a synthetic material that is not well characterized—and different forms have radically different uses. It is not necessary for organic production, and the NOSB has a Technical Review that summarizes many allowed substances for the petitioned use in wine made with organic grapes. 
3. Limits should be placed on the use of chlorine in livestock drinking water. Chlorinated drinking water is unavoidable for anyone using public water supplies, but many livestock producers supply drinking water from wells, cisterns, or ponds. The NOSB should propose guidance and/or instructions for certifiers regarding the application of this use in the various situations faced by livestock producers, including “shocking” wells with high concentrations of chlorine. The NOSB must perform a comprehensive review of cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing materials that can support annotations for these materials on the National List. 
4. E-Commerce must provide all information about organic products that is required by law. Probably every organic consumer who has shopped online has encountered product names, including the word “organic” or descriptions of products as “organic” or containing organic ingredients, and wondered whether that description is true. There is inconsistency between the requirements for a product offered for sale by a “brick and mortar” establishment and the requirements in eCommerce, and inconsistency provides an opportunity for fraud. The requirements for eCommerce should be brought into line with those for physical establishments. The NOSB must immediately identify any obstacles to eliminating this loophole and propose a rule change that will address them. 

For more information on organic, please see Beyond Pesticides’ organic program page.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

(Beyond Pesticides, April 24, 2026) In a review of scientific literature documenting pesticide contamination in the atmosphere, international researchers find human and ecosystem exposure even in remote and distant areas. As published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, the authors state: “Atmospheric transport of pesticides is a globally significant yet widely underestimated driver of human and ecological exposure, with contamination documented far beyond treated fields. This review provides a novel integrated synthesis, bridging emission pathways, atmospheric transformation processes, monitoring evidence, model limitations, and regulatory gaps to deliver a comprehensive understanding of the fate and impacts of pesticides in the atmosphere.”

In analyzing the current knowledge on pesticide emissions, through both drift and volatilization (process where a solid or liquid converts into a gas or vapor), the researchers highlight “the widespread detection of both current-use and banned pesticides in environmental matrices far from their application,” along with the resulting implications for human health and environmental health. As the current risk assessment framework “fails to adequately address the perturbations caused by the atmospheric transport of pesticides,” the urgent need to transition away from chemical-intensive practices grows stronger.

Background

While this review highlights regulatory gaps in the European Union (EU), the cited scientific literature encompasses pesticide contamination worldwide. Beyond Pesticides extensively covers the regulatory deficiencies present in the U.S., which do not incorporate many of the stricter regulations seen in the EU. As reported in previous Daily News, in the regulation of pesticides, the EU relies more on the precautionary principle than the U.S. approach to risk assessment, which accepts a high degree of uncertainty and data gaps in promulgating mitigation measures. One study, entitled “The USA lags behind other agricultural nations in banning harmful pesticides,” highlights the up to hundreds of millions of annually used pesticides in the U.S. that are banned in other countries, including those in the EU.

Despite the stricter regulations in the EU, the review notes: “In 2021, 355,175 tons of pesticides were applied to approximately 180 million hectares of farmland in the European Union. This equates to an average of approximately 2 kg of pesticides per hectare dispersed over 43% of the EU’s total area.” This intensive use of pesticides, with a range of properties within varying environmental conditions, represents the spread of both active and “inert” ingredients, and their transformation products, in soil, surface water, groundwater, and air that is occurring worldwide.

Pesticide residues are ubiquitous in nature, contaminating different matrices including “insects within nature conservation areas or terrestrial organisms in non-target areas, indoor and outdoor dust in residential settings, rainwater, soil samples from organic farms that do not use synthetic pesticides, and organic food.” (See Pesticide Pollution from Chemical-Intensive Farming Diminishes Some Benefits of Organic Production for more information.)

Pathways for Pesticide Contamination

Various exposure routes lead organisms, including humans, to encounter pesticides. Pesticide emissions in the air represent a major pathway, which results from multiple processes. “Up to 60% of the dosage can enter the atmosphere due to direct spray drift during application,” the authors state. They continue: “Pesticide-containing dust can be released into the air when granular products or treated seeds are applied. Volatilization from plants, soils, and surface waters can occur for several days to weeks after application. Even pesticides classified as non-volatile can enter the atmosphere through aerosol emission from soil particles.”

Depending on the physicochemical properties of the pesticides, they are able to persist in the air for minutes, hours, days, or weeks, with the atmosphere acting as a reservoir and transport medium for these chemicals. The movement through the air to different areas widely depends on meteorological parameters, such as wind fields, precipitation, and temperature, among others.

As the researchers describe: “Atmospheric deposition of pesticides contributes to their lifetime and environmental distribution far from their original application sites and occurs via two primary pathways: dry and wet deposition. Dry deposition involves the transfer of pesticide particles or gases from the air to terrestrial or aquatic surfaces through turbulent diffusion and settling, independent of precipitation events… In contrast, wet deposition refers to the removal of pesticides from the atmosphere by precipitation, such as rain and snow. During wet deposition, both particulate and gaseous forms of pesticides are incorporated into cloud or precipitation droplets and subsequently deposited onto ecosystems.”

Research shows that these processes play an important role in environmental exposure to pesticides, allowing residues to reach soil, vegetation, urban surfaces, water bodies, and ice not close to the original application site. (See studies here and here.) “Pesticides can enter the atmosphere during application by drift of spray droplets or in post-application by volatilization from treated surfaces (soil or plant canopy), or by wind erosion of contaminated soil,” the authors write. “Spray drift occurs at the time of application within less than a few minutes, whereas volatilization lasts from a few days to several weeks.”

An important factor not considered in the pesticide regulation process is the additive and synergistic nature of pesticide mixtures. As pesticide active ingredients are not encountered individually, this co-occurrence can further “promote the formation of transformation products (TPs) that may be more persistent and/or hazardous than the parent compounds.”

Other “inert” ingredients can also increase risks. “In addition to the active substance, commercial plant protection products (PPPs) formulations contain other co-formulants to improve the efficiency of the application, such as solvents and adjuvants, which can make up more than 98% of their composition,” the researchers point out. They continue: “Some formulations contain a wide range of aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, for example, this has been observed in the commercial formulation of chlorpyrifos. Like other organic compounds, the atmospheric degradation of these inactive compounds could lead to the formation of secondary contaminants such as formaldehyde, ozone, highly oxygenated molecules or fine particulate matter.” These co-formulants can be relatively volatile and highly reactive in the atmosphere, leading to additional adverse effects on human health and climate.

Threats to Human and Environmental Health

Human exposure occurs through many pathways, including “direct inhalation, dermal contact, and indirect exposure following deposition onto food crops and residential environments.” As a result, pesticide residues can accumulate within the body. As shared in the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database, ‘Body Burden’ refers to the accumulation of synthetic chemicals found in pesticides, cosmetics, industrial solvents, heavy metals, etc. in our bodies. At any given time, hundreds of chemicals can be found in blood, urine, breast milk, and even umbilical cord blood.

“Regarding pesticides transported in the atmosphere, inhalation and dermal exposure are the primary pathways of exposure,” the authors note. They continue: “Residential exposure to pesticides is a major concern for the scientific community due to its association with significant adverse health effects. People living near agricultural areas have an increased risk during spraying periods due to the spray drift, and after application due to the dispersion of volatilized pesticides in the atmosphere. Consequently, residents are at higher risk of developing immune disorders, endocrine disruptions, renal diseases, and neurological diseases. Different studies associate residential exposure in children with cancer, leukemia, birth outcomes, and neurological and respiratory diseases, such as childhood asthma, lower respiratory tract infections and wheezing.” (See additional Daily News coverage on disproportionate risks here.)

The environmental risks associated with pesticides can affect both biotic (living organisms) and abiotic components (e.g., water) within all ecosystems. “Harmful effects on soil and water microorganisms and pollinators are of particular concern because they are major drivers of biodiversity loss,” the researchers emphasize. (See Daily News here.) A wide body of research, which continues to mount, shows impacts ranging from “reduced reproductive success, altered growth and development, altered behavior, changes in species diversity and ecosystem structure, disrupted trophic interactions, and population declines among key species” that can have cascading effects. (See Pesticide Use Harming Key Species Ripples through the Ecosystem.)

Previous Research

Cited within the review, a myriad of studies find impacts to health and the environment, “confirming that airborne transport represents a distinct and significant threat to biodiversity conservation.” This includes:

• The detection of organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides in studies of the atmosphere worldwide, including polar regions. (See here and here for examples.)
• “Other type of pesticides such as pyrethroids (lambda-cyhalothrin, permethrin, phenothrin, cypermethrin, bifenthrin, cyfluthrin, fenvalerate) have been detected in China, Spain, Belgium, USA, and Brazil.”
• Carbamates, such as fenoxycarb and carbofuran, are detected in studies in Spain, Belgium, and Vietnam.
• Neonicotinoids, including acetamiprid and imidacloprid) “have been observed in Spain, in France, and Vietnam. Thiamethoxam and thiacloprid have also been observed in France.”
• Triazoles, such as tebuconazole, myclobutanil, epoxiconazole, and propiconazole, are shown in “several works from Spain, in Western pacific, France, and Belgium,” with additional triazines, including atrazine, terbuthylazine, and hexazinone, identified in Brazil, Spain, Western Pacific, Italy, Belgium, and Vietnam.
• The weed killer glyphosate, and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), both are observed in studies of rainfall. (See here and here.)

The Organic Solution

The widespread transition to organic agriculture and land management can eliminate the use of pesticides that are contaminating the atmosphere and subsequently threatening the health of all humans, wildlife, and the environment. These practices can also mitigate climate change, conserve natural lands, preserve and enhance biodiversity, and protect human health, among other benefits.

In adopting organic standards, which are continuously improved upon through the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), all life can be protected. Stay tuned for additional information on the Spring 2026 NOSB meeting, which will be held in Omaha, NE, and available virtually, May 12-14, through the Keeping Organic Strong resource page.

Learn more about how you can act locally to improve the environment. In partnership with major retailers like Natural Grocers and Stonyfield Organic, the Beyond Pesticides’ Parks for a Sustainable Future program provides in-depth training to assist community land managers in transitioning two public green spaces to organic landscape management, while aiming to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to eventually transition all public areas in a locality to these safer practices.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Bedos, C. et al. (2026) Pesticide fate and transport in the atmosphere and implications for risk assessment, Journal of Hazardous Materials. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389426007478.

(Beyond Pesticides, April 23, 2026) “Fully organic growers face fewer agronomic challenges as compared to mixed growers,” according to a recent analysis published in Agricultural Systems by researchers at the University of California. The authors cite a slowing growth rate for organic certification and new organic farms, despite an increase in consumer demand. A 2025 Organic Trade Association (OTA) report shows organic market product sales at $76.6 billion with an annual growth rate of 6.8 percent—double that of the non-organic marketplace (3.4 percent). On the eve of the 2026 National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) spring meeting to review organic standards and update the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances, public health and environmental advocates, and members of the broader regenerative organic movement, will gather. The Board convenes twice a year to vote on key issues that are under review and have been subject to public hearings and comments, intended to ensure organic integrity and expansion.

Methodology and Results

The researchers combined quantitative and qualitative data from a survey and a set of interviews, respectively, with organic farmers in the state of California. For the survey, 426 certified organic farmers in California responded to questions asking “growers to report on the extent of challenges they faced with managing various aspects of their organic operation including the production of different crops, managing the farm as an integrated organic system, and handling systemic aspects of organic farming such as certification, regulation, and labor.” There were also 69 interviews with experts “across the organic industry, including growers of different crops, input suppliers, handlers, researchers and others, who spoke about the primary challenges and needs of their role and the directions in which they would like to see the industry evolve.” For more details on the methodology, please see page 4 of the study.

The researchers confirmed their hypothesis that organic producers face a different set of challenges depending on scale and type of operation. The three main findings include:

1. Fully organic farmers face fewer agronomic difficulties overall compared to mixed organic or non-organic farmers.
2. Larger farms, regardless of organic status, face greater agronomic challenges in terms of crop nutrition, pest, and weed management; and
3. Smaller-scale farms face fewer agronomic challenges than medium-to-large-scale farms.

There are some additional noteworthy results from the quantitative and qualitative analyses:

• “Only 18.6% of mixed farms were categorized as small as compared to 80% of the fully organic farms.”
• “Overall, agronomic challenges are viewed as more severe than systemic challenges, with weed management emerging as the most significant agronomic challenge, and labor the most significant systemic challenge….This trend reverses for systemic challenges where we find that large-scale (and mixed) growers report lower challenges as compared to small and medium farms, potentially reflecting economies of scale in systemic issues.”
• “Fully organic growers and those growing annual crops (such as diversified vegetables, rice, and cut flowers) also experience less difficulty with managing agronomic practices (β = − 0.374 and β = − 0.324 respectively), as compared to mixed growers or those growing perennial crops.”
• “Although soil-friendly practices may help reduce supplemental nutrition requirements, most growers in our study find they cannot completely eliminate off-farm inputs. Moreover, some producers choose to forego soil building practices entirely in favor of market-available inputs. Organic fertilizers are typically more expensive than conventional fertilizers, despite lower efficacies, contributing to higher production costs at larger farm scales.”
• “Findings from our interviews support this: growers of diversified vegetables that we interviewed, often (but not universally) cited minimal problems with pests, but this was less common across other cropping systems.”

In the opening literature review for this study, the researchers note that farm yields increased 190 percent between 1948 and 2021” across all farming modes” in part due to “heavy investments in public agricultural research and extension services.” This investment does not necessarily include organic agriculture. Meanwhile, the top identified agronomic challenges in organic agriculture include weed pressures, soil fertility and crop nutrition, as well as pest and disease pressures. On the second identified agronomic challenge, “Multiple studies show that the incorporation of organic practices improves soil health indicators [see here], such as higher soil organic carbon [see here and here], and better nitrogen-use efficiency [see here], as well as increased soil microbial biomass and diversity [see here and here ]without the need for additional fertilizers.” The authors continue: “However, producers who focus on supporting crop nutrition through the use of organic inputs might face higher production costs due to increasingly costly production inputs [see here].”

In terms of systemic challenges, issues range from certification costs, identifying markets, potential financial losses during the transitional period, and lackluster public support programs relative to the chemical-intensive status quo. There are also concerns around farm size and organic integrity: “[L]arge, mixed farms which are less likely to use agroecological practices dominate organic acreage,” the authors say. They continue: “Organic agriculture has also seen consolidation in the processing sector through vertical integration and the introduction of organic varieties into mainstream brands. [See here.]”

Previous Coverage

There are numerous examples of the economic viability of organic businesses at different scales, in addition to the significant degree of peer-reviewed literature going back decades that highlight the climate, biodiversity, and public health benefits of organic agriculture.

In a previous Daily News, The Growth of Organic Production and Supply Chains Emphasizes Importance to the Public, various examples of businesses embracing organic are highlighted. A 2024 article in Flatwater Free Press identifies a growing trend of companies, communities, and farms nationwide advancing organic agriculture and land management. Among the signs of this change is Belltown Farms, a Philadelphia, PA owner and operator of organic and organic-transitioning farms, that, according to Flatwater, is “the second-largest buyer of Nebraska’s increasingly expensive farmland by money spent between 2018 and 2022” with plans to expand to 50,000+ acres in various states across the country. Similarly, the continued success of the Nebraska-based, on-farm processing operation, Grain Place Foods, and its collaboration with farmers focused on small-scale organic production, represents the diversity of economic and organizational models that can exist in local, regional, national, and even international food systems. Even household-name grocery conglomerates such as Wegmans have entered the organic space, albeit with a less systemic approach. In an interview in Progressive Grocer, editor-in-chief Gina Acosta toured Wegmans Organic Farm in upstate New York to witness what she and the company acknowledge as an incubator for offering organic food options across all 111 stores located in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. The goal of this farm is not to produce for all farms across Wegmans’s supply chain, but to trial various organic crops and then partner with their nearly two dozen partner farmers (who are certified organic) to offer organic produce across their stores.

A study published in European Journal of Agronomy, based on a 16-year, long-term experiment (LTE), finds that organic crops (cotton production with wheat and soybean rotations) in tropical climates are competitive with chemical-intensive (conventional) systems when evaluating systems’ resilience (to weather and insect resistance), input costs, and profitability. One of the underlying assumptions in chemical-intensive agriculture is the disproven belief that pesticides on the market, or the next generation of chemicals, will continue to serve as effective weapons in the never-ending war against insects, weeds, and fungal diseases that threaten the economic viability and sustainability of the farming operations. While organic systems faced reduced yields due to pest pressures from pink bollworm infestations, their decline was much smaller relative to the chemical-intensive operations. This study’s findings indicate that a different direction is not only possible, but necessary, for the long-term financial viability of farms. Farmers understand that the health of the soil is a compounding investment that will help or hurt you depending on the actions taken yesterday, today, and tomorrow. (See Daily News here.) Another study published in Scientific Reports highlights the benefits of organic agriculture in comparison to different farming systems over five years on four crops (maize, tomato, faba bean, and potato). “Soil carbon sequestration is a long-time storage of carbon in soil which represents 70% of the carbon in land,” the authors note. “Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the agricultural practice systems on the soil carbon sequestration and properties, productivity, water consumption, soil carbon sequestration, CO₂ emission and cost of some agricultural crops.” As a result, the experiment reveals that, compared to chemical-intensive farming, organic methods enhance soil properties, reduce water consumption, provide higher yields and higher soil carbon sequestration, reduce CO₂ emissions, and achieve the highest total net profit for all four crops after five years. (See Daily News here.)

There have been recent (albeit unsuccessful) efforts in 2025 to expand organic agriculture in the states of Washington and New York.  Legislation in the state of Washington (Senate Bill 5474) was aiming to establish a first-in-the-nation Organic Action Plan to “expand opportunities for organic, regenerative, climate-smart, and sustainable producers.” If passed, this bill would build on California’s trailblazer status as a leader in cultivating the expansion of the organic marketplace. Advocates hope that in developing the Plan, Washington will follow in the footsteps of California and European Union by setting targets for total cropland under certified organic management and bridge the gap between climate, public health, and biodiversity. (See Daily News here.) New York state Senator Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick (R-NY) introduced a bill (S1306) that would exempt farmland that is in transition to certified organic practices from real property tax for up to a three-year period. The legislation recognizes the importance of supporting and incentivizing organic as a common good in order to protect health and the environment and save taxpayer costs associated with the externalities of chemical-intensive farming, from costs associated with fires, floods, and severe weather; daily health and cleanup expenses associated with contamination of air, land, and water; and crop and productivity losses and depressed ecosystem services (including loss of pollinators). (See Daily News here.)

Call to Action

The Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board meeting will be held in Omaha, NE, and virtually, May 12-14, 2026. As part of this process, the public is invited to submit written comments and/or provide oral comments on the Spring 2026 meeting issues. See draft comments at Keeping Organic Strong, with a link for submission to Regulations.gov. The deadline to submit written comments is 11:59 pm ET on Monday, May 4, 2026. Please get them in as early as possible! You can learn more about how to take action at our Keeping Organic Strong resource hub.

You can also contact your members of Congress to ask them to become a cosponsor of the Opportunities in Organic Act, which provides a significant opportunity to reduce barriers to organic farming, strengthen organic supply chains, and ensure that farmers have the support they need to transition to and remain in organic production to meet the growing demand for organic food and grow the sector. Importantly, the bill will provide an opportunity for partners to continue the transition support and technical assistance models that are proving effective through USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which ends in 2026.   

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source: Agricultural Systems

Editor’s Note: The board and staff at Beyond Pesticides wish you a Happy Earth Day 2026! Click here or the banner below to honor today, a day of education and action that embodies the power of people in their communities engaging to advance changes in policies and practices that meet the environmental and public health challenges of the day! 

(Beyond Pesticides, April 22, 2026) A study of the effects of flooding on aquatic-terrestrial pesticide transfer, published in Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, finds heightened risks to riparian zone ecosystems as flooding frequency continues to increase with climate change. Riparian zones, recognized as biodiversity hotspots, “are increasingly subjected to various stressors, including chemical contaminants such as pesticides,” the authors state. As transportation of these compounds can occur not only through surface runoff but through flooding events, the frequency and duration of floods can greatly impact the cumulative effects of pesticides on soil health and organisms within ecosystems.

In analyzing pesticide residues following simulated flooding within a controlled experiment, the researchers find: “[S]ix pesticides were detected exclusively in riparian root-zone soil following four repeated flooding events. Our findings indicate that both longer flood durations and repeated flooding events tend to increase the total concentration of pesticides in the riparian root-zone soil. These results demonstrate that flooding promotes the movement of pesticides from streams into adjacent riparian areas. As flood frequency and intensity are expected to increase due to climate change, the significance of this transport pathway is likely to increase, with potential consequences for riparian biodiversity and habitat quality.”

Importance and Background

Riparian zones are transitional areas between aquatic and terrestrial environments, making them important ecosystems for a wide range of species. Many water-loving plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and insects rely on these habitats for food, shelter, and water. Pesticides, however, are introduced into surface waters through runoff and drift from adjacent agricultural fields, parks, and residential lands, threatening vital riparian zone ecosystems.

Previous research shows that pesticide concentrations in flooded soils can fluctuate in the days following individual flooding events but that they increase cumulatively with repeated flooding. As the authors point out, “This is especially relevant in the context of climate change, as flooding events in general are predicted to becoming more frequent in certain areas.” They continue, saying: “Studies on riverine flood trends show that there is an increase in flood risk with modelled climate change scenarios of up to 220% within this century in river basins with upstream areas larger than 500 km². Especially summer floods seem to be particularly affected as precipitation events in summer are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency in the near future due to climate change.”

While decades of peer-reviewed, independent scientific literature provide evidence for climate change, and the connection to increased flooding, a recent event held by the Heartland Institute featured Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as keynote speaker and echoed President Trump’s routine mocking of climate change as a “hoax.” (See The New York Times (NYT) coverage of this event here, here, and here.) The Heartland Institute, as NYT writes, “argues there is ‘no such thing’ as climate-driven floods, hurricanes and extreme heat.” The article continues, “The speech, critics said, risks bestowing the credibility of the federal government on the fringe theories that the group espouses.”

Despite the current administration’s undermining of environmental protection, science continues to mount regarding the existential crises of climate change, public health, and biodiversity and the urgent need to act. Research, such as the current study, raises additional concerns about chronic exposure to environmental contaminants, specifically in this case for riparian ecosystems. “Moreover, riparian soil might act as a long-term sink for persistent pesticides, which might pose risk to essential soil functions and further might act as a source of contamination for the wider riparian area,” the authors write. “Therefore, flooding as an exposure pathway should be considered as a potentially ecologically relevant pathway.”

Study Methodology and Results

To assess the effects of flood frequency and duration on the presence of pesticide residues in riparian root-zone soil, the researchers conducted an experiment with simulated flood events at the Riparian Stream Mesocosm facility in Landau, Germany. This facility contains “16 spatially independent replicated aquatic-terrestrial mesocosm units” in which a flow-through system can supply water from the “nearby, agriculturally impacted, fourth order, River Queich.”

The experiment, which occurred between May and September 2023 with a total of four flooding events, incorporates the main pesticide application season in the surrounding agricultural areas. The authors explain: “We sampled riparian root-zone soil 24 h following the end of each respective flooding event. For each sampling, we uprooted a separate individual of common grass species (Elymus spp.) located at the sampling site.” This allowed for pesticide measurements within the soil, which led to the detection of six pesticides following the four flooding events. Also of note, the total pesticide concentration of the six flood-mediated pesticides in riparian root-zone soil after the four flooding events show over a three-fold increase as compared to after just one flooding event.

Within the river water, “Fluopyram was detected in 92% of the water samples, followed by Isoproturon (69%), S-metolachlor (65%), Metalaxyl (62%), Metrafenone (54%) and Acetamiprid (54%),” the researchers note. This mix includes an insecticide, herbicides, and fungicides. The pesticide mixture within the soil is further described by the authors: “The six pesticides reported as potentially flood-mediated in the present study display low (Azoxystrobin, Metrafenone, Boscalid), moderate (Spiroxamine, Isoproturon) and high solubility in water (Acetamiprid). This variability in solubility suggests that water solubility alone may not be a reliable indicator of a pesticide’s susceptibility to flood-mediated transfer.”

Previous Research

As reported in earlier Daily News coverage, flooding can threaten biodiversity and ecosystem functioning as it transports pesticides into riparian zones. Similar research to the current study and with many of the same authors, published in 2024 through the American Chemical Society, also analyzes pesticide contamination in riparian soil and plants as a result of flooding from streams in Germany. The authors hypothesize, and then prove, that frequently flooded sites have higher levels of pesticides present due to the pesticides in surface waters contaminating the soil. Results show that the plant vegetation in the contaminated soil then takes up the pesticides, which bioaccumulate and lead to higher contamination that can further cascade throughout the ecosystem and affect terrestrial food webs.

Additional studies, cited in the current study, show how soil communities are negatively impacted by pesticides. (See here and here.) The results highlight how pesticide mixtures exert stronger negative effects on soil communities than with exposure to single substances. “Therefore, the ability of flooding events to transport pesticide mixtures at low concentrations into riparian root-zone soils as shown in the present study, might be relevant for soil fauna communities in frequently flooded and agriculturally impacted areas, as our results suggest that the implications for the communities will vary as a function of flooding,” the researchers say.

A Holistic Solution

The myriad of threats to ecosystem functioning and public health continue to be exacerbated by extreme weather events and environmental contaminants. As Beyond Pesticides has written, climate change is one of multiple crises that are compounding one another. Environmental disasters, including fires, floods, and severe weather events, are brought on or exacerbated by widespread reliance on disruptive chemicals. All of these factors, in turn, threaten the health and well-being of all organisms.

Organic agriculture and land management can mitigate climate change, conserve natural lands, preserve and enhance biodiversity, and protect human health, among other benefits. In adopting organic standards, which are continuously improved upon through the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), less harmful chemicals will pollute waterways and be able to impact not only human health but the health of all organisms and the environment. Stay tuned for additional information on the Spring 2026 NOSB meeting, which will be held in Omaha, NE and available virtually, May 12-14, through the Keeping Organic Strong resource page.  

Play a part in the organic solution and join Beyond Pesticides as a member today. Learn more about transitioning your community to organic land management, as well as how to make The Safer Choice within your home. Take action to support biodiversity conservation and eliminate the use of pesticides that threaten natural predators, and sign up now to get Action of the Week and Weekly News Updates delivered right to your inbox!

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Source:

Fiolka, F. et al. (2026) Flood Frequency and Duration Drive the Aquatic-Terrestrial Pesticide Transfer to Riparian Root-Zone Soil: A Mesocosm Study, Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00244-026-01190-9.