(Beyond Pesticides, November 13, 2024) 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 glyphosate mixtures through tests on the South African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis (X. laevis). After exposing embryos to four glyphosate formulations, mortality, morphological defects, altered heartbeat rate, and impaired heart-specific gene expression are observed. Glyphosate, an herbicide and popular weed killer in many Roundup® products, is one of the most commonly detected pesticides in waterbodies worldwide, threatening aquatic organisms and overall biodiversity. This study investigates the effects of Glyphosat TF, Durano TF, Helosate 450 TF, and Kyleo, four formulations containing glyphosate, as compared to the effects of pure glyphosate on embryonic development in amphibians. The formulations consist of varying concentrations of the active ingredient glyphosate, as well as other active and inert ingredients. The authors share that, “Glyphosat TF contains 34% glyphosate and 10–20% d-glucopyranose, while Durano contains 39–44% glyphosate and 1–5% N–N-dimethyl-C12-C14-(even numbered)-alkyl-1-amines. In Helosate most of the ingredients are listed – 50–70% glyphosate, 1–10% isopropylamine, 1–3% lauryl dimethyl betaine, 0.25–1% dodecyl dimethylamine. Kyleo only lists the active ingredients glyphosate (27.9%) and 2,4-D (32%).” 2-cell stage embryos (early […]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 12, 2024) With revelations reported last month by Investigate Midwest and previously by The Guardian showing that Syngenta, the manufacturer and registrant of paraquat, kept secret scientific information on the weed killer’s adverse effects related to Parkinson’s disease, there is increasing concern that endocrine-disrupting properties have not been fully disclosed. Endocrine-disrupting synthetic chemicals, derived from fossil fuels, will be the focus of Session 2 of Beyond Pesticides 41st National Forum: Imperatives for a Sustainable Future on Thursday, November 14 from 1:00-3:00pm (EST). Keynote Speaker The keynote speaker, Tracey Woodruff, PhD, will address the scientific, health, and regulatory issues associated with societal reliance on these chemicals. Dr. Woodruff, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) senior scientist and policy advisor, is the director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, and professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.  Roundtable Discussion Dr. Woodruff’s talk will be followed by a roundtable with panelists, including a former senior scientist focusing on ecosystem effects, a breast cancer activist, and a farmworker advocate who will share their experience and insight into both the regulation of hazardous materials […]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 4, 2024) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week opened a public comment period on the regulation of endocrine-disrupting pesticides, a proposal that lays out a drawn-out 10-year process that is narrow in evaluating the underlying mechanism that causes endocrine disruption. The proposal, published in the Federal Register as a partial settlement agreement and consent decree, responds to a lawsuit filed by farmworker and health groups challenging the agency’s failure to test and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides. Earlier in the year, after over 25 years of delay following the 1996 Congressional mandate to determine whether pesticides disrupt the endocrine system of humans and other organisms, EPA issued a proposal for modifying its approach to the implementation of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP).  The National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences explains endocrine disruptors this way: “Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are natural or human-made chemicals that may mimic, block, or interfere with the body’s hormones, which are part of the endocrine system. These chemicals are associated with a wide array of health issues. . . Endocrine glands, distributed throughout the body, produce the hormones that act as signaling molecules after release into the circulatory system. The human body is […]

(Beyond Pesticides, October 29, 2024) STARTS TOMORROW—NATIONAL FORUM: IMPERATIVES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE. A legal victory in federal court is the latest in a series of attempts to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fulfill the mandate given to it by Congress in 1996 to test all pesticides for their endocrine disrupting effects and regulate them accordingly. The case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California was brought by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and a collection of agricultural workers’ organizations, farmers’ groups, and pesticide activists. Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2019, EPA’s “Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) began, then virtually stopped, its review and regulation of endocrine disrupting pesticides, despite [its 1996 Congressional mandate] to develop a screening program within two years and then begin regulating.” (See timeline, Figure 2, p11.) After the release of a  a damning 2021 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report (see Beyond Pesticides’ reporting) on the agency’s lack of progress in protecting the population from potentially damaging endocrine disruption impacts of exposures to synthetic chemical pesticides (and other chemicals of concern), CFS wrote: “The 2021 [OIG] report included the shocking revelation that some EPA staff were instructed to function as […]

(Beyond Pesticides, October 1, 2024) While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received accolades for its August 7, 2024, decision to ban the herbicide Dacthal (or DCPA—dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate), it also leaves many people asking, “Why Dacthal and not other very hazardous pesticides?” Paraquat, for example, poses similar elevated hazards to people and the environment, has no antidote, and has viable alternatives. Therefore, Beyond Pesticides is challenging EPA to apply the same standard that removed Dacthal from the market to the long list of pesticides that are contributing to a health crisis, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency.  In the case of Dacthal, EPA used the “imminent hazard” clause of the federal pesticide law to immediately suspend the chemical’s use. At the same time, the agency is exercising its authority to prohibit the continued use of Dacthal’s existing stocks, a power that EPA rarely uses. Additionally, the agency, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that there were alternatives to Dacthal. Based on the reasoning in the Dacthal decision, EPA should ban paraquat, Beyond Pesticides says. >> EPA must apply the standard of the Dacthal decision to paraquat and issue an emergency suspension and prohibit use of existing stocks.  Paraquat […]

(Beyond Pesticides, September 24, 2024) Recent commentary in Frontiers in Toxicology by two researchers, Maricel Maffini, PhD and Laura Vandenberg, PhD, highlights the pitfalls in the current regulatory systems in the United States (U.S.) for chemicals that threaten human health. Despite many advancements in science over the past few decades, and the wealth of studies that tie chemical exposure to negative health effects, risk assessments, and subsequent risk management, remain “static” and “outdated,” according to the authors. “There is increasing concern amongst public health professionals, environmental health scientists, and medical organizations about exposures to synthetic chemicals,” the researchers say. “These organizations’ concerns are based on the overwhelming evidence showing associations between chemical exposures and adverse health outcomes in human populations.” Such concerns have sparked a debate on current regulatory methods for chemicals that are present in highly used products, such as pesticides, plastic containers, and food.    The authors continue, “There are now thousands of studies showing associations between these chemicals and adverse health effects in humans including neurological disorders and learning disabilities, metabolic outcomes, infertility, thyroid dysfunction, and cancers.” Additional health effects can be seen in the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database. Of the many harmful chemicals, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances […]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 26, 2024) In July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it was raising the allowable levels of the highly toxic weed killer atrazine in the nation’s waterways from the 2016 level of 3.4 to 9.7 micrograms per liter (µg/L), which scientists and environmental advocates say is a serious threat to aquatic plants, fish, invertebrates, and amphibians, in addition to people who recreate in waterways or eat food from them. With EPA’s August 7 decision to ban the weed killer Dacthal (or DCPA–dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate), Beyond Pesticides is rallying public support for the removal of atrazine from the market under the same standards of harm, inability to mitigate hazards, and the availability of alternatives. As Beyond Pesticides points out in its 2022 atrazine comments (2020 and 2016 comments included) to EPA, the agency in November 2021 released the final Biological Evaluation (BE) assessing risks to listed species from labeled uses of atrazine (in the triazine chemical family). The agency made “likely to adversely affect (LAA) determinations” for 1,013 species and 328 critical habitats, which it is now rejecting, while using a “community-equivalent level of concern (CE-LOC)” measure that is filled with uncertainty and lacks any sense of precaution with […]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 12, 2024)  When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an emergency ban of the weed killer Dacthal (DCPA) last week, it said that there are no “practicable mitigation measures” to protect against identified hazards—a clear and honest assessment of the limits of pesticide product label changes and use restrictions. Now, the question is whether the same thinking can be applied across the EPA’s pesticide program, addressing the urgent need to protect biodiversity. In the Dacthal proclamation, EPA said it consulted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on “alternatives to this pesticide,” and presumably determined that there were “alternative chemicals” that could be used in chemical-intensive agriculture—while not considering “alternatives to chemicals.” This is the framework that is understood to be EPA’s process that keeps pest management on a pesticide treadmill except in extremely rare cases (this being the second in nearly 40 years). It is also the framework that has led to catastrophic events or existential crises on biodiversity collapse, health threats, and the climate emergency. On biodiversity, the mix of diverse and intricate relationships of organisms in nature that are essential to the sustaining of life, EPA’s pesticide program, the Office of Pesticide Programs, has […]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 22, 2024) Mosquito management practices, typically reliant on toxic pesticides, can be antithetical to biodiversity protection. In this respect, consideration being given to biodiversity conservation goals in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts raise important issues critical of the chemical-intensive practices that are conventionally used to control mosquitoes. The state is taking public comments until August 30, 2024 on the development of biodiversity conservation goals. In an executive order (no.618), Biodiversity Conservation, issued September 21, 2023, Governor Maura Healey (D) directed the state’s Department of Fish and Game to “conduct a comprehensive review of the existing efforts of all executive department offices and agencies to support biodiversity conservation in Massachusetts [and] recommend biodiversity conservation goals for 2030, 2040, and 2050 and strategies to meet those goals.”  [Massachusetts residents, please look out for an action from Beyond Pesticides.] In response to development of biodiversity goals in Massachusetts, last week Beyond Pesticides testified before the Massachusetts Fish and Game Department and urged the state to adopt a broad government-wide strategy that establishes biodiversity protection and enhancement as a basic tenet for all programmatic decisions going forward. In this context, Beyond Pesticides identified the following issues, among others, which stand out as […]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 16, 2024) In a recent study at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Ulm University in Germany, published in Current Research in Toxicology, scientists exposed embryos of South African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) to three neonicotinoids (NEOs), which led to developmental effects down to a molecular level. These frogs are a well-established model species often used in ecotoxicology studies as bioindicators for overall environmental and ecosystem health. When amphibian species like Xenopus laevis are exposed to contaminants in the water, it leads to negative impacts in the food chain and harms biodiversity. The study concludes that exposure to NEOs directly or through contaminated water leaves entire ecosystems vulnerable.    The NEOs that the embryos were subjected to include imidacloprid (IMD), thiamethoxam (TMX), and its metabolite clothianidin (CLO). NEOs are a class of insecticides that target the central nervous system of insects and lead to death. These insecticides pose a potential hazard to nontarget organisms, such as animals and humans, since they are persistent in the environment and “are found in natural waters as well as in tap water and human urine in regions where NEOs are widely used,” this study states. The authors continue by […]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 24, 2024) On April 16, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted an “update” to the Draft Herbicide Strategy Framework (Draft Herbicide Strategy Framework to Reduce Exposure of Federally Listed Endangered and Threatened Species and Designated Critical Habitats from the Use of Conventional Agricultural Herbicides) that was released last summer, weakening aspects of the agency’s efforts to “protect” endangered species from herbicide use. The update outlines three types of modifications to the Draft Strategy, including “simplifying” its approach, increasing growers’ “flexibility” when applying mitigation measures, and reducing the mitigation measures required in certain situations. By reducing the stringency of the Strategy, advocates are again questioning EPA’s commitment to fulfilling legal requirements under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) or protecting endangered species and their habitats in the midst of an unprecedented rate of global extinction. ESA is celebrated as one of the most far-reaching conservation laws globally, credited with preventing the extinction of 99 percent of those species the government targets for protection, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). ESA establishes a framework to categorize species as “endangered” or “threatened,” granting them specific protections. Under ESA, EPA is required to consult with relevant agencies […]

(Beyond Pesticides, February 27, 2024) Popular culture and official policy continue to ignore a blatant source of the rise in obesity: chemical exposures, including pesticides. A study, “Associations of chronic exposure to a mixture of pesticides and type 2 diabetes mellitus in a Chinese elderly population,” contributes to the now-massive trove of evidence linking pesticides to diseases and shows that by the time people reach retirement age they are suffering from a heavy burden of contamination that raises their risk of complex disease. Since the 1960s, obesity in both adults and children has nearly tripled. More than half of U.S. adults were either obese or severely obese by 2018, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study. The 55-year trend line is decidedly upward. More women than men are obese, and black women suffer the most, but men are racing to catch up. Between 1999 and 2018, Mexican American men shot up from the lowest percentage of obesity to nearly the highest. Obesity is a milestone on the road to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney failure, joint replacement, and more. The causes of obesity are severely misunderstood. Most people believe that discipline and […]

(Beyond Pesticides, February 5, 2024) Public Comment Period Ends February 26, 2024. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never completed protocol for testing pesticides that disrupt the fundamental functioning of organisms, including humans, causing a range of chronic adverse health effects that defy the common misconception that dose makes the poison (“a little bit won’t hurt you”)—when, in fact, minuscule doses (exposure) wreak havoc with biological systems. After a nearly two decade defiance of a federal mandate to institute pesticide registration requirements for endocrine disruptors, EPA has now opened a public comment period ending February 26, 2024 and advocates are criticizing the agency’s proposed evaluation as too narrow. A detailed examination of EPA’s proposal can be found in draft comments by Beyond Pesticides.  Endocrine disruption as a phenomenon affecting humans and other species has been critically reviewed by many authors. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can, even at extremely low exposure levels, disrupt normal hormonal (endocrine) function. Such endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) include many pesticides, exposures to which have been linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and childhood and adult cancers. EPA […]

(Beyond Pesticides, December 15, 2023) Drawing on a recent gathering of international scientists, a group of 34 scientists published a call for much stricter scrutiny of researchers’ conflicts of interest by agencies that regulate and register chemicals, with recommendations for the newly formed Intergovernmental Science Policy Panel. Writing in Environmental Science & Technology, the authors, led by Andreas Schäffer of Aachen University in Germany and Martin Scheringer of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, cite an abundance of examples of chemical companies and their trade associations manufacturing doubt via an array of techniques, resulting in agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dropping certain provisions from rulemaking, ignoring scientific consensus, and keeping chemicals on the market—and in the environment—that many scientists say should be entirely banned. The authors produced the article in response to this webinar to discuss how to ensure that U.N. panels dealing with global crises get the most sound scientific advice conducted by the International Panel on Chemical Pollution. Over the last four decades or so, the notion that conflicts of interest affect the validity of scientific research and professional opinions has been steadily eroded. Regulators wallow in compromised research, hamstrung by political pressure and […]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 30, 2023) Scientists at Minami Kyushu University in Japan have made a groundbreaking discovery of a new biological control for a target insect. They have identified a virus in tobacco cutworms that kills males, creating all-female generations. The discovery was described in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences and The New York Times as evidence that multiple viruses have evolved to kill male insects. This “male-killing” virus could be added to the growing attempts to control unwanted insects with biological, as distinguished from genetically engineered (GE) solutions. Efforts range from the introduction of natural predators, to radiation-based sterilization of insects, CRISPR-based genetic mutations, and other techniques. While the GE approach has run into controversy because of unanswered questions associated with their release into natural ecosystems, some approaches have also run into resistance problems. Nearly a decade ago, researchers found armyworm resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)-incorporated genetically engineered (GE) maize in the southeastern region of the U.S., calling this evolution of insect resistance to a naturally occurring soil bacterium engineered into crops “a serious threat to the sustainability of this technology.” The general population knows to avoid eating raw eggs because the bacteria salmonella, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, October 20, 2023) Comments are due October 22. This action requires use of Regulations.gov. See instructions and proposed comment language that can be copy and pasted by clicking HERE. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to “protect” endangered species, its Draft Herbicide Strategy Framework, continues a legacy of failed risk assessment and mitigation measures that do not meet the moment of looming biodiversity collapse. This is a critical time for the agency to embrace real fundamental change in how it regulates pesticides, recognizing that land management strategies, including in agriculture, exist that are no longer reliant on pesticides. This is not a time to tinker with strategies that EPA admits fall short. Recognizing that its Pesticide Program has failed to meet its obligation to protect endangered species from registered pesticides, EPA has come up with a strategy to redefine its responsibilities to protect endangered species in its pesticide registration and registration review program. According to EPA, “The proposed Strategy is structured to provide flexibility to growers to choose mitigations that work best for their situation. Additionally, the draft Strategy may require more or less mitigation for growers/pesticide applicators depending on their location.” Understandably, EPA has taken this approach, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, October 2, 2023) On the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), statements out of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raise concerns about the agency’s ability to meet the challenge of evaluating pesticides for their adverse impact on threatened and endangered species. While EPA has initiated efforts to address a significant backlog of pesticide evaluations, the agency faces a task so extensive that it may require several additional decades to fully catch up. EPA officials stated, “Even if EPA completed this work for all of the pesticides that are currently subject to court decisions and/or ongoing litigation, that work would take until the 2040s, and even then, would represent only 5 percent of EPA’s ESA obligations.”   As part of a “whole of government” approach, EPA must redirect its pesticide program to protecting all species and their habitats.   The speed and depth of biodiversity loss has reached crisis proportions. A 1,500-page report in 2019 by Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES )—Global Assessment Summary for Policymakers, the most comprehensive look to date at the biodiversity crisis and its implications for human civilization, makes the following finding: “Since 1970, trends in agricultural production, fish harvest, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 9, 2023) The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have agreed to assess the harms of applying pesticides in waterways to threatened and endangered wildlife under a legal agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). Under the Clean Water Act, a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Systems (NPDES) permit is needed when pollutants are discharged from a point source (an identifiable source) into the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS), but federal authorities, in their general permitting process, have long failed to assess effects to threatened and endangered species. According to the terms of the settlement agreement, FWS must complete consultations required under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to prevent harm to protected species such as bull trout, pallid sturgeon, Oregon spotted frogs, and other threatened aquatic organisms.  The agreement is a step in implementing the 1973 ESA, a law that is saving numerous species from extinction, facilitating the recovery of hundreds more, and enabling the preservation of habitats. The humpback whale, bald eagle, and snail darter are among the species that have been saved thanks to the ESA. For years, Beyond Pesticides has reported on decades of neglecting to fully implement and fund […]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 3, 2023) Mosquito season is upon us, and to many that means spraying pesticides to kill them. But not only is spraying flying mosquitoes the most ineffective way to prevent mosquito problems, it is also counterproductive because it eliminates some of our most attractive and helpful allies—birds. Tell EPA to eliminate pesticides that threaten birds or their insect food supply. Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Interior to protect birds by eliminating the use of pesticides that threaten them. Tell Congress that EPA and other agencies need to do their job and protect birds and other mosquito predators. While the appetite of purple martins for mosquitoes is well known, most songbirds eat insects at some stage of their life. Many birds who eat seeds or nectar feed insects to their young, including flying insects that may be bothersome–like mosquitoes or flies. Altogether, birds consume as many as 20 quadrillion individual insects, totaling 400-500 million metric tons, per year. Mosquito-eating birds include many well-known residents of our communities. They include, for example, wood ducks, phoebes and other flycatchers, bluebirds, cardinals, downy woodpeckers, swallows, swifts, robins, orioles, wrens, great tits, warblers, nuthatches, hummingbirds, red-winged blackbirds, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 30, 2023) On Endangered Species Day, May 19, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed an unfortunate degree of hypocrisy in its claims to protect endangered species from pesticides. Tell EPA and Congress that dwindling biodiversity is an existential crisis that requires removing serious threats posed by pesticides. EPA announced that it “is publishing a group of StoryMaps to raise public awareness about protecting endangered species from pesticides.” It continues, “Through its Vulnerable Species Pilot, EPA has been identifying endangered species that are vulnerable to pesticides, developing mitigations to protect them from pesticide exposure, and will apply the mitigations to many types of pesticides.” However, pesticide use is a major cause of declining biodiversity, which is manifested in extinctions, endangered species, and species vulnerable to environmental disturbances—including climate change, habitat fragmentation, and toxic chemicals. If EPA is serious about protecting biodiversity, it must look first at the ways it has created the crisis in the first place. Studies upon studies upon studies show that pesticides are a major contributor to the loss of insect biomass and diversity known as the “insect apocalypse,” particularly in combination with climate change. Insects are important as pollinators and as part of […]

(Beyond Pesticides, May 17, 2023) British biotechnology company Oxitec is withdrawing its application to release billions of genetically engineered mosquitoes in California, according to a recent update from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. The withdrawal is a victory for environmental and health campaigners concerned about the release of a novel mosquito that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had previously authorized under an “experimental use” permit. “Genetically engineered mosquitoes are an environmental justice issue for Tulare County residents who should not be human experiments,” said Angel Garcia, codirector of the statewide coalition Californians for Pesticide Reform and Tulare County resident in a press release. “We are already impacted by some of the worst pollution problems in the state and deserve prior informed consent to being part of an open-air biopesticide experiment. Ahead of any future proposal for genetically engineered insects, DPR needs to have robust regulations in place that protect community members, and meaningful, inclusive public participation in any decision making.”     Oxitec began releasing its GE mosquitoes over a decade ago, first introducing the insects in the Brazilian town of Itaberaba. The company has made efforts to launch its mosquitoes in the United States, likely as a way […]

(Beyond Pesticides, April 18, 2023) Health officials in France are alerting the public that a majority of drinking water samples tested by the government contain the presence of the highly toxic fungicide chlorothalonil. The findings highlight a stark divide between regulations and public health management in the European Union and United States. While EU member states have banned this chemical and are working to understand and address lingering effects, tens of millions of pounds of chlorothalonil continue to be sprayed throughout the U.S. annually. French officials say they conducted this research after researchers in Switzerland found evidence of the fungicide in drinking water. A few years ago, Swiss scientists released a report showing Evian bottled water, touted for its claims of purity, was found to contain measurable levels of chlorthalonil.  “The fact that even the Evian springs in the French Alps, which are hardly affected by humans, contain pesticide residues is alarming and shows the far too careless handling of these substances,” Roman Wiget, president of the international drinking water association AWBR told the German-language Swiss weekly at the time. The EU banned uses of chlorothalonil in 2019, due to concerns over water contamination, the effects of such contamination on fish […]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 29, 2022) Based on new international research adding weight to previous research on falling sperm counts, it is critical that environmental agencies address this and other problems related to endocrine disruption. The study by Levine et al. finds that the drop in sperm count—a drop of 51.6% from 1973 through 2018—is global and that the rate of decline is accelerating. Tell EPA and Congress that pesticide use cannot continue without findings of no endocrine disruption.  The documented (average) drop in sperm counts is approaching the level at which the ability to cause a pregnancy begins to plummet dramatically. The reduction in male fertility may have profound psychological and social impacts, including anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. These psychological problems have health impacts of their own. Equally serious are connections of anxiety and depression with violent behavior and suicide. Compounding the problem is the fact that men are unlikely to seek fertility-related social support. The drop in sperm counts is just one example of endocrine disruption largely due to exposure to toxic chemicals. The endocrine system consists of a set of glands (thyroid, gonads, adrenal and pituitary) and the hormones they produce (thyroxine, estrogen, testosterone, and adrenaline), which […]