Calls for Holistic Environmental Justice and a Shift Away from Societal Dependence on Petrochemical Pesticides and Fertilizers

(Beyond Pesticides, June 18-19, 2024) Juneteenth (June 19) commemorates the date in 1865 when the enslavement of Black Americans ended in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, over two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the defeat of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865. On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger brought federal troops to Galveston, Texas and finally, and belatedly, implemented the Emancipation Proclamation, which proclaimed on January 1, 1863 freedom from slavery across the nation.

Carl Mack, PhD, a historian and former President of the Seattle-King County NAACP, reminds us that there were still 225,000 enslaved Black Americans in Kentucky and Delaware after June 19, 1865 and the end of the Civil War until December 6, 1865 when Georgia became the 27^th state to ratify the 13^th amendment. “That is the day in which Georgia ratified the 13^th amendment,” Dr. Mack goes on to discuss the remaining three former border states on their progress in adopting the 13^th amendment. “As it applies to Delaware and Kentucky, Delaware did not ratify the 13^th amendment until 1901. Kentucky ratified the 13^th amendment in 1976 and the state that I’m from—Mississippi—didn’t ratify the 13^th amendment until February 7, 2013 [the last eligible state to do so, according to Equal Justice Initiative and ABC News].”

These persisting lapses of freedom are emblematic of continued delays in equal protection under environmental statutes in the realm of pesticide and chemical exposure that persist today, as people of color and communities experience disproportionate harm from toxic chemicals.

A report released in January, US pesticide regulation is failing the hardest-hit communities. It’s time to fix it, finds “people of color and low-income communities in the United States and around the world continue to shoulder the societal burden of harmful pollution.” More specifically, the authors state that “ongoing environmental injustice is the disproportionate impact these communities suffer from pesticides, among the most widespread environmental pollutants.” 

As National Pollinator Week coincides with the Juneteenth commemoration, it is time to renew our commitment to environmental justice, while seeking the adoption of transformative solutions that recognize the urgency to address disproportionate harm caused by toxic pesticide production, transportation, use, storage, and disposal. We affirm on Juneteenth and Pollinator Week the urgent need to support healthy ecosystems that sustain lives that are being catastrophically harmed by escalating existential pesticide-induced health crises, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency—all disproportionately affecting people of color in the U.S. and worldwide.

From fenceline communities near chemical production plants to the hazardous and inhumane working conditions in agricultural fields, to the elevated risk factors for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from toxic pesticide exposure, the struggle for protection continues as society must shift away from a reliance on petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers and end their use.

Environmental Justice and Pesticides

In a 2022 interview with Southern Environmental Law Center, Robert Bullard, PhD—the father of environmental justice—defines environmental justice as the embracement of “the principle that all communities, all people, are entitled to equal protection of our environmental laws, housing laws, transportation laws…civil rights laws, human rights laws, and health laws and regulations.” In the January report co-written by Dr. Bullard and Nathan Donley, PhD, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the history of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) failure to live up to its environmental justice commitments are laid out. See here for additional coverage.

In April 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan directed all EPA offices to clearly integrate environmental justice considerations into their plans and actions, saying, “Too many communities whose residents are predominantly of color, Indigenous, or low-income continue to suffer from disproportionately high pollution levels and the resulting adverse health and environmental impacts. We must do better. This will be one of my top priorities as Administrator, and I expect it to be one of yours as well.” This effort follows President Biden’s Executive Order, Modernizing Regulatory Review (January 20, 2021), which mandates the adoption of agency policy across government to seriously and with urgency confront disproportionate harm to people of color communities (environmental racism) with the directive to “forward health, racial equity, and environmental stewardship.” Yet, the institutionalized protection of chemical companies that are marketing pesticides no longer needed to grow food and maintain our quality of life is integral to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, which supports pesticide dependency through its pesticide registration program and continued insistence in putting forward “risk mitigation” measures that are unrealistic in calculating harm and ignoring the devastating effects caused by pesticides—from cancer, neurological effects, reproductive dysfunction, to respiratory disease and major public health threats like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s.

The Bullard/Donley review found that Black Americans are “more than twice as likely [as whites] to live within a mile of a hazardous chemical facility.” In spite of this higher likelihood of proximity to toxic petrochemical pesticides, there is an absence of equity and action by both EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA has virtually abandoned responsibility for occupational protection and redirected it to EPA. Bullard and Donley identify that the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), which revised the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, set a new safety standard of ” ‘reasonable certainty that no harm will result’ to people exposed to pesticides through food and all other non-occupational exposure routes,” explicitly excluding occupational exposure. This impacts not only BIPOC communities living near chemical facilities, but also those living near crop fields sprayed with these pesticides.

There is various documentation of disproportionate risks that BIPOC communities face due to generations of structural and institutional barriers. A 2022 study published in BMC Public Health documents evidence of disparities through existing literature and datasets, reaching the following conclusions:

“These disparities are being perpetuated by current laws and regulations through

1. a pesticide safety double standard,
2. inadequate worker protections, and
3. export of dangerous pesticides to developing countries.

Racial, ethnic, and income disparities are also maintained through policies and regulatory practices that

4. fail to implement environmental justice Executive Orders,
5. fail to account for unintended pesticide use or provide adequate training and support, fail to effectively monitor and follow-up with vulnerable communities’ post-approval, and fail to implement essential protections for children.”

A 2024 Consumer Reports analysis of pesticide residues corroborates decades of concerns from advocates regarding the failure of the existing risk assessment process to demonstrate heightened health risk levels for communities of color. Federal agencies typically point to acceptable or legal residues as an indication that they are taking responsibility—for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2022 Pesticide Data Program Annual Summary found that 99% of produce the agency tested “had residues below the established [EPA] tolerances,” despite potential adverse effects associated with inadequate assessment of health outcomes, such as endocrine disruption, vulnerable population groups, exposure to mixtures and synergistic interactions, and more.

The invisible threat of pesticides results in clearly visible consequences, as Beyond Pesticides sheds light on the hidden dangers of pesticide exposure and the disproportionate impact it has on marginalized communities. Communities of color and economically disadvantaged areas bear a heavier burden of pesticide exposure, leading to higher rates of health issues, including respiratory problems, developmental disorders, and certain cancers. From agricultural workers to residents of low-income neighborhoods, the adverse health effects of pesticides are not evenly distributed. The use of pesticides without adequate consideration for their health impacts constitutes a form of environmental injustice.

See Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database and Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management to follow the latest scientific literature on specific diseases and adverse health conditions linked to pesticide exposure—resources include fact sheets, uses, health and environmental effects, and alternatives.

Environmental Injustice on Farmland, Wood Treatment Facilities & CAFOs

Be it concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or wood treatment facilities, communities of color face the brunt of toxic petrochemical pesticide and chemical use.  

A recent EPA Inspector General Report in April echoes criticism over the course of the Biden Administration regarding the federal government’s inadequate response to the public’s risk to “residual contamination in the groundwater and soil.” The report emphasizes EPA’s weak response at the American Creosote Works Superfund site in Pensacola, FL, a problem that reflects the unending dangers of sites contaminated with persistent toxic chemicals associated with wood preservatives, which are felt disproportionately by majority Black communities nationwide. The Pensacola site was put on the Superfund priority list in 1983 and in 2017, it was estimated that the clean-up would cost $35.3 million. Just last year, EPA Administrator Michael Regan toured another Superfund Site contaminated with creosote and pledged the clean-up of that site, which affects a community of predominantly people of color. Advocates continue to urge EPA to cancel the registration of highly toxic wood preservatives, including creosote, chromated arsenicals, and copper compounds, and demand action from Congress to ensure the prevention of future site contaminations.

Rural communities and communities of color living in proximity to CAFOs tend to face heightened risk of chronic breathing issues like asthma and respiratory diseases such as chronic, obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), based on a 2022 study published in Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America. Going back to 2020, advocates continue to call for Congress to enact the Farm System Reform Act which would put a moratorium on factory farms by 2040 and hold operators accountable for associated health harms they impose on surrounding communities and their workers.

Take Action Today

What can we do? You can speak up for environmental justice and urge EPA and other federal agencies to adopt meaningful programs that take out of the pipeline of production, use, storage, and disposal hazardous chemicals that are having disproportionate adverse effects in people of color communities.

>> Take action by telling EPA that it needs to make environmental justice connections! 

Become an advocate for targeted support for small-scale organic farmers facing unprecedented uncertainty. See Agricultural Justice to learn more about Beyond Pesticides’ origins and commitment to organic land management principles after witnessing farmworker occupational and living conditions. See Keeping Organic Strong to learn about our priorities for equity and the environmental justice benefits of an organic food system.

• Consider supporting Sanctuary Farms in Detroit, Michigan—A message from jøn kent, co-founder:
  “Sanctuary Farms is a sustainable organization that focuses on closing the food loop through two main objectives: cultivating organic produce and creating nutritious compost. We cultivate the land through our composting and permaculture (no-till method) gardening practices. With these goals we want to foster a thriving community on the lower eastside of Detroit where people are safe, healthy and connected to their local environment and food by actively being involved in closing the food loop. We are practicing the tenets of food sovereignty and environmental justice by providing examples of the possibilities of what can be accomplished and reimagined in our communities from folks who live within the area. The long term goal is to put this land into a community land trust to provide folks in the Riverbend community with direct equity in the property with the purpose of ceasing potential displacement. If possible please consider supporting our cause here.”

• Consider supporting The Black Institute—The Black Institute (TBI) isn’t a think-tank, it’s an action-tank. Through a “head, heart, and feet strategy,” TBI injects new ideas for achieving racial equity and environmental justice into the policy realm. An Eco-Friendly Parks for All (EFPA) coalition partner, TBI is a leader in advancing organic land management legislation in NYC that bans toxic pesticides. [Poison Parks]

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 17, 2024) Every year, Beyond Pesticides announces National Pollinator Week—this year beginning today, June 17—to remind eaters of food, gardeners, farmers, communities (including park districts to school districts), civic organizations, responsible corporations, policy makers, and legislators that there are actions that can be taken that are transformative. All the opportunities for action to protect pollinators, and the ecosystems that are critical to their survival, can collectively be transformational in eliminating toxic pesticides that are major contributors to the collapse of biodiversity. This is why Beyond Pesticides starts most discussions and strategic actions for meaningful pollinator and biodiversity protection with the transition to practicing and supporting organic.

In launching National Pollinator Week, Beyond Pesticides makes suggestions for individual actions to increase efforts to think and act holistically to protect the environment that supports pollinators. The impact that people have starts with grocery store purchases and the management of gardens, parks, playing fields, and pubic lands. The introduction of pesticides into our food supply and our managed lands has contributed to a downward spiral that is unsustainable. The good news is that it is now proven that we do not need toxic pesticides to grow food productively and profitably and that these chemicals are not required to manage ballfields, parks, and public spaces.

That is why in very realistic terms Beyond Pesticides says that pollinator protection starts with organic practices. Pollinators—bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other organisms—make a critical contribution to plant health, crop productivity, and the preservation of natural resources, but their existence is threatened by their pesticide-contaminated habitat. Throughout the week, Beyond Pesticides will suggest actions that can be taken to promote the health of pollinators. Although these actions can include the establishment of pollinator-friendly plants, the first step is providing a safe place for pollinators to live, eat, reproduce, and take refuge from predators and adverse weather. In this context, pollinator conservation begins with organic management of their environment.

A great way to get grounded in Pollinator Week
See the keynote talk by David Goulson, PhD from Beyond Pesticides 40^th National Forum, Forging a Future with Nature. In his book, A Sting in the Tale (2013), Dr. Goulson writes, “We need worms to create soil; flies and beetles and fungi to break down dung; ladybirds and hoverflies to eat greenfly; bees and butterflies to pollinate plants to provide food, oxygen, fuel and medicines and hold the soil together; and bacteria to help plants fix nitrogen and to help cows to digest grass. . . [yet] we often choose to squander the irreplaceable, to discard those things that both keep us alive and make life worth living. Perhaps if we learn to save a bee today we can save the world tomorrow?” He is also the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Garden Jungle: or Gardening to Save the Planet (2019).  And in his most recent book, Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse (2021), he writes, “We have to learn to live in harmony with nature, seeing ourselves as part of it, not trying to rule and control it with an iron fist. Our survival depends on it, as does that of the glorious pageant of life with which we share out planet.”

More background
Pollinators––bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other organisms––make a critical contribution to plant health, crop productivity, and the preservation of natural resources. However, pesticides consistently act as a key contributor to dramatic pollinator declines. Much research attributes the decline of insect pollinators over the last several decades to the interaction of multiple environmental stressors, from climate change to pesticide use, disease, habitat destruction, and other factors. Roughly a quarter of the global insect population has disappeared since 1990, according to research published in the journal Science. Monarchs are nearing extinction, and beekeepers continue to experience declines that are putting them out of business. We continue to lose mayflies, the foundation of many food chains, and fireflies, the foundation of many childhood summer memories. The declines in many bird species likely have close links to insect declines. Recent research finds that three billion birds, or 29% of bird abundance, have been lost since the 1970s. In a world where habitat loss and fragmentation show no sign of abating, scientists have concluded that the globe cannot afford to continue to subject its critically important wild insects to these combined threats. 

Toxic pesticide residues also threaten ecosystem functions needed to support life, frequently found in soils, water (solid and liquid), and the surrounding air at levels exceeding U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. The scientific literature demonstrates pesticides’ long history of adverse environmental effects, especially on wildlife, biodiversity, and human health. Notably, pesticides are immensely harmful to pollinators. The pervasiveness of pesticide exposure combined with climate change threatens global species biodiversity. The globe is currently undergoing Earth’s sixth mass extinction, with one million species of plants and animals at risk. With the increasing rate of biodiversity loss, it is essential to provide protection from pesticides by adopting organic agriculture and land care methods. A study in the journal Nature found that, “The interaction between indices of historical climate warming and intensive agricultural land use is associated with reductions of almost 50% in abundance and 27% in the number of species within insect assemblages relative to those in less-disturbed habitats with lower rates of historical climate warming.”

Over the last decade and a half, increasing scientific evidence shows a clear connection between the role of pesticides in the decline of honey bees and wild pollinators. In the U.S., an increasing number of pollinators, including the American bumblebee and monarch butterfly, are being added or in consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act, with specific chemical classes like systemic neonicotinoid insecticides putting 89% or more of U.S. endangered species at risk. Pesticides intensify pollinators’ vulnerability to health risks (such as pathogens and parasites), with pesticide-contaminated conditions limiting colony productivity, growth, and survival. Past research finds that notorious bee-killing neonicotinoid insecticides kill bees outright, resulting in a range of complex damage, including their ability to impede bees’ olfactory senses and adversely affects their vision and flying ability. Other chemicals like glyphosate weaken bees’ ability to distinguish between colors. A 2018 study found that commonly used neonicotinoid insecticides begin to kill off bumblebees during their nest-building phase, as exposure makes it more difficult for a queen to establish a nest. Exposure to neonicotinoids results in bumblebee colonies that are much smaller than colonies not exposed to these systemic insecticides. Spray applications of various agrichemicals affect the visitation patterns of pollinators through a range of different processes. Neonicotinoid exposure decreases pollination frequency, resulting in fewer social interactions as the chemical alters bumblebee feeding behavior and degrades the effectiveness of bumblebees’ classic “buzz pollination” process. A study published in 2017 determined that fungicides also play a significant role in bumblebee declines by increasing susceptibility to pathogens.

Organic practices require not only refraining from the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, but also taking positive actions to promote biodiversity. Providing organic habitats can protect pollinators, and all species, including humans, that depend on their ecosystem services.

We launch Pollinator Week 2024 with our webpage of actions below. Everything here you can find on our webpage, National Pollinator Week Kicks Off with a Week of Actions!

Monday
Pollinator Protection Starts with Organic Practices
The week of June 17 is National Pollinator Week, which allows us to recognize—and take action to protect—these vital ecosystem members. >>Tell your Governor to adopt organic practices on state lands.

In addition, millions of miles of roads, utility lines, railroad corridors, and other types ofrights-of-way (ROWs) are treated with pesticides to control unwanted plants and insects. Some states have addressed the risk of using pesticides along ROWs by developing integrated pest management (IPM) programs, restricting when and where pesticides can be applied on ROWs and/or providing no-spray agreements. Planting native vegetation, using mechanical, biological, and least-toxic vegetation control methods are effective in reducing and eliminating toxic pesticide applications.

What can we do? Encourage your community to develop an integrated roadside vegetation management program for roadside management. Cut, girdle, mow or use grazing animals whenever possible as a mechanical means to eradicate unwanted vegetation. Establish a roadside wildflower program that plants native flower and grass species, especially those that are attractive to bees and other pollinators. Avoid pesticides such as 2,4-D, glyphosate (Roundup), dicamba, picloram, and triclopyr for roadside management. Look to our Pesticide Gateway page for more information! 

  Monday’s featured image: “Bumble and Lupine” by Barbara from Bend, OR!

 

Tuesday
Become an organic parks advocate in your community.

Envision an organic community where local parks, playing fields, and greenways are managed without unnecessary toxic pesticides, children and pets are safe to run around on the grass, and bees and other pollinators are safeguarded from toxic chemicals. At Beyond Pesticides, this is the future we envision and are working to achieve.

Our Parks for a Sustainable Future program is an in-depth training assists 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.

Beyond Pesticides is interested in working with you to encourage your community to transition to organic. Our training program starts small, with two pilot sites, but often becomes the basis for broader change to land care practices throughout the entire community.

Sign up to be a Parks Advocate today to let us know you’re willing to speak with local leaders about the importance of this program.

Wednesday
Juneteenth and Environmental Justice
As Pollinator Week coincides with the Juneteenth celebration, the time is now to renew our commitment to environmental justice while seeking the adoption of transformational policies and practices that recognize the urgency to address disproportionate harm inflicted by toxic pesticide use.  Those fighting for environmental justice understand that the harms inflicted by toxic chemical production and use cause disproportionate adverse effects on people of color—from fenceline communities near chemical production plants to the hazardous and inhumane working conditions in agricultural fields, to the elevated risk factors for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from toxic pesticide exposure.  

In a 2022 interview with Southern Environmental Law Center, Robert Bullard, PhD – known as the father of environmental justice – defines environmental justice as the embracement of “the principle that all communities, all people, are entitled to equal protection of our environmental laws, housing laws, transportation laws…civil rights laws, human rights laws, and health laws and regulations.” Earlier this year, Dr. Bullard co-wrote a report for the Brookings Institute entitled, US pesticide regulation is failing the hardest-hit communities. It’s time to fix it, that describes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) failure to live up to its environmental justice commitments as laid out in various presidential directives under the Biden Administration.

You can speak up for environmental justice and urge EPA and other federal agencies to adopt meaningful programs that take out of the pipeline of production, use, storage, and disposal hazardous chemicals that are having disproportionate adverse effects in people of color communities. >> Take action by telling EPA that it needs to make environmental justice connections.

Become an advocate for targeted support for small-scale organic farmers facing unprecedented uncertainty. See Agricultural Justice to learn more about the origins of Beyond Pesticides and a commitment to organic land management principles after witnessing farmworker occupational and living conditions. See Keeping Organic Strong to learn about our priorities for equity and the environmental justice benefits of an organic food system.

Two organizations you can support on Juneteenth:

• Consider supporting Sanctuary Farms in Detroit, Michigan. A message from jøn kent, co-founder of Sanctuary Farms: “Sanctuary Farms is a sustainable organization that focuses on closing the food loop through two main objectives: cultivating organic produce and creating nutritious compost. We cultivate the land through our composting and permaculture (no-till method) gardening practices. With these goals we want to foster a thriving community on the lower eastside of Detroit where people are safe, healthy and connected to their local environment and food by actively being involved in closing the food loop.
• Consider supporting the The Black Institute: The Black Institute (TBI) isn’t a think-tank, it’s an action-tank. Through a “head, heart, and feet strategy,” TBI injects new ideas for achieving racial equity and environmental justice into the policy realm. An Eco-Friendly Parks for All (EFPA) coalition partner, The Black Institute is a leader in advancing organic land management legislation in New York City that bans toxic pesticides. [Poison Parks] 

Thursday
Identifying and Planting for Pollinators
With pollinators responsible for over 80% of the world’s flowering plants, it’s no wonder we are fighting to protect them. Pollinators are important members of various land ecosystems, therefore how we manage these ecosystems and landscapes plays a critical role in long-term pollinator health. The expansion of urban, suburban, and agricultural areas reduces pollinator habitat and access to food, while intensive chemical use harms these beneficial organisms. Pesticide applications expose bees, birds, butterflies, and more to acute and sublethal levels of pesticides, which can result in reproductive abnormalities, impaired foraging, and even death. Please see our brief introduction to pollinators here! 

You can play a role in protecting pollinators simply by making an organic garden with colorful, bee-attractive flowering plants, pledging it as pollinator-friendly, or even organizing your community, schools, or local government to make choices that foster pollinators. Don’t have a garden? Windows and balconies are also great places to feature plants to encourage pollinators to stop by! Backyard trees, gardens and beekeeping are great ways to support biodiversity and pollinators. Intentionally providing water, food and forage to pollinators will encourage and boost pollinator populations in your community. 

It helps to review Organic Lawn Care 101 best practices and know your weeds—simple steps to convert your lawn to organic! Check out the BEE Protective Habitat Guide for more information; the Do-It-Yourself Biodiversity resource offers hints about increasing biodiversity; and the Pollinator-Friendly Seed Directory.

Additionally, check out the short film “The Seeds That Poison,” a Beyond Pesticides’ feature video highlighting the hazards associated with a major use of bee-toxic pesticides—seed coatings!  

Friday
Time to Spread the Buzz!
In view of EPA’s failure to protect pollinators from pesticides, the lives of those essential insects, birds, and mammals are increasingly dependent on state and local laws that under threat of U.S. Congressional action in the upcoming Farm Bill. The Farm Bill covers many areas—ranging from the supplemental nutritional assistance program (SNAP) to trade—and one provision that the pesticide industry would like to include is preemption of local authority to restrict pesticide use. This attack on local governance would undercut the local democratic process to protect public health and safety, especially important in the absence of adequate federal protection of the ecosystems that sustain life. >> Tell Your U.S. Representative and Senators to support a Farm Bill that promotes a sustainable future.

What else can we do? Order a Pesticide-Free Zone sign to showcase your organic yard or garden, share resources with your community, and share photos of pollinators on social media of with the hashtags #PollinatorWeek or #ProtectPollinators—then submit them to our Art Page! 

The banner highlights art submissions from members of the public to our Art Page! 🐝 Today’s featured image above: “Bumble and Lupine” by Barbara from Bend, OR!

(Beyond Pesticides, June 14, 2024) The influence of the chemical industry over public policy and regulation, especially in agriculture, is glaringly obvious and has little popular support, yet no one can seem to do anything about it. Numerous analyses have detailed the ways this influence is applied—through lobbying and political donations including dark money; industry experts named to regulatory agency scientific advisory boards; and the massive public relations machines that create and sustain public uncertainty using the tobacco industry playbook revealed by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt.

A more insidious tendril of industry influence is explained in U.S. Right to Know’s (USRTK) report, released this month, on pesticide manufacturers’ infiltration of the Entomological Society of America (ESA). The report, “Anatomy of a science meeting: How controversial pesticide research all but vanished from a major conference,” examines the ESA’s 2023 annual meeting—its program, sponsorships, presentations, panelists, poster sessions, meet-and-greets, budget, revenue sources, and other aspects of the event. What is revealed is a systematic and comprehensive industry presence throughout the society and its meeting. A direct consequence is the near-elimination of any scientific presentations addressing the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on insects, particularly bees. Those effects are dire, as Beyond Pesticides has detailed in great detail here, here and here.

ESA, with nearly 7,000 members, is the largest organization dedicated to insect research in the world. It publishes eight scientific journals. According to USRTK, ESA has changed its approach to meeting sponsorships from the standard method employed by thousands of organizations, in which corporations and other organizations seeking to impress or recruit attendees organize “hospitality suites” and receptions—glorified cocktail parties replete with shrimp pyramids and artisanal alcohol. ESA adopted instead a “sponsorship program” that allows industry-backed scientists more chances to present during scientific sessions, publish in ESA journals and serve as officers in the organization. This makes the influence less obvious and more insidious.

An extra donation of $65,000 bought Corteva Agriscience an in-conference ad campaign featuring a photo of an unidentified man in a checked shirt attendees dubbed “Corteva guy,” who came to represent the face of ESA at the meeting. Corteva is a spinoff of the DowDuPont conglomerate (formerly Dow AgroSciences for Dow Chemical) selling Isoclast (sulfoxaflor), a seed treatment with similar action to neonicotinoids that, the company says, “when used according to the label…presents a low risk to honeybees and other pollinators.” (The Minnesota Department of Agriculture states that it is “highly toxic to bees.”) There is plentiful evidence from this research line that neonicotinoids are extremely toxic to a variety or organisms including vital beneficial species like bees. Neonicotinoids are banned for outdoor uses in the European Union and Quebec.

The top sponsors at ESA in 2023 were Corteva, Bayer (which absorbed Monsanto); and Syngenta, now owned by the China National Chemical Corp. Also sponsoring were BASF and SCJohnson. Corteva has extended connections deep into ESA. Two positions on ESA’s 18-member governing board are held by Corteva employees; two Corteva employees are editors on three of the ESA’s eight scientific journals; one edits two journals. In addition, three ESA journals include editors who work at Bayer. One ESA journal editor started the editing position as an academic and retained it after moving to FMC Corp, another major agribusiness entity.

ESA has allowed pesticide companies to sideline and minimize one of the most dire toxic consequences of those companies’ products. USRTK found that in the ESA program for 2023, nearly 100 papers, posters and symposia were devoted to bee science. But only four of the bee presentations addressed neonicotinoids, compared to 19 a decade earlier. All four of the neonicotinoid-bee presentations were by students, who do not enjoy the same level of prestige and credibility as professors and other PhD holders. The ESA spokesperson pointed out that there were 30 abstracts about neonicotinoids, and these included research on resistance to neonicotinoids in bedbugs and the Colorado potato beetle. But there were no discussions of neonicotinoids and bees.

This could be because industry-affiliated participants were organizing and populating the panel discussions. In 2023, 26 percent of the symposia, workshops and policy sessions were organized by corporate employees, mostly from agrochemical companies. Sixteen percent of the panelists were corporate employees.

Entomologists interviewed by USRTK who organized bee science sessions did not realize that neonicotinoids had disappeared from the program. Many believe neonicotinoids should be banned but said the field has shifted to concentrate on the effects of multiple stressors, such as mites and climate change. This approach, while sensible and productive, is also in line with and pushed by corporate interests, allowing them to hide behind a smoke screen. In traditional toxicology, which is still the gold standard for regulatory policy, each chemical is evaluated first individually; and the pesticide companies are very familiar with the direct effects of their products on target and nontarget organisms, which obviously must be included in any consideration of combined effects. Yet according to the USRTK report, ESA sessions about multiple stressors omitted any reference to pesticides, emphasizing for bees, for example, climate change and the Varroa mite.

The situation of ESA is not unique, nor are scientific societies. Many organizations whose mission is to advance the interests of particular groups by political action and public advocacy themselves are swallowed by chemical companies, which dominate their internal structures, budgets and actions, often to the detriment of the groups’ members. In 2019, the District of Columbia’s Environmental Film Festival featured the film “Ground War” (available on Hoopla), which details the domination of golf course policies and practices by chemical companies. The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America holds a massive annual trade show sponsored by many companies including Bayer, Syngenta, and the Australian chemical firm NuFarm. This financial influence makes it difficult for any organization to resist pressure from funders that is detrimental to members and society in general. After all, as “Ground War” shows, it is employees and patrons of golf courses who suffer the consequences, such as various lymphomas, of the companies’ profit-motivated control.

Tess Legg of the University of Bath and a researcher with its Tobacco Control Research Group told USRTK that corporations are able to influence science and “push out their preferred scientific messages by infiltrating professional organizations, including through funding and through speaking at their scientific and educational events, and publishing in their academic journals.”

In research published in 2023, Tess Legg and coauthors analyzed the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, purportedly an “independent scientific organization” founded by Philip Morris in 2017. They concluded that the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is “a new vehicle for agnogenesis….” The term agnogenesis means the manufacture of doubt, the study of which is now called agnotology in academia. In particular it is the study of the kind of ignorance that is “an active construct or strategic ploy…deliberately made and maintained to fulfill the interests of certain people,” in the words of philosopher Manuela Fernández Pinto, PhD of the University of Helsinki.

Nick Chartres, PhD, a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney, told USRTK, “Industry is afforded key positions/roles of influence throughout the [ESA], which allows them to shape the society’s scientific priorities, agenda, and public statements. Unless you dig, you do not realize there is this level of influence throughout the society.”

The USRTK report’s focus on neonicotinoids and bees reveals a stark contrast between the reality of neonicotinoid harms and blunt scientific acknowledgment of same on the one hand, and an insular professional society’s fiction that neonicotinoids are not responsible for devastation throughout not only European honeybee populations but also native bees and numerous other insects vital to our ecosystems.

Eliminating the self-interested influence of the chemical industry from scientific discourse and policymaking is a tall order. That influence inside professional societies seems especially cynical. These societies offer an entrée to a career for young scholars who want to be professional entomologists and face limited job prospects. Like many other agricultural scientists, they may be hitching their altruism to a doubtful star—convinced that the world cannot be fed without pesticides. With the help of charming industry colleagues, many may convince themselves that working for pesticide manufacturers can be an honorable profession. But this is a poison pill. A recent ProPublica investigation highlighted the personal cost that dedicated scientists can pay for staying loyal to a company that is knowingly distributing a toxic forever chemical in every part of the globe.

The manufacture of doubt also takes advantage of the scientific method’s own demand that every potential factor in a causal chain must be considered, and all evidence must be challenged to establish its validity. But we must no longer grant commerce an equal place at the scientific table. There is passion for truth and methodological integrity, and then there is venal manipulation of nebulous evidence. If we are to navigate the dire crises facing us, from the devastation of neonicotinoids and other pesticides, to the plague of plastics, to the juggernaut of climate change, both the scientific community and the regulatory system must choose.

To see more on regulatory corruption and collusion with the chemical industry, see Corruption Problems Persist at EPA.

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

Sources:

Anatomy of a science meeting: How controversial pesticide research all but vanished from a major conference 
https://usrtk.org/bees-neonics/entomological-society-america-corporate-partners/

Amid Damning Criticism of Its Scientific Integrity, EPA Takes Public Comments on Updated Policy
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/02/amid-damning-criticism-of-its-scientific-integrity-epa-takes-public-comments-on-updated-policy/

Int’l Group of Scientists Calls for Restraints on Conflicts of Interest in Publications and Regulation
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2023/12/an-international-group-of-scientists-calls-for-clear-restraints-on-conflicts-of-interest-in-publications-and-regulation/

Chemicals Implicated
https://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/bee-protective-pollinators-and-pesticides/chemicals-implicated

Neonicotinoids Combined with Other Pesticides Elevate Hazards to Honey Bee
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2023/02/neonicotinoids-combined-with-other-pesticides-elevate-hazards-to-honey-bee/

Maine Bans Consumer Use of Neonicotinoid Insecticides, with Some Exceptions
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2021/06/maine-bans-consumer-use-of-neonicotinoid-insecticides-with-some-exceptions/

Seeds That Poison
Advocating for the removal of bee-toxic pesticides and the transition to organic policies and practices.
https://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/bee-protective-pollinators-and-pesticides/seedsthatpoison

(Beyond Pesticides, June 13, 2024) 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.” Beyond Pesticides executive director Jay Feldman remarked, “EPA’s ecological risk assessment process is fundamentally flawed and puts thousands of bee species at risk of pesticide-caused population declines and extinctions.” Mr. Feldman continued, “This underscores the urgent need to expedite the transition to organic land management to better protect bees, butterflies, and other pollinators from the harms of toxic pesticides.”

Study Method and Results

ECOTOX, focused on acute effects, has been used for more than 20 years for a “rapid source for toxicity data to …inform ecological risk assessments for chemical registration and reregistration” among other assessment and regulatory decisions.  As EPA explains, the database includes 12,000 chemicals and ecological species with over one million test results from over 50,000 references,” as described in an article on the database in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The study analysis includes a total of 252 assays from 49 studies. Data collected are for neonicotinoid insecticide exposure effects on both honey bees (Apis mellifera) and wild (non-Apis) bee species, including all reported LD50 values (lethal dose at which 50% of test population dies when exposed), routes of exposure (dietary vs topical), the neonicotinoid(s) tested, duration of study, and environmental parameters like temperature. Based on this information, researchers modeled the different effects of LD50 values across variables, highlighting the effects of genera, specific neonicotinoids, exposure routes, and study duration.

The researchers found:

• For both dietary and topical exposures to neonicotinoid insecticides, multiple non-Apis (wild) bee genera like Bombus, Megachile, Melipona, Nannotrigona, and Partamona exhibit significantly higher sensitivities and lower LD50 values compared to Apis (honey bees), in some cases up to six orders of magnitude more sensitive.
• Looking within just the Apis genus, LD50 values for the same neonicotinoid varied by up to seven orders of magnitude, likely due to factors like genetic diversity, temperature differences, nutrition levels, and other environmental parameters that were not adequately accounted for by the ERA process.
• The ECOTOX database is overwhelmingly populated (79.4%) by acute lethality data from studies lasting just one to five days on the western honeybee.
• Chronic, longer-term studies on diverse bee species and real-world conditions are lacking.

As the study finds, EPA’s reliance on honey bee data from lab studies focused on LD50 does not accurately capture the threats that pesticides pose in the real world to thousands of other bee species with diverse life histories, genetic compositions, and sensitivities to pesticides. This study demonstrates how estimating pesticide risks based predominantly on laboratory tests using a single surrogate species–the western honey bee–fundamentally fails to capture the range of differential sensitivities across thousands of other bee species. This failure jeopardizes the ability of the ERA process to accurately assess threats and develop appropriate mitigation measures to protect biodiversity and pollination services.

The study authors make specific recommendations for improving pollinator risk assessments:

• Develop toxicity assays for native bee species beyond just Apis mellifera, and integrate these into the assessment process
• Prioritize longer-term, chronic studies over short-term acute lethality studies on individual bees
• Account for factors like genetic diversity, climate conditions, nutritional status, and their interactions with pesticides

Other Studies Show EPA’s Ecological Risk Assessment Methods Flawed

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 Nature study, ”Pesticide use negatively affects bumble bees across European landscapes,“ evaluates the health of bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) as a sentinel species placed in 106 agricultural landscapes across Europe. The authors’ conclusions challenge “the current assumption of pesticide regulation—that chemicals that individually pass laboratory tests and semifield 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.

Neonicotinoids

Neonicotinoids (neonics) are insecticides similar to nicotine –that activate neuronal receptors and disrupt many sensory and cognitive processes in invertebrate organisms. The binding of neonicotinoids to the receptor is irreversible in arthropods.  Thus, they are highly toxic to insects and other invertebrates. (See Beyond Pesticides’ 2017 Factsheet). Neonics are linked with the dramatic decline of pollinators and other wildlife. U.S. beekeepers lost an unsustainable 33% of their hives between 2016 and 2017. Bees, butterflies, birds, and a range of soil and aquatic organisms essential to healthy ecological systems are imperiled by the use of these systemic and persistent pesticides. While several classes of pesticides introduced since the outset of the chemical-intensive agricultural era are systemic, neonicotinoids have attracted substantial scientific and public scrutiny because their appearance and proliferation in the market coincided with dramatic die-offs and decline of honey bees throughout the world. This decline has occurred, not only through immediate bee deaths, but also through sublethal exposure causing changes in bee reproduction, navigation, and foraging.

The Loss of Biodiversity Demands Better Pesticide Assessments

Bees and other insect pollinators play a vital role in fertilizing over 75% of flowering plants and nearly 35% of global food production. However, their populations have plummeted in recent decades due to multiple stressors including pesticide exposures, climate change, habitat loss, and diseases/pests. A 2020 study published in the journal Science reported that roughly a quarter of the global insect population has been wiped out since 1990 (see here for details). As Beyond Pesticides reports, a 2019 systematic review of insect population studies worldwide reported on “the dreadful state of insect biodiversity in the world, as almost half of the species are rapidly declining and a third are being threatened with extinction.” The study concluded with the dire prediction that insects will go extinct in the next few decades if patterns of intensive agriculture, in particular pesticide use, continue.

The science has become increasingly clear that pesticides, either acting individually, in mixtures, or synergistically, play a critical role in the ongoing decline of honey bees and wild pollinators, as Beyond Pesticides has extensively reported. While studies reveal wide-ranging adverse impacts from a multitude of agents, including poor nutrition, stress, fungicides, and pathogens, the neonicotinoid class of insecticides continues to receive the greatest attention from scientists, beekeepers, and advocacy groups. (See here, here, and Beyond Pesticides website here).

EPA Risk Assessment Process Ignores Potential Chemical Interactions or Synergistic Effects

With the limitations of the ERA process in assessing multiple pesticide exposure, Beyond Pesticides reported in February 2023 (see research published in Scientific Reports) that the synergistic effect of combining neonicotinoid insecticides with other commonly used pesticides can increase the overall toxic effect to honey bees. Under current regulations, EPA requires chemical manufacturers to submit data only on singular active ingredients. Yet, pesticide products may be packaged or ‘tank mixed’ with other equally toxic pesticides without any requirement to determine the toxicity of the material that is actually being applied. Independent research is left to fill in these gaps.

EPA’s Shortcomings Align with Beyond Pesticides’ Critique

The findings align with long-standing critiques by Beyond Pesticides and others about the inadequacy of EPA’s risk assessment process for evaluating threats posed by pesticides, particularly to critically important but understudied organisms like native bees.  (See here, here, and here for past comments and calls to action).

Beyond Pesticides has cited research showing neonicotinoids and other pesticides are key factors, alongside climate change, habitat loss, and pathogens, in driving unsustainable losses of bees, birds, butterflies, and other organisms essential to biodiversity and productive ecosystems. Beyond Pesticides argues that in addition to acute lethality, EPA risk assessments must comprehensively account for real-world exposure scenarios, the long-term effects of repeated exposure to various pesticides, sublethal effects on larval development and cognitive function, interactions with other stressors like climate change, and indirect effects on pollinators via impacts to food sources.

In addition to a faulty ERA process, the current registration procedures and risk assessment methods for pesticides has an over-reliance on industry-funded science that contradicts peer-reviewed studies. (See Beyond Pesticides website, Chemicals Implicated, for examples). Scientific fraud in support of regulatory decisions has plagued EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs for decades (see here).

Ultimately, the only way to ensure the safety of pollinators and thereby the world’s agricultural systems as well as natural ecosystems, and protect human health, is to end the use of toxic petrochemical pesticides, including neonicotinoid insecticides. Beyond Pesticides advocates for the widespread adoption of organic management practices as key to protecting pollinators and the environment, and has long sought a broad-scale marketplace transition to organic practices that legally prohibits the use of toxic synthetic pesticides, and encourages a systems-based approach that is protective of health and the environment.

To move action forward on the pollinator crisis, Beyond Pesticides launched the BEE Protective campaign, a national public education effort that supports local actions to protect honey bees and other pollinators from pesticides and contaminated landscapes.   

BEE Protective includes a variety of educational materials to help encourage municipalities, campuses, and individual homeowners to adopt policies and practices that protect bees and other pollinators from harmful pesticide applications and create pesticide-free refuges for these beneficial organisms. In addition to scientific and regulatory information, BEE Protective also includes a model community pollinator resolution and a pollinator protection pledge.

Through Beyond Pesticides’ Parks for a Sustainable Future program, the organization works directly with communities to adopt organic land management in its parks, playing fields, school yards, and public spaces. It also teaches community members about managing their yards organically. Organic land management is effective, productive, economically viable, and sustainable and does not require yet another new toxic pesticide or genetically engineered plant, whether in agriculture or residential areas. By respecting the environment, and the complexity and benefits of interconnected ecosystems, organic agriculture protects pollinators and enhances the benefits we derive from the natural environment.

See Beyond Pesticides’ Eating With a Conscience database for more on why organic is the right choice and the Bee Protective webpage for additional resources you can use to go organic and safeguard pollinator populations. Join the effort to move your community to organic land management practices.

Things you can do:

• Plant pollinator habitat: Explore Beyond Pesticides’ resources to find ideas for native plantings or sources of untreated flowers and dig your pollinator-friendly garden today. Use the Bee Protective Habitat Guide and or Pollinator-Friendly Seed Directory to help! 
• Pledge to protect pollinators and produce in your garden by never using chemicals that harm beneficial insects and ladybugs and go organic! Display a Pesticide-Free Zone sign for your yard and show your neighbors that pesticide-free spaces are important for health and the environment.
• Protect the bees by using our organizing materials to aid in eliminating the use of bee-toxic pesticides in the community. Be sure to mark it on the Honey Bee Haven map! Additionally, demand justice and just conditions to stand in solidarity with farmworkers and the pollinators vital to our food supply!
• Become an Organic Parks Advocate! Send the municipal parks department links to Beyond Pesticides factsheets on Establishing New Lawns and Landscapes and Maintaining Sustainable Lawns and Landscapes. Or print them out and take them to the parks manager. For more support from Beyond Pesticides, sign up to become an organic parks advocate!

There is a lot more at Lawns and Landscapes on the Beyond Pesticides’ website. For more information about becoming an advocate for organic parks, see Parks for a Sustainable Future and Tools for Change.

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

Sources:

Risk assessments underestimate threat of pesticides to wild bees, Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, May 15, 2024

BEE Protective: Pollinators and Pesticide: What the Science Shows and Chemicals Implicated, Beyond Pesticides website

Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers, Biological Conservation, April 2019

(Beyond Pesticides, June 12, 2024) A study of pesticide contaminated algae finds that the disruption of algal communities has a devastating effect on the health of the aquatic food web. The study findings show that contact with pesticides can result in changes to “algal physiology, causing tissue injury, developmental delay, genotoxicity, procreative disruption, and tissue biomagnification” that alters the dominance of algae species in the environment. This in turn “can impact higher trophic levels and have a domino effect on the aquatic food web. It is possible for biodiversity to disappear, reducing ecosystem stability and resistance to environmental alterations,” the authors state. The study, a worldwide literature review conducted by researchers from India, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, appears in Aquatic Toxicology. 

The health of aquatic ecosystems is at risk with indirect effects on nontarget species from pesticides in the environment. This includes impacts on species of fish, invertebrates, microbial communities, and marine mammals. In explaining the importance of extensively studying effects of pesticides, the researchers note, “Different pesticide classes have different chemical structures, which define their modes of action and affect how they interact with both target and nontarget organisms.” Because of this, the range of effects seen from pesticide exposure is widespread. The amount and type of pesticides that contaminate waterways and the species of algae exposed to them can lead to varying consequences.  

In referencing over 150 studies, this review consolidates relevant results and conclusions regarding the effects of pesticide exposure on algal communities. The main pesticides identified in the research include atrazine, glyphosate, bifenthrin, and imidacloprid. Studies find that atrazine, an herbicide used for grasses and weeds, inhibits the photosynthetic machinery of algae such as diatoms and green algae, while glyphosate, a similar herbicide, affects nutrient dynamics and induces shifts in algal community composition. Bifenthrin, a pyrethroid insecticide, also causes an imbalance in algal populations. While copper-based algicides to control algal blooms show impacts on nontarget algae and disrupt photosynthesis, neonicotinoid insecticides like imidacloprid lower populations of zooplankton and allow algal communities to flourish.   

“Because different algae species have diverse physiologies, metabolic pathways, and susceptibilities to different toxicological processes, the impact of pesticides on those species can differ significantly,” this study finds. While different pesticides alter the structure of the algal communities in different ways, they all lead to changes in the marine food web and overall ecosystem health. The use of pesticides from any class severely threatens the fragile balance of aquatic environments, as any shift in species’ populations can impact other species as well.  

Herbicides, such as atrazine and glyphosate, are “potent inhibitors of algae photosynthetic activity,” the authors observe, with multiple studies linking herbicide exposure to the prevention of chlorophyll formation and electron transport in certain species of algae. Without being able to carry out photosynthesis, these algal communities’ biomass and production decreases. 

Alternatively, the interaction between other pesticides and algae species can lead to an increase in the amount of algae present after exposure. The researchers report, “Changes in nitrogen cycling by pesticides may raise nutrient availability, supporting algal blooms and lowering water quality.” Algal blooms are a result of the process known as eutrophication. When there is a spike in available nutrients, it causes an increase in the amount of plant and algae growth. The excessive nutrients set off a chain reaction that results in low oxygen levels in the water that kill fish and other organisms. Impacts of algal blooms can include fish mortality, shrimp mortality, fishery collapse, human health impacts (such as poisoning) upon consumption of contaminated shellfish, and deterioration of water quality.  

The researchers emphasize, “Algal species are essential players in cycling nutrients and energy transmission due to their diversity and ecological roles. Pesticide exposure can affect algal communities through direct contact with polluted water, indirect contact through contaminated prey, and interruption of photosynthesis, especially from herbicides. Algal growth, reproduction, and general community dynamics may be impacted by such exposure.” 

The persistence of pesticides in the environment leads to bioaccumulation in “algal tissues, which could result in biomagnification as the toxins climb the food chain and endanger higher trophic levels.” The direct contact with these chemicals can cause “rapid physiological stress that impairs photosynthesis growth rates and, in extreme situations, results in death,” while the indirect contact to other organisms through the food web leads to negative impacts on the biological balance of entire marine ecosystems.  

Bioaccumulation (concentration over time of individual organisms) and biomagnification (exponential increase in concentrations throughout the levels of the food web) of pesticides cause a cascade of issues throughout all trophic levels. (See more on trophic cascades.) The pesticide-laden algae pass their contamination to organisms that consume them, and the contamination continues to increase through trophic transfer. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains, “Phytoplankton and algae form the bases of aquatic food webs. They are eaten by primary consumers like zooplankton, small fish, and crustaceans. Primary consumers are in turn eaten by fish, small sharks, corals, and baleen whales. Top ocean predators include large sharks, billfish, dolphins, toothed whales, and large seals. Humans consume aquatic life from every section of this food web.” 

Because these impacts affect all organisms and the environment, a holistic approach is needed to assess pesticide usage and exposure. These chemicals are “jeopardizing environmental integrity and human well-being,” the authors assert. They continue in saying, “Pesticides infiltrate water bodies through runoff, chemical spills, and leachate, adversely affecting algae, vital primary producers in marine ecosystems. The repercussions cascade through higher trophic levels, underscoring the need for a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between pesticides, algae, and the broader ecosystem. Algae, susceptible to pesticides via spillage, runoff, and drift, experience disruptions in community structure and function, with certain species metabolizing and bioaccumulating these contaminants. The toxicological mechanisms vary based on the specific pesticide and algal species involved, particularly evident in herbicides’ interference with photosynthetic activity in algae.”  

Studying the impacts on algae is vital because they are crucial primary producers in aquatic ecosystems, are vulnerable to the negative impacts of pesticides, and their deteriorated health can have a cascading adverse effect on higher trophic levels. Because of their sensitivity to chemicals in the environment, algal communities offer insights into the health of ecosystems and need to be further studied.   

The authors conclude, “A comprehensive comprehension of these characteristics is essential for evaluating the influence on the environment, creating efficient management plans, and advocating for environmentally friendly farming methods that reduce damage to ecosystems.” With all organisms being dependent on one another and the environment, assessing the negative impacts of pesticides currently in use and offering alternatives is imperative.  

There is an overwhelming body of science that shows the negative implications associated with pesticide exposure on the environment including in soil, water, and air, as well as detrimental effects on human health. Alternatives, such as organic agriculture, offer a path forward that eliminates these threats.  

Beyond Pesticides’ mission is to lead the transition to a world free of toxic pesticides. You can start by supporting and buying organic products and making The Safer Choice to avoid hazardous home, garden, community, and food use pesticides. Stay informed with the Daily News Blog, and take action to create change with Action of the Week. 

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

Source: 

Narayanan, N. et al. (2024) Assessing the ecological impact of pesticides/herbicides on algal communities: A comprehensive review, Aquatic Toxicology. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166445X24000225?via%3Dihub.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 11, 2024) Published in Science of The Total Environment in May, a comprehensive literature review of population-based studies finds strong linkages between direct and acute pesticide exposure and elevated risk of breast cancer (BC). A majority of the studies analyzed in this review were based on population groups in the United States, but also extends to Australia and three European countries (Greece, France, and Italy). Included in these studies are women who worked in chemical-intensive agricultural settings, directly sprayed pesticides in their at-home gardens, and/or handled pesticide-contaminated clothing. The findings in this literature review underscore organic advocates’ concerns of relying on pesticide substitution models that inevitably impact the health of land stewards, farmers, farmworkers, and the broader public rather than transforming food systems to an organic model that bans the use of toxic petrochemical-based pesticides.

The goal of this review was to synthesize existing literature on pesticide exposure and breast cancer to determine the specific pathways and underlying mechanisms that contribute to female participants’ heightened risk. This literature review was published online by researchers at the University of Arizona’s R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy and Coit Center for Longevity and Neurotherapeutics and the Laboratory of Tumor Biology at the State University of Western Paraná in Brazil. Author Carolina Panis, PhD, has written extensively on the nexus of breast cancer and various potential linkages, including pesticide exposure. Coauthor Bernardo Lemos, PhD specializes in evolutionary and population genomics, employing this background in studies identifying linkages to various types of cancers at the cellular level. Drs. Panis and Lemos point out that the majority of studies to-date on breast cancer and pesticides comprise women who live in heavy-use areas or experience indirect exposure from husbands who are occupationally exposed. Most of the studies compiled for this literature review, however, focus on “direct” exposure (women who apply pesticides themselves in agricultural or home gardening contexts, as well as those who handled contaminated clothes while simultaneously engaging in one of the former methods of directly spraying pesticides). “The significant associations are related to women’s direct exposure to pesticides, including being in the field during pesticide application, not wearing personal protection equipment during pesticide spraying and handling, washing pesticide-contaminated clothes, being engaged in farming, working on crops, or living under spray drifts.”

In the initial search, 598 articles (published before January 26, 2023) were collected through Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scielo databases using the descriptors “breast cancer risk,” “occupational risk,” and “pesticide.” After screening, the researchers assessed 105 full-text articles. The initial screening process removed reviews, meta-analyses, animal studies, in vitro studies, mixed toxic substance exposure, studies on male breast cancer, among other criteria. The researchers ultimately focused on 11 studies. These studies were published between 2000 and 2022 in various journals focused on cancer, occupational and environmental health, and epidemiology. The sample size for these population-based studies ranged from 128 to 30,145 screened participants. The types of exposure for this final group of studies includes those living on farms or working in the agricultural sector, household exposure through direct spraying or washing clothes that had pesticide residues, among others.

Insecticides—specifically malathion, chlorpyrifos, terbufos, chlordane, and dieldrin—were the predominant group of pesticides of focus in the studies reviewed, however Drs. Panis and Lemos indicate the need to track the life-long exposure implications for female agricultural workers and pesticide applicators on other widely-used pesticides, including atrazine and glyphosate. “Ten of the eleven selected studies reported at least one significant association between some aspect of pesticide exposure and BC risk,” the researchers report in summarizing their results.

This literature review supports earlier research findings that indicate linkages between pesticide exposure and underlying mechanisms contributing to the development of breast cancer. A 2023 study published in Environmental International determines that a variety of chemicals (piperidine insecticide, 2,4-diitrophenol, benzo[a]carbazole, and a benzoate derivative) contributed to inflammation pathways that lead to the development of breast cancer. Also published in 2023, a study in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety finds that exposure to atrazine impacts 4T1 breast cancer cell development and significantly increases cancer cell spread and tumor size, as well as suppression of immune cell function. Other pesticides registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including those registered for general use and others restricted for use by certified applicators, have been found to act as endocrine disruptors, contributing to the development of breast cancer—discovered in the cases of glyphosate-based herbicides in a 2022 study published in Chemosphere and seven neonicotinoid insecticides (thiamethoxam, imidacloprid, nitenpyram, thiacloprid, clothianidin, acetamiprid, and dinotefuran) in a 2022 study published in Environmental International. These two studies build on a comprehensive research report published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2021, which finds 296 chemicals linked to breast cancer risk through the increased production of estradiol (estrogen-like compound) or progesterone production of H295R cells responsible for hormone synthesis. For more information, the Pesticide-Induced Disease Database entry on breast cancer offers a list of peer-reviewed research studies, literature reviews, and additional resources.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is every October, and Beyond Pesticides has a dedicated section on its website that provides resources and opportunities to engage in the scientific literature highlighting the chemicals implicated with breast cancer-inducing characteristics, disproportionate risks, sex-specific risks, generational impacts, and implications along race and socioeconomic status. Advocates continue to urge a wholesale transformation of land management and agricultural practices away from the reliance on endocrine-disrupting chemicals that heighten the risk of breast cancer. They see investing in organic, be it as a consumer, gardener, or farmer, as a critical solution. See Eating With a Conscience to learn about what chemicals are being sprayed on commonly purchased products and produce to better inform your next grocery trip. And, see Keeping Organic Strong to learn about National Organic Program and opportunities to engage with the public review comment periods with the aim of strengthening federal organic standards.

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

Source: Science of The Total Environment

(Beyond Pesticides, June 10, 2024) Expanding the planting of genetically engineered crops is the major focus of “The Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology – Plan for Regulatory Reform under the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology” (Framework), released in May by three federal agencies. In its Framework, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) use the words “exempt” or “exemption” in reference to federal safety regulations 21 times. Then, another 21 times the agencies identify their efforts to “streamline” the process for bringing genetically engineered “plant-incorporated protectants” (PIPs) to market. Without including the word “resistance” even once, the Framework advances the interests of the biotech and allied industries, ignoring the serious scientific issues regarding health and environmental effects and the economic failure for farmers facing crop loss. Meanwhile, the issue of resistance is not new to EPA, which has for years acknowledged the resistance problem despite allowing continued weed resistance to weed killers used with herbicide-tolerant crops and insect resistance to the pesticides incorporated into plants.  

>> Tell USDA, FDA, and EPA to replace agricultural provisions in the Framework with policies that discourage GE crops and promote organic agriculture.

Weeds and insects do evolve resistance to the weed and insect killing chemicals. With more than 70% of all GE crops altered to be herbicide tolerant, the increased planting of herbicide-resistant GE crops has led to the evolution of “super weeds,” the destruction of pollinator habitat, increased drift damage to neighboring fields, and increased use of herbicides. With the incorporation of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into crop plants, insects evolved resistance to Bt toxins, and biotech companies started “stacking” genes for more toxins into their seeds, which merely delayed the inevitable. See Beyond Pesticides’ comments on PIPs resistance here and here. 

The updated Framework stems from the Biden Administration’s 2022 Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure Bioeconomy,” which aims to accelerate biotechnology innovation and grow the bioeconomy across multiple sectors. The Framework characterizes the executive order as having “the goal of accelerating biotechnology innovation and growing America’s bioeconomy across multiple sectors, including health, agriculture, and energy.” See more on the resistance issue here. 

USDA has taken an approach to genetically engineered (GE) crops or processed foods with GE agricultural ingredients that has defied transparency and consumer right-to-know with labeling that advocates say misleads people at the point of sale. USDA’s authority to mislead stems from a statute it supported, the 2016 National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Act, dubbed the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, that has led to what advocates call deceptive messaging. The law preempts states from adopting stronger label language and standards, and excludes a large portion of the population without special cell phone technology (because information is accessed the QR codes on products). However, USDA regulations go further—creating loopholes and barriers to transparency that prohibit the use of the widely-known terms “GMO” and “GE” and prohibit retailers from providing more information to consumers. Instead, USDA designed with a “bioengineered” and “derived from bioengineering” graphic with an image of a farm. The label took effect January 1, 2022. 

Although both of the Framework and the Executive Order address a broad range of biotechnology applications, the agricultural applications are noteworthy because they deny the reality of evolution, pose environmental and health hazards, and enrich chemical companies at the expense of farmers. 

In deciding to ban GE, or genetically modified (GM), corn, Mexico compiled a database of scientific studies that document the health impacts to insects, pollinators, and animals fed GE corn, as well as the adverse health impacts of glyphosate on humans. In addition to herbicide-tolerant GE crops, a report by CBAN (the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network) states, “Most GM corn plants are genetically modified to kill insect pests. The GM plants express a toxin from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is known to harm the guts of specific types of insects but not others. Farmers have long used Bt as a spray to kill pests but the Bt toxins in GM crops are different from this natural Bt in structure, function, and biological effects.” The report continues, “In fact, peer-reviewed studies across the scientific literature continue to find that Bt toxins in GM plants can harm insects (spiders, wasps, ladybugs, and lacewings, for example) that are not the intended targets.” 

Instead of trying to fight natural biological processes, organic agriculture works with the biology of crops and the surrounding ecosystem. Organic producers are required “to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” In doing so, not only do they respond to consumers’ demand for healthful food uncontaminated by toxic pesticides, but they also contribute to the health of farmers and farmworkers, protect the land, air, and water from toxic chemicals, and help mitigate climate change. 

Federal agencies should not be promoting GE crops but should instead encourage a rapid transformation to organic agriculture nationwide.  

Consumers can avoid food with GE ingredients by buying organic food. 

>> Tell USDA, FDA, and EPA to replace agricultural provisions in the Framework with policies that discourage GE crops and promote organic agriculture. 

Letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, and FDA Commissioner Robert Califf: 

The Biden administration, like others before it, has been removing obstacles to the spread of genetic engineering (GE) in agriculture. Two tools in expanding the use of GE are a document issued jointly last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “The Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology – Plan for Regulatory Reform under the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology” (Framework) and the September 12, 2022 Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure Bioeconomy,” which aims to accelerate biotechnology innovation and grow the bioeconomy across multiple sectors. 

Although both of these documents address a broad range of biotechnology applications, the agricultural applications are noteworthy because they deny the reality of evolution, pose environmental and health hazards, and enrich chemical companies at the expense of farmers. 

Two commonly used GE methods used in chemical-intensive agriculture are the creation of herbicide-tolerant crops and “plant-incorporated protectants” (PIPs). Both deny the existence of evolution, but weeds and insects do evolve resistance to the technology. With more than 70% of all GE crops altered to be herbicide resistant, the increased planting of herbicide-resistant GE crops has led to the evolution of “super weeds,” the destruction of pollinator habitat, increased drift damage to neighboring fields, and increased use of herbicides. With the incorporation of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into crop plants, insects evolved resistance to Bt toxins, and biotech companies started “stacking” genes for more toxins into their seeds, which merely delayed the inevitable.  

In deciding to ban GE corn, Mexico compiled a database of scientific studies that document the health impacts to insects, pollinators, and animals fed GE corn, as well as the adverse health impacts of glyphosate on humans. In addition to herbicide-tolerant GE crops, a report by CBAN (the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network) states, “Most GM corn plants are genetically modified to kill insect pests. The GM plants express a toxin from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is known to harm the guts of specific types of insects but not others. Farmers have long used Bt as a spray to kill pests but the Bt toxins in GM crops are different from this natural Bt in structure, function, and biological effects.” The report continues, “In fact, peer-reviewed studies across the scientific literature continue to find that Bt toxins in GM plants can harm insects (spiders, wasps, ladybugs, and lacewings, for example) that are not the intended targets.” 

Instead of trying to fight natural biological processes, organic agriculture works with the biology of crops and the surrounding ecosystem. Organic producers are required “to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” In doing so, not only do they respond to consumers’ demand for healthful food uncontaminated by toxic pesticides, but they also contribute to the health of farmers and farmworkers, protect the land, air, and water from toxic chemicals, and help mitigate climate change. 

Your agency should not be promoting GE crops but should instead encourage a rapid transformation to organic agriculture nationwide.  

Thank you. 

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators: 

The Biden administration, like others before it, has been removing obstacles to the spread of genetic engineering (GE) in agriculture. Two tools in expanding the use of GE are a document issued jointly last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “The Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology – Plan for Regulatory Reform under the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology” (Framework) and the September 12, 2022 Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure Bioeconomy,” which aims to accelerate biotechnology innovation and grow the bioeconomy across multiple sectors. 

Although both of these documents address a broad range of biotechnology applications, the agricultural applications are noteworthy because they deny the reality of evolution, pose environmental and health hazards, and enrich chemical companies at the expense of farmers. 

Two commonly used GE methods used in chemical-intensive agriculture are the creation of herbicide-tolerant crops and “plant-incorporated protectants” (PIPs). Both deny the existence of evolution, but weeds and insects do evolve resistance to the technology. With more than 70% of all GE crops altered to be herbicide resistant, the increased planting of herbicide-resistant GE crops has led to the evolution of “super weeds,” the destruction of pollinator habitat, increased drift damage to neighboring fields, and increased use of herbicides. With the incorporation of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into crop plants, insects evolved resistance to Bt toxins, and biotech companies started “stacking” genes for more toxins into their seeds, which merely delayed the inevitable.  

In deciding to ban GE corn, Mexico compiled a database of scientific studies that document the health impacts to insects, pollinators, and animals fed GE corn, as well as the adverse health impacts of glyphosate on humans. In addition to herbicide-tolerant GE crops, a report by CBAN (the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network) states, “Most GM corn plants are genetically modified to kill insect pests. The GM plants express a toxin from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is known to harm the guts of specific types of insects but not others. Farmers have long used Bt as a spray to kill pests but the Bt toxins in GM crops are different from this natural Bt in structure, function, and biological effects.” The report continues, “In fact, peer-reviewed studies across the scientific literature continue to find that Bt toxins in GM plants can harm insects (spiders, wasps, ladybugs, and lacewings, for example) that are not the intended targets.” 

Instead of trying to fight natural biological processes, organic agriculture works with the biology of crops and the surrounding ecosystem. Organic producers are required “to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity.” In doing so, not only do they respond to consumers’ demand for healthful food uncontaminated by toxic pesticides, but they also contribute to the health of farmers and farmworkers, protect the land, air, and water from toxic chemicals, and help mitigate climate change. 

Please ensure that federal agencies are not promoting GE crops but instead encourage a rapid transformation to organic agriculture nationwide.  

Thank you. 

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 7, 2024) This week, climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum shattered a proverbial glass ceiling, emerging as the first woman president of Mexico.  

The election of a woman with a background in environmental protection— who signed an accord promising Mexican farmers to uphold the ban on transgenic corn and replace glyphosate with safer alternatives this past April—did not happen in a vacuum. According to an article by CBS News, President-elect Sheinbaum shared the following wisdom in the middle of a downtown hotel as her polling lead became definitive: 

“I do not make it alone. We’ve all made it, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters, and our granddaughters.”

As the new president-elect steps into the leadership of a country grappling with the ravages of the climate crisis, we reflect on the leadership of women in advancing Beyond Pesticides’ mission to end the use of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers. 

Leading the Fight for Farmworker Justice—Dolores Huerta 
 
Earlier this year, Acting Governor Eleni Kounalakis of California honored the lifelong efforts of 94-year-old social justice activist Dolores Huerta, joining Washington State in recognizing Huerta’s decades of leadership in the fight for farmworker justice.  

A schoolteacher-turned-activist and daughter of a farmworker, Ms. Huerta was inspired to action by the hungry farm children in her classroom, organizing farmers and farmworkers before cofounding the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO) and the Agricultural Workers Association. After meeting activist César Chávez, the team founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA)—the precursor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW)—ultimately resulting in the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which “protects the rights of agricultural employees to make their own decisions about whether or not they want a union to negotiate with their employer about their wages, hours, and other working conditions.” A recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Huerta remains a champion of equity and environmental justice, despite ethnic and gender bias she faced throughout her career.  

In an interview with Civil Eats, Ms. Huerta described her theory of change for her foundation as building “leadership in low-income communities and organize people so that they can have a sense of their own voices and their own power… once they understand this process and they have the power to change policy—and politicians—they really feel empowered and they want to go on and keep organizing.

It’s wonderful. I call it ‘magic dust.’” 

“Magic Dust” and Leaving a Legacy 

In commemorating the legacy of Dolores Huerta and other environmental icons such as Rachel Carson, whose work exploring the effects of agricultural pesticides and government abuses sparked her seminal work Silent Spring, we—the women on the board and staff of Beyond Pesticides—would like to take a moment to spread, in Huerta’s words, “magic dust” and celebrate both the women who inspired us on our professional journeys and those who will follow in our footsteps. 

🌱 Who is a woman that planted the seed and inspired you to take action? 

✨ What advice would you offer to the next generation that will carry on our work? 

Paula Dinerstein, Esq., President of the Board 

🌱 I have long been inspired by both Rachel Carson and Jane Goodall as women who were leaders in their scientific fields but also used their knowledge and insights to go beyond science to become articulate and compassionate advocates for the preservation of the natural world and the human beings who depend on it. Both recognized just how daunting the challenges we face are, and yet maintained a spirit of love, joy and hope. 

✨ I would advise the next generation who engage in our work, which includes my own daughters, that the struggle we are engaged in, despite the difficulties and whatever the ultimate outcome, makes life meaningful and rewarding. Be proud of yourself if you can make even a small contribution, because it is not easy and we must each also preserve ourselves and our own health and opportunities to enjoy life. You will meet the best people who will provide support, inspiration and immeasurable enrichment for your life.

Terry Shistar, PhD, Secretary of the Board  

🌱 You have probably never heard of Ruth Fauhl. Ruth was a bird watcher and environmentalist in Lawrence, Kansas. She had a passion for water issues, as well as birds and plants. She grew up on a farm at the confluence of two (at that time uncontrolled) rivers in Southeast Kansas. Her mother’s piano was on pulleys so that it could be raised above flood waters. Their pigs were trained to climb stairs to get away from the water. One thing that struck me was that she never wasted water. If she needed to run the tap to get hot water, she filled jugs for watering plants. During the time that her life overlapped with mine, I learned a lot about birds from her and learned to appreciate her connection with the land, which provided a grounding for my activism. 

✨ I hope there will be a next generation to carry on our work. My advice is to “think globally and act locally”—globally not only in spatial terms, but also in terms of our mission. Environmental, social, and economic problems are all connected to a worldview that views the Earth as belonging to humans. 

Caroline Cox, Treasurer of the Board 

🌱 I would like to mention three women. Carol Van Strum is a Pacific Northwest activist who took on both the U.S. Forest Service and Monsanto regarding the hazardous herbicide 2,4,5-T and its contaminant dioxin. Bonnie Hill surveyed miscarriages in her community which led to the emergency suspension of 2,4,5-T in the 1970s. Norma Grier was a founder and longtime director of the first community-based pesticide reform coalition in the U.S. as well as a Beyond Pesticide board member for many years. 

✨ The pesticide industry is wealthy and politically powerful, but together we can and are making progress towards better solutions. 

Melinda Hemmelgarn, Board member 

🌱 Easily, my mother. She was a role model for advocacy and had an adventurous spirit.   I learned from her actions. She joined organizations and volunteered to work on issues that mattered – from funding the arts to supporting fair elections. She wrote letters to legislators, joined the League of Women Voters and the PTA. She taught me to take a stand – I recall marching together against the Viet Nam war.  She also modeled honesty, kindness and empathy, and taught me to put myself in another person’s shoes.  In her mid-sixties, she even pasted a bumper sticker on her front door that said: “If you don’t vote, don’t bitch.” 

✨ Find what you are passionate about.  Seek out organizations who share your concerns; then use your unique skills to make a difference. There is power in working together. 

Jocelyn Cordell, Director of Operations 

🌱 I was raised in New England within a family of fiercely independent and resilient women—from my Italian great-grandmother and single-parent grandmother to my psychotherapist mother and linguist twin sister—whose collective passion and dedication despite the obstacles in their path inspire me every single day. The legacy of their love and progress, in collaboration with the incredible mentors of both genders I have met throughout my journey, has set the stage for the person and professional that I choose to be.   

✨ In the seminal work When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation, Angela Jill Lederach with her father describes this incredible ability to heal and reconnect—as a transformative practice— via the nonlinear experience of creating music. This may be the musician in me, but I find the themes inherent speak to how we as a movement and as human beings can make a positive difference: finding our voices to speak (or sing!) that which is unspeakable and traumatic amid escalating crises, building safe spaces for compassion that validate lived experiences, and resiliently innovating spaces of interaction that nurture meaningful conversation alongside purposeful action. This is all possible if you treat yourself with the trust and compassion that you would extend to those within your orbit and remember, at the end of the day, you are not alone in the pursuit of a livable future. 

Rika Gopinath, Community Policy and Action Manager 

🌱 One of the many women who have inspired me is Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist and eco-feminist from India. Dr. Shiva’s dedication to promoting organic farming, seed sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture and challenging the dominance of agribusiness has shown me the power of individual actions in addressing environmental challenges. Her work emphasizes the power of small-scale, grassroots initiatives in creating positive change 

✨ To the next generation continuing this work, I humbly offer this advice: Stay resilient and persistent in the face of challenges, knowing the road to change is long. Prioritize self-care to find joy in the work as well as the impact, recognizing there’s no finish line in our collective effort. Foster collaboration, build strong networks, and seek diverse partnerships. The environmental movement is stronger when we work together, share knowledge, and support one another. Seek out partnerships with diverse stakeholders, including communities, scientists, policymakers, and grassroots organizations, as well as reaching out to other individuals to educate and empower action. By joining forces, we can amplify our impact and create lasting change. 

Sara Grantham, Science, Regulatory, and Advocacy Manager 

🌱 I have been lucky throughout my education to have had strong female mentors who have shaped my experiences and directly impacted my growth and goals as a female scientist. My initial inspiration came from a project on Rachel Carson in sixth grade that planted the seed for me to pursue a science education. This seed was able to blossom due to an enormous amount of support and care from my AP Environmental Science teacher, Laura Dinerman. In a historically male-dominated field, I was fortunate to feel uplifted and inspired in my journey to become the female scientist, and change-maker, that I am today. 

✨ All youth, regardless of gender, should embrace the power for change that they hold. Every voice is capable of making a difference, so be confident and brave in the face of adversity and stand up for what you want the future to be. It truly is in your hands – what is actually possible and sustainable for this planet is in your control, so make sure you use your voice and actions to create a positive change. 

What is the legacy we will leave behind for the next generation? 

In reaching to pass the baton to the future generations of men and women leading the transition to a world free of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, what is the future that we envision and are working to achieve? Is it a legacy of rampant toxics use, protected by the petrochemical industry, resulting in weak federal, state and local regulatory standards that leave farmland poisoned, public spaces destroyed, and pesticide residues with lingering health and environmental effects in the soil for decades due to drift, runoff, and leaching?  

No. 

We envision: 

• an organic community where local parks, playing fields, and greenways are managed without unnecessary toxic pesticides, children and pets are safe to run around on the grass, and bees and other pollinators are safeguarded from toxic chemicals; [Parks for a Sustainable Future Program]  
   
• a workplace with fair wages and benefits for farmworkers, without discrimination or coercion, disrupting the disproportionate burden and occupational risk in communities of color from the use of harmful petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers; [Agricultural Justice] 
   
• a future rooted in indigenous practices and protections for equitable land and resource access—recognizing the impacts of colonialism—and cultivating resilience led by grassroots activists to meet the social, economic, and environmental needs of local communities; [Hawai‘i] 
   

• the widespread adoption of and broad-scale marketplace transition to organic management, under continuous improvement from public input, to protect pollinators through a systems-based approach that is protective of health and the environment; [BEE Protective] 
   
• AND, the growth of organic agriculture as the only acceptable and foundational form of land management while protecting the integrity of the standards and enforcement of USDA-certified organic. Organic Agriculture / Keeping Organic Strong 

However, this future would be impossible without the raised voices of our incredible network. The saying that we need to “feed the soil to feed the plant” is at the very heart of organic, and by working in concert with the grassroots, we are sowing the seeds for the very future we are striving to achieve.  

Thank you—to the women who came before us, the women who work in partnership with us, and the women who will continue the charge—for your commitment to a world free of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers.

In the spirit of Dolores Huerta, “Sí, se puede.” 

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

Sources: 

Brito, J.L. (2024) Sheinbaum Ofrece terminar con el uso de glifosato, Aunque Paulatinamente, Proceso. Available at: https://www.proceso.com.mx/nacional/elecciones-2024/2024/4/10/sheinbaum-ofrece-terminar-con-el-uso-de-glifosato-aunque-paulatinamente-327028.html (Accessed: 05 June 2024). 

Claudia Sheinbaum elected as Mexico’s president, the first woman to hold the job (no date) CBS News. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-first-female-president-claudia-sheinbaum/ (Accessed: 05 June 2024). 

Greenaway, T. (2019, July 2). Dolores Huerta is still fighting for farmworkers’ rights. Civil Eats. https://civileats.com/2017/11/09/dolores-huerta-is-still-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with/ 

Michals, E. by D. (n.d.). Biography: Dolores Huerta. Dolores Huerta Biography. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dolores-huerta 

Newsroom (2024, April 10). Acting Governor Eleni Kounalakis Proclaims Dolores Huerta Day 2024. Proclamation. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/10/acting-governor-eleni-kounalakis-proclaims-dolores-huerta-day-2024/ 

(Beyond Pesticides, June 6, 2024) Researchers link pesticide exposure to behavioral effects on zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae, signaling a larger issue for overall population and ecosystem effects. 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.

As 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 (a greater combined effect when substances mix) and the ripples created throughout entire ecosystems.

Researchers from the Department of Morphology and Animal Physiology, as well as the Department of Physics, from the Rural Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil collaborated with the Department of Biology at Indiana University in Indianapolis to perform the study. The researchers exposed zebrafish larvae to carbendazim, fipronil, and sulfentrazone to determine any behavioral effects on anxiety, fear, and spatial/social interaction for each compound separately and in combination.

Each compound and mixture were applied to embryo medium, exposing fertilized zebrafish eggs. The embryos of zebrafish hatch, or become larvae, within 48-72 hours of fertilization. For this study, the zebrafish were kept in the solutions for six days post-fertilization during which their behavior was monitored and recorded. The solutions, containing just embryo medium (controls) or the embryo medium and pesticide(s) (test groups), were refreshed daily to prevent degradation.

As the study finds, “Pesticide concentrations were based on values equal to or lower than the maximum residue limits (MRL) of these pesticides in foods allowed by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency,” which establishes real-world environmental exposure levels. In most ecotoxicology studies, lethal exposure is the primary focus, limiting the ability to determine effects for sublethal concentrations. These lower levels are crucial in understanding environmental impact because, as the authors state, “Pesticides are commonly found in the aquatic environment at low concentrations, which accumulate, and effects are amplified through the food chain.”

The behaviors of the zebrafish monitored include swimming patterns within the chamber; swimming behavior when touched; direction and distance of travel; and spatial interaction and social/escape responses to stimuli. These behaviors are important for the survival of zebrafish and many other species. As the study concludes, “Changes in swimming behavior can have important consequences for feeding behaviors (prey capture) and susceptibility to predation (predator escape), among others.”

Carbendazim, fipronil, and sulfentrazone were chosen as pesticides to test as they are all commonly used in crop production and have been detected in aquatic ecosystems and food products. There is also prior research linking each with effects on zebrafish and similar species. Carbendazim is a fungicide that causes disorganized swimming patterns, while fipronil is an insecticide that has been found to adversely affect the nervous system with test populations exhibiting convulsions and muscle spasms. Sulfentrazone is an herbicide with the least knowledge on its neurotoxicity, but it acts like an endocrine disruptor and affects zebrafish heart development.

Zebrafish are commonly used in ecotoxicology studies, especially as a model in behavioral studies “not only because of their morphological and genetic conservation with humans (60 to 80% homology), but also behavioral similarities, exhibiting a wide range of complex behaviors including social interactions, anxiety, learning, memory, and avoidance behaviors that may be useful for modeling neurological and psychiatric diseases,” the researchers say. Additional studies on zebrafish have found organ damage and transgenerational toxic effects with pesticide exposure.

Within this study, the authors report, “Significant changes were observed in the performance of larvae exposed to all compounds and their mixtures… Among the single pesticides, exposure to S[ulfentrazone] produced the most behavioral alterations, followed by F[ipronil] and C[arbendazim], respectively. A synergistic effect between the compounds was observed in the C[arbendazim] + F[ipronil] group, which showed more behavioral effects than the groups exposed to pesticides individually.”

Specifically, behavioral changes between the control groups and exposed groups are seen in the larvae and their responses to stimuli, movement (speed, trajectory, and distance traveled), and visual abilities. Immobility is one of the results of pesticide exposure, which is an extreme effect in terms of movement being impaired.

In the study’s discussion, the authors state, “The changes in the behavior result from one or a combination of molecular, biochemical, and physiological changes. The group exposed to sulfentrazone was the one that showed the highest number of behavioral changes. Showed significant differences in mean speed, distance traveled, and presented an abnormal trajectory.” This effect on muscle mechanics within the larvae can lead to lower rates of survival in the species.

The authors continue, writing, “Larvae exposed to fipronil showed a significant increase in immobile behavior during the exploratory activity test and showed an abnormal trajectory in the test.” Fipronil causes larvae to lose their mobility, which makes them more vulnerable to predators. Carbendazim is the least toxic of the three single compounds in the study, but zebrafish still exhibit behavioral effects in abnormal trajectory and impairment of their visual systems with exposure.

Being able to see and respond to visual stimuli is essential for fish, who need to process their surroundings to navigate their habitat, find food, and avoid predators. “About escape from the visual stimulus, larvae exposed to the single pesticides and their mixtures stayed significantly longer in the lower part of the well (area with stimulus) and did not show evasive behavior,” the study states. Since many stimuli in their natural environment can represent a threat, not being able to process and respond to potential predators can lead to death for impaired larvae.

The synergistic responses in zebrafish, such as with the reduction in speed, distance traveled, and optomotor response, show that mixtures of chemicals can increase effects on organisms. The study concludes, “These results highlight the complexity of pesticide mixture toxicity and the sensitivity of behavioral tests, which can be used as initial indicators of environmental stress. Experiments testing pesticide mixtures will help us understand their additive and synergistic environmental exposure effects.” Scientists and advocates have urged prioritizing further studies on the effect of mixtures on organisms, given that exposure in the environment is not limited to a single pesticide at a time.

This study helps show that pesticide exposure goes beyond human health issues to other vertebrates, invertebrates, and ecosystems in general. Pesticide use negatively impacts nontarget organisms and can “reduce the fitness of an individual, leading to population decline and serious effects on the ecosystem.” By using petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, impacts can reach a multitude of organisms through the soil, water, and air that can lead to declines in populations that spread throughout the food web.

With alternatives available, petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers are causing unnecessary and avoidable effects on health and the environment. Organic agriculture offers a holistic approach to sustainable crop production that improves soil quality, increases biodiversity, minimizes water pollution, and more.  

Stay informed about pesticides and their negative effects with the Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management and through the Daily News Blog, which highlights the ever-growing body of science that supports the need for organic alternatives. Spring Into Action with a pesticide-free garden and make The Safer Choice to avoid hazardous home, garden, community, and food use pesticides.    

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

Source:

Gomes, S. da S. et al. (2024) Behavioral effects of the mixture and the single compounds carbendazim, fipronil, and sulfentrazone on zebrafish (danio rerio) larvae, Biomedicines. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/6/1176.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 5, 2024) Individuals living near chemical-intensive agricultural environments have heightened risk of Alzheimer’s disease relative to the general population, according to a study published earlier this year in Psychiatry Research. This finding builds on existing peer-reviewed studies that document the relationship between chronic pesticide exposure and elevated risk of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, as well as Parkinson’s disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis (MS), and Huntington’s disease. In light of the mountains of scientific evidence, advocates continue to demand for a wholesale transformation of agricultural and land management systems to one based in organic principles in alignment with the U.S. National Organic Program.

Study Analysis

This study was published online on May 1, 2024 with the full entry to be published in July 2024. The researchers are physicians, health professionals, and professors at the University of Almeria in southern Spain, specifically working in the Health Research Center and the Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medicine. There is also a researcher, Cristofer Ruiz-González, who works at the Torrecárdenas University Hospital also located in Almeria, Spain. Researchers gathered case information from over 40,000 patients between 2000 and 2021 living in demarcated health care districts with high and low levels of pesticide usage. The acreage of high-use districts, measured by the size of greenhouse space in hectares, make up 93.2% of the total surface area in the region of focus for this study.

The pesticides identified in this region include:

Insecticides

• organophosphates (chlorpyrifos, chlorpyrifosmethyl, dimethoate, pyrimifos-metyl)
• n-methylcarbamates (methomyl, oxamyl)
• macrocyclic lactones (abamectin, spinosad)
• neonicotinoids (imidacloprid, acetamiprid)
• pyrethroids (cypermethrin, deltamethrin)
• miscellaneous insecticides (amitraz, formetanate, indoxacarb, azadirachtin, spiromesifen, Bacillus thuringiensis, endosulfan).

Fungicides

• (di)thiocarbamates (zineb, mancozeb, maneb, thiram)
• conazoles (tebuconazole, triadimenol, myclobutanil, prochloraz)
• dicarboximide (procymidone, iprodione, vinclozolin)
• anilino-pyrimidines (cyprodinil, mepanipyrim, pyrimethanil)
• copper salts (copper oxychloride)
• miscellaneous fungicides (cymoxanil, metalaxyl, fosetyl, thiophanate methyl, fluopicolide, chlorthalonil, propamocarb, dimethomorph, azoxystrobin)

Herbicides

• bipyridyl (paraquat, diquat)
• organophosphates (glyphosate, glufosinate)
• chlorotriazine (atrazine, simazine, terbuthylazine, cyanazine)
• phenylurea (isoproturon, linuron, diuron, monuron)

The researchers determined that there is “a positive association between pesticide exposure and the risk of developing [Alzheimer’s Disease] in individuals residing in the southern region of Spain.” Female participants were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s relative to male participants, despite the former group being more likely to work in agricultural operations for longer periods of time. This finding is consistent with other studies that indicate distinctions in hormonal and biological pathways of pesticides based on sex. Further research is recommended in this arena as outlined in the Discussion section.

Alzheimer’s Disease Literature Breakdown

Advocates envision a transformational shift to organic agriculture and land management following substantial, peer-reviewed scientific research on the linkage between Alzheimer’s disease and pesticide exposure. A Consumer Reports analysis from last month indicates the health risks associated with low-level pesticide exposure, including elevated risk of neurological impacts such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Particular classes of pesticides, including organophosphate compounds such as Tris (1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCIPP), disrupt lysosomal proteins which has been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease, according to findings in a 2024 study published in Heliyon. A different pesticide, the legacy insecticide DDT, was found to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s after researchers used numerous models demonstrating the effects of DDT on toxic protein production in the brain, based on findings in a 2022 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives. A 2014 study in JAMA Neurology, building on research gathered at Emory University (Georgia) and University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, reached a similar conclusion on linkage to DDT and associated metabolite exposure—even at low levels—to heightened risk of Alzheimer’s. In 2022, researchers at Arizona State University built on existing studies detecting the infamous weedkiller glyphosate in various animals’ brain tissues, finding that glyphosate crosses the blood-brain barrier in both in vitro (artificial environments) and in vivo (living organisms) studies, posing an increased risk of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Yet another study, published in 2016 in Nature Communications, found that the strobilurin class of fungicides produce genetic changes in mice that are consistent with human neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s. Be it exposure to herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides, experts from various research institutions conclude relationships between pesticide exposure and elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Huntington’s Disease and Dementia

Chronic and low-level pesticide exposure also leads to other neurodevelopmental disorders such as Huntington’s disease and dementia. Regarding Huntington’s disease, a 2023 case report published in Frontier in Public Health finds that inhalation of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D or Telone) in workplace settings results in various adverse health effects, including brain edema/neuroinflammation, which can elevate risk of neurodegenerative diseases including Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. Studies focused on dementia arrive at similar conclusions. Organophosphate exposure has been linked to the onset of major health crises, including dementia, according to the accumulation of population-based research in a literature review published in Science of The Total Environment in 2024.

Parkinson’s Disease

The link between Parkinson’s disease and pesticides is notable given that a miniscule proportion of cases result from genetic inheritance; in other words, most Parkinson’s cases are borne from environmental or other confounding factors. In 2023, a study published in Parkinsonism and Related Disorders determined household exposure to readily accessible pesticides can double the risk of developing Parkinson’s. This phenomenon goes beyond household settings. After combining Parkinson’s Environment and Genes data with the California Pesticide Use Report system, researchers from University of California, Los Angeles found that Central Valley farmworkers had elevated instances of genetic mutations in genes associated with Parkinson’s disease after decades of exposure to organoarsenic pesticides, organophosphorus pesticides, and n-methyl carbamates. There has been growing movement by advocates to ban the use of paraquat in California because of sprawling scientific literature that indicates a relationship between Parkinson’s disease and paraquat exposure. The California bill AB 1963 introduced by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Burbank), would ban the use of paraquat in agriculture and non-agricultural settings by the end of 2025. The California Assembly passed the bill on May 23 and it is currently being deliberated in the state Senate. This move does not surprise advocates after a Science of The Total Environment study published in 2024 found pesticide bans would be economically beneficial when considering long-term health savings. There are numerous additional studies that advocates point to regarding pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s Disease (here, here, and here) as well as in the Pesticide-Induced Disease Database entry on Parkinson’s disease that lists further peer-reviewed science on Parkinson’s.

Call To Action

Advocates continue to invest their time and energy in mobilizing diverse communities of concerned citizens, physicians, farmers, farmworkers, businesses, environmentalists, and elected officials to demand transformational change to food system practices. Rather than relying on a product substitution framework that permits the replacement of toxic pesticides for “less-toxic” pesticides, forward-thinking advocates demand a wholesale transformation toward models rooted in organic land management principles. See Action of The Week to stay informed of opportunities to mobilize your community to make the change you wish to see in eliminating the use of toxic petrochemical pesticides that ultimately enable the cascading crises of public health fragility, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency.

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

Source: Psychiatry Research

(Beyond Pesticides, June 4, 2024) A study published in the most recent edition of the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety documents for the first time the presence of the herbicide glyphosate in human sperm. The study looked at 128 French men with an average age of 36 years who tested positive for glyphosate in their blood. Seventy-three out of the 128 men were found to also have glyphosate in their seminal plasma. Not only that, the amount of glyphosate in seminal plasma was nearly four times higher than what was detected in the blood.  

Methods 

The study involved a population of 128 infertile French men from whom seminal and blood plasma samples were collected. The study was conducted at the “Pole Santé Léonard de Vinci” medical center, located centrally near Tours, France. This region is recognized for its urban characteristics as well as being a major agricultural hub, particularly for grain and wine production. The study authors note, “This area reflects the common herbicide exposure in France” and the district ranks third highest in terms of pesticide purchases. While additional qualitative data was collected, only 47 of 128 participants fully completed a questionnaire about their profession, diet (organic or not), and smoking habits. The study examined concentrations of glyphosate and its main metabolite, amino-methyl-phosphonic acid (AMPA), using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS-MS). Notably, while glyphosate was detected in significant proportions, AMPA was undetectable in the samples. The study also measured oxidative stress biomarkers, including malondialdehyde (MDA) and 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) techniques. Total Antioxidant Status (TAS) and Total Oxidant Status (TOS) were determined using commercial colorimetric kits to assess the oxidative stress levels in the participants. The researchers analyzed potential correlations between the concentration of glyphosate in the plasma (both blood and seminal) and the oxidative stress biomarkers. They also looked at how these factors correlated with sperm parameters such as sperm concentration, progressive speed, and abnormal forms. 

Findings 

Glyphosate (GLY) was detected in the seminal plasma of the participants, with concentrations that were four times higher than those observed in blood plasma. In contrast, its main metabolite, amino-methyl-phosphonic acid (AMPA), was not detectable. There was a strong positive correlation between the concentrations of glyphosate in blood plasma and seminal plasma and the levels of 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), a marker of DNA damage due to oxidative stress. The study observed higher concentrations of Total Oxidant Status (TOS), Oxidative Stress Index (OSI) (which is the ratio of TOS to Total Antioxidant Status (TAS)), and malondialdehyde (MDA) in both blood and seminal plasma of men with detectable levels of glyphosate. The Total Antioxidant Status (TAS) in both blood and seminal plasma was similar in men with or without detectable levels of glyphosate, suggesting that the antioxidant capacity remained constant regardless of glyphosate exposure. 

These findings suggest a negative impact of glyphosate on human reproductive health, potentially affecting sperm quality and oxidative stress levels, which could have implications for the progeny of the affected individuals. The study advocates for a precautionary approach in the ongoing discussions about the use of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides in Europe. 

These results add to the existing mountain of evidence regarding the harmful effects of glyphosate, the most commonly used pesticide in the world and known to many as Roundup™ and Rodeo™. Glyphosate causes DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells, resulting in the onset of chronic disease. It is considered an endocrine disruptor and patented as an antibiotic. It has been specifically linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma. Beyond Pesticides has reported that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) negatively impacts testicular function and may cause sperm count declines over time, according to a 2022 review published in Endocrine.  

Glyphosate works by disrupting a crucial pathway (shikimate pathway) for manufacturing aromatic amino acids in plants—but not animals—and, therefore, many have assumed that it does not harm humans. However, it is lethal to bacteria that inhabit the human digestive tract and are essential for good health. Disturbing the gut’s microbiota can contribute to a whole host of “21st-century diseases,” including diabetes, obesity, food allergies, heart disease, antibiotic-resistant infections, cancer, asthma, autism, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and more. (See here and here ). 

The rise in these same diseases is tightly correlated with the use of glyphosate, and glyphosate exposure can result in inflammation at the root of these diseases. Glyphosate use in agriculture rose 300-fold from 1974 to 2014, with nonagricultural uses increasing by 43-fold during the same time. Increasingly, target weeds are becoming resistant to the herbicide, creating superweeds, and genetically engineered (GE) crops are being created with genetic tolerance for numerous toxic herbicides, such as 2,4-D and dicamba. As Beyond Pesticides’ glyphosate factsheet reports, the greatest overall glyphosate use by acreage is in the Mississippi River basin where most applications are for weed control on GE corn, soybeans, and cotton, as well as other crops.  

Plants treated with glyphosate translocate the systemic herbicide to their roots, growing points, and fruit, where it blocks the activity of the enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), a key enzyme in the shikimate pathway of aromatic amino acid production, ultimately leading to the plant’s death by starvation. Because plants absorb glyphosate, it cannot be removed completely by washing or other food preparation. It persists in food products for up to two years.  

“Inert” Ingredients 

In addition to glyphosate, researchers have also determined that the “inert” ingredients in glyphosate products, especially polyethoxylated tallow amine (POEA), a surfactant commonly used in glyphosate and other herbicidal products, are even more toxic than glyphosate itself. The current study of French men was unable to determine if the co-formulants or even other pesticide exposure were contributing factors in their results. But, previous studies have shown that many pesticides, including glyphosate products (e.g., Roundup™), are more toxic than glyphosate alone, and result in a number of chronic, developmental, and endocrine-disrupting impacts. The “inert” ingredients in Roundup™ formulations kill human cells at very low concentrations. At least some glyphosate-based products are genotoxic. POEA is extremely toxic to aquatic organisms. One study found that co-formulants account for more than 86% of Roundup™ toxicity observed in microalgae and crustaceans. 

EPA pesticide registration rules do not require the agency to account for all ingredients when it evaluates pesticide formula safety, even though the industry labels dangerous substances like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as inert or as contaminants. In October 2023, EPA rejected a 2017 Center for Food Safety (CFS) legal petition to compel the EPA to require that pesticide companies provide safety data on all ingredients in a pesticide product, or formulation, both active and inert. The limitations of the EPA’s pesticide registration review process persist despite evidence of potential hazards associated with synergism between ingredients, including inert (undisclosed) ingredients, and other pesticides applied in combination. Bill Freese, the science director at CFS, said, “The idea that we’re not assessing the actual chemicals that farmers spray is kind of ridiculous.” 

At the time of the decision, Beyond Pesticides said: “EPA’s failure to act on the science, as detailed in the litigation, has real-world adverse health consequences for farmworkers, the public, and ecosystems. Because of this lawsuit, the agency’s obstruction of the regulatory process will not be allowed to stand, and EPA should start shifting food production to available alternative non- and less-toxic practices and materials that meet its statutory duty.” 

9th Circuit Court Decision Struck 

In December 2023, farmworker organizations and Beyond Pesticides, represented by the Center for Food Safety, filed a petition with EPA urging the agency to remove glyphosate from the market after having won a 2022 court decision forcing EPA to redo its science evaluation. That 2022 court decision in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that EPA’s 2020 approval of glyphosate was unlawful and voided EPA’s “interim registration review” decision approving the continued use of glyphosate, issued in early 2020. “EPA ignored its own experts and guidelines in making these judgments,” Amy van Suan, senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety and lead counsel in the case, told the judges.  The three-judge Ninth Circuit panel agreed, finding the EPA discounted epidemiological studies showing a link between glyphosate exposure and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, concluding that the association could be explained by “chance and/or bias.” This decision, the panel said, defied the EPA’s own Cancer Guidelines. 

Environmental groups, including Beyond Pesticides, have consistently urged EPA to follow in the footsteps of the European Union by adopting the precautionary principle, which withholds registration when data on product safety is missing. Given the lack of complete information and uncertainties, Beyond Pesticides advocates that communities and individuals reject legally allowed uses and exposures deemed acceptable under EPA risk assessment calculations. Instead, the organization asked that decision makers focus on safer alternative practices and products that are proven effective, such as organic agriculture, which prohibits the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. 

Roundup™ Litigation 

In recent years, Monsanto has been hit by an avalanche of lawsuits asserting that Roundup™ is carcinogenic, particularly linked to non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and that Monsanto failed to warn the public of the hazards when using Roundup™ as directed. According to the Lawsuit Information Center, Monsanto has settled nearly 100,000 lawsuits and paid approximately $11 billion as of March this year. There are an estimated 54,000 lawsuits remaining and the company has reportedly set aside an additional $6 billion for additional settlements.  

At first, it seemed that these cases were decided in favor of Monsanto and its relatively new owner Bayer. In 2021, Bayer won nine individual lawsuits over Roundup™, but last year Bayer lost in jury trials in four different cases totaling billions of dollars and the cost is starting to take a toll. This week, Bayer AG Chief Executive Officer Bill Anderson reportedly said at a speech in Chicago that the barrage of lawsuits is an “existential” threat to the company. It has also been reported that the company is considering bankruptcy known as the Texas Two-Step as a means of stopping the hemorrhage of cash. 

Under pressure for a strategy to avoid additional judgments, Bayer has turned to a lobbying effort to twist the narrative away from Roundup™ product liability and the company’s culpability to lobbying for state laws that would end pesticide manufacturers’ responsibility for harm caused by using their pesticide products as directed. Bayer has been lobbying for immunity through legislation since January 2024 and bills to limit Bayer’s liability for claims regarding Roundup™ were introduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Idaho. The bill was defeated in Idaho and Iowa but was passed by the House in Missouri and was defeated in the Senate. Beyond Pesticides recently launched an action to stop this nationwide campaign by chemical manufacturers to shield themselves from liability cases filed by those who have been harmed by pesticide products. Stay informed of news and ways to take action – sign up for Action Alerts here.   

However, this legislative push is not part of Bayer’s “official” strategy to fight off lawsuits. The Bayer website lays out for investors a five-step plan for addressing them. Their best hope was the U.S. Supreme Court, which they hoped would decide that state-based failure-to-warn claims are preempted by federal law. Essentially their argument was that since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the herbicide for use, Bayer cannot be held liable for harm caused to users of its products. However, as of the time of publication, the Supreme Court has declined to hear Monsanto’s appeals. 

The second prong on Bayer’s five-step plan is to continue managing the 170,000 claims filed to date. As reported above, while Bayer started out strong, it recently has begun to settle for huge sums of money. With 54,000 suits left to go, it remains to be seen if Bayer will return to individual negotiations. 

The third prong of the five-step plan is to substitute glyphosate with other chemicals, like Bayer’s Roundup™ product sold in Europe without glyphosate. However, without publicity or fanfare, Bayer/Monsanto has quietly removed glyphosate and substituted other active ingredients with different risk profiles from some formulations of Roundup™ sold in the United States for use by regular consumers (those without a pesticide applicator license). Some of these formulations of Roundup™ contain the active ingredient triclopyr. Advocates are alarmed at the new risk this poses to unsuspecting consumers, since the brand name remains the same. Advocates note that deficiencies in the Roundup™ warning label continue with these new formulations and active ingredients. Given Monsanto’s track record with its use of co-formulants that are potentially more toxic than glyphosate, it seems unlikely that any substitute pesticide will be any less toxic to humans and the environment. And given the failure of EPA to protect the public from these chemicals in the past, it also seems unlikely that the substitute pesticide will receive appropriate vetting.  

Bayer seems to have backtracked on the fourth step of the five-step plan, claiming first to seek individual settlements with claimants outside of the normal legal system. (The website specifically mentions “directly avoiding plaintiffs’ law firms.”) However, Bayer goes on to say that since they have been so successful in court they have decided to stick to the legal system. Recent losses in court and broad Bayer staff layoffs suggest they may be reconsidering this approach. 

The fifth step of the plan is to simply repost their “scientific safety studies” for their products, thereby ensuring “more transparency and information.” However, industry-funded studies have repeatedly been shown to have bias, poor science, or other questionable findings. An investigative report published in 2022 provided a comprehensive review of Bayer’s strategy to deny science, manufacture doubt, and discredit critics who have researched, reported on, and/or advocated against the company’s products. A report from U.S. Right to Know in collaboration with Friends of the Earth and Real Food Media, Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide, exposed not only Bayer’s malfeasance in its promotion of its glyphosate-based herbicide products, but also highlighted the broader landscape of corporate efforts to white- or green-wash products that companies know are harmful to people and the environment.  

Merchants of Poison says, “Big Tobacco’s spin tactics arguably cost millions of lives as regulations emerged long after it was evident that cigarettes cause cancer—and continue to cost lives. (The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 8 million people die annually from tobacco use.) The fossil fuel sector’s spin pushed science denialism and political inaction that has led to a warming world and is associated with millions of deaths per year, with few clear pathways to averting catastrophic climate change.” 

The report’s coauthor, Stacy Malkan, commented, “The pesticide industry is not just following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco and Big Oil, they co-wrote the playbook — from their attacks on Silent Spring author Rachel Carson 60 years ago to the recent Monsanto-led assault on the cancer researchers of the World Health Organization.”  

As Beyond Pesticides has reported, the pesticide industry has engaged in knowingly deceptive and aggressive tactics to persuade the public that pesticides are not only “safe,” but also somehow “critical” to producing enough food for the world’s population. Both claims are demonstrably false. Beyond Pesticides has frequently written about the impressive capacity of organic, regenerative, agroecological agriculture to produce high-quality and sufficient food supplies as well as being key to turning around the public health, biodiversity, and climate crises. (See here, and the latest news here). 

The unsavory and sometimes corrupt activity has also extended, as Beyond Pesticides has covered, to federal agency staff, including managers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which oversees pesticide registration and regulation. Indeed, unholy “alliances” between industry lobbyists and EPA staff exacerbate the toxic pesticide problem, as we have reported here and here. 

And it is not just EPA that is often “towing” the pesticide line for Bayer and other manufacturers, but U.S. foreign policy has engaged in efforts to tamp down restrictions more stringent than the EPA. Both Thailand in 2019 and Mexico in 2024 adopted bans on the use of glyphosate products in their countries, only to be met with pushback by the U.S. government that resulted in their postponement and possible withdrawal of the bans.  

This most recent study of glyphosate reinforces the urgent need to get off the toxic pesticide treadmill and adopt organic regenerative approaches that obviate the use of these compounds.  

What Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2018 still holds: “Beyond Pesticides has strategically sought to transform our country’s approach to pest management, both agricultural and residential/structural, by eliminating reliance on pesticides and advancing organic management practices that do not rely on toxic inputs. In this context, pesticides like glyphosate become an example of chemical industry influence resulting in inadequate underlying laws and regulations. . . [W]e must teach that these chemicals are not only dangerous to environmental health, but are unnecessary to prevent pests and achieve pest management goals.” 

Please see the Daily News Blog and Take Action features on the Beyond Pesticides’ website homepage, and join Beyond Pesticides  to support our campaign to end the use of toxic pesticides, such as glyphosate, in the next decade. To reduce exposure to pesticides such as glyphosate residue in conventional food, please see Eating With A Conscious.  

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

Sources: 

Glyphosate presence in human sperm: First report and positive correlation with oxidative stress in an infertile French population, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, June 15, 2024 

Bayer wants legislative help to fight its cancer lawsuits, The Economist, May 18, 2024 

Glyphosate (Roundup™) Factsheet, Beyond Pesticides, 2017 

Glyphosate: Cancer, endocrine disruption and other health risks, US Right to Know, January 19, 2024 

Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office, The Intercept, July 2021 

The Monsanto Papers – Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption and One Man’s Search for Justice, Carey Gillam, March 2021 

Roundup litigation discovery documents: implications for public health and journal ethics, Journal of Public Health Policy, June 2018  

(Beyond Pesticides, June 3, 2024) Environmental advocates continue to raise concerns about the Farm Bill (H.R.8467—Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024) that emerged from the House Agriculture Committee on May 23 with provisions they say will allow the escalation of environmental threats and then insure big agriculture commodity producers for losses attributable to those environmental disasters through an expansion of USDA’s crop insurance program. Through this taxpayer supported program, USDA covers farm revenue losses due to “natural causes such as drought, excessive moisture [e.g., floods], hail, wind, frost, insects, and disease. . .” Petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use in chemical-intensive land management and agricultural production contributes to the climate emergency and associated weather, insect, and plant disease threats.

Advocates point out that the House Agriculture Committee Farm Bill reduces environmental protections by (i) preempting local and state government authority to allow more restrictive standards at the municipal level, (ii) taking away the right to sue pesticide manufacturers and allied companies for a failure to fully disclose adverse effects of the products they produce or use, and (iii) weakening the regulatory process intended to protect endangered species and biodiversity from pesticides.  

Tell Your U.S. Representative and Senators To Support a Farm Bill that Promotes a Sustainable Future.

The frequency of climate disasters can no longer be attributed to “natural causes.” Climate change contributes to “natural” disasters including storms, drought, wildfires, extreme temperatures, and more—including earthquakes and volcanic activity. Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. In a recent article in Science, Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. According to the International Panel of Climate Change, agriculture and forestry account for as much as 25% of human-induced GHG emissions. Last year was a historic year of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters.

In addition, the increase in commodity crop subsidies reliant on expensive pesticides and chemicals (accumulating $59.7 billion in production expenses for farmers as of 2022) will continue to be a significant factor in federal spending on interest payments on the national debt in the years ahead unless the Farm Bill stops propping up agricultural production systems that are contributing to costly environmental and revenue crises.

The same industry interests that seek to increase federal spending on crop insurance for chemical-intensive agriculture are also in support of weakening local democratic institutions and decision-making processes with federal preemption language that directly impacts the ability of local governments and the courts to protect the public, including farmers, from associated harms. There are two central critiques of the House Farm Bill relating to federal preemption of local authority to restrict pesticides and the ability to litigate on harm caused by pesticides. The legislation:

1. Takes away the right to sue for failure to warn when harmed by pesticides. In Section 10204 of the House Farm Bill, language shields (gives immunity to) the producers and users of toxic pesticides from liability lawsuits associated with the harm that their products cause. The provision will block lawsuits like those successfully advanced against Bayer/Monsanto for adverse health effects, like cancer, associated with exposure to their products and companies’ failure to warn about these effects on EPA approved product labels.
2. Eliminates the rights of states and local governments to restrict pesticides and protect public health and the environment. In Sections 10204 and 10205, the attack on local and state authority to restrict pesticides is a bottom-line issue. Local restrictions on pesticide use in the face of ongoing poisoning and contamination have shown that effective land management does not require toxic pesticide use. Historically, localities have exercised their democratic right to protect public health and safety where state and federal standards are not adequately protective of their residents. Local governments have exercised this right in many areas affecting the health of people and the environment, such as with smoking, recycling, dog waste, and other standards.

The House Farm Bill also threatens to undermine rulemaking and administrative accountability under provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) that are intended to protect biodiversity and provide for public participation in decision making.

For example, the bill removes the requirement for reinitiation of consultation on an approved land management plan when new threatened or endangered species or habitats are designated or new information becomes available about them—which would undermine protection for such species and habitats. The House Farm Bill would also expand the U.S. Forest Service’s ability to exclude destructive practices like logging or road building from environmental review pursuant to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on 3,000 to 10,000 acre projects.

Another provision would open the door for federal agencies to declare industry interests more valid than the interests of organizations fighting for stringent pesticide regulations that impact public health, biodiversity, and climate.

The House bill contains additional problematic provisions undermining ecosystems and public health, including the continuation of a decade-long attack on the Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting program under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) that threatens local governments’ ability to regulate pesticide discharge into waterways.

The House Farm Bill fails on numerous levels to protect public health, ecosystems health, and long-term stability of the U.S. agricultural economy. Investing the same amount of funding and political will into the National Organic Program would not only ensure financial stability for farmers across the spectrum of markets, but also serve as a bulwark against the impending crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health exacerbated by intervention from the toxic pesticide industry and their allies.

Tell Your U.S. Representative and Senators To Support a Farm Bill that Promotes a Sustainable Future.

Letter to U.S. Representatives and Senators:

The House Agriculture Committee voted on May 23 to move the Farm, Food, and National Security Act (House Farm Bill) out of committee along with amendments undermining ecosystem health and local democratic authority. The enthusiastic applause from industrial agriculture reveals its support for a system that relies on petrochemical-based pesticides—leading to economic instability, ecosystem collapse, and the degradation of democratic institutions.

The Federal Crop Insurance Program—which protects chemical-intensive farmers from the economic consequences of their actions—illustrates the problem. With support for entrenched dependency on petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, the committee’s bill requires taxpayers to pay through the government’s crop insurance program for escalating losses caused by chemical-intensive farming practices, contributing to yield losses that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says are due to “natural causes such as drought, excessive moisture [e.g., floods], hail, wind, frost, insects, and disease. . .”

These climate disasters can no longer be attributed to “natural causes.” Climate change contributes to disasters such as storms, drought, wildfires, extreme temperatures, and more. Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. In a recent article in Science, Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target.

The same industry interests that seek to increase federal spending on crop insurance for chemical-intensive agriculture are also in support of weakening local democratic institutions and decision-making processes with federal preemption language that directly impacts the ability of local governments and the courts to protect the public, including farmers, from associated harms. The House Farm Bill takes away the right to sue for failure to warn when harmed by pesticides and eliminates the rights of states and local governments to restrict pesticides and protect public health and the environment. Historically, localities have exercised their democratic right to protect public health and safety where state and federal standards are not adequately protective of their residents—a right exercised in many areas affecting the health of people and the environment, such as smoking, recycling, and dog waste. It is essential to maintain these rights.

The House bill also threatens to undermine rulemaking and administrative accountability under provisions of the Endangered Species Act and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act that are intended to protect biodiversity and provide for public participation in decision making, such as removing the requirement to reinitiate consultation on an approved land management plan when new threatened or endangered species or habitats are designated, or new information becomes available about them and expanding the U.S. Forest Service’s ability to exclude destructive practices from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The House bill contains additional problematic provisions undermining ecosystems and public health, including the continuation of a decade-long attack on the Clean Water Act permitting program under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) that threatens local governments’ ability to regulate pesticide discharge into waterways.

The House Farm Bill fails to protect public health, ecosystems health, and long-term stability of the U.S. agricultural economy. Investing funding and political will into the National Organic Program would not only ensure financial stability for farmers across the spectrum of markets, but also serve as a bulwark against the ongoing crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health exacerbated by the toxic pesticide industry and their allies.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 31, 2024) Among the many promises that have been made by agribusiness to farmers and consumers, the glories of crops genetically engineered (GE) to resist pests stand out. GE tools—genes—were touted as “natural,” and promised to reduce the use of toxic pesticides. The first such plants incorporating DNA or RNA from other organisms hit the market in the 1990s. Today more than 70% of all GE organisms are engineered to tolerate herbicides, and the overwhelming majority of corn, soybean and cotton varieties are engineered to to be toxic to insects. See Beyond Pesticides’ backgrounder on GE here.

Despite a dramatic increase in the use of herbicides and the fast development of weed and insect resistance to plant incorporated pesticides, this month the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly released a document entitled “The Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology – Plan for Regulatory Reform under the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology.” It responds to a 2022 executive order by President Biden to “accelerate biotechnology innovation” and “support the safe use of biotechnology products” by using a “science- and risk-based, predictable, efficient, and transparent regulatory system.”

The most common GE insecticide is the class of Bt toxins derived from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which are commonly used on the various moth species whose larvae plague corn, soybeans and cotton. Genes for the toxins are inserted into the crop genomes so that each part of the plant will express them. But nature evolves inexorably: USDA knew at least by 1998 that resistance to Bt toxins was going to be a problem, and within five years growers reported that the first Bt toxin was becoming ineffective against target insects. Currently, resistance has been documented to at least three Bt toxins.

Although many voices objected to using genes as pesticides in agriculture when the idea was first proposed, technologies for doing so have proliferated while regulation has been criticized as being slipshod at best. It has also been duplicative, inefficient and confusing, causing the chemical industry—principally Monsanto (now Bayer), Dow Chemical, and Syngenta to complain about red tape while also feeling pressure to invent new GE insecticidal technologies faster than they become obsolete.

Much of the multi-agency document demonstrates that it is aimed at reducing obstacles to industry’s further development, marketing and dissemination of GE products. For example, interstate transport of some GE plants will no longer need permits. EPA has recently implemented a final rule regarding “plant-incorporated protectants” (PIPs) that exempts some PIPS from regulation under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). The FDA will assist developers of genome-edited plants to “voluntarily interact with FDA prior to marketing foods from their new varieties.”

In a rare acknowledgment of actual hazards and risks, the document also states that FDA and USDA “intend to collaborate” to create “stewardship” of food crops that may be unsafe, such as those with genes inserted from other species that may be allergenic. The document also addresses the use of modified microorganisms, again devoting much of its consideration to making it easier for commercial interests to develop and market their creations rather than protecting public health or sustainable agriculture.

While GE technologies have reduced the use of field-applied pesticides somewhat, the Darwinian development of pest resistance remains a glaring problem. After resistance to Bt toxins appeared, biotech companies started “stacking” genes for more toxins into their seeds. This merely delayed the inevitable. Currently the widely-used “pyramid” of three toxins is reaching the end of its useful life.

Because resistance emerged almost immediately during initial product development, biotech interests and regulators began telling farmers to include refugia on the edges of fields, and eventually within fields. Refugia would be planted on the edges of non-Bt crops, with the idea that the resistant and non-resistant bugs would interbreed, thus maintaining genetic susceptibility to Bt in the overall population.

This has not worked well. For example, adult females of the western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) don’t travel outside the refugia, so they do not mate with the resistant males from the main fields. This seems like something that could have been checked in a field trial before promising farmers refugia would solve their problems, but apparently this did not happen. An additional problem is that refuge strategies are not always practicable. According to the Malaysian NGO Third World Network, “Over-enthusiastic modelling of efficacy under ideal conditions has been one factor that has promoted the reduction in refuge requirements in the US, but the claimed efficacy has not been reflected in real-world conditions.”

In 2021 an Iowa State University entomologist described a further problem emerging from the use of Bt products against the western corn rootworm: Monoculture—vast areas planted with one crop—creates “the ideal habitat for this pest, and can be associated with large populations…and high levels of larval feeding injury.” Thus not only monoculture per se, but monoculture over time exacerbates the convoluted contradictions of industrial agriculture.

Industrial geneticists may believe they understand the genetic and environmental factors that determine genetic modifications’ effectiveness and the development of resistance by pests, but they have to-date failed. Research by Chinese scientists reported in 2021 provides a striking example. Helicoverpa armigera, a cotton bollworm, is a rapidly spreading pest throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. The Chinese scientists found that the bollworms infected by a densovirus known to be beneficial to the insect had higher resistance to Bt crops, and that areas in China planted with Bt crops had a higher rate of viral infection. The researchers suggest that the mutualistic relationship between the virus and the insect led to enhanced insect survival after Bt exposure. The mutualism reduces the fitness cost to the bollworm for developing resistance as the bollworm outcompetes the toxin. The potential for microbial involvement in Bt resistance had not occurred to the industry.

This study demonstrates the ultimate folly of corporate biotechnological thinking. Changing a few genes in one organism may have far-reaching ripple effects that are likely unpredictable. The ways in which various species, such as insects and their microbial companions, negotiate the spectrum between pathogenicity, mutualism, and symbiosis is poorly understood, and these relationships interact with environmental conditions. Pest resistance to GE technologies may be only one of a cascade of unintended consequences. For example, there is evidence that GE pest resistance genes affect product quality, as illustrated by Burkina Faso’s renowned cotton industry suffering severe losses after adopting Bt seeds, which produced inferior cotton.

Yet the agricultural biotech industry is busily trying to develop new generations of the same idea, including higher pyramids of stacked insecticidal traits. SmartStax PRO, a new GE corn product devised jointly by Bayer and Dow Chemical, is just being introduced into U.S agriculture. It combines six different toxin genes, five derived from Bt (one of which does not exist in nature, according to a backgrounder from the Brussels-based Institute for Independent Impact Assessment of Biotechnology (Test BioTech)). It also contains an RNA interference component that lethally silences an essential gene in the rootworm. Bayer markets Intacta 2 Xtend for soybeans, which contains a stack of three toxin genes along with tolerance to glyphosate, glufosinate and dicamba. These novel combinations of toxins and pesticide tolerance genes may produce sharply higher toxicity and affect far more species than the targets. It is unclear whether the manufacturers have investigated the broader effects of combining all these mechanisms, but likely have, as usual, looked at each one in isolation.

A 2022 Test BioTech report stresses that new gene editing techniques pose a profound risk to the planetary ecosystem because “an increasing number of projects [are] looking at wild populations and a broad range of organisms such as microorganisms, insects, rodents and trees…similarly to environmental pollution with plastics and chemicals, it is not always an individual NGT-GMO which may create the real problems, but rather the sum of diverse effects on the environment.”

What seems obvious is that either or both of two outcomes are likely: pests, which are simply availing themselves of a bountiful, convenient food source—will again, as ever, develop resistance to humans’ technological wonders; or the unintended consequences of each technology and their combinations will produce the very food crises the industry claims to be preventing. As the Biden administration’s biotechnology modernization document shows, industry is proceeding apace with the help of government policies. We wonder whether these interests are so grotesquely deluded as to their power over nature, or simply cynically looking for products “good enough” to delay the inevitable through a few more rounds of profit-taking at the expense of farmers, consumers, and the natural world.

See Beyond Pesticides organic agriculture page and efforts to continually build organic integrity and the organic sector as what appears to be the only alternative to the current existential crises challenged by pesticide-induced diseases, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency.

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

What You Can Do:

• Tell the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Secretary of State to withdraw opposition to Mexico’s ban on imported GE corn. In 2023, Mexico banned genetically modified corn, including Bt corn, and ordered the phaseout of glyphosate, a move that the U.S. has challenged under the Canada-US-Mexico Trade Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Act in 2018. See Beyond Pesticides’ coverage of this issue for more detail.
• Tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and members of Congress to require USDA agencies to honestly disclose genetically engineered ingredients and carry out its modernization goals.
• Urge your U.S. Senators and Representative to ask Agriculture Committees to hold oversight hearings to ensure that USDA, FDA and EPA hold to those goals.

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

Sources:

The Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology – Plan for Regulatory Reform under the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration
May 2024
https://usbiotechnologyregulation.mrp.usda.gov/eo14081-section8c-plan-reg-reform.pdf

Rapid spread of a densovirus in a major crop pest following wide-scale adoption of Bt-cotton in China
Xiao et al.
eLife 2021
https://elifesciences.org/articles/66913

Canada & US vs.  Mexico’s Ban on GM Corn The CUSMA trade dispute champions the biotech industry over food sovereignty
Canadian Biotechnology Action Network Brief
January 29, 2024
https://cban.ca/wp-content/uploads/CBAN-Brief-Canada-vs-Mexico-Jan-2024.pdf

Bt Crops Past Their Sell-By Date: A Failing Technology Searching for New Markets?
Third World Network Bhd (198701004592 (163262-P) 2022
www.twn.my

https://wp.twnnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/BiotechnBiosafe19complete.pdf

(Beyond Pesticides, May 30, 2024) The House Agriculture Committee voted 33-21 on May 23 to move the Farm, Food, and National Security Act out of committee after a contentious markup and onslaught of amendments that undermine water health, soil health, and local democratic authority to protect people and the environment from toxic pesticide exposure. One of nearly sixty amendments introduced in the markup last week included the continuation of a decade-long attack on National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit via Clean Water Act (CWA) for pesticide discharge. What was most illuminating however was not the passage of the bill itself, but Big Agriculture’s raucous approval. Advocates see pesticide industry and its allies’ support for what it is—the reliance on petrochemical-based pesticides leading to economic instability, ecosystem collapse, and the degradation of democratic institutions. With support for entrenched dependency on petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, the committee’s bill requires taxpayers to pay through the government’s crop insurance program for escalating losses caused by chemical-intensive farming practices, contributing to yield losses that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says are “natural causes such as drought, excessive moisture [e.g., floods], hail, wind, frost, insects, and disease. . .” However, the frequency of these climate disasters can no longer be attributed to “natural causes.”

Federal Crop Insurance

According to data from USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) indicated in the above graph, roughly 43.7 percent of insured crop losses are a result of climate change-induced temperature increases and drought. This phenomenon has led to a year-over-year increase in annual indemnity payments by an average of 19.6 percent between 2002 and 2022. Besides cattle and dairy, oilseeds and grain production make up the largest share of U.S. farmland. Within this category falls corn, soybeans, and wheat. According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, more than 90 percent of corn and soybean acres and more than 85 percent of wheat acres were insured through the Federal Crop Insurance Program. Genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant, and therefore herbicide-dependent, crops rely on highly toxic pesticide products in the production of 96 percent of soybeans as of 2023, 95 percent of spring wheat as of 2021, and 96 percent of corn as of 2021. The toxic herbicides used on these commodity crops include, but are not limited to, atrazine, glyphosate, dicamba, 2,4-D, paraquat, mesotrione, and fluroxypyr, among others.

Simultaneously, the Congressional Budget Office earlier this year released a report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook 2024 to 2034,” which finds that federal spending on interest payments from the national debt will exceed both military and Social Security spending for the first time in U.S. history. While the report attributes much of this to tax cuts and federal pandemic aid, the increase in commodity crop subsidies reliant on expensive pesticides and chemicals (accumulating $59.7 billion in production expenses for farmers as of 2022) will continue to be a significant factor in the years ahead unless the Farm Bill stops propping up agricultural production systems that are contributing to costly environmental and revenue crises.

Attacks on Local Democracy

The same industry interests that seek to increase federal spending on crop insurance for chemical-intensive agriculture are also in support of weakening local democratic institutions and decision-making processes with federal preemption language that directly impacts local governments’ ability and intervention of the courts to protect the public, including farmers, from associated harms. In response to committee passage of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act, agricultural trade associations including the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, and National Association of Wheat Growers released press releases commending the House Agriculture Committee for its leadership in protecting farmers and crop markets, with special notice given to crop insurance. As mentioned in an earlier Daily News, there are two central critiques of the House Farm Bill relating to federal preemption of local authority to restrict pesticides and the ability to litigate on harm caused by pesticides. The legislation:

1. Takes away the right to sue for failure to warn when harmed by pesticides. In Section 10204 of the House Farm Bill, language shields (gives immunity to) the producers and users of toxic pesticides from liability lawsuits associated with the harm that their products cause. The provision will block lawsuits like those successfully advanced against Bayer/Monsanto for adverse health effects, like cancer, associated with exposure to their products and companies’ failure to warn about these effects on EPA approved product labels.
2. Prohibits the rights of states and local governments to restrict pesticides and protect public health and the environment. In Sections 10204 and 10205, the attack on local and state authority to restrict pesticides is a bottom-line issue. As momentum builds for local restrictions on pesticide use in the face of ongoing poisoning and contamination, it is clear that effective land management does not require toxic pesticide use. Historically, localities have exercised their democratic right to protect public health and safety where state and federal standards are not adequately protective of their residents. Local governments have exercised this right in many areas affecting the health of people and the environment, such as with smoking, recycling, dog waste, and other standards.

Attacks on local democracy manifest in large part from Big Agriculture’s interest in maintaining economic supremacy over alternative models, such as organic, they view as a threat to their modus operandi.

Endangered Species Under Threat

The House Farm Bill also threatens to undermine rulemaking and administrative accountability under provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) that are intended to protect biodiversity and provide for public participation in decision making.

For example, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary shall not be required to reinitiate consultation under section 7(a)(2) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1536(a)(2)) or section 402.16 of title 50, Code of Federal Regulations (or a successor regulation), on an approved land management plan prepared, amended, or revised under this section when, after the date of such approval, amendment, or revision—

1. a species is listed as a threatened or endangered species under section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1533);
2. a critical habitat for a threatened or endangered species is designated under that section; or
3. new information concerning a threatened or endangered species or critical habitat for such a species becomes available.’’ [SEC 8411, p. 635]

In exempting U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management from requiring to consult with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a Humane Society of the United States analysis points out that this would undermine newly designated endangered or threatened species and critical habitats. The House Farm Bill would also expand the U.S. Forest Service’s ability to exclude destructive practices like logging or road building from environmental review pursuant to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on 3,000 to 10,000 acre projects, as referred to in Sections 8402, 8403, and 8404.

Additionally, an amendment would change the criteria for the interagency working group decision making on pesticide regulation (pursuant to FIFRA ) by establishing that the working group “take into consideration factors, such as actual and potential differences in interest between, and the views of, those stakeholders and organizations.” [SEC 10203, p. 797] Analysis reported by Civil Eats indicates that this language, particularly “act and potential differences in interest” would open the door for federal agencies to declare industry interest more valid than the interest of organizations fighting for stringent pesticide regulations that impact public health and biodiversity.

Advocates have urged improvements in federal funding and improvements of ESA programs, including calls for increased funding for fiscal year 2024 and scrutiny over EPA’s Draft Herbicide Strategy Framework. Per the most recent update in the Framework, EPA proposes a weaker plan by shortening the mitigation requirements from a nine-point system to four tiers, offering more flexibility for farmers (including minor and specialty crops) in adopting restrictive measures, and reducing requirements in certain circumstances. Advocates have also called on the Biden Administration to significantly increase its budget request given that a budget of $841 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) alone is needed to fully implement ESA objectives. Currently, FWS only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act.

Undermining the Clean Water Act

There are additional problematic provisions that undermine ecosystems and public health, including the continuation of a decade-long attack on the Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting program under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), pursuant to Section 402. The inclusion of Amendment 18 in the House Agriculture Committee’s Farm bill text that passed the House Agriculture Committee threatens local government’s ability to regulate pesticide discharge into waterways via NPDES. In 2009, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found that point source discharges of pesticides into waters of the United States were considered pollutants under CWA. As a result of the Court’s decision, NPDES permits are now required for these discharges beginning on October 31, 2011. The goal for these permits, like any NPDES permit, is to help U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state and local agencies monitor chemicals entering waterways nationwide, help mitigate any downstream adverse health effects, and safeguard drinking water. In spite of this court ruling, industry-aligned bills continued to pop up in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2023 to remove pesticides from NPDES permitting. If passed in its current form, the 2024 House Farm Bill text will see this objective come to fruition after last year’s Supreme Court case, Sackett v. EPA (2023)—changing the definition of “waters of the United States” to exclude wetlands, and ultimately weakening EPA authority to protect them.

According to advocates, the House Farm Bill fails on numerous levels in protecting public health, ecosystems health, and long-term stability of the U.S. agricultural economy. Advocates argue that investing the same amount of funding and political will into the National Organic Program would not only ensure financial stability for farmers across the spectrum of markets, but also serve as a bulwark against the impending crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health exacerbated by intervention from the toxic pesticide industry and their allies. Follow coverage on Farm Bill developments by seeing Daily News section on this year’s Farm Bill. See Keeping Organic Strong to learn more about the climate, health, and environmental justice benefits of transforming agricultural and land management practices to an organic system. Joining the movement can happen at the click of the keyboard by subscribing to the Action of the Week.

Let Congress know how you feel about the Farm Bill provisions: Tell your U.S. Congressional Representative and Senators to support organic agriculture in the Farm Bill, but not at the expense of undermining local and state authority to enact more stringent restrictions of pesticides.

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

Source: U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee

(Beyond Pesticides, May 29, 2024) A study from the Academy of Biology and Biotechnologies and the Federal Rostov Agricultural Research Centre adds to the body of science linking pesticide use with negative impacts on soil health and bacterial communities. Antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs), considered a class of pollutants, are found in certain types of bacteria and can spread through the environment and subsequently to humans and animals. This study, performed by researchers and soil experts, found an increase in specific bacterial families that host ARGs with exposure to pesticides. 

The study aims to identify the role of agricultural soils in ARG transfer and to assess the presence and prevalence of bacterial families with and without exposure to fertilizers and pesticides. Since soil serves as a habitat for a wide range of bacteria, including many that are resistant to antibiotics, analyzing the organisms within soil samples is an indicator of overall environmental health. Agricultural soils are essential in food production, and as this study states, “[I]ntensive exploitation of such soils implies the widespread use of various chemical plant protection products (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides) and mineral fertilizers, which contribute to pollution and a decrease in soil quality.”  

Within this field study, there is a control group to compare against a group treated only with mineral fertilizers, a group treated only with pesticides, and a group treated with a combination of the fertilizers and pesticides. The experiment was conducted in the Rostov region of Russia on soy and sunflower crops grown in plots during 2022 and then on wheat grown in the same plots the following year. Soil sampling was conducted before and after exposure to the fertilizers and pesticides, and rRNA gene sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR were performed to study the soil microorganisms and to determine the bacterial community taxonomy and ARGs present in the bacteria.     

Overall, the soil bacteria community structure is similar in all studied samples, with common families of bacteria present. While the “agrochemical treatments had little effect on changes in the abundance of individual bacterial taxa,” the number of bacteria within families or genera increased or decreased with the application of fertilizers, pesticides, and the combined treatment. Most notably, the study found that “the abundance of certain taxa (Sphingomonadales, Gemmataceae, Burkholderiaceae) was significantly increased in soils treated with pesticides.” Species within these families of bacteria are known for high antibiotic resistance (studies here, here, and here). 

Resistance within bacteria can rapidly spread to neighboring bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. The resistance becomes no longer tied to a specific species but can then persist in the larger microbial environment. Stressors within the system, such as pesticides, contribute to the evolution of bacterial antibiotic resistance and horizontal gene transfer. Application of pesticides induces acquired antibiotic resistance via several pathways; mechanisms for this include the “activation of efflux pumps, inhibition of outer membrane pores for resistance to antibiotics, and gene mutation induction.” 

Chemical-intensive agricultural practices, which rely heavily on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, contribute to poor soil health and ecological destruction which, since soil serves as a natural reservoir for many ARGs, leads to higher resistance. As the researchers found, even “sublethal concentrations of pesticides can provoke oxidative stress and enhance mutagenesis in bacteria, which cause changes in antibacterial defense enzymes, among others. Pesticides can also affect the soil bacterial community, reducing diversity and shaping a specific community of bacteria, including promoting ARG hosts.” 

Additional studies suggest that pesticides drive resistance within soil microbiomes. Soils exposed to weed killers contain a greater abundance of ARGs, even at exceptionally low levels, demonstrating that pesticides can “significantly change the genetic composition of soil bacterial populations.” Moreover, another finds that “bacteria exposed to widely used herbicides like Roundup develop antibiotic resistance 100,000 times faster than average.”  

There is a history of pesticide usage that correlates with higher antibiotic resistance. For example, a common species of bacteria, Escherichia coli, becomes stimulated toward higher resistance when exposed to pesticides. Genetic mutation occurs as a result of the application of pesticides, leaving behind more resistant bacteria that can spread throughout the environment. The research indicates that this resistance develops directly in the field, with soils sprayed with pesticides likely to contain higher amounts of antibiotic resistant bacteria that then transfers to other organisms.  

As Beyond Pesticides has previously written about, in 2019 the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation reported that millions of people died as a result of resistance. The statistics state that “4.95 million people who died in 2019 suffered from drug-resistant infections, such as lower respiratory, bloodstream, and intra-abdominal infections” and “1.27 million deaths in 2019 were directly caused by AMR [antimicrobial resistance].” 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inaction, despite sponsoring research that confirms the spread of antibiotic resistance to humans from horizontal gene transfer in the environment, only adds to the problem. As drug-resistance has been documented as being on the rise for years, EPA’s response, or lack thereof, has been increasingly apparent. In one case, as previously reported by Beyond Pesticides, “The agency failed to assess the efficacy of any pesticides that are not used for public health purposes; EPA only evaluated the efficacy of antimicrobial compounds whose use patterns classify them as human-health-related—thus ignoring the impact of other antimicrobial pesticides on resistance in human pathogens.”  

The courts have not followed the science on horizontal gene transfer and the damaging effects of antibiotic resistance on public health. The courts have ignored the World Health Organization’s warning of a looming pandemic associated with antibiotic resistance and instead deferred to EPA’s inaction. In a lawsuit from December 2023 filed against the expanded use of streptomycin in citrus production for Huanglongbing, also known as “citrus greening” (a plant disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that since “EPA emphasized that ‘there is no data that antibiotic use in agriculture leads to the presence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria of human health concern” that “[a]t the present time, there is little evidence for or against the presence of microbes of human health concern in the plant agricultural environment.” And yet on May 19, 2019, The New York Times reported, “The agency approved the expanded use [of streptomycin] despite strenuous objections from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warn that the heavy use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture could spur germs to mutate so they become resistant to the drugs, threatening the lives of millions of people.” (See the following opportunity to take action on antibiotic resistance.) 

The court, in Migrant Clinicians Network, Beyond Pesticides et al. v. EPA (represented by Earthjustice), did find EPA’s action to allow expanded streptomycin use illegal for other reasons, ruling that the agency failed to reach findings on the impacts on bees and the agency’s responsibility for evaluation under the Endangered Species Act. 

Despite litigation and copious studies, there is a growing crisis in health care due to drastic increases in antibiotic resistance. Non-organic agricultural practices, which utilize antibiotics in crop and livestock production, exacerbate this major health issue by also applying harmful pesticides that promote ARGs in bacteria. Despite resistance on many farms that have led to harm and collapse, there are organic methods that offer a path forward. The foundation of all organic systems starts in the soil, which highlights the importance of promoting healthy soil and the microorganisms within it. 

Make The Safer Choice to avoid hazardous home, garden, community, and food use pesticides and learn about organic agriculture. There are direct health benefits of going organic and supporting organic, and these methods also reduce the threat of the climate crisis. Voice your concern and help to keep organics strong.      

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

Source: 

Khmelevtsova, L. et al. (2024) Effect of mineral fertilizers and pesticides application on bacterial community and antibiotic-resistance genes distribution in agricultural soils, Agronomy. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/14/5/1021. 

(Beyond Pesticides, May 28, 2024) Public comments are due May 29, 2024. With 40 percent of all vegetables grown in the U.S. coming from the state of California, the current state level process to define “regenerative agriculture” could have major impact on land management practices that address the current climate, biodiversity, and health crises. That is, according to advocates, if the process, directed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) departs from a history of poorly defined and unenforceable terms like Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Sustainable Agriculture. Virtually all consumers of food have a stake in the outcome of the definition of “regenerative,” so the current public comment period, which closes tomorrow, May 29, 2024, can help influence the outcome.

As Beyond Pesticides has reported previously, the term “regenerative” is now increasingly being advanced as a loosely defined alternative to the organic standard and label, which is transparent, defined, certified, enforced, and subject to public input. The  publication AgFunderNews (AFN) in February 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 in their supply chain practicing “regenerative” agriculture with target dates ranging from 2024 to 2050. AFN 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.”

CDFA’s Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel (SAP) proposes a framework for developing a definition:

• Being applicable, relevant, and useful for California Agriculture.
• Leading to positive impacts on California’s environmental, social, human health, and economic goals, including climate goals.
• Providing measurable and verifiable outcomes, keeping in mind variability throughout the state, and – emphasizing outcomes farmers and ranchers can easily measure and that are not economically burdensome to measure.
• Allowing for context specific outcomes (in terms of scale, geographic location, diverse and/or innovative agricultural systems, goals, etc.)
• Include the idea that building soil health, including elements of physical quality, carbon sequestered, soil biodiversity, and alleviation of climate change (e.g., practices funded by the CDFA Healthy Soils Program) as a foundational element.

However, Beyond Pesticides states in comments that this framework will be not effective if definitions, policies, and rules fail to meet the following criteria:

1. Definition clarity and enforceability;
2. Systems plan (establishes baseline for management practices intended to create resiliency and prevent pests);
3. Rigorous standard for allowed/prohibited substances list with mechanism for incorporating real-time data on hazards and alternatives into reevaluation of allowed list;
4. Certification and enforcement system (third party enforcement);
5. Process for public participation to ensure a feedback loop for continuous improvement; and
6. Funding to ensure elements are carried out in a robust way.

Regenerative agriculture must be organic.
Organic agriculture, which has been widely adopted in California, fits the framework proposed by the SAP as well as the criteria above.

>> Tell CDFA and USDA that regenerative agriculture starts with organic. Comments to CDFA are due May 29, 2024.

Organic agriculture can mitigate climate change.
Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. In a recent article in Science, Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. According to the International Panel of Climate Change, agriculture and forestry account for as much as 25% of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The contribution of animal agriculture has been estimated at 14.5% to 87% or more of total GHG emissions. These estimates include emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. The carbon dioxide contribution largely comes from converting land from natural forest to pasture or cropland.

“Regenerative” agriculture is widely considered to be a solution for reducing or even reversing these impacts. Unfortunately, a movement by promoters of chemical-intensive agriculture has fooled some environmentalists into supporting toxic “regenerative” agriculture. While recognizing practices that sequester carbon in the soil—practices that are central to organic agriculture—the so-called “regenerative agriculture” promoted by these groups ignores the direct climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizers, the damage to soil health caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the fact that pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing is dependent on fossil fuels—as key ingredients as well as for the heat and energy driving chemical reactions. It is important to see through this deception.

Organic practices preserve natural lands and biodiversity. Natural forests are more effective than tree plantations in sequestering carbon. Preserving natural land increases biodiversity, which also reduces dependence on petroleum-based pesticides. Organic farms are required to “comprehensively conserve biodiversity by maintaining or improving all natural resources, including soil, water, wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife, as required by § 205.200 of the regulations and per the § 205.2 definition of Natural resources of the operation.”

Organic agriculture benefits human health. By avoiding the use of antibiotics and toxic pesticides, organic agriculture protects farmworkers and consumers. In addition, studies have found organically grown plant foods and milk to be nutritionally superior to those produced by chemical-intensive agriculture.

The National Organic Program provides for clarity and enforceability, while providing processes that are open and transparent to growers, consumers, and the public at large. As an established program, it also has its own funding mechanism. CDFA should start by defining “regenerative” as—at a minimum—meeting organic standards.

It is crucial, as we move forward with a plan to harness agriculture in the fight against climate change, biodiversity collapse, and health problems, that we not be misled into promoting the same practices that have created the problem. As aptly stated by Jeff Moyer of the Rodale Institute, “We believe that in order to be regenerative, you have to start by being organic. It’s a little disingenuous to say you can regenerate soil health and sequester carbon and still use nitrogen fertilizers and synthetic pesticides. What you’re really saying is equivalent to saying ‘I want to be healthy as a person, but I still want to smoke cigarettes.'”

>> Tell CDFA and USDA that regenerative agriculture starts with organic. Comments to CDFA are due May 29, 2024.

Letter to California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel 
We support the urgent need to adopt regenerative agricultural practices that mitigate climate change, improve soil health, restore biodiversity, enhance ecosystems, and contribute to human health. Past experience with poorly defined and unenforceable terms like Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Sustainable Agriculture raises serious problems that well-intentioned efforts to define regenerative could repeat and, in the process, stifle the growth and continuous improvement of certified organic practices. Organic is a necessary baseline or foundation of a new regenerative standard because it eliminates the use of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers in meeting the existential environmental and health crises of our time. A standard for “regenerative” must do this as well if it is to be helpful and not harmful in advancing the critical changes needed in this time of crises.

CDFA’s Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel (SAP) proposes a framework for developing a definition. However, that framework will be ineffective if definitions, policies, and rules fail to meet these criteria:

1. Definition clarity and enforceability;
2. Systems plan (establishes baseline for management practices intended to create resiliency and prevent pests);
3. Rigorous standard for allowed/prohibited substances list with a mechanism for incorporating real-time data on hazards and alternatives into reevaluation of allowed list;
4. Certification and enforcement system (third party enforcement);
5. Process for public participation to ensure a feedback loop for continuous improvement; and
6. Funding to ensure elements are carried out in a robust way.

Regenerative agriculture must be organic.
Organic agriculture, which has been widely adopted in California, fits the issues in the framework proposed by the SAP as well as the criteria above.

Organic agriculture can mitigate climate change.
Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change. In a recent article in Science, Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. According to the International Panel of Climate Change, agriculture and forestry account for as much as 25% of human-induced GHG emissions. The contribution of animal agriculture has been estimated at 14.5% to 87% or more of total GHG emissions. These estimates include emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. The carbon dioxide contribution largely comes from converting land from natural forest to pasture or cropland.

While recognizing practices that sequester carbon in the soil “regenerative agriculture” employing toxic chemicals ignores the direct climate impacts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, the damage to soil health caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the fact that pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing is dependent on fossil fuels—as key ingredients as well as for the heat and energy driving chemical reactions. It is important to see through this deception.

Organic practices preserve natural lands and biodiversity. Natural forests are more effective than tree plantations in sequestering carbon. Preserving natural land increases biodiversity, which also reduces dependence on petroleum-based pesticides. Organic farms are required to “comprehensively conserve biodiversity by maintaining or improving all natural resources, including soil, water, wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife.

Organic agriculture benefits human health. By avoiding the use of antibiotics and toxic pesticides, organic agriculture protects farmworkers and consumers.

The USDA organic seal is backed by an enforceable inspection system. CDFA should start by defining “regenerative” as—at a minimum—meeting organic standards.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
I am concerned that “regenerative” agriculture, which is widely considered to be a solution for reducing or even reversing climate change, will have negative impacts if not properly defined. Unfortunately, a movement by promoters of chemical-intensive agriculture has fooled some environmentalists into supporting toxic “regenerative” agriculture. The so-called “regenerative agriculture” promoted by these groups ignores the direct climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizers, the damage to soil health caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the fact that pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing is dependent on fossil fuels—as key ingredients as well as for the heat and energy driving chemical reactions. It is important to see through this deception.

The climate crisis and the devastating decline in biodiversity are escalating because of uncontrolled and unnecessary reliance on toxic chemicals. These threats to life require a meaningful holistic strategy to end our fossil fuel dependence and use of materials that release harmful levels of noxious gases (including greenhouse gases).

Agriculture must—across the board and on an expedited five-year schedule—shift to organic practices. Organic practices both sequester carbon and eliminate petroleum-based pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Importantly, the data show that organic agriculture now operates without sacrificing productivity or profitability. While the vested economic interests in the petroleum and chemical industry cling to the status quo, there are good jobs and money to be made in a green economy.

We need a national plan to shift to 100% organic farming. Organic land management is more effective at reducing emissions and sequesters carbon in the soil. There is already a national program for certifying farms that meet organic standards. Organic operations must “comprehensively conserve biodiversity by maintaining or improving all natural resources, including soil, water, wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife.”

Undefined “regenerative” agriculture falls short by ignoring the direct climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizers, the damage to soil health and ecosystem services caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the fact that pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing is dependent on fossil fuels—as key ingredients and for the heat and energy-driving chemical reactions. 

We need a national land management plan.  Preserving natural land increases biodiversity, reducing dependence on petroleum-based pesticides, and is more effective in sequestering carbon. Biodiversity buffers against damage from climate change—for example, by protecting shorelines from storm damage.

Preserving natural lands and transitioning farms to organic production should be the cornerstones to combating climate change.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 24, 2024) Even allegedly “low-toxicity” pesticides such as flupyradifurone (insecticide), azoxystrobin, and difenoconazole (fungicides) pose adverse health effects to solitary ground-nesting squash bees (Xenoglossa pruinose), according to a study published in Biological Sciences. Fungicide exposure led to less pollen collected per flower, while exposure to flupyradifurone (FPF) produced larger offspring (which make it more challenging for them to fly). Simultaneous exposure to the three pesticides “induced hyperactivity in female squash bees relative to both the control and single pesticide exposure, and reduced the number of emerging offspring per nest compared to individual pesticide treatments.” With United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations-sponsored World Bee Day earlier this week, now more than ever advocates are calling for the elimination of toxic insecticide classes, such as neonicotinoids and butanolides, and their wholesale replacement with organic land management principles.

This study was written by Sabrina Rondeau, PhD, postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa, and Nigel E. Raine, PhD, professor at University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Science. Published on March 20, 2024, the researchers delve into the individual and co-exposure impacts of two fungicides and one insecticide, which is important, given the documented synergistic effects of chemical mixtures cited in other peer-reviewed, scientific studies.

The researchers used “10 hoop houses covered with bee-proof mesh and divided in the middle by a flexible wall made from transparent, colorless polyethylene plastic sheeting to obtain 20 experimental units” alongside Lakefield, Ontario, Canada in 2020. The site was sprayed with flupyradifurone and the two fungicides one week before the squash bees were introduced to their hoop houses. None of the pesticides were sprayed the following year. Over the three weeks of the experiment, Drs. Rondeau and Raine gathered data on nesting activity, foraging activity, motor activity, crop yield and flower counts, offspring production, and pesticide residues. Regarding the results specifically for the fungicides, “[o]n average, female squash bees collected 32% less pollen per single flower visit () and spent 24% less time handling squash flowers () in enclosures treated with Quadris Top [azoxystrobin and difenoconazole].” Regarding chemical mixture of Sivanto (FPF) and Quadris Top, “Computing simple main effects of pesticide treatments revealed that the mean number of offspring that emerged per nest was significantly lower for bees that were exposed to both pesticides compared to those that were only exposed to either [pesticide product.]”

This is not the first time that neonicotinoid insecticides have been found to have adverse effects on pollinators and other living organisms, including humans. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered FPF in January 2015, deeming the insecticide safer than on-the-market neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid, even though their own field studies reveal high mortality in adult bees within 24 hours of treatment.

The European Union followed suit, with the Directorate-General for Health and Safety authorizing its approval in November 2015 in spite of advocates warnings of its hasty roll-out. Organizations including Beyond Pesticides have taken action by advocating for the passage of Saving America’s Pollinators Act in 2019. Groups such as Center for Biological Diversity have engaged in litigation on Bayer’s proposal to EPA to permit expanded use of FPF on over 300,000 acres of tobacco-growing land nationwide in 2018. A 2020 study published in PLOS One affirms the concerns of pollinator friends, finding that FPF and sulfoxaflor were found to increase cell death (apoptosis) and oxidative stress in honey bees. Another study also published in 2020 in Biological Sciences found that FPF has the same mode of action as neonics, with potential to remain in the soil for months or years after its original application.

Difenoconazole, meanwhile, has been found to have possible links to an increase in cancer (possible carcinogen) and suspected endocrine disruption. Additionally, a 2023 study published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that strawberries sprayed with this fungicide reduced their flavor and fragrance, posing implications for the economic wellbeing of strawberry farmers who remain on the chemical treadmill. Azoxystrobin also has adverse health effects on humans, including eye irritation and nutrient absorption disruption, as well as potential toxicity to aquatic organisms due to algae blooms, permanence in groundwater, and leaching from soil into living organisms. Among the over 2,000 samples tested for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2020 Pesticide Residue Monitoring Report, 185 different pesticide residues were detected; of that 185, the fungicide azoxystrobin appeared the most frequently (146 times). Litigation on azoxystrobin has challenged its use on a New York State golf course and EPA fined Syngenta $1.2 million for, among other reasons, the pesticide company’s failure to maintain study records used for the pesticide’s registration—as required by the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)—that characterized the food residues resulting from the use of azoxystrobin and propiconazole. For more information, see Daily News sections on neonicotinoids, pollinators, and chemical mixtures. See also the adverse effects of difenoconazole and azoxystrobin, as well the corresponding peer-reviewed scientific literature, in the Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management.

After engaging in decades of advocacy on biodiversity protections, public health, and holistic climate action, advocates continue to push for the expansion of organic land management principles and the National Organic Program. Why? The long-term economic and ecological benefits of organic food systems are reinforced by the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances, which renders toxic petrochemical-based pesticides, including neonicotinoids, obsolete. See Bee Protective: Pollinators and Pesticides to see a slew of educational resources, including videos, infographics, regulatory actions, and scientific literature, on the adverse effects of toxic pesticides on pollinator species. At-home gardeners and aspiring organic farmers can view the Pollinator-Friendly Seeds and Nursery Directory to identify organic seed companies in your state/region. Whether you are a veteran beekeeper or just getting started, BEE Protective Beekeeper Resources offers lists of state extension schools by region, as well as state/local and national groups, to establish community with like-minded groups.

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

Source: Biological Sciences

(Beyond Pesticides, May 23, 2024)  A study recently 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.   

LCA is a commonly used methodology to estimate food production system impacts on the environment through resource depletion and pollutant emissions. The results—that organic food production is less impactful on the environment—add to the robust body of research that underscores the importance of organic farming to the development of a sustainable global food system while addressing climate change. Beyond Pesticides has long argued that one of the most powerful tools in fighting global warming is organic agriculture, as it sequesters atmospheric carbon, eliminates the use of fossil fuel-based synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, and provides environmental and human health benefits. This study and most of the 100 studies it evaluates, do not recognize that conventional industrial agriculture relies on a treadmill of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, from cradle to grave, exacerbating the climate crisis.   

The impact of food production on the environment has been well documented. In 2015, it was estimated that food production accounted for 34% of the total emissions of greenhouse gases for the year. In addition, it is estimated that global food systems account for 70% of the world’s freshwater use and 78% of freshwater pollution. Agriculture is also responsible for much of the change in land use (primarily deforestation) and loss of biodiversity.  

Study Methodology 

To measure the impact of organic versus conventional food production systems, the Nature study looks at data from 100 studies, including 75 comparative studies of organic and conventional food production and 25 studies of organic food production between 2000 and 2020. Products analyzed include animals (milk, pig, cattle, lamb, seafood, chicken, and eggs) and plants (vegetables, grain and cereals, fruits, nuts, and aromatic beverages such as tea) from geographical regions around the world, except Africa for which no data was available. 

The study includes impacts per mass (amount of food produced) and per production unit (amount of land farmed). Significant differences in the environmental impact of organic versus conventional systems are found when measured per production unit. Specifically, organic dairy production has an estimated 22% lower impact on Global Warming Potential (GWP), which measures the potential increase in acidity of an ecosystem. Organic systems demonstrate a 47% lower eutrophication potential (or potential enrichment of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with nutrients), likely due to the lack of use of chemical fertilizers. Energy use is 32% lower in organic systems. Eco-toxicity, or the “fate, exposure, and effects of eco-toxic substances on different species in soil and water,” is significantly lower for organics, given the lack of use of toxic pesticides. Water use analysis finds a generally lower level of use of water in organic systems, likely due to the increased water retention capacity of healthy soil.    

Study Limitations 

The Nature study finds no significant difference in the environmental impacts of organic versus conventional farming systems when measured per unit of mass produced. When measured by volume, the environmental impacts of conventional practices are watered down, in part due to the type of data collected. Specifically, the review cites the lack of information on biodiversity Impacts and eco-toxicity potential. The study also cites limitations to LCA approach and calls for more research to “model potential biodiversity loss, pesticide effects and changes in soil organic carbon in LCA…although the use of pesticides affects both toxicity and biodiversity impacts, (they) were rarely considered in LCA of food products.”  

Thus, while the study demonstrates the need to transition to organic agriculture as soon as possible to stop the increasingly devastating effects of climate change, it also demonstrates the limitations of the LCA (life cycle assessments) methodology to fully understand the impacts of agriculture on the environment. Few of the studies in the Nature analysis include data on soil carbon sequestration (SOC), meaning only a portion of the environmental benefits of organic agriculture are being captured.  

Measuring Sequestration of Carbon (SOC) 

As Beyond Pesticides reported previously, under organic management, healthy soil can absorb and store 1,000 pounds of carbon per acre foot of soil annually. This translates to about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre drawn down from the air and sequestered into organic matter in soil. (It is noteworthy that use of synthetic fertilizers undermines the carbon-capture ability of some kinds of terrain, such as salt marshes.) A fact often overlooked by policy makers—and researchers—in examining climate strategies is that carbon-sequestering soil practices are federally mandated in certified organic agriculture. 

Many readers are familiar with one of the first research efforts on this topic:  For over 40 years, the Rodale Institute has been studying and comparing organic and conventional agricultural practices at their 386-acre farm in Pennsylvania (see full report here). Three agricultural systems have been developed over time: the “conventional” system, which represents a typical U.S. grain farm that fertilizes with synthetic nitrogen and controls weeds with synthetic herbicides; the “organic legume” system, which represents an organic grain system of annual grain and cover crops with leguminous cover crops for fertility; and the “organic manure” system, which represents an organic dairy or beef operation of annual feed grain and perennial forage crops with leguminous cover crops and periodic applications of composted manure for fertility. They found that after 40 years, the SOC was significantly higher in the organic manure system than in conventional and organic legume systems. In addition, microbial biomass, diversity, and activity is higher in the organic plots and those plots had reduced soil compaction, all measures of good soil health. Without sufficient measures of SOC, a substantial portion of the organic story is not being told. Beyond Pesticides corroborates the findings in the Rodale study that organic agriculture is a crucial solution to address cascading crises relating to climate change and public health.  

Negative Climate Impacts of Synthetic Fertilizers and Pesticides 

As reported by Beyond Pesticides in October 2021 before COP26, the use of synthetic fertilizers is a particular and noxious contributor to the rising planetary temperature. This happens largely through these products’ emissions of nitrous oxide (NOx)—another potent greenhouse gas that also pollutes the air and feeds the development of ozone. (For more, see here and here).  

Measuring Biodiversity 

In the current Nature study, the Biodiversity Impact assessment is limited to only three studies of dairy farms and has widely varying results. It has long been established that food production is a major contributor to global biodiversity loss. Over one-third of land is currently used for agriculture and expansion of food production is predicted to reduce habitat for approximately 88% of terrestrial birds, mammals, and amphibians by 2050. While this study did not recognize a meaningful way of measuring biodiversity loss, the 2021 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report, Food System Impacts on Biodiversity Loss, identifies the global food system as the primary driver of biodiversity loss. The UNEP report points to the conversion of natural ecosystems to crop production and pasture, with concomitant use of toxic chemicals, monoculture, and production of greenhouse gases. This highlights the limitations of a “life cycle assessment” approach in the Nature study.  

Animal Food Production and Climate Change 

A similar blind spot of this study’s methodology is in not addressing the larger impact of animal production, organic or conventional, on climate change. According to the International Panel of Climate Change, agriculture and forestry account for as much as 25% of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The contribution of animal agriculture has been estimated at 14.5% to 87% or more of total GHG emissions. These estimates include emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. The carbon dioxide contribution comes from converting land from natural forest to pasture or cropland.   

Diets that include animal products have been shown to contribute significantly more to climate change than diets that include low amounts or no animal products. For example, a 2023 study published in Nature Food, examined 570 LCAs and found that compared to high meat diets, the diets of vegans produce 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions, 27% of the eutrophication, 34% of the biodiversity loss, and use 46% of the water. Even between low meat-eaters and high meat-eaters there was a 30% reduction in climate impacts.  

Cost 

Another study in Nature Communications from February 2024 looks at not only the difference in climate impacts between animal-based and plant-based diets, but also the difference in nutrition and cost to consumers. The study finds that diets in Sweden that include plant-based alternatives to meat or whole foods, such as legumes as the protein source, emit 30-52% fewer greenhouse gases, and use 20-45% less land and 14-27% less water. Diets of plant-based meat alternatives are comparable in nutritional value to meat-based diets, except for vitamin B12, vitamin D, and selenium. These diets also enhanced iron, magnesium, folate, and fiber supplies, and decreased saturated fat. The study also finds that while these diets are lower in protein, they still meet or exceed dietary recommendations. A notable finding is that diets of plant-based alternatives to meat (often ultra-processed, containing genetically modified ingredients) increase the cost of food to consumers by 3-5%, although a whole food diet decreases food costs by 4-17%.   

Critics of organic agriculture have long justified the use of toxic chemicals in food production by the increase in the quantity of food that can be produced with conventional practices. The Rodale Institute found that their organic manure plots meet the output average for other plots in the county, which primarily follow chemical-intensive practices. The organic legume plots and non-tilled plots both have lower production rates than the county average (20% and 6.7% respectively), but the financial loss may be compensated for by reduced labor and materials costs.  

The Rodale Institute finds that the total cost of operations on organic farms is significantly lower than on conventional farms and the addition of organic price premiums makes their organic plots much more profitable than the conventional plots. Importantly, organic grain crops are surpassing the yields of conventional crops during drought years, likely owing to the increased soil health, and demonstrating the ability of organic crops to withstand climate change better than conventional practices.   

The true cost of conventional, petrochemical pesticide use is critical to the calculation of overall benefit. However, many of these costs are not borne by the pesticide user, but by society or taxpayers who bear the cost of environmental and human health harms, lost ecosystem services such as die-off of pollinators, water contamination, and the cost of fighting climate-induced fires and flooding. (See Beyond Pesticides database of Pesticide Induced Diseases and Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management).   

A Cautionary Note on Defining Regenerative Agriculture  

Undefined “regenerative” agriculture risks derail the urgent need to end the use of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers and their direct negative climate impacts, including damage to soil health, human health, and ecosystem services. Regenerative and no-till farmers can, and often do, continue to rely on petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, including glyphosate-based herbicide products that impose adverse health impacts, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, on farmers, farmworkers, frontline communities, and the broader public. 

Surveys collected in a 2019 Friends of the Earth report, Pesticides and Soil Health, “… indicate that the majority of no-till farmers [in this study] rely on herbicides such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. In fact, 86% of No-Till Farmer readers said they planned to plant Roundup Ready corn in 2017, while 80 percent planned to plant Roundup Ready soybeans, and some 92 percent planned to use glyphosate for weed control.”  

Organic Agriculture  

Advocates of regenerative organic agriculture, including Beyond Pesticides, contend that organic certification as a baseline in defining regenerative agriculture is crucial to address compounding crises relating to climate change, biodiversity, and public health. 

There are examples of regenerative agriculture certifications that take this approach, including Rodale Institute and Regenerative Organic Alliance’s Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label. Researchers in California quantified the reduction of total pesticide use in organic and conventional farms, noting that there is an “18–31% likely reduction in spraying of pesticides on organically managed fields compared to conventional, and a 27% likely reduction in use of pesticide products with high acute human toxicity for organic versus conventional fields” from 2013 to 2019. However, putting this finding in context requires an assessment of the researchers’ definition of permitted synthetic substances or pesticides, which are allowed on conventional farms but strictly prohibited under federal organic law’s National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances and required organic systems plan. Biodiversity and pollinator health are also shown to be more prevalent on organic versus conventional farms, according to a 2018 Swedish study that corroborates previous studies in 2011 and 2012. 

To engage in opportunities to protect the integrity of organic standards under the Organic Foods Production Act, see Beyond Pesticides’ webpage on Keeping Organic Strong. Stay tuned for updated resources for the Fall 2024 National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting. Each year Beyond Pesticides provides information on the meeting agendas, pertinent proposals, sign-up periods to submit comments to the Board, historical context, and potential strategies in alignment with Actions of the Week. The NOSB, with active public participation, is a powerful tool to shape the future of agriculture and of the environment broadly, as this August 2021 Daily News article underscores. Organic standard setting was envisioned as providing for continuous improvement, democratic input, and full transparency. There are important opportunities for the public to engage with the organic rulemaking process to ensure that the NOSB and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program uphold the values and principles of organic.  

Beyond Pesticides advocates for structural changes through grassroots mobilization of a concerned public, including scientists, physicians, public officials, farmers, and farmworkers. See Tools for Change for a range of strategies, resources, and tips to initiate grassroots advocacy in your community, town, city, or state against pesticide use on lawns, public land, and agricultural lands. 

Urgent Action You Can Take Now  

While negotiations have been stalled for months, the Democrat-led Senate and Republican-led House of Representatives unveiled their respective provisions for the 2024 Farm Bill last week. The office of U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, released an initial Senate framework for the (now 2024) Farm Bill. At the same time, U.S. Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, released an outline of the House version, then followed up with more details and legislative language (“Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.”)  

While advocates say that anti-democratic Republican language in the House makes the overall bill unacceptable for advocates, the Senate Democrats’ proposal includes robust support for expanding and strengthening organic product supply chains and domestic production, recognizing their economic, ecological, and public health benefits. House Republican language in support of organic is undermined, according to advocates, by its broad attack on pesticide restrictions and the right to sue chemical manufacturers and allied users of pesticides when harmed. The language, if adopted, is viewed as a crippling setback for efforts to meet the existential health and environmental threats of the day. 

While advocates object to the Republican Farm Bill moving forward because of provisions they say will weaken protections from pesticides and undermine local democratic decision making and the right to sue chemical companies when harmed, there are  elements  in the Senate and House framework that would help nurture the growth of organic agriculture by: 

• Addressing organic certification costs; 
• Funding organic oversight and enforcement; 
• Supporting organic transition; 
• Addressing bottlenecks in organic regulatory actions; 
• Providing mandatory funding for organic research and data collection; 
• Making organic programs work for organic farmers; and 
• Establishing an Organic Agriculture Research Coordinator who will coordinate and establish annual strategic priorities. 

The bipartisan consensus that organic supply chains and markets must continue to be nurtured as recognition of their importance to sustainability, rather than put on the legislative chopping block, is welcomed. Certified organic agriculture has grown over the past four decades from a voluntary standard organized by farmers and grassroots consumers and organizations representing farmers, environmentalists, community leaders, physicians, and rural and urban communities to a $70 billion industry. In the same period, considerable scientific literature continues to underscore  the significance of a wholesale transition to organic  from chemical-intensive food systems to adequately address the cascading crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health. 

>> Tell your U.S. Congressional Representative and Senators to support organic agriculture in the Farm Bill, but not at the expense of undermining local and state authority to enact more stringent restrictions of pesticides. 

Join the movement to end the use of fossil fuel-based pesticides and synthetic fertilizers in 10 years and receive Action of the Week and Weekly News Updates here.  

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

Sources  

Organic food has lower environmental impacts per area unit and similar climate impacts per mass unit compared to conventional, Nature, May 10, 2024 

Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts, Nature Food, July 20, 2023 

A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks, Nature, October 7, 2020 

Research Shatters Myth of Pesticide Benefits, Beyond Pesticides, Retrospective: Pesticides and You, 2021  

Organic Management Practices Ensure a Sustainable Future, Beyond Pesticides, Retrospective: Pesticides and You, 2021 

(Beyond Pesticides, May 22, 2024) A study in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology Letters, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the first to find halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) in deep ocean sediment and biota off the coast of California. The test area, known as the Southern California Bight (SCB), is home to historic offshore DDT waste dumping, with part of the SCB designated as a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site. 49 HOCs were detected in the sediment and biota, many of which are DDT-related and not previously screened for. The presence of these “unmonitored compounds can significantly contribute to the contaminant body burden across a range of marine taxa,” the study states, which leads to impacts on critical food webs and biodiversity.

While this study is the first to specifically analyze previously overlooked DDT+ compounds, the results are nothing new. There is a body of science around the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of harmful pollutants that continue to lead to a decline in biodiversity, negative impacts on water and soil, and detrimental human health effects.      

To assess the bioavailability of DDT+ and HOCs in the deep ocean food web, this study focused on areas near a dumpsite in the San Pedro Channel between Long Beach, CA, and Santa Catalina Island, CA. Sampling of the sediment and biota occurred in the Santa Cruz Basin and San Pedro Basin, proximal to the dumpsite. The first goal of the study was to determine the presence of overall HOCs with a specific interest in the number of DDT+ compounds within the sediment. The second goal was to “assess the potential for DDT+ bioaccumulation in the deep ocean food web by determining the chemical profiles in one invertebrate and three fish species collected from throughout the water column.” 

For sediment sampling, sediment cores were taken with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) from three sites. Two of the sites were near visually identified dumped barrels and a ‘no barrel site’ was 90 m from any observed barrels. For the biota, micronekton and fish species (Leuroglossus stilbius, Cyclothone acclinidens, and Melanostigma pammelas) were collected from the water column above the San Pedro Basin and the Santa Cruz Basin. To represent the lowest level of the food web, zooplankton were also analyzed. After sampling, all analyses were performed at San Diego State University and compounds were classified and named according to their mass spectra and retention times.

As a result, the scientists “detected 49 HOCs across all samples, including 15 DDT+ compounds in the sediment and 10 DDT+ compounds in the biota.” This shows that “high DDT+ body burdens were found in biota… indicating widespread DDT+ contamination in the deep ocean… [and] that deep ocean sediment may be a source of DDT+ to the marine food web.” HOCs are known for bioaccumulation and biomagnification, which explains the presence of more compounds in the biota. DDE is the most abundant form of DDT that was identified in the samples, which occurs when DDT breaks down. While the original DDT that was dumped may now be present in different forms, the persistence of these compounds throughout the environment after decades is apparent.

The fish species from the Santa Cruz Basin show “2 to 6 times higher DDT+ abundance compared to the samples collected ∼100 km distant at the examined dumpsite in the San Pedro Basin. This suggests that DDT+ contamination may be widespread beyond [the dumpsite] and may not be directly correlated to the presence of barrels or proximity to the dumpsite.” With 14 known dumping sites off the coast of California, this is concerning. The spread of pesticide pollution is potentially much larger than ever anticipated. “The majority of the DDT+ compounds detected in the sediment and biota were previously detected in SCB birds and marine mammals,” the study continues. “This discovery is critical and suggests that DDT+ from deep ocean sediment enters the water column and subsequently the marine food web.”

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was a widely used insecticide, primarily for mosquitos, that became popular in the 1940’s. It was later banned in the United States in 1972 after its high toxicity to wildlife and humans became publicly accepted after Rachel Caron’s book Silent Spring. At that time, Montrose Chemical Corporation, the largest producer of DDT, had disposed of DDT waste into the previously permitted deep-ocean dump sites in the San Pedro and Santa Monica Basins. While the Palos Verdes Shelf is a Superfund site to acknowledge the contamination, EPA continues to state that the DDT pollution does not pose any risks to humans for being in the water or consuming fish collected from this area. According to this study, “EPA suggested that DDT manufacturing waste may have been bulk-dumped (i.e., not containerized) near the dumpsites rather than disposed in barrels.” In addition, documents indicate that approximately 40,000 pounds per year of DDT and other harmful chemicals could have been disposed of between the 1930’s and 1972 in the SCB.

There is much “uncertainty in past estimates of the total magnitude of DDT pollution in the SCB” and a lack of thorough studies. “Most DDT surveys examine four to eight typical compounds… [but] recent work indicates that marine mammals inhabiting the SCB are exposed to more than 45 DDT-related contaminants,” the scientists say. These contaminants are known as DDT+, which includes DDE, DDD, DDX, and further degradation byproducts. With the lack of studies around the amount of contamination and health risks, despite EPA’s assurance that there are none, there is a need for further investigation.  

Most concerning is the bioaccumulation (concentration over time of individual organisms) and biomagnification (exponential increase in concentrations throughout the levels of the food web) that causes a cascade of issues leading all the way up to humans. Since the SCB “has some of the highest recorded concentrations of DDT in the world due to the discharge of DDT manufacturing waste from 1947 to 1982 by the Montrose Chemical Corporation,” all levels of the food web are at risk of exposure. When zooplankton have levels of contamination, they pass this on to the micronekton that consume them. Pesticide load then travels through the trophic levels into small fish and crustaceans before continuing to larger fish and mammals. HOCs, including DDT, are moving up through the deep ocean food webs into species that are directly consumed by humans.

A recent Daily Breeze article highlights this study and interviewed the authors, who further shared the importance of studying the effects from historic waste dumping and their research discoveries. “‘It’s providing the link that there’s a potential that the source of DDT to the food web could be coming from deep ocean sediments…coming off of the Palos Verdes Shelf,” said Margaret Stack, a research specialist at San Diego State University. The two basins where Stack and her co-authors collected samples from are 60 miles apart, and she addressed the importance of this when saying, “‘this broad distribution of DDT pollution in the Southern California environment [shows] we still maybe don’t know the boundary of where DDT pollution is occurring.”

Additional studies are also concerned about the long-lasting presence of HOCs such as DDT. A study from the University of California states that “substantial amounts of DDT remain in these sediments, which are largely unaltered after more than 70 years.” This made the researchers ask questions: “How much DDT waste was disposed offshore? When and where did the disposal occur? Was the DDT waste containerized as once suggested or bulk dumped as indicated more recently by the EPA? Have these wastes persisted in a manner that can lead to ongoing ecological effects?” While the majority of these questions are still unanswered after their study, the persistence of DDT has been documented and ecosystem and health effects have been observed that “include cancer in sea lions and bioaccumulation in endangered California Condors… [and] generational health effects from maternal DDT exposure.”

While much research still needs to be conducted on the long-term effects in the environment for historic pesticide waste, it brings to the forefront how important it is to eliminate current practices that expose all organisms to toxic materials. Beyond Pesticides’ mission is to bring an end to petrochemical pesticide and synthetic fertilizer use by 2032, which will save future generations from the concerns highlighted in these studies. A transition to organic is the answer, such as with organic agriculture and choosing organic food to protect the health of the environment and all its inhabitants. DDT and equivalent products in use today can instead be replaced with safer mosquito management, and individuals can make The Safer Choice by learning how to avoid hazardous home, garden, community, and food use pesticides.

To get involved, reference the Action of the Week and utilize Beyond Pesticides Resources. Non-toxic Lands and Landscapes and ManageSafe™ are also great references for least-toxic control of pests in the home and garden. Become an advocate today to help make changes in your community and to join in the organic movement. 

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

Source:

Stack, M.E. et al. (2024) ‘Identification of DDT+ in deep ocean sediment and biota in the Southern California bight’, Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 11(5), pp. 479–484. Available at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00115.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 21, 2024) In a first-of-its kind series of biomonitoring studies published in Agrochemicals, researchers identified the presence of the herbicides dicamba and 2,4-D in all pregnant participants from both cohorts in 2010-2012 and 2020-2022. The findings from this research are not surprising given the explosion of toxic petrochemical pesticides in the Midwest region of the United States. “The overall level of dicamba use (kilograms applied in one hundred thousands) in the U.S. has increased for soybeans since 2015 and slightly increased for cotton and corn,” the authors report, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agriculture Statistics Service surveys. “The overall level of 2,4-D use (kilograms applied in one hundred thousands) in the U.S. was highest in 2010 for wheat, soybeans, and corn. The amount of 2,4-D applied increased the most for soybeans and corn from 2010 to 2020.” The researchers focused on the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, given the increase in dicamba and 2,4-D during the study period for both cohorts (2010-2022).

The researchers are based at Indiana University School of Medicine in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science and Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Quebec Toxicology Center within the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, and Benbrook Consulting Services. Charles Benbrook, PhD one of the authors, served as an expert witness in herbicide litigation but stepped down as executive director of the Heartland Health Research Alliance to avoid any conflicts of interest pertaining to the studies cited in this report. The study was published online on February 20, 2024. The methodology included the analysis of urine samples from 2010-2012 Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study that enrolled 10,0037 pregnant participants from eight study sites across the three states, as well as a “smaller nested case-control study” in which 61 samples were gathered from women enrolled in the original study, in the first trimester in 2020-2022 periods, and based specifically in Indiana. “Cases were selected as participants in which any of the following occurred: hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, spontaneous preterm birth, gestational diabetes, stillbirth, or fetal demise < 20 weeks,” according to the researchers. The study identified metabolites found within the samples evaluated, “including herbicides (dicamba, 2,4-D, and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T)), organophosphates insecticides (malathion dicarboxylic acid (MDA), para-nitrophenol (PNP), 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPy), 2-diethylamino-6-methylpyrimidin-4-ol (DEAMPY), and 2-isopropyl-6-methyl-4-pyrimidinol (IMPY)), and synthetic pyrethroids insecticides (cis-3-(2,2-Dichlorovinyl)-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid (cis-DCCA), trans-3-(2,2-Dichlorovinyl)-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid (trans-DCCA), 3-Phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA), 4-Fluoro-3-phenoxybenzoic acid (4-F-3-PBA), and cis-3-(2,2-Dibromovinyl)-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane carboxylic acid (cis-DBCA)).”

“We found that dicamba in pregnant study participants increased significantly in the more recent Midwest cohort from 2020 to 2022 relative to the earlier cohort from 2010 to 2012,” the researchers arrive at this conclusion based on existing and recent studies. “Concentration levels of 2,4-D also increased in the more recent cohort, but the difference was not statistically significant.”

There are a plethora of studies that demonstrate the adverse health effects of both dicamba and 2,4-D, even at low levels. The research reported in Agrochemicals adds to the knowledge of widespread exposure and adverse effects. For example, a 2021 study published in Toxicology found individuals working or residing in areas with frequent pesticide use, including 2,4-D, experience more incidences of neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) relative to the general population. Additionally, studies published earlier this year in Toxics and Environmental Sciences Europe found increased instances of cancer, including liver cancer, as well as endocrine disruption and metabolic disorders via inducement of oxidative stress from chronic exposure to 2,4-D. A troubling trend found in a separate study published in Global Pediatric Health found that young people are facing an unprecedented rise in liver disorders and metabolic syndrome. Tracking the latest science, particularly regarding pesticide exposure and chemical mixtures, can help bridge the existing research gaps.

Regarding dicamba, exposure to the toxic herbicide has been linked to various cancers according to a 2020 research study published by the National Institute of Health in International Journal of Epidemiology. Dicamba has also been linked to neurotoxicity, birth defects, and kidney and liver damage, not to mention posing harm to birds, fish, and other aquatic organisms, according to various peer-reviewed studies identified in the Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management. Dicamba also causes serious damage to non-GE (genetically engineered), non-target plants, damaging habitat and food sources for various organisms, especially for birds, according to fieldwork by Audubon of Arkansas. See Daily News sections on dicamba and 2-4,D to learn more about the latest regulatory decisions and scientific literature pertaining to these two toxic pesticides.

There has been a flurry of litigation, industry reaction, and corresponding actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on dicamba since dicamba-tolerant soybeans and corn entered the domestic market back in 2016 when EPA initially registered dicamba-based products such as Xtendimax™. In 2020, the Ninth Circuit nullified “EPA’s 2018 conditional registration of three dicamba weed killer products for use on an estimated 60 million acres of DT (dicamba-tolerant through GE) soybeans and cotton,” finding that EPA did not adequately consider adverse health effects from over-the-top (OTT) spraying of dicamba in approving its conditional registration. Again, earlier this year in February, the U.S. District Court for Arizona rendered moot the EPA’s 2021 approval of three dicamba-based herbicides after a damning Inspector General Report called out EPA’s violation to both the Endangered Species Act and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the agency’s failure to appropriately manage resistance and the devasting impact this failure has on farmers’ livelihoods.

For context, according to USDA data gathered in 2018 and analyzed by Center for Food Safety, “As much as 1 in every 6 acres of ultra-sensitive soybeans were injured by dicamba drift in 2018 alone, over 15 million acres.” In spite of these developments, EPA announced an existing stocks order permitting use of dicamba products for the 2024 growing season just a few weeks after this most recent court ruling. The latest action regarding dicamba is the proposed registration of a new dicamba-based product for genetically engineered cotton and soybean crops with a 60-day public comment period that ends on June 3, 2024.

Advocates who champion public health, environmental protections, and organic agriculture and land management practices put faith in the decades-long body of scientific literature that demonstrates the adverse health effects of toxic chemicals, substances, and chemicals. In this context, EPA continues to permit the use of toxic pesticides, despite the compounding scientific research that supports Beyond Pesticides’s goal to eliminate toxic petrochemical-based pesticides by 2032, and replace the current system defined by product swapping with one that aligns with the National Organic Program and its National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.

See Keeping Organic Strong to engage with strengthening organic standards and opportunities to improve federal and state policies in support of organic agriculture and land management. See Tools for Change and Parks for a Sustainable Future to learn how to engage in eliminating toxic pesticides in your community. See Eating With a Conscience to learn which toxic pesticide residues are likely to show up in common produce items to better inform your next grocery haul.

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

Source: Agrochemicals

(Beyond Pesticides, May 20, 2024)  (Beyond Pesticides, May 20, 2024) The Republican Farm Bill draft in the U.S. House of Representatives, released on Friday, May 17, is a broad attack on pesticide restrictions and the right to sue chemical manufacturers and allied users of pesticides when harmed. “This legislation is a complete nonstarter for the millions of people who want stronger pesticide restrictions, democratic decision making on toxic chemicals in communities, and the right to sue manufacturers and pesticide users when harmed and misled on the hazards of pesticides,” said Jay Feldman, executive director. “We vehemently oppose this Republican legislation with the understanding and experience—bridging farmers, medical practitioners, land managers, local policy makers, and families—that we can and must transition to safe practices and products that protect our health, biodiversity, and climate,” Mr. Feldman continued.

The Farm Bill attack takes place on many critical fronts. The draft legislation:

1. Takes away the right to sue for failure to warn when harmed by pesticides. The language says: “prohibit. . .a court from directly or indirectly imposing or continuing in effect any requirements for, or penalize or hold liable any entity for failing to comply with requirements with respect to, labeling or packaging that is in addition to or different from the labeling or packaging approved by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.” (SEC. 10204. UNIFORMITY OF PESTICIDE LABELING REQUIREMENTS, p790).

This language shields (gives immunity to) the producers and users of toxic pesticides from liability lawsuits associated with the harm that their products cause. The provision will block lawsuits like those successfully advanced against Bayer/Monsanto for adverse health effects, like cancer, associated with exposure to their products and companies’ failure to warn about these effects on EPA-approved product labels.

2. Prohibits the rights of states and local governments to restrict pesticides and protect public health and the environment. That language says, “prohibit any State, instrumentality or political subdivision thereof. . . from directly or indirectly imposing or continuing in effect any requirements for, or penalize or hold liable any entity for failing to comply with requirements with respect to, labeling or packaging that is in addition to or different from the labeling or packaging approved by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.” (SEC. 10204. UNIFORMITY OF PESTICIDE LABELING REQUIREMENTS, p790).

In addition, the language says: “A political subdivision of a State shall not impose, or continue in effect, any requirement relating to the sale, distribution, labeling, application, or use of any pesticide or device. . .” (SEC. 10205. AUTHORITY OF STATES, p791)

The attack on local and state authority to restrict pesticides is a bottom-line issue. As momentum builds for local restrictions on pesticide use in the face of ongoing poisoning and contamination, it is clear that effective land management does not require toxic pesticide use. Historically, localities have exercised their democratic right to protect public health and safety where state and federal standards are not adequately protective of their residents. Local governments have exercised this right in many areas affecting the health of people and the environment, such as with smoking, recycling, dog waste, and other standards.

3. Allows plants genetically engineered with pesticides to be exempt from regulation. The language says, “[P]lant-incorporated protectants [PIPs] resulting from endogenous genetic material found within or that could arise from the plant’s gene pool are exempt from the requirements of this Act.” PIPs are defined as “a substance or mixture of substances intended to be produced and used within a living plant, or in the produce thereof, and the genetic material necessary for its production.” (Subtitle C—Regulatory Reform PART I—FEDERAL INSECTICIDE, FUNGICIDE, AND RODENTICIDE ACT, SEC. 10201. EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN SUBSTANCES, pp781-784)

PIPs are created when scientists take the gene for a specific pesticidal protein from an organism and introduces the gene into the plant’s genetic material. Then the plant continuously expresses the pesticidal protein that kills the pest when it feeds on the plant. Classified by EPA as “biopesticides” and marketed as a silver bullet for pest control, PIPs are showing insect resistance to this technology and threatening the efficacy of natural microbial organisms used as a part of an organic system, which is focused on soil health and ecosystem balance. (See more.)

4. Broadens exemption of pesticides from regulation. The language says, “Section 25(b) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (7 U.S.C. 136w(b)) is amended to read as follows: ‘‘(b) EXEMPTION OF PESTICIDES.— ‘‘(B) to be of a character which is unnecessary to be subject to this Act in order to carry out the purposes of this Act.” (Subtitle C—Regulatory Reform PART I—FEDERAL INSECTICIDE, FUNGICIDE, AND RODENTICIDE ACT, SEC. 10201. EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN SUBSTANCES (b) EXEMPTION FROM REGULATION, p781)

The Farm Bill is being debated as advocates call for a global transition to organic agriculture and land care that seriously takes on the challenges of the public health crisis, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency. Approximately every five years, Congress passes a Farm Bill, a comprehensive omnibus bill setting policy and funding for agricultural and food programs. The chemical industry and companies that use their products see the adoption of the bill as an opportunity to adopt amendments to a range of statutes, including pesticide law, to advance its economic interests, not necessarily what is good for people and the environment

>>Tell your U.S. Congressional Representative and Senators to support organic agriculture in the Farm Bill, but not at the expense of undermining local and state authority to enact more stringent restrictions of pesticides.

While Farm Bill negotiations have been stalled for months, the Democrat-led Senate and Republican-led House of Representatives presented their respective visions to amend the 2024 Farm Bill. The office of U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, released an initial Senate framework for the (now 2024) Farm Bill. At the same time, U.S. Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, released an outline of the House version, then followed up with more details and legislative language (“Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.”

While advocates say that anti-democratic Republican language in the House makes the overall bill unacceptable for advocates, the Senate Democrats’ proposal includes robust support for expanding and strengthening organic product supply chains and domestic production, recognizing their economic, ecological, and public health benefits. House Republican language in support of organic is undermined, according to advocates, by its broad attack on pesticide restrictions and the right to sue chemical manufacturers and allied users of pesticides when harmed. The language, if adopted, is viewed as a crippling setback for efforts to meet the existential health and environmental threats of the day.

While advocates object to the Republican Farm Bill moving forward because of provisions they say will weaken protections from pesticides and undermine local democratic decision making and the right to sue chemical companies when harmed, there are elements in the Senate and House framework that would help nurture the growth of organic agriculture by:

• Addressing organic certification costs;
• Funding organic oversight and enforcement;
• Supporting organic transition;
• Addressing bottlenecks in organic regulatory actions;
• Providing mandatory funding for organic research and data collection;
• Making organic programs work for organic farmers; and
• Establishing an Organic Agriculture Research Coordinator who will coordinate and establish annual strategic priorities.

The bipartisan consensus that organic supply chains and markets must continue to be nurtured as recognition of their importance to sustainability, rather than put on the legislative chopping block, is welcomed. Certified organic agriculture has grown over the past four decades from a voluntary standard organized by farmers and grassroots consumers and organizations representing farmers, environmentalists, community leaders, physicians, and rural and urban communities to a $70 billion industry. In the same period, considerable scientific literature continues to underscore the significance of a wholesale transition to organic from chemical-intensive food systems to adequately address the cascading crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health.

>>Tell your U.S. Congressional Representative and Senators to support organic agriculture in the Farm Bill, but not at the expense of undermining local and state authority to enact more stringent restrictions of pesticides.

Letter to U.S. Senators and Representatives:

I am writing to ask you to support a Farm Bill that helps to grow organic agriculture, but not undermine, or preempt, state and local authority to restrict toxic pesticides. A global transition to organic methods is necessary if we are to seriously take on the challenges of the public health crisis, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency. We cannot achieve these changes with organic if preemption language in the House Republican bill is adopted.

The attack on local and state authority to restrict pesticides is a bottom-line issue. As momentum builds for local restrictions on pesticide use in the face of ongoing poisoning and contamination, it is clear that effective land management does not require toxic pesticide use. Historically, localities have exercised their democratic right to protect public health and safety where state and federal standards are not adequately protective of their residents. Congress should not be stepping into states to tell local governments that they cannot exercise this right, as they have done with smoking, recycling, dog waste, and other standards. The House Republican bill states boldly that, “A political subdivision of a state shall not impose any requirement relating to the sale, distribution, labeling, application, or use of any pesticide or device,” challenging the right of states and localities to exercise local governance and the democratic process. This language, at this point, is not in the Senate Democrats’ bill.

While the anti-democratic Republican language in the House makes the overall House bill unacceptable, the Senate Democrats’ proposal includes robust support for expanding and strengthening organic product supply chains and domestic production, recognizing its economic, ecological, and public health benefits. House Republican language in support of organic is undermined by a framework that preempts local restrictions of pesticides.

Please seek to eliminate provisions in the House Republican bill that preempt the state and local government’s right to restrict pesticides while supporting the following elements in the Senate and House framework that nurtures the growth of organic agriculture by:

• Addressing organic certification costs;
• Funding organic oversight and enforcement;
• Supporting organic transition;
• Addressing bottlenecks in organic regulatory actions;
• Providing mandatory funding for organic research and data collection;
• Making organic programs work for organic farmers; and
• Establishing an Organic Agriculture Research Coordinator who will coordinate and establish annual strategic priorities.

Let’s make the Farm Bill a bipartisan consensus bill that builds a positive future, by growing organic supply chains and markets with the recognition of their importance to sustainability. Certified organic agriculture has grown over the past four decades from a voluntary standard organized by farmers and grassroots consumers and organizations representing farmers, environmentalists, community leaders, physicians, and rural and urban communities to a $70 billion industry. In the same period, considerable scientific literature continues to underscore the significance of a wholesale transition to organic from chemical-intensive food systems as a way to adequately address the cascading crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health.

Please support organic agriculture in the Farm Bill and reject language that undermines, or preempts, local and state authority to enact more stringent land management policies that protect health and the environment.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, May 17, 2024) Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey (D) proclaimed May 12 -18, 2024 as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Week, first established in 1998 in numerous states across the U.S. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS)—also called chemical intolerance or Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance (TILT), is characterized by disorders in one or more body systems, including respiratory, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, and neurological processes. It is thought to be caused by adverse reactions to environmental chemicals and/or biological substances such as mold. Affected individuals suffer fatigue, rashes, muscle and joint pains, memory loss, and other symptoms.

The Massachusetts proclamation encourages “residents of the commonwealth to take cognizance” of the event and recognize the distress of their fellow citizens who suffer from MCS. May 12 is also known as International May 12^th Awareness Day, an observance started in 2006 in the United Kingdom to educate the public about many diseases associated with sensitivity to chemicals, including MCS, fibromyalgia, and Gulf War Syndrome.

While some scientists have considered MCS a psychological or psychosomatic problem, there is increasing support for the reality of MCS as a physical disease distinct from mental or emotional disorders. Yet there are no medical tests that can reliably confirm a diagnosis, so health care providers must rely on self-reporting such as the TILT questionnaire. This leaves the medical profession with one option for patients: to try to alleviate the symptoms by avoiding triggering exposures. Often this entails changes in exercise and diet and reduced use of personal care products, cleaning products, and pesticides at home. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends clinical treatment approaches here. The Massachusetts Association for the Chemically Injured offers numerous resources for coping with the symptoms of MCS and navigating medical and governmental assistance, along with links to many other groups working on MCS issues.

As noted in the Massachusetts proclamation, MCS is recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other federal and state agencies. Yet MCS sufferers often experience a cascade of consequences to their well-being, ranging from unemployment to homelessness. It is difficult to find a place to live or work where chemical exposures do not occur.

Workplaces can be a significant source of trouble; workers typically spend about a fourth of their week inside office buildings. Even in these non-agricultural environments, pesticides and other industrial chemicals may be present, impregnated in building materials and décor such as furniture, carpets, and wood, or used against pests like cockroaches and ants.

Anne Steinemann, PhD, an honorary professor of civil engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia, has done extensive research on consumer product emissions such as fragrances and indoor air quality. In 2018, Dr. Steinemann published a study finding that 25 percent of Americans develop symptoms in response to common chemicals in paint, petrochemical fumes, and fragrances.

A 2021 study gathered data on workplace exposures in offices in the U.S. the United Kingdom, India and China. The workers wore silicone wristbands, which absorb chemicals in the environment. Out of the 99 chemicals the study targeted, all but five were detected in at least one wristband. For some pesticides, such as malathion and chlorpyrifos, exposures were highest in India and China, but permethrin was most frequent in the U.S. and U.K., probably because permethrin is used to prevent insect infestations and against mosquitoes in urban areas in addition to its agricultural applications. Importantly, several chemicals that have been banned showed up on the wristbands, including chlordane, the DDT breakdown product DDE, PCBs, and PBDE flame retardants (mostly banned in the European Union but not entirely in the U.S.). This demonstrates that these persistent chemicals linger far past their original application dates, potentially exposing generations of people at work and at home.

The wristband study notes that hand-washing reduced exposures significantly, so people with MCS may be able to adjust somewhat to chemical triggers by washing their hands frequently.

Treatment for MCS remains imprecise. In a video on the Massachusetts Association for the Chemically Injured website, L. Christine Oliver, MD, MPH, associate professor of clinical medicine at Harvard Medical School, notes that, “There are no miraculous cures out there.” Further, she says, physicians are not trained to recognize MCS and thus tend to either treat it as an emotional problem or to focus on one or more symptoms by testing for allergies, metabolic and cardiovascular disease, or digestive disorders. But despite the frustrating lack of specific physical disease mechanisms, Oliver stresses, “This is not a psychogenic disease.”

The problem MCS patients confront, she adds, is similar to the controversy over banning smoking in workplaces and public spaces. There was strong resistance to banning smoking, but since smoke-free policies were implemented, we have learned a great deal about the health effects of secondhand smoke. Something very similar is likely to happen with victims of MCS, Dr. Oliver says. As a policy step to cope with MCS, she says the CDC’s internal policy for its own workplaces is “what we should be doing in every workplace in the country.” For example, workers should use no personal fragrances, and offices should warn sensitive individuals ahead of time when remodeling or redecorating is to occur so those individuals can avoid exposures to the related chemicals.

An additional complication is that, like many diseases associated with environmental chemicals, MCS may be caused not by exposure to one chemical or environmental toxicant, but by combinations of exposures, and not by single events, but by numerous events over time. Science, and in particular regulatory toxicology, has focused on single acute events and disregarded long-term, lower-dose events.

Chemical sensitivity has been raised as a medical condition for almost as long as the post-World War II burst of industrial development released a flood of new stressors. In a 2010 status report for Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Canada, Lynn Marshall, MD and co-authors reviewed the history of scientific attention to MCS. The authors observed that more than 80,000 chemicals have been introduced since World War II and that already by the 1950s and 1960s patients began reporting symptoms related to intermittent exposures. In a 1962 book, Human Ecology and Susceptibility to the Chemical Environment, Theron G. Randolph, M.D. tried to make the connection, but the book was reviewed scathingly in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Then, about a decade after building construction became more airtight to save energy in the 1970s, “Sick Building Syndrome” emerged as an initiator of chemical sensitivities, according to Dr. Marshall, et al. Many other triggers, including electrical currents and microwave radiation, have since been added to the list of possible suspects.  

But little progress has been made on determining whether, say, small doses of perfume combined with bathroom air fresheners and pesticides in building materials could set in motion the multiplicitous symptoms of MCS and their subsequent catastrophic effects on lives. More evidence is emerging of chemicals’ effects on cellular processes that affect many body systems (see Beyond Pesticides’ May 3 Daily News Blog on Parkinson’s disease). There may well be genetic factors that predispose some people to react negatively to exposures that have no effect on others. The molecular biology and genetic approaches used in neurodegenerative disease research could be a fruitful area of research for MCS.

But two things would really move the science forward for MCS patients: reliable objective diagnostics, including genetic profiling and biomonitoring, and effective, targeted treatments. Currently, the lack of these crucial tools leaves MCS patients open to assertions that MCS is entirely psychological and therefore not society’s problem.

Ultimately, it would probably be easier to reduce the number and toxicity of all industrial chemicals in the environment and peoples’ bodies than to undergo the painstaking and politically manipulable process of studying each chemical separately and each disease individually and then trying to parse the devilishly complex interactions among not only those 80,000 anthropogenic chemicals, but also the 30,000 genes, at least 200,000 proteins, and many other molecules required for human life to function.

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

Sources:
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
A Proclamation
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Week
https://html.scribdassets.com/7nky11uhkwcfjcde/images/1-5135531184.jpg

Massachusetts Association for the Chemically Injured
https://www.maci-mcs.org/

Hormone receptor activities of complex mixtures of known and suspect chemicals in personal silicone wristband samplers worn in office buildings
Anna S. Young, et al.
Chemosphere
Volume 315, February 2023, 137705
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653522041984?via%3Dihub

Care Now Ontario
https://carenowontario.org/action/
timeline of MCS as a diagnosis in Canada

Clinical Care of Patients with ME/CFS
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/me-cfs/healthcare-providers/clinical-care-patients-mecfs/index.html

Indoor carbon dioxide concentrations, VOCs, environmental sensitivity association with mucous membrane and lower respiratory sick building syndrome symptoms in the base study: analyses of the 100 building dataset
M.G. Apte and C.A. Erdmann
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2002
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3vj5m6wj

(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 saying, “Pesticide residues can enter natural waters through leaching, run-off, or “worst-case” scenarios (e.g., incorrect handling or improper disposal), which brings amphibians into contact with the pesticides.” Previous studies have shown impacts on amphibians to NEOs throughout multiple life stages, but this study focused on early developmental effects to determine impacts on survival.  

To ascertain if NEO exposure was harmful during embryogenesis, the frog embryos were incubated in five milliliters of the three different NEO solutions and analyzed over two weeks for changes in “embryonic morphology and mobility as well as development of cranial cartilage, cranial nerves and cardiac structure and function including the heart rate. In addition, tissue-specific gene expression was investigated to compare possible effects of the three NEOs at the molecular level.” Looking at key organs like the heart and brain, as well as motor skills, helps to assess the fitness (ability to live and reproduce) needed for the survival of the species. 

Fertilized eggs, created from 310 female frogs and 49 male frogs, were incubated in single pesticide solutions for a maximum of 14 days in concentrations of 0.1, 1, 10, 50 to 100 mg/L. “The exposure of embryos to 0.1 and 1 mg/L of each NEO reflects environmentally relevant concentrations, with 10, 50 and 100 mg/L NEO representing ‘worst-case’ scenarios (e.g., incorrect handling or improper disposal),” the authors say. 

Throughout the incubation period, measurements and observations were made using cameras, imaging software, RNA probes, and microscopes before processing all data using a rank sum test through GraphPad Prism 9 software to determine significance. The results that the scientists found, “included a reduced body length, a smaller orbital space, impaired cranial cartilage and nerves, and an altered heart structure and function. At the molecular level, NEO exposure partially resulted in an altered expression of tissue-specific factors, which are involved in eye, cranial placode, and heart development.” 

NEO exposure caused delays in the growth and development of the organisms’ bodies and the organs within. Decreased embryonic mobility was noted, and “all three NEOs altered the heart rate. Imidacloprid (as of 50 mg/L) and TMX (as of 10 mg/L) significantly increased the heart rate, while CLO (100 mg/L) reduced the heart rate.” A significant reduction in eye development was observed for all three NEOs at every concentration, and visible cranial cartilage deformations were also seen for all three insecticides. Nerves in the brain were found to have significant shortening and structural differences, and all three NEOs impacted cardiac parameters as well. “Contact with the NEOs affected the structure of the heart. Some isolated hearts had wider atria and ventricles,” the study states. The most significant structural differences were seen with IMD: “An exposure to IMD resulted in abnormal hearts in 78.00% (50 mg/L) and 86.36% (100 mg/L) of the embryos examined.” 

Several negative effects, such as external appearance, swimming mobility, and neural/cardiac embryonic development, were seen with exposure to each of the three NEOs studied. Some effects occurred upon exposure to as little as 0.1 mg/L of these insecticides. Overall, the most concerning of the three types is IMD. The scientists found “that IMD has the strongest effect on X. laevis embryogenesis, because an exposure to IMD leads to negative effects in all organs and tissues studied (eyes, cranial cartilage, cranial nerves, and heart). Most importantly, IMD leads to a drastic reduction in mobility up to complete immobility, which is a major problem in nature in terms of foraging and escape from predators.” 

NEOs became one of the leading insecticide classes in the early 2000s by offering targeted pest control. More recently, however, there have been concerns for their safety and the impacts on nontarget organisms. After numerous studies, these three NEOs were banned in the European Union based on the environmental risks, especially with bees. With NEOs “occur[ing] in high concentrations in some areas of the world in natural waters… [they bring] a variety of non-target organisms into contact with NEOs… Amphibians are especially threatened by biodiversity loss, with various causes such as habitat loss, climate change, infectious diseases, or contaminants being responsible for the amphibian extinction,” say the authors of this study. 

Contamination in ecosystems from pesticides is an ongoing concern. Not only are there effects on soil and water but biodiversity loss has reached unprecedented levels. There is a long history of the effects on human health, essential pollinators (even at extremely low doses), and aquatic organisms from NEOs, which harm biodiversity and jeopardize ecosystem health. Current environmental laws do not adequately protect biodiversity, which furthers the urgency to advance organic practices and preserve biodiversity.  

Learn about Managing Pests Safely Without Neonicotinoids and visit Tools for Change to learn how to organize your community against pesticide use. Sign up to get Beyond Pesticides’ Action of the Week and Weekly News Updates delivered right to your inbox, and stay informed on the health and environmental hazards of pesticides, pesticide regulation and policy, pesticide alternatives, and cutting-edge science with the Daily News.  

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

Source: 

Flach, H. et al. (2024) Comparing the effects of three neonicotinoids on embryogenesis of the South African clawed frog xenopus laevis, Current Research in Toxicology. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666027X24000227?via%3Dihub.