(Beyond Pesticides, January 24, 2023) Oral arguments begin this week in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) approval of the antibiotic streptomycin as a pesticide on citrus crops. Brought forth by a coalition of farmworker, health, and environmental groups, the lawsuit aims to stop the use of a critical medical treatment for agricultural purposes. “Humanity’s dwindling supply of medically effective antibiotics is not worth sacrificing for an industry that has safer alternatives available,” said Drew Toher, community resource and policy director at Beyond Pesticides. “Despite the challenges, we know from the elimination of this material in organic production that we don’t need antibiotics in order to produce a glass of orange juice.”

 In 2020, the Lancet published an article that identifies several of the multiple and interacting crises the U.S. and world face, with a focus on another “looming potential pandemic . . . [a] rise in multidrug-resistant bacterial infections that are undetected, undiagnosed, and increasingly untreatable, [whose rise] threatens the health of people in the USA and globally.” It calls on leaders in the U.S. and beyond, asking that even as they address the current coronavirus pandemic, they also attend to the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) problem, which is a growing threat to public health. The coauthors outline a number of strategies for progress on AMR, including banning of medically important antibiotics in agribusiness, and promoting consumer, and supplier and private sector, awareness and action on food choices. 

The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is a major health care issue. Beyond Pesticides has written, “Many bacterial infections are becoming resistant to the most commonly prescribed antibiotics, resulting in longer-lasting infections, higher medical expenses, the need for more costly or hazardous medications, and the inability to treat life-threatening infections. The development and spread of antibiotic resistance is the inevitable effect of antibiotic use. Bacteria evolve quickly, and antibiotics provide strong selection pressure for those strains with genes for resistance.”

EPA registered streptomycin as a tool for citrus growers because it can suppress Huanglongbing (HLB) disease, also known as citrus greening, caused by a bacterial pathogen transmitted by the invasive Asian citrus psyllid. HLB results in citrus fruit becoming green, misshapen, and bitter. The agency also claims streptomycin “will aid resistance management” for citrus canker disease, a contagious pathogen that can be spread by wind, rain and human activity. Once infected, citrus canker is incurable. Growers may use copper pesticides to delay the inevitable, but there is growing concern of resistance to copper compounds.  

While both diseases represent legitimate concerns for the citrus industry, advocates are clear that the answer cannot be to take an important human medical treatment and broadcast spray hundreds of thousands of pounds across upwards of 650,000 acres of US cropland. EPA’s short-sighted response may help the industry in the short term, but most of these benefits will be seen not by farmers but top-level executives, with the long-term risk of exacerbating the pre-existing epidemic of antibiotic resistance.

Data show that over 35,000 Americans die each year because of antibiotic resistant bacteria. And antibiotic-based pesticides present a significant risk to endangered animals in citrus growing regions, like Florida panthers and Joaquin kit foxes, in addition to dwindling pollinator populations.

The health risk of this decision is greatest to the essential workers that manage citrus groves. “The use of streptomycin as a pesticide continues to be an ongoing threat to the health and safety of our farmworkers, who are at the frontlines of feeding our nation,” said Jeannie Economos, coordinator of the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Program at Farmworker Association of Florida. “We’re urging swift resolution of this case and an end to the misuse of medically important antibiotics within our food systems. Every day of delay means more farmworkers are exposed, putting themselves and their families at risk.”

The lawsuit against EPA’s decision includes Beyond Pesticides, US Public Interest Research Group, Environment Confederation of Southwest Florida, Farmworker Association of Florida, Farmworker Justice, Migrant Clinicians Network, represented by Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, and Center for Biological Diversity. Petitioners argue that EPA failed to ensure that the approved uses of streptomycin as a pesticide would not result in unreasonable adverse effects on human health or the environment, and say that EPA failed to adequately assess risks streptomycin poses to endangered species.

EPA decision put it at odds with other agencies, as officials with both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have raised concerns about using medically important antibiotics as pesticides.

Concerns over turning medical treatments into pesticides are not conjecture but borne out of experiences already concerning on the ground. There is significant evidence available now that widespread use of human-important antifungal drugs as antibiotics is resulting in resistance to dangerous fungal pathogens that are now infecting humans. Aspergillus fumigatus, a common mold found in soils and composts, has become increasingly virulent to humans. Between 2000 and 2013, cases of invasive aspergillosis increased 3% per annum, and roughly 300,000 worldwide are diagnosed each year. Data show that roughly 20% of Aspergillus fumigatus samples are resistant to azole fungicides used in agriculture but also critical for human treatments. By finding evidence that the same infections strains of Aspergillus fumigatus were also resistant to non-azole agricultural fungicides, scientists provided a direct link from hospital infections to on-farm fungicide applications.  In the same vein, the emerging fungal pathogen Candida auris displays 90% of infections resistant to one drug, and 30% to two or more, with this resistance tracing back to farm use.

Nearly 10 years ago, Beyond Pesticides’ galvanized action on the National Organic Standards Board to eliminate the use of antibiotics like streptomycin in organic apple and pear production. At issue was the destructive bacterial disease fire blight, which can turn blossoms, leaves, twigs, and branches of affected trees black, having the appearance of being hit by fire. Despite the challenges, farmers were able to transition to resistant varieties and craft system management plants to better address outbreaks without resorting to antibiotic use.

Unlike the challenge to organic apple and pear growers, chemical-based citrus farmers already have proof of concept that citrus crops can be grown to market without the use of medically important antibiotics. Organic citrus farmers are prohibited from employing not only antibiotics, but other toxic pesticides such as the systemic neonicotinoids that are often used on chemical farms. Organic growers like Uncle Matt’s in Florida discuss the importance of breeding programs for tolerant rootstock, the use of botanical insecticides such as neem and clove oil, and the release of the biological control agent Tamarixia wasps, which feed on Asian Citrus Psyllids. Watch Uncle Matt’s Benny McClean, production manager, speak about organic citrus production in Florida at Beyond Pesticide’s 33rd National Pesticide Forum.

While the organic approach shows the wisdom and value of organic’s drive towards ‘continuous improvement,’ EPA’s response to industry executives crowing about the potential for declining profit margins represents a short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction. Advocates implore there is no need to steal from our health future to protect the inability of the citrus industry to responsibly manage its problems; what’s needed is a strategy that represents a long-term investment in the future of citrus production. Rather than bringing new chemicals to the market, EPA should work with growers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deploy resistant rootstocks, new biologicals and truly least-toxic pesticides.

For more information about the dangers of antibiotics in farming, see Beyond Pesticides article Agricultural Uses of Antibiotics Escalate Bacterial Resistance.

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

Source: Earthjustice press release

(Beyond Pesticides, January 23, 2023) There is no doubt that the climate crisis is upon us. And the consequences are undeniably grave. So, we must incorporate our understanding of the grave health and environmental effects into the deliberations on all policy decisions regarding petrochemical pesticide registrations and synthetic fertilizer use in agriculture and nonagricultural land management. Of critical importance, in this context, is the effect of policy decisions on soil health—in particular, soil organic carbon, which sequesters atmospheric carbon and reduces its damaging atmospheric effects.

Tell USDA, EPA, and Congress to incorporate in ALL its policy decisions an analysis of impact on the climate crisis, with particular attention to the protection of soil health.

Although the soil is commonly recognized as a sink for atmospheric carbon, there is a false narrative that says carbon can be sequestered in the soil through chemical-intensive no-till agriculture. Now the Rodale Institute’s 40-Year Report on their “Farming Systems Trial” should end the myth of the toxic, petrochemical-based, GMO-herbicide, no-till systems. Rodale’s scientific trials clearly show that these degenerative no-till systems are inferior to Regenerative Organic Agriculture on every key criterion.

The highest yields of corn in the tilled organic manure system and the best increases in soil organic carbon were produced with an organic manure system and limited tillage (tilled every other year). Of importance to climate resilience, organic corn yields have been 31 percent higher than conventional/industrial farming systems in drought years.

The trials show that herbicide no-till systems do not produce higher levels of soil organic carbon (SOC) than tillage systems. This result is consistent with reviews of 194 studies comparing no-till and tilled fields.

According to Andre Leu, international director at Regeneration International, “The main reason for the loss of soil carbon in farming systems is not tillage; it is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Research shows that there is a direct link between the application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers and a decline in soil carbon.” In addition, those same nitrogenous fertilizers act as potent greenhouse gases when volatilized to the atmosphere.

Thus, chemical-intensive agriculture and nonagricultural land management contribute to climate change in multiple ways. If we are to be serious about combating climate change and mitigating its impacts, all agencies must consider climate impacts when making decisions. This means that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must not approve registrations of pesticides that harm the soil or facilitate agricultural practices that interfere with carbon sequestration. It means that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in a much more aggressive way, must lead the transition to organic agriculture as a replacement for chemical-intensive practices and should cease all support for chemical-intensive agriculture immediately. It means that the Department of Interior (DOI) must manage all public lands with organic practices that ensure soil health and all that means for a livable future.

Tell USDA, EPA, and Congress to incorporate in ALL its policy decisions an analysis of impact on the climate crisis, with particular attention to the protection of soil health.

Letter to EPA:

The broad perspective embodied in President Biden’s Executive Memorandum (EM) Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office, creates a mandate across all federal agencies for future-oriented public health and safety protections. As well as environmental stewardship, more protections are urgently needed to abate the climate crisis. A separate executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, states, ”The United States will also move quickly to build resilience, both at home and abroad, against the impacts of climate change that are already manifest and will continue to intensify according to current trajectories.”

A comprehensive resiliency policy requires EPA to cease allowing the continued degradation of soil and ecosystems that are so critical to abating the climate crisis when alternatives are available and could be promoted. Missing from EPA’s registration program are the steps necessary to reduce and eliminate the contribution of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers to the climate, recognizing the viability of the $63 billion organic industry that is growing, despite EPA’s continuing commitment to the status-quo allowance of chemicals unnecessary to achieve agricultural productivity and land management goals. EPA’s failure in this regard constitutes a public health threat, a reneging of the agency’s responsibility to environmental stewardship, and a missed opportunity and mandate to ensure a livable future.

A key missing element of EPA’s review is the impact of pesticide registration decisions on soil health—in particular, soil organic carbon, which sequesters atmospheric carbon away from damaging atmospheric effects. Although the soil is commonly recognized as a sink for atmospheric carbon, there is a false narrative that says carbon can be sequestered in the soil through chemical-intensive no-till agriculture, which depends heavily on EPA-registered herbicides. Now the Rodale Institute’s 40-Year Report on their “Farming Systems Trial” should end the myth of the toxic, petrochemical, GMO-herbicide, no-till systems. Rodale’s scientific trials clearly show that these degenerative no-till systems are inferior to Regenerative Organic Agriculture on every key criterion.

The highest yields of corn in the tilled organic manure system and the best increases in soil organic carbon were produced with an organic manure system and limited tillage (tilled every other year). Of importance to climate resilience, organic corn yields have been 31 percent higher than conventional/industrial farming systems in drought years.

The trials show that herbicide no-till systems do not produce higher levels of soil organic carbon than tillage systems. This result is consistent with reviews of 194 studies comparing no-till and tilled fields.

According to Andre Leu, international director at Regeneration International, “The main reason for the loss of soil carbon in farming systems is not tillage; it is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Research shows that there is a direct link between the application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers and a decline in soil carbon.” In addition, those same nitrogenous fertilizers act as potent greenhouse gases when volatilized to the atmosphere.

Chemical-intensive agriculture contributes to climate change in multiple ways. If we are to be serious about combating climate change and mitigating its impacts, all agencies must consider climate impacts when making decisions. This means that EPA must not approve registrations of pesticides that harm the soil or facilitate agricultural practices that interfere with carbon sequestration. In fact, under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), continued registration of pesticides contributing to the climate crisis or not effectively abating the crisis, when possible, causes “unreasonable” adverse effects.

Please adopt this changed direction. Thank you.

Letter to USDA:

The broad perspective embodied in President Biden’s Executive Memorandum (EM) Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office creates a mandate across all federal agencies for future-oriented public health and safety protections, as well as environmental stewardship. More must urgently be done to incorporate protections that abate the climate crisis. A separate executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, states,” The United States will also move quickly to build resilience, both at home and abroad, against the impacts of climate change that are already manifest and will continue to intensify according to current trajectories.”

There Is no doubt that climate change is upon us. And the consequences are undeniably grave. We should seriously consider all policy decisions in light of those grave consequences. Among those are decisions that affect soil health—in particular, soil organic carbon, which sequesters atmospheric carbon away from damaging atmospheric effects.

A comprehensive resiliency policy requires USDA in all its programs to reverse the continued degradation of soil and ecosystems that is so critical to abating the climate crisis. Missing from USDA’s analysis, work, and programs generally are the steps necessary to replace dependence on petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers contributing to the climate emergency with a new direction recognizing the viability of the $63 billion organic enterprise. While strides are being made in the National Organic Program, the growth of organic is not keeping pace with the need to confront the climate crisis, given that status-quo use of chemicals is no longer needed to achieve agricultural productivity and land management goals. USDA’s failure in this regard constitutes a public health threat, a reneging of the agency’s responsibility to environmental stewardship, and a missed opportunity and mandate to ensure a livable future.

Although the soil is commonly recognized as a sink for atmospheric carbon, there is a false narrative that says carbon can be sequestered in the soil through chemical-intensive no-till agriculture. Now the Rodale Institute’s 40-Year Report on their “Farming Systems Trial” should end the myth of the toxic, petrochemical, GMO-herbicide, no-till systems. Rodale’s scientific trials clearly show that these degenerative no-till systems are inferior to Regenerative Organic Agriculture on every key criterion.

The highest yields of corn in the tilled organic manure system and the best increases in soil organic carbon were produced with an organic manure system and limited tillage (tilled every other year). Of importance to climate resilience, organic corn yields have been 31 percent higher than conventional/industrial farming systems in drought years.

The trials show that herbicide no-till systems do not produce higher levels of soil organic carbon (SOC) than tillage systems. This result is consistent with reviews of 194 studies comparing no-till and tilled fields.

According to Andre Leu, international director at Regeneration International, “The main reason for the loss of soil carbon in farming systems is not tillage; it is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Research shows that there is a direct link between the application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers and a decline in soil carbon.” In addition, those same nitrogenous fertilizers act as potent greenhouse gases when volatilized to the atmosphere.

Chemical-intensive agriculture contributes to climate change in multiple ways. If we are to be serious about combating climate change and mitigating its impacts, all agencies must consider climate impacts when making decisions. This means that USDA must lead in a much more aggressive way the transition to organic agriculture as a replacement for chemical-intensive practices and should cease all support for chemical-intensive agriculture immediately.

Please adopt this changed direction. Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators:

President Biden’s Executive Memorandum Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office creates a mandate across all federal agencies for future-oriented public health and safety protections. More is urgently needed to incorporate protections to abate the climate crisis. A separate executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, states, ”The United States will also move quickly to build resilience, both at home and abroad, against the impacts of climate change that are already manifest and will continue to intensify according to current trajectories.”

There is no doubt that climate change is upon us. The consequences are undeniably grave. We must seriously consider all policy decisions in light of those grave consequences. Among those are decisions that affect soil health—in particular, soil organic carbon, which sequesters atmospheric carbon away from damaging atmospheric effects.

A comprehensive resiliency policy requires USDA, EPA, and DOI in all of their programs to eliminate the continued degradation of soil and ecosystems and adopt known alternatives. Missing from the agencies’ analysis, work, and programs generally is a recognition of the viability of $63 billion organic industry. Despite strides made with the National Organic Program, the growth of organic is not keeping pace with the need to confront the climate crisis. Key to the required analysis is the impact of pesticide use on soil health. The agencies’ failure in this regard constitutes a public health threat, a reneging of their responsibility to environmental stewardship, and a missed opportunity to ensure a livable future.

Although the soil is commonly recognized as a sink for atmospheric carbon, a false narrative says carbon can be sequestered in the soil through chemical-intensive no-till agriculture. Now the Rodale Institute’s 40-Year Report on their “Farming Systems Trial” should end the myth of the toxic, GMO-herbicide, no-till systems. Scientific trials clearly show that these degenerative no-till systems are inferior to Regenerative Organic Agriculture in every respect.

The highest yields of corn in the tilled organic manure system and the best increases in soil organic carbon were produced with an organic manure system and limited tillage (tilled every other year). Of importance to climate resilience, organic corn yields have been 31 percent higher than conventional/industrial farming systems in drought years.

The trials show that herbicide no-till systems do not produce higher levels of soil organic carbon (SOC) than tillage systems. This result is consistent with reviews of 194 studies comparing no-till and tilled fields.

According to Andre Leu, international director at Regeneration International, “The main reason for the loss of soil carbon in farming systems is not tillage; it is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Research shows that there is a direct link between the application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers and a decline in soil carbon.” In addition, those same nitrogenous fertilizers act as potent greenhouse gases when volatilized to the atmosphere.

Thus, chemical-intensive agriculture and land management contribute to climate change in multiple ways. If we are to be serious about combating climate change and mitigating its impacts, all agencies must consider climate impacts when making decisions. This means EPA must not approve registrations of pesticides that harm the soil or facilitate agricultural practices that interfere with carbon sequestration. It means USDA must forcefully lead the transition to organic agriculture as a replacement for chemical-intensive practices and cease all support for chemical-intensive agriculture immediately. It means DOI must manage all public lands with organic practices that ensure soil health and a livable future.

Please ensure that our federal agencies adopt this changed direction. Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 20, 2023) In late December 2022, the University of California San Francisco made a public apology for the unethical actions of two School of Medicine faculty members who conducted experiments in the 1960s and 1970s on some 2,600 prisoners held at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. The connection to the work of Beyond Pesticides? The experiments involved exposing male prisoners, by dermal application and via injection, to insecticides and herbicides; this continued until 1977, when the State of California banned all human subject research at state prisons. The investigation and apology — which arose through the work of the UCSF Program for Historical Reconciliation — surface multiple issues surrounding scientific research on human subjects, including ethics and regulations related to consent and to risk of harm. Beyond Pesticides has assiduously chronicled the huge variety of health harms that pesticide use can cause, has reported on many studies evidencing the presence of pesticide residues in human bodies, and in the mid-2000s weighed in on the then-vociferous ethics and regulations controversies surrounding research practices (see more below).

UCSF investigated the case of two dermatology professors who, the university learned, had failed to secure consent from the prisoners — many of whom were then either being evaluated or treated for psychiatric issues. The one surviving professor, Dr. Howard Maibach, wrote in a letter to colleagues: “What I believed to be ethical as a matter of course forty and fifty years ago is not considered ethical today. I regret having participated in research that did not comply with contemporary standards.” He indicated that a former University of San Francisco president had opined to him that the prisoners were ethically able to consent to the experiments. Dr. Maibach has also defended the research, suggesting that it yielded benefits to the prisoners, such as free dermatologic care subsequent to the study, and compensation for their participation (the university has dismissed these “benefits” claims).

The UCSF apology emerges into a landscape in which there is increased public attention in the U.S. on historical (and current) inequities and abuses across institutions, as well as mounting concern about the human and environmental health harms of pesticide use. The medical academy has had its own share of ethical misbehavior, from clinical bias to outright villainy; most notorious among them was the 1930s Tuskegee Institute study on syphilis. In that terrible episode, researchers not only did not secure consent from the study’s 600 Black male subjects, but also, wanting to monitor the disease’s progression, withheld treatment from the 399 subjects who had the disease. Investigators essentially stood by and did nothing as the infected men went blind, had other severe health problems, and/or eventually died.

Informed consent is now ethically central to how scientific research can be conducted in the U.S. Legitimate research abides by federal requirements, which include: (1) disclosing to potential research subjects information needed to make an informed decision; (2) facilitating the understanding of what has been disclosed; and (3) promoting the voluntariness of the decision about whether or not to participate in the research. (See also the U.S. Health and Human Services FAQ on informed consent.)

Intentional dosing of human subjects with pesticides is a different kettle of fish from the current biomonitoring protocols employed in some pesticide research. The role of potential harm caused by pesticides has fueled research for decades, but deliberate testing on humans was the subject of much discussion and argument, most intensively during the 1990s and 2000s.

To wit: should humans be the subjects of research on pesticides at all? If so, under what conditions? Should potentially harmful substances ever be intentionally introduced to research subjects? Can all harms be predicted? How is “harm” defined and by whom? Should there be any “weighing” of potential harms to research subjects against potential direct or indirect benefits to them, to public health, to disease treatment or prevention, et al. (See a multitude of Beyond Pesticides coverage of related developments here and here; see also a 2007 publication of the American Medical Association that parses some of these issues.)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and federal agencies broadly, were and are compelled (given their mandates) to address these issues. In 1991, EPA and 14 other federal agencies and departments adopted a set of regulations aimed at creating uniformity in the protection of human research subjects. EPA’s regulation was the “Protections for Subjects in Human Research,” referred to as the Common Rule. In 2006, EPA banned all third-party research (intended for submission to the agency) involving intentional dosing of pregnant or nursing women [or] children with pesticides. The Common Rule has undergone a series of revisions and rulemaking up through 2018, seeking to “modernize, strengthen, and make [it] more effective . . . [and] to better protect human subjects involved in research, while facilitating valuable research and reducing burden, delay, and ambiguity for investigators.”

EPA convened a joint meeting, in 1998, of its Scientific Advisory Board and Scientific Advisory Panel on the matter of human pesticide testing. According to an evaluation published in Environmental Medicine, after considerable Sturm und Drang, the committee ultimately “could not agree unanimously whether there are circumstances under which pesticide testing on human subjects can be justified. The final report states, ‘human dosing experiments are not appropriate if the primary intent of the study is to determine or revise a NOEL or NOAEL [types of standardized metrics for symptom levels].’ . . . [I]f the use of human subjects in pesticide testing can be justified, that justification cannot be to facilitate the interests of industry or agriculture, but only to better safeguard the public health.” It is noteworthy that several members objected to the final report because it “minimizes the risks to humans from intentional experimental dosing and deemphasizes the issue that ‘no limited human study will provide information about safe levels of intake of pesticides by humans, especially children.’”

EPA has subsequently adopted several “subparts” to the 2018 Common Rule aimed at increasing protections for participants in human research conducted or supported by EPA, or certain types of third party research. The federal Regulations.gov website notes that “Congress mandated three requirements for EPA’s rule: (1) prohibit the use of pregnant women, infants or children as subjects; (2) be consistent with the principles proposed in the 2004 report of National Academy of Sciences ‘Intentional Human Dosing Studies for EPA Regulatory Purposes: Scientific and Ethical Issues’ and the principles of the Nuremberg Code; and (3) establish an independent Human Subjects Review Board. . . . EPA created [other] regulatory subparts . . . [to] govern research conducted or sponsored by EPA involving . . . intentional exposure to any substance of human subjects who are children or pregnant or nursing women; [additional subparts] provide extra protections for pregnant women and for children who are the subjects of observational research conducted or supported by EPA.”

This apparently represents the current EPA stance; Beyond Pesticides research to find evidence of an outright EPA ban on human dosing experiments found none. That said, a digital search also yielded no evidence of any recent or current research that has intentionally dosed people with pesticides. What is far more common, and has been for some years, is a “retrospective” approach in pesticide research — sampling and analysis of the products of the human body (e.g., urine, blood) to determine the presence and concentration of various kinds of pesticides, acquired through vocational exposures, or through food, water, and general environmental exposures.

Such “biomonitoring” is used in academic/scientific research, but it is also used by government agencies (e.g., the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]), nonprofit advocate organizations, and others watchdogging impacts of specific contaminants in humans (or other organisms). Beyond Pesticides explains that biomonitoring “is considered to be the most health-relevant assessment of exposure because it ‘measure[s] the amount of the chemical that actually gets into people, not the amount that may get into people.’”

However, Beyond Pesticides has historically criticized EPA and the CDC for conducting human monitoring studies without full disclosure of agency knowledge about known or potential hazards associated with the exposure patterns being monitored. In 2012, the CDC and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene enrolled Maryland households in a study that involved spraying the neurotoxic synthetic pyrethroid insecticide bifenthrin on their property to determine the efficacy of this approach in controlling Lyme disease. At the time, Beyond Pesticides voiced concern that study participants, who were given gift cards for their participation, had not been provided complete information about bifenthrin’s potential health risks to people, and requested that the study be halted. [The study was eventually terminated after over a year, when no efficacy was found.]

Similarly, in 2004, EPA launched the two-year Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study of 60 children in Duval County, Florida to collect information on their exposure to pesticides and household chemicals, such as flame retardants and perfluorinated chemicals, a family of substances in products such as Teflon. Paul Gilman, then-EPA science adviser and assistant administrator, said the study, utilizing chemical industry money, will help the agency conduct “groundbreaking work” on how chemicals are absorbed by infants and children from birth to age three. Participating parents, who were to receive up to $970 and a free video camcorder for participating, had to agree to routinely spray or have pesticides sprayed inside their homes during the two-year study period. Chemical concentrations were to be measured in air, dust, and urine samples of the children, and by analyzing chemicals absorbed in clothing before and after pesticide applications. While the study was derailed by public outrage and press coverage, EPA can still engage in “observational studies” that encourage pesticide use with incentives under federal regulations.

One could credibly argue that pesticide use is a grand human experiment, given that virtually everyone carries hundreds of exogenous chemical compounds in their bodies (and the number continues to rise)—an experiment associated with elevated rates of debilitating and deadly diseases. (See Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database.) These compounds enter human bodies through multiple routes (air, food, water, consumer products, etc.), and some accumulate because they are not readily processed/broken down and excreted; these can sometimes linger for long periods and increase risk for certain diseases. “Body burden” refers to the presence and accumulation of these synthetic chemicals in (generally human) bodies.

Beyond Pesticides reports regularly on emerging research documenting the presence and effects of pesticides in people. A recent example is a study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials that, for the first time, finds a high frequency of eight widely available neonicotinoid insecticides in human bile (which is produced by the liver). Residues in the sampled bile was 86% nitenpyram and dinotefuran; the former is used in flea treatments, and the latter in agriculture and land management. This finding suggests that these compounds are not easily degraded by the liver and represent potential toxicity risks to the organ.

One of the important vectors for exposure to chemical contaminants is the food supply; three federal agencies are involved in understanding and regulating pesticide residues in food. EPA sets “tolerances” for the amount of pesticide residue allowable in foods (though it is also able to establish tolerance exemptions for particular pesticides). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforces those EPA tolerances for domestic foods shipped in interstate commerce, and for imported foods (except for meat, poultry, catfish, and certain egg products, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). FDA conducts a pesticide residue monitoring program that generates an annual report on results of its evaluation thousands of foods and food products each year; see our coverage of the 2020 report, which found that more than half of food in the U.S. contains pesticide residues.

The ubiquity of synthetic chemicals, including pesticides, is true not only in human bodies; other organisms, ecosystems, natural resources, and the environment broadly are all permeated to greater or lesser degrees.

As Beyond Pesticides reported early in 2022, Professor Sir Ian Boyd (of the University of St. Andrews) wrote in The Guardian, “The rise of the chemical burden in the environment is diffuse and insidious. Even if the toxic effects of individual chemicals can be hard to detect, this does not mean that the aggregate effect is likely to be insignificant. Regulation is not designed to detect or understand these effects. We are relatively blind to what is going on as a result. In this situation, where we have a low level of scientific certainty about effects, there is a need for a much more precautionary approach to new chemicals and to the amount being emitted to the environment.”

Research, regulation, and biomonitoring efforts are certainly an improvement over the pesticide landscape of 40 or more years ago. Given that more than 500 synthetic pesticides are registered for use in the U.S. (and thousands of other synthetic chemicals are used in myriad other sectors), it is helpful to know what is happening in humans and the rest of the living world. But these efforts are not solutions to our chemical problem in agriculture and land management.

Once again, Beyond Pesticides points out that, rather than digging our collective selves into a deeper, synthetic chemical/pesticide-saturated hole, the far wiser path is one of moving to a precautionary approach that would eschew these synthetic and petrochemical inputs. Organic is the path to a healthy and sustainable future; we must advance on that path with extreme urgency.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-22/ucsf-apologizes-for-experiments-done-on-prisoners-in-the-60s-and-70s

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

(Beyond Pesticides, January 19, 2023) Research published in Environmental Health Perspectives finds the presence of nine various neonicotinoids (neonics) and six neonic metabolites within human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). CSF is an essential part of the central nervous system (CNS), especially for CNS development. Specific chemical biomarkers (measurable indicators of biological state), like pesticides, found in CSF are useful for diagnosing and evaluating numerous neurological diseases.

The nervous system is an integral part of the human body and includes the brain, spinal cord, a vast network of nerves and neurons, all of which are responsible for many of our bodily functions—from sensed to movement. However, mounting evidence over the past years shows that chronic exposure to sublethal (low) levels of pesticides can cause neurotoxic effects or exacerbate preexisting chemical damage to the nervous system. The impacts of pesticides on the nervous system, including the brain, are hazardous, especially for chronically exposed individuals (e.g., farmworkers) or during critical windows of vulnerability and development (e.g., childhood, pregnancy). Researchers identify the role agricultural chemicals play in CNS impacts causing neurological diseases, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease, dementia-like diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and other effects on cognitive function.

Over 300 environmental contaminants and their byproducts, including pesticides, are chemicals commonly present in human blood and urine samples and can increase neurotoxicity risk when crossing the brain barrier. Therefore, studies like this highlight the importance of understanding how chemical accumulation in the body can impact long-term health and disease prognosis.

The study explores whether the presence of neonics and their metabolites in CSF is an indicator of adverse CNS effects. From April 2019 to January 2021, researchers gathered 314 CSF samples from patients aged one month to 89 years in the First Affiliated Hospital of Shantou University, Shantou, China using a clinical lumbar puncture. Researchers collected CSF samples from patients experiencing similar symptoms with a different disease/clinical diagnosis (i.e., “mostly viral encephalitis, encephalitis other than viral encephalitis, leukemia, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral laceration, urinary tract infection, respiratory failure, pulmonary tuberculosis, and posterior circulation ischemia”). To analyze the presence of neonics and their metabolites in CSF, researchers used acidification, solid phase extraction, and high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). Ninety-nine percent of the 314 CSF samples contain at least one neonic. Of the 314 CSF samples, nine percent (28) have a single neonic compound, 84 percent (265) have between 2 and 6, and six percent (19) have between 7 and 10 neonic compounds. Nine of these neonics in CSF samples are nitenpyram (NIT), thiamethoxam, imidacloprid, acetamiprid (ACE), thiacloprid, clothianidin, flonicamid, imidaclothiz, and sulfoxaflor. Additionally, six neonic metabolites are present in CSF: N-desmethyl-thiamethoxam, olefin-imidacloprid, 5-hydroxy-imidacloprid, N-desmethyl-acetamiprid (N-dm-ACE), thiacloprid-amide, and 6-chloronicotinic acid.

Over the past 20 years, neonicotinoids served as an alternative for four major chemical classes of insecticides in the global market (organophosphates, carbamates, phenyl-pyrazoles, and pyrethroids). These systemic agricultural pesticides are highly toxic, resembling nicotine, and affect the central nervous system of insects, resulting in paralysis and death, even at low doses. Like other pesticides, neonics readily contaminate water and food resources as traditional water waste treatments typically fail to remove the chemical from tap water, and the systemic nature of neonics allows the chemical to accumulate within plant products. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly half the U.S. population encounters at least one type of neonic daily, with children ages three to five having the highest exposure risk. Health impacts of exposure to neonics can include neurotoxicity, reproductive anomalies, hepatic and renal damage, and an increase in gene expression linked to hormone-dependent breast cancer. Additionally, researchers identified that some neonicotinoids play a role in enzyme (aromatase) production that stimulates excess estrogen production, a known event in hormone-dependent cancer development.

Beyond its link to human health effects, neonicotinoids are infamous for their well-documented role in driving mass pollinator declines. However, pollinators are far from the only victims of ubiquitous neonicotinoid contamination. In a recent avian risk assessment, EPA scientists found that neonicotinoids levels in treated seeds exceed the agency’s threshold of concern for certain birds by as much as 200-fold. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan confirmed that tiny amounts of neonicotinoids – the equivalent of just four treated canola seeds, for example – are enough to cause migrating songbirds to lose their sense of direction and become emaciated. Recent research uncovered the endocrine-disrupting health impacts of imidacloprid on white-tailed deer, adding to the concern of the same effect in humans.

This study adds to the growing research on pesticides and neurotoxic consequences. Although past studies on neonic toxicity focus on neurotoxicity among insects and aquatic invertebrates, emerging evidence demonstrates these compounds also adversely impact the nervous system of animals, including humans as well. Not only does research find exposure to sublethal doses of chemicals affect hormone receptors (endocrine disruption), but neural receptors, such as connections between nerves, the brain, enzymes, and DNA are affected as well. In addition to this research, several studies demonstrate autism, mood disorders (e.g., depression), and degenerative neurological conditions among aquatic and terrestrial animals, including humans, exposed to pesticides. Pesticides themselves, mixtures of chemicals such as the defoliant Agent Orange (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T) and its  dioxin contaminants and therapeutic hormones in pharmaceutical products, possess the ability to disrupt neurological function. Furthermore, studies suggest that pesticides formulants (adjuvants) such as POEA (polyoxyethylene tallow amine) have both neurological and endocrine-disrupting activity. POEA is present in some glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup and has higher nervous system toxicity than the active ingredient (glyphosate). Although the biological function and mechanism of neurotoxicity related to pesticide exposure is ambiguous, scientists note synchronized communication within and between cells that have a mechanism of action of “spamming” communication signals. The study concludes, “For continued global use of NEOs [neonics], mechanisms of toxicity, especially to the CNS in humans, need to be more rigorously investigated.”

The nervous system is integral to everyday human activities and the body’s ability to function normally. Pesticides themselves can possess the ability to disrupt neurological function. Pesticides’ impact on the nervous system, including the brain, are hazardous, especially for chronically exposed individuals or during critical windows of vulnerability and development. Therefore, studies related to pesticides and neurological disorders can help scientists understand the underlying mechanisms that cause neurodegenerative diseases. As captured by epidemiologic studies in Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (PIDD) and Daily News Blog, the adverse health effects of pesticides, exposure, and the aggregate risk of pesticides showcase a need for more precise research on pesticide exposure. Existing information, including this study, supports the clear need for a strategic shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information on the effects of pesticide exposure on neurological health, see Beyond Pesticides’ PIDD pages on brain and nervous system disorders, including dementia-like diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, and other impacts on cognitive function. 

Beyond Pesticides advocates for organic land and agriculture management as precautionary approach to pest prevention and management. Buying, growing, and supporting organic can help eliminate the extensive use of pesticides in the environment and from your diet. For more information on why organic is the right choice for consumers and the farmworkers who grow our food, see Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

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

Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

(Beyond Pesticides, January 18, 2023) Sunflower plantings have the potential to significantly reduce mite infestations in nearby honey bee colonies, according to research recently published in the Journal of Economic Entomology by researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). With pollinators under threat from pesticides, climate change, loss of habitat, and the spread of disease and parasites, sustainable methods that address multiple factors at once are needed. This study points to a way to address destructive Varroa mites, while reducing the need for in-hive use of miticides that can likewise harm colony health. “If sunflowers are as big of a factor in mite infestation as indicated by our landscape-level correlations … having a few more acres of sunflower within a mile or two of apiaries could bring colonies below the infestation levels that require treatment of hives with acaracides (i.e., mite-controlling chemicals),” said lead author Evan Palmer-Young, PhD, of USDA’s Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, MD.

Prior research has pointed to sunflower pollen as a potential benefit for a number of common bee diseases and infestations, including the Varroa mite, the fungal parasites Nosema spp, and various viruses. Investigations went through four different experiments aimed at characterizing any potential effects. The first focused on landscape associations between Varroa mites and Nosema using National data on over 400 apiaries in 30 states, comparing the amount of sunflower crop area to colony health. The second took a group of 30 bee colonies at the University of Maryland and supplemented their feeding with either an artificial pollen patty, sunflower patty, or wildflower patty during the late summer to early fall, and then assessing the prevalence of mites and disease. The third supplemented a group of 30 colonies in Massachusetts with the same pollen options in springtime, and then evaluated colony health. The last experiment focused on the impact of sunflower pollen on worker bees already infected with Nosema and deformed wing virus.

For the initial experiment on landscape associations, areas with more sunflower production were found to have lower levels of mite infestation. For every doubling of sunflower crop production, models employed show a nearly 1/3 decrease in varroa mite infestation. For the fall pollen feeding experiment, colonies fed sunflower pollen saw a 2.75 fold reduction in the intensity of Varroa infestation compared to the artificial pollen treatment. For the spring feeding, Varroa was found in only one-third of hives sampled. Neither the fall nor spring feed experiment, or the individual caged bee experiment saw a significant effect on viral loading or Nosema prevalence, however. “Although we did not find significant effects of sunflower pollen on endopasrasites [Nosema ceranae] or viruses in laboratory or field settings, sunflower pollen was associated with reduced levels of Varroa mites in honey bee colonies,” the authors write.

This finding is important in the context of declining diversity in U.S. crops. According to the study, the acreage of US farmland under sunflower production has declined by 2% per year since 1980.

While the pesticide industry often cites Varroa mites as the primary factor in pollinator declines, it is critical to understand that pesticides are playing a role in this phenomenon. Evidence shows that exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides increase honey bee vulnerability to mite problems. While mites infestations are relatively simple to diagnose in the field,  it is much more difficult to test for insecticide exposure in a hive, requiring specialized labs and equipment.

Typical approaches to Varroa management include regular hive treatments with various miticides, many of which can likewise place a colony at risk. Any approach that will allow beekeepers to reduce stress on honey bee hives provides important benefits. “If sunflower pollen can be used to effectively manage Varroa mites, the timing of sunflower pollen production—which peaks in late summer (in temperate regions), just as mite levels begin to rise towards their peak in October and November (Traynor et al. 2016)—is ideal for reducing infestation during the critical late-season time frame,” the study notes.

Nearly a decade ago, then-President Obama established a Presidential Pollinator Health Task Force aimed at reversing declines in honey bees and other pollinators, coordinating action among various government agencies, and including guidelines for federal agencies to protect pollinators. USDA did announce some actions to increase habitat, but neglected other factors like pesticides, and only two years later, the Government Accountability Office cited USDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its failure to address threats to pollinator populations. While the Trump administration took an antagonistic approach towards pollinator safety, siding with industry and delaying even the listing of an endangered pollinator, President Biden has yet to pick up the important work that President Obama began, or take any similar steps to protect pollinators.

With a vacuum in leadership at the top, both managed and wild pollinators continue to suffer unacceptable declines that threaten not only the health of ecosystems, but critical food sources humans rely upon. Earlier this year a study found pollinator declines are the reducing the global production of nuts, fruits, and vegetables by 3-5% annually, and this loss of healthy, nutrient-dense food is resulting in over 425,000 excess deaths each year.

Join Beyond Pesticides in urging the Biden administration to take meaningful steps to reform pesticide regulation and address the coinciding existential crises of our time – climate change, public health, and pollinator and biodiversity decline.

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

Source: Entomology Today, Journal of Economic Entomology

(Beyond Pesticides, January 17, 2023) One of the world’s most successful conservation laws—the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)—was enacted in 1973. Since then, it has saved countless imperiled species from extinction, put hundreds more on the road to recovery, and has enabled the preservation of habitats that support all of us. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the humpback whale, bald eagle, and snail darter are still with us. The ESA is our most powerful tool to combat the extinction crisis and stem the loss of biodiversity currently facing our country and the global community. However, decades of underfunding have kept it from realizing its full potential.

Tell the Biden Administration and Congress to provide adequate funding for the Endangered Species Act.

The Biden Administration must significantly increase its budget request for endangered species in FY24. A budget of $841 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is needed to fully implement the Endangered Species Act. Currently, FWS only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act. The money is needed to support the following activities.

Listing: FWS needs at least $66.3 million, or an increase of at least $11.3 million per year for at least the next four years, to process the backlog of nearly 200 species awaiting review. Underfunding for the listing program has resulted in many animals and plants waiting over a decade to receive safeguards, with devastating consequences. Nearly 50 unlisted species have been declared extinct while waiting for protections because of these funding shortfalls. This is unacceptable.

Recovery: The FWS recovery program needs $467.9 million to support recovery planning, implementation, and recovery progress tracking. FWS desperately needs additional funding to help stabilize and save the most critically endangered species and ensure that all listed species receive a minimum amount of funding for their recovery.

Planning and Consultation: $179.3 million is required for planning and consultation to be maximally effective and efficient. This includes funding for standard consultations, pesticide consultations; “ECOSphere” development; voluntary conservation; and basic compliance monitoring that does not currently exist.

Conservation and Restoration: $10.15 million is needed to help conserve species—such as the Monarch butterfly—by improving their habitat and removing threats before they need to be listed. 

Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation: $117.7 million is required to close the gap from previous funding shortfalls and match the current need for state and private lands conservation.

Tell the Biden Administration and Congress to provide adequate funding for the Endangered Species Act.

Letter to Secretary Haaland (DOI) and Director Williams (FWS):

The Biden Administration must significantly increase its budget request for endangered species in FY24. A budget of $841 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is needed to fully implement the Endangered Species Act. Currently, FWS only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act. The money is needed to support a range of critical activities listed below.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), enacted in 1973, is one of the world’s most successful conservation laws. It has saved countless imperiled species from extinction, put hundreds more on the road to recovery, and has enabled the preservation of habitats that support all of us. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the humpback whale, bald eagle, and snail darter are still with us. The ESA is our most powerful tool to combat the extinction crisis and stem the loss of biodiversity currently facing our country and the global community. However, decades of underfunding have kept it from realizing its full potential.

Here is what is needed for a truly effective program:

Listing: FWS needs at least $66.3 million, or an increase of at least $11.3 million per year for at least the next four years, to process the backlog of nearly 200 species awaiting review. Underfunding for the listing program has resulted in many animals and plants waiting over a decade to receive safeguards, with devastating consequences. Nearly 50 unlisted species have been declared extinct while waiting for protections because of these funding shortfalls. This is unacceptable.

Recovery: The FWS recovery program needs $467.9 million to support recovery planning, implementation, and recovery progress tracking. FWS desperately needs additional funding to help stabilize and save the most critically endangered species and ensure that all listed species receive a minimum amount of funding for their recovery.

Planning and Consultation: $179.3 million is required for planning and consultation to be maximally effective and efficient. This includes funding for standard consultations, pesticide consultations; “ECOSphere” development; voluntary conservation; and basic compliance monitoring that does not currently exist.

Conservation and Restoration: $10.15 million is needed to help conserve species—such as the Monarch butterfly—by improving their habitat and removing threats before they need to be listed. 

Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation: $117.7 million is required to close the gap from previous funding shortfalls and match the current need for state and private lands conservation.

I urge the Biden administration to invest in protecting our nation’s most vulnerable species by requesting a budget of $841,370,000 for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to fully implement the Endangered Species Act.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators:

The Biden Administration must significantly increase its budget request for endangered species in FY24. A budget of $841 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is needed to fully implement the Endangered Species Act. Currently, FWS only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act. The money is needed to support a range of critical activities listed below.

One of the world’s most successful conservation laws—the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)—was enacted in 1973. Since then, it has saved countless imperiled species from extinction, put hundreds more on the road to recovery, and has enabled the preservation of habitats that support all of us. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the humpback whale, bald eagle, and snail darter are still with us. The ESA is our most powerful tool to combat the extinction crisis and stem the loss of biodiversity currently facing our country and the global community. However, decades of underfunding have kept it from realizing its full potential.

Listing: FWS needs at least $66.3 million, or an increase of at least $11.3 million per year for at least the next four years, to process the backlog of nearly 200 species awaiting review. Underfunding for the listing program has resulted in many animals and plants waiting over a decade to receive safeguards, with devastating consequences. Nearly 50 unlisted species have been declared extinct while waiting for protections because of these funding shortfalls. This is unacceptable.

Recovery: The FWS recovery program needs $467.9 million to support recovery planning, implementation, and recovery progress tracking. FWS desperately needs additional funding to help stabilize and save the most critically endangered species and ensure that all listed species receive a minimum amount of funding for their recovery.

Planning and Consultation: $179.3 million is required for planning and consultation to be maximally effective and efficient. This includes funding for standard consultations, pesticide consultations; “ECOSphere” development; voluntary conservation; and basic compliance monitoring that does not currently exist.

Conservation and Restoration: $10.15 million is needed to help conserve species—such as the Monarch butterfly—by improving their habitat and removing threats before they need to be listed. 

Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation: $117.7 million is required to close the gap from previous funding shortfalls and match the current need for state and private lands conservation.

I urge you to invest in protecting our nation’s most vulnerable species by supporting a budget of $841,370,000 for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to fully implement the Endangered Species Act.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 16, 2023) Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about individual greatness on February 4, 1968 to his congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta two months before he was assassinated. We take this day—Monday, January 16— to commemorate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. as an inspiration for taking on the challenges of justice, equity, and safety as a central part of all our work for a sustainable future. It will take the recognition of the greatness that all individuals have within to raise our voices in our communities to stop the toxic petrochemical assault and advance viable solutions that effect a transformation to organic practices and products. In so doing, we will address those who suffer the most harm from petrochemicals—in their production, transportation, use, and disposal.

Whether determining our community’s management of public lands, playing fields, and parks, or choosing food grown without toxic chemicals, or creating habitat for biodiversity, we as individuals and collectively are the instruments for effecting meaningful change. This is true whether focused on an individual chemical exposure or in taking on the existential health, biodiversity, and climate crises of our day.

Dr. King’s complete quote from which the excerpt above is taken:

“If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In Beyond Pesticides’ strategic work—whether with professionals or laypeople, local elected officials or concerned activists—great individuals play a critical role in advocating for the urgent steps that must be taken. Technical knowledge is not required to play a pivotal role in tapping into the greatness within because Beyond Pesticides provides the support network to use science as a tool for action and the hands-on guidance to adopt regenerative organic practices. In doing this, our strategies are informed by a recognition that, with the escalating grave threats, there is disproportionate risk to communities of color and those with health vulnerabilities. While the chemical industry, and chemical-intensive agriculture and landscape sector, are fiercely fighting to retain the status quo and protect their vested economic interests in petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use, individuals, joining together in their communities, are able to prevail in transitioning to sustainable practices and policies.

It is important in this work to elevate understanding and meaningful changes that end disproportionate harm. Critical to our analysis and educational work is the disproportionate risk of the existential health crises to people of color and occupational groups. Great individuals and groups of people are seeking to eliminate disproportionate harm, with elevated rates of pesticide-induced diseases among those who live in fenceline communities where chemicals are produced, in farmworkers who harvest the nation’s food, and in landscapers who manage our parks, children’s playing fields, and neighborhoods.

To inform advocacy that recognizes disproportionate harm and seeks to eliminate it, Beyond Pesticides highlights studies and decisions that establish the problems that need our attention and must be corrected. These studies and actions, captured in Beyond Pesticides’ Daily News and numerous databases (e.g., Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database), become important to strategies for structural change that must be adopted to correct injustices.

Here are some of the pieces covered by Beyond Pesticides over the last year that paint a stark picture of disproportionate harm to people of color, translating to a pattern of injustice that must be corrected in the adoption of a transformative path forward.

—A study published on April 18 finds that people in U.S. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) communities, as well as those living in low-income communities, endure a very disproportionate rate of exposure to pesticides, and of subsequent risks of harm. It finds that such disparities exist in both urban and rural communities, and at all points in the pesticide “life cycle,” from manufacture to application. A section of Beyond Pesticides’ recent mega-issue of Pesticides and You, “Retrospective 2021: A Call to Urgent Action,” is devoted to such inequities. Section IV, “Disproportionate Pesticide Harm Is Racial Injustice: Documenting Victimization: Structural Racism,” reprises Beyond Pesticides’ 2021 coverage of environmental injustices. It also calls for urgent action re: federal and state “evaluations that go into toxic chemical regulation . . . to reform and replace the current regulatory decision-making process, which is empirically racist, with one that acknowledges and cares for those with the highest real-world vulnerabilities and exposure[s].” [See Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Community at Disproportionate Risk from Pesticides, Study Finds]

— A recent report, Exposed and At Risk: Opportunities to Strengthen Enforcement of Pesticide Regulations for Farmworker Safety, by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School, in partnership with the nonprofit advocacy group, Farmworker Justice, again highlights the systemic racism of our country’s pesticide policies. Our nation depends on farmworkers, declared “essential workers” during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure sustenance for the nation and world. Yet the occupational exposure to toxic pesticides by farmworkers is discounted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), while study after study documents the disproportionate level of illness among farmworkers.

— While we are encouraged to see the formation of EPA’s new Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights, the agency has a historical bias against preventive action to ensure the protection of those disproportionately poisoned by toxic chemicals. While critically important to clean up contaminated communities, EPA must stop the flow of toxic pesticides at the front end because of the disproportionate poisoning effects of use, handling, transportation, and disposal. We live in an age of practices and products that make toxic pesticides unnecessary and their use unconscionable. Yet, EPA insists on the acceptability of harm (which it calls risk), despite its failure to (i) recognize comorbidities and preexisting health conditions, (ii) consider a combination of multiple chemical exposure interactions, and (iii) cite extensive missing health outcomes information (e.g., on endocrine disruption) and a resulting high level of uncertainty. [See Systemic Racism Exposed that New EPA Office of Environmental Justice May Not Address]

—A study published in the International Journal of English, Literature, and Social Science (IJELS) finds an association between pesticide exposure and anemia among female farmers in Indonesia. Anemia is an autoimmune blood disorder negatively affecting the number of red blood cells (RBCs) and subsequent oxygen distribution via available hemoglobin proteins in RBCs. Types of anemia include iron deficiency, pernicious (lack of vitamin B-12 absorption), aplastic (lack of RBC production), and hemolytic (RBC destruction). Although risk factors for anemia consist of age, genetics, lifestyle, and gender, environmental factors such as pesticide use and exposure contribute to disorder development. Pesticides can interfere with cells in the body, causing blood profile abnormalities that affect blood cell formation and immune system function. Anemia disproportionately impacts women and children across the globe, prevalent in over half a billion women. The disorder was more prevalent among pregnant individuals because of blood loss and iron deficiency, causing adverse reproductive outcomes among children. [See Pesticide Exposure Associated with Anemia and Blood Disorders in Farmworkers]

—On Juneteenth Day, we commemorate the abolition of slavery and celebrate human freedom. At the same time, we recognize that we have significant work to do to eliminate systemic racism and advance environmental justice. We strive to ensure that people of color are not disproportionately harmed by pesticides and other toxic chemicals—from production, use, to disposal—and that all people have access to sustainable and organic food and organically managed communities. Acute and chronic exposure to chemicals like pesticides cause a plethora of harmful effects, including (but not limited to) brain and nervous system disorders, birth abnormalities, cancer, developmental and learning disorders, endocrine disruption, immune disorder, and reproductive dysfunction, among others. However, people of color may experience more servere health effects from exposure, resulting in elevated rates of diseases. Communities of color and those living in low-socioeconomic conditions experience an inequitable number of hazards, including toxic waste plants, garbage dumps, and other sources of environmental pollution and odors that lower the quality of life. Therefore, these populations experience greater exposure to harmful chemicals and suffer from health outcomes that affect their ability to work and learn. When discussing health disparities and environmental justice, we need to focus on those most impacted by toxic chemical use. [See This Juneteenth, We Celebrate Those Who Made this Country]

—A report from the Organic Center finds that people in U.S. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities endure a significant disproportionate risk of exposure to pesticides and subsequent harms. The report also contains a lesson plan that informs young activists on how to improve the food system. Many communities of color and low-socioeconomic backgrounds experience an unequal number of hazards, including nearby toxic waste plants, garbage dumps, and other sources of environmental pollution and odors that lower the quality of life. Therefore, these populations experience greater exposure to harmful chemicals and suffer from health outcomes that affect their ability to learn and work. Doctoral candidate at Northwestern University and author of the report and lesson plan, Jayson Maurice Porter, notes, “Urban planning and city policy considers certain people in certain communities more or less disposable and puts them in harm’s way, giving them an uneven burden of experiencing and dealing with things like pollutants.” [See Highlighting the Connection Environmental Racism and the Agricultural Industry Through History]

—Flood cleanup in Houston after Hurricane Harvey increased resident exposure to a range of pesticides and other industrial chemical compounds, according to a study published recently in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health by scientists at Oregon State University (OSU). The findings are particularly concerning for a community already subject to some of the highest rates of environmental contamination in the country. “Houston is one of our most industrialized cities,” said study co-author Kim Anderson, PhD, of OSU. “When we look a year after the storm, we see that several neighborhoods that are closer to industrial zones — socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods — had higher concentrations of chemicals right from the get-go, and that was only exacerbated when the hurricane came in.”  [See Post-Hurricane Flood Cleanup in Houston Exposed Residents to Range of Pesticides and Industrial Chemicals]

—A report issued on September 7 analyzes the U.S. regulatory structure that is supposed to protect agricultural workers from the harms of pesticide use. Its conclusion? The current, “complex system of enforcement . . . lacks the capacity to effectively protect farmworkers. . . . [and] the cooperative agreement[s] between federal and state agencies makes it nearly impossible to ensure implementation of the federal Worker Protection Standard.” The report, Exposed and At Risk: Opportunities to Strengthen Enforcement of Pesticide Regulations for Farmworker Safety, was developed by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School, in partnership with the nonprofit advocacy group, Farmworker Justice. Beyond Pesticides’ coverage of farmworker exposure to pesticides and resultant harms began in the late 1970s; it continues today, most recently with attention to incidence of kidney damage, systemic racism in the farmworker policies of EPA (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), and extra risks endured by farmworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. [See Farmworkers Still Inadequately Protected from Pesticides, Report Finds]

—Revelations of toxic risks to pregnant people seem to emerge with alarming frequency. In late August a peer-reviewed study published in Chemosphere finds that the compound melamine, its primary byproduct (cyanuric acid), and four aromatic amines were detected in the urine of nearly all pregnant research participants. These chemicals are associated with increased risks of cancer, kidney toxicity, and/or developmental harm to the resultant child. Beyond Pesticides has covered a variety of pregnancy risks from pesticides and other toxic chemicals, including these in just the last three years: pesticides and children’s sleep disorders; prenatal exposures to a multitude of chemicals; insecticides and childhood leukemia; insecticides and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. [See Compounds in Pesticides Shown to Harm Fetuses and Children with Disproportionate Risk to People of Color]

—Indigenous farmer, Kaipo Kekona, provided participants of Beyond Pesticides’ 39^th (2022) National Forum, for a Livable World, with a history of traditional farming production in Hawai’i on land once a productive food forest, but appropriated by non-native corporations that established sugarcane plantations. Mr. Kekona manages a 12.5 acre farm site for the Ku’ia Agricultural Education Center in the ahupau’a of Ku’ia on Legacy Lands of Keli’I Kulani (foothills of the West Maui Mountains). Critical to the mission of the site is to not only reclaim space as a native historical food property, but also introduce to the community the practices that encourage a healthier food system and the soil health that forms the foundation of productive land management. Mr. Kepona brings the teachings from indigenous practices thathave proven to be resilient, healthy, and respectful of life. He serves as the educational coordinator and project director at the Center. Watch Mr. Kekona’s talk here.

It will take the greatness of large numbers of people to find a path forward that corrects the institutional racism that is captured in the pattern harm to people of color. The spoken truth of Martin Luther King, Jr., which we featured last year, speaks to the collective action that unites everyone in adopting the path forward. Dr. King said, “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. . .Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

We at Beyond Pesticides are looking forward to working with great people in communities nationwide to tackle what often seems like insurmountable problems, but problems that have real solutions that are within our reach, when we tap into our greatness and work together.

Thank you Martin Luther King, Jr.

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(Beyond Pesticides, January 13, 2023) The pastoral image that “farming” may still conjure for many will suffer a shock as Beyond Pesticides reports, in this Daily News Blog, about developments in the agricultural universe, including massive consolidation in the industries that supply seeds and agrochemicals to conventional farmers. A January 2023 report from Philip H. Howard, PhD updates previous work of his (see here and here) on these trends during the past couple of decades, and focuses on the most-recent (2018–2022) developments. The net conclusion is that the four largest agrochemical companies — Bayer (Monsanto), BASF, Corteva, and Sinochem (which recently subsumed ChemChina/Syngenta) — are exerting increasing leverage over an agricultural system that concentrates power and wealth, while threatening health, the environment, and access to food.

The machinations of these industries for profit, power, market penetration, and privatization of aspects of the natural world are hardly new. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) summarizes some aspects of the situation in saying, “Land and seed once belonged to no one and were shared by all, replicating the giving essence of the natural world. Today, these precious resources are tightly controlled and commoditized inputs. The modern U.S. food and agriculture system is designed to maximize a narrow concept of economic efficiency which fails to prioritize the well-being of small family farmers, rural communities, or the land.”

Increasing mechanization, industrialization, consolidation, and privatization of genetic information and of data all contribute to the dynamic and entropic world in which conventional agriculture currently operates. Aspects of the shifting paradigms in agriculture during the past 75 years can be traced to multiple factors, including World War II innovations in materials science, chemical weapons development, and other technologies; the so-called “Green Revolution”; advances in genetic science and biotechnology in the last couple of decades; and most recently, the advent of uses of Big Data and the technologies that enable it.

To begin with one of those: the dawn of genetically modified seed that would resist the assaults of applied herbicides was a game changer for the agrochemical industry and ratcheted up sector consolidation (see below). Glyphosate-resistant seed meant that farmers could plant the seed and use Roundup (glyphosate) liberally because it would not harm the plant — but would knock down weeds.

NSAC writes: “To create and mass produce a seed that would resist Roundup, Monsanto needed a captive supply of germplasm [seed]. ‘One of their main strategies,’ noted [Kiki] Hubbard [of the Organic Seed Alliance], ‘was to buy up smaller [seed] firms to access their varieties and simply insert their GE traits without needing to do any of the breeding work themselves. . . . Monsanto thus began to acquire small and regionally based seed companies, exponentially multiplying their supply of germplasm and restricting the distribution of these varieties which had been carefully bred to possess ideal traits. These foundations enabled Monsanto to become the first company to genetically engineer a plant cell and eventually mass produce a Roundup Ready line of seed.”

The company promoted the heck out of this pairing of proprietary seed plus herbicide, and competitors took note. With Monsanto’s development of its flagship glyphosate herbicide (Roundup), and its acquisition of seed companies that resulted in the 1996 debut of “Roundup Ready” soybean seed, the consolidation that now characterizes most parts of the food supply system was off and running. Now, several huge companies (see below) sell genetically modified (GM) seed for use with their herbicide products.

Not so many years ago, there were six large agrochemical companies that sold pesticides and (in some cases) synthetic fertilizers and seeds to agricultural operations. Beyond Pesticides has covered several of the huge mergers of the past decade-plus that have reduced that number to four, including Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto, the Dow–DuPont merger (which then reconfigured to DuPont and Corteva), and the ChemChina acquisition of Syngenta (with ChemChina subsequently acquired by Sinochem in 2021). ChemChina had already been scooping up many smaller seed companies over the past decade; multiple of Bayer’s seed divisions were also sold off to BASF, another chemical giant, in 2018.

Bayer, DowDupont, Sinochem, and BASF now control more than 60% of global proprietary seed sales. Globally, sales are dominated by Corteva and Bayer. Notably, Bayer is the inheritor of the beleaguered but ubiquitous glyphosate herbicides, most notably Roundup, that are still in extensive use around the world and often paired with GM seeds for important commodity crops, such as corn, soy, cotton, and increasingly, wheat and oat crops.

Dr. Howard — faculty member in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (iPES-Food) — points out in his 2016 book, Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat, that control of much of the world’s food supply system by so few entities has enormous impacts on human health, biodiversity, the environment broadly, agricultural workers, and rural communities.

In his 2023 report, Recent Changes in the Global Seed Industry and Digital Agriculture Industries, Dr. Howard goes on to note that the impacts on people “tend to disproportionately affect the disadvantaged — such as women, young children, recent immigrants, members of minority ethnic groups, and those of lower socioeconomic status — and as a result, reinforce existing inequalities.”

Indeed, a year ago, a report — written by the Open Markets Institute and submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law by — begins with this: “Food system consolidation is a danger to all Americans.” It goes on to say, “Just a handful of corporations control critical junctures in the U.S. food supply chain, from seeds and fertilizers to processing to grocery shelves. This concentration of capacity and control increases supply chain fragility by putting more production in fewer hands and fewer places. This consolidation is also what gives these corporations the market power necessary to dictate prices paid to producers and push down workers’ wages, even while they charge consumers more.”

Beyond Pesticides would add that this consolidation makes the products agrochemical companies offer, and the harmful practices they engender, even more entrenched in the operations of most conventional farming. These large companies’ size gives them more influence on governmental and commercial decision makers; more leverage in supply chains and their sector marketplace, and thus, more control of what products are available to producers; and deeper pockets with which to fight challenges to their products and business models. This is true in the U.S. and much of the so-called “developed” world, and increasingly, these companies are making inroads into less-Western, less-mechanized, and heretofore less “agrochemically saturated” agricultural areas around the globe. (See more below.)

Behind the retail food outlets (which are themselves being gobbled up by larger and larger “parent” companies) are these behemoth actors in the food system. These entities exist to make money; they do not, unless forced (or sometimes incentivized) to do so, center human or environmental or community health, or equity concerns, in their business models.

The interest of these corporations is now expanding beyond the production and sale of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and seeds, often genetically modified. In the face of the issue of developing organismic resistance to agricultural chemicals’ efficacy, increasing public distaste for the noxious products these companies offer, and more governmental regulation of their products’ use, some have begun investing in firms that specialize in “biologicals” for pest control. Syngenta, Corteva, and Bayer have all entered into this business realm.

Syngenta’s website characterizes this emerging sector as “harnessing nature to protect and promote plant growth effectively and sustainably,” and notes its entry into both biocontrols (i.e., use of natural pest enemies) and biostimulants (i.e., products with substances or microorganisms to improve growth and boost yield). The company describes biologicals as “derived from or inspired by nature,” which is the “tell.” The companies are likely uninterested in selling what organic farmers use — largely, naturally occurring substances — but rather, once again, in creating genetically modified organisms and/or synthetic versions of natural “substances or microorganisms” to deploy in agriculture and into the environment. Syngenta speculates that the biologicals market will double in a few short years, and that the company expects to “secure market leadership” by 2025.

In addition, some companies are exploring and/or expanding into the digital agriculture space (i.e., the application of robotics, software, automation, and sophisticated data analysis to agricultural operations). The 2023 report notes some corporate aspirations: “Executives at agricultural machinery firm John Deere, for example, said they want to ‘build a world of fully autonomous farming by 2030,’ and Dan Rykhus, CEO of precision agriculture company Raven Industries, is certain that autonomous machinery is ‘the future of farming.’” A recently published book by Kelly Bronson, PhD, The Immaculate Conception of Data suggests, according to Dr. Howard, that “the site of power in the food system has moved from seed and chemicals (or seeds paired to be useful only with chemicals) to data.”

Critics note that the agrochemical and agro-biotech industries have used the myth of the “Green Revolution” of the mid-20^th century in their promotion of “the next big things” in agriculture, whether GM seeds paired with herbicides, or synthetic “biologicals,” or über-mechanized and digital farming. Glenn Davis Stone, of Washington University, revises our understanding of the Green Revolution, and comments, “Today the biotechnology industry and its allies zealously promote the legend as a flattering framing for the spread of genetically modified crops. A Monsanto chief even recounted the aging Borlaug [— Norman Borlaug, credited with the short-stalked wheat with very high yield potential when heavily fertilized that was the linchpin of said revolution in India —] tearing up because while he lived through the Green Revolution, he would not live to see the ‘Gene Revolution’ which might save Africa. . . . [T]he push for a ‘Green Revolution for Africa’ today is very real.” (Note, e.g., China’s investment in “industrializing” agriculture in multiple African countries. See also, pushback against United Nations cooperation with industry, in order to protect agroecological activity.)

Taken together, Dr. Howard writes in this 2023 report, the trends cited above “have blurred previously distinct boundaries between seeds, agrochemicals, and biotechnology, and more recently, between other sectors, including biologicals (‘plant protection and strengthening products that are derived from or inspired by nature’) and digital agriculture (the growth of robotics, software, automation, and sophisticated data analysis in agriculture).”

Taken together, these trends reflect an intensifying industrialization of agriculture and a landscape that some economists might readily deem an “oligopoly.” Control over more parts of the food supply system translates to more power to set prices, dictate practices, and more. Dr. Howard adds, “Such high levels of concentration can also threaten political sovereignty, or lead to additional consequences, including negative impacts on communities, labor, human health, animal welfare, and the environment.”

The Open Markets Institute report is not a fan of consolidation; it asserts, “Food companies and some economic analyses argue that decades of consolidation promoted efficiency and brought down food prices. Recent supply chain disruptions reveal the tradeoffs of prioritizing efficiency over resiliency, diversity, and safety nets. . . . Rebuilding a resilient, sustainable, and equitable food supply chain requires rules of fair competition that encourage businesses to focus on socially beneficial innovation and investing in workers and infrastructure rather than exploiting their brute bargaining power to wring cash out of other people’s pockets. It requires strict assurances of safety and dignity on the job as well as a living wage for workers. And it requires changes in corporate governance to hold corporations accountable to invest in capacity and act in the interests of the public rather than the interests of financiers.”

These industrialization and consolidation trends continue to be very concerning. As long ago as 1999, scientist-researchers at the University of Missouri, led by Dr. William Heffernan, wrote this: “New firm names emerge, often the result of new joint ventures, and old names disappear. But underlying these changes is a continuing concentration of ownership and control of the food system. These structural changes are so strong that they often undermine the desired and expected outcomes of much of the agricultural policy developed over the past couple of decades. These structural changes, often referred to as ‘the industrialization of agriculture,’ have progressed to the point that some agricultural economists now refer to the agricultural stage of the food system as ‘food manufacturing’. . . . One often hears the statement that agriculture is changing and we must adapt to the changes. Few persons who repeat the statement really understand the magnitude of the changes and the implications of them for agriculture and for the long-term sustainability of the food system. It is almost heresy to ask if these changes are what the people of our country really want or, if they are not what is desired, how we might redirect the change. The changes are the result of notoriously short sighted market forces and not the result of public dialogue, the foundation of a democracy.”

In the face of these trends, and the power of the corporations that shape how agriculture is deployed, both in the U.S. and globally, the importance of protecting and promoting alternative approaches is greater than ever. Beyond Pesticides works for the advancement of organic regenerative agricultural strategies that genuinely work with natural systems, do not use synthetic petrochemical inputs (fertilizers and pesticides), and have at their heart the health and welfare of people, communities, soil, environment, biodiversity, and more. It is critical that small- and medium-scale organic agriculture holds true to its origins and principles, and serves as an increasingly robust and viable alternative and counterpoint to the agrochemical and agro-biotech industries, which do not serve or protect consumers, farmers, the environment, or planetary sustainability.

A recent Substack post by Charles Eisenstein offers relevant inspiration. “The core of the old story is hollowing out. . . . The void beneath the power, the wealth, the control, the comfort grows intolerable. . . . Cracks spread through the superstructure. Truths long denied seep out through the cracks. Contradictions erupt through the broken crust. People stop believing the stories that held the world in place. . . . [A]ll of us were born with a biologically encoded Great Expectation which the modern world falls far short of. Yet that expectation never truly dies. It can go dormant for years, for decades, but its ember stays alive at the center of the cold ash of innumerable disappointments. Today many of us are gently brushing away the ash and blowing on the coal within. It bursts back into flame. It is the flame of hope — not the false hope of wishful thinking and ignorance of reality, but the true hope that is a premonition of an authentic possibility, a possibility we have agency in creating. . . . [T]here are two basic kinds of work we may to do. . . . The first is to dismantle the structures, habits, beliefs, and powers of the old story. . . .The second is to grow the structures of the new story” — which can build, as he writes, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”

Help us build that world in agriculture and the food system, and amplify the message, by protecting and growing organic — join us, organize and advocate, and buy organic!

Source: https://philhoward.net/2023/01/04/seed-digital/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, January 12, 2023) Exposure to certain pesticides among individuals diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) can increase the risk of symptom progression. According to a study published in Science of the Total Environment, nearly 20 percent of pesticides associated with the onset of PD also increase the risk of faster decline in motor and non-motor function. Several studies find exposure to chemical toxicants, like pesticides, has neurotoxic effects or exacerbates preexisting chemical damage to the nervous system. Past studies suggest neurological damage from oxidative stress, cell dysfunction, and synapse impairment, among others, can increase the incidence of PD following pesticide exposure. Despite the association between PD onset via pesticide exposure patterns, few epidemiologic studies examine the influence pesticides have on worsening motor and non-motor symptoms in PD.

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, with at least one million Americans living with PD and about 50,000 new diagnoses annually. The disease affects 50 percent more men than women, and individuals with PD have a variety of symptoms, including loss of muscle control and trembling, anxiety and depression, constipation and urinary difficulties, dementia, and sleep disturbances. Over time, symptoms intensify, but there is no current cure for this fatal disease. While only 10 to 15 percent of PD cases are genetic, PD is quickly becoming the world’s fastest-growing brain disease. Therefore, research like this highlights the need to examine how chemical exposure accelerates disease progression, especially among severe, incurable, and fatal illnesses. The study notes, “Pesticides are not applied in isolation, and people are not singly exposed to one agent over a lifetime. Both scientists and regulators need to consider co- and sequential application hazards and human exposures.”

Using a geographic information system (GIS) tool to gather information on ambient exposure to pesticides in residences and workplaces via California Pesticide Use Report records and land use records. The researchers examine the association between 53 pesticides with links to PD onset to determine PD symptom progression for five years and 2.7 years (respectively) for two patients. Measurements of PD symptom progression include movement disorder specialist-administered Unified Parkinson’s disease Rating Scale part III (UPDRS), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Of the pesticides with links to PD onset, ten or ~18.8 percent (i.e., copper sulfate [pentahydrate], 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid [MCPA] dimethylamine salt, tribufos, sodium cacodylate, methamidophos, ethephon, propargite, bromoxynil octanoate, monosodium methanearsonate [MSMA], and dicamba) have associations with faster symptom progression. The study identifies a progressive decline among three endpoints: motor skills, cognitive function, and mental health regarding depression. Markedly, individuals living near residential areas or working in occupations with higher exposure to copper sulfate and MCPA experience a rapid decline in all endpoints.

Parkinson’s disease occurs when there is damage to dopaminergic nerve cells (i.e., those activated by or sensitive to dopamine) in the brain responsible for dopamine production, one of the primary neurotransmitters mediating motor function. Although the cause of dopaminergic cell damage remains unknown, evidence suggests that pesticide exposure, especially chronic exposure, may be the culprit. Occupational exposure poses a unique risk, as pesticide exposure is direct via handling and application. A 2017 study finds that occupational use of pesticides (i.e., fungicides, herbicides, or insecticides) increases PD risk by 110 to 211 percent. Even more concerning, some personal protection equipment (PPE) may not adequately protect workers from chemical exposure during application. However, indirect nonoccupational (residential) exposure to pesticides, such as proximity to pesticide-treated areas, can also increase the risk of PD. A Louisiana State University study finds that residents living adjacent to pesticide-treated pasture and forest from the agriculture and timber industry have higher rates of PD incidence. Furthermore, pesticide residues in waterways and on produce present an alternate route for residential pesticide exposure to increase the risk for PD via ingestion. Pesticide contamination in waterways is historically commonplace and widespread in U.S. rivers and streams, with over 90 percent of water samples containing at least five or more pesticides. Pesticide exposure can cause severe health problems even at low residue levels, including endocrine disruption, cancers, reproductive dysfunction, respiratory problems (e.g., asthma, bronchitis), and neurological impacts (e.g., developmental effects and Parkinson’s), among others. Nevertheless, direct occupational and indirect nonoccupational exposure to pesticides can increase the risk of PD. 

This study is one of the few, possibly the first, to identify that pesticides can contribute to the progression of Parkinson’s disease. The study identifies 53 pesticides associated with PD onset, with ten directly accelerating declines in motor and non-motor function and mental health from amplified disease progression. However, pesticides’ worsening disease risk following exposure is not an unfamiliar phenomenon for either physical or psychiatric health. For instance, pesticide exposure can cause injury to cells responsible for safeguarding against viral infections, inducing more severe disease progression. Since the start of the pandemic, studies evaluating disease outcomes acknowledge excessive and improper use of pesticides, like disinfectants, as a culprit of immunocompromising the respiratory system of COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 is a systemic (general) disease that overwhelmingly impacts the respiratory system of many patients. The respiratory system is essential to human survival, regulating gas exchange (oxygen-carbon dioxide) in the body to balance acid and base tissue cells for normal function. Damage to the respiratory system can cause many issues—from asthma and bronchitis to oxidative stress that triggers the development of extra-respiratory, systemic manifestations like rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular disease. However, just as the respiratory system is far from the only bodily system affected by the virus, pesticides’ adverse effects can span multiple bodily systems, even co-concurrently. Furthermore, underlying medical conditions (i.e., heart/kidney disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, etc.) heighten risks associated with severe illness from disease. Additionally, this study is not the first to identify an association between multiple disease risks and proximity to areas with regular pesticide applications. Studies can match disease risk to zip code, with individuals in low-income, indigenous, and people of color communities at the greatest risk of developing pesticide and other environmentally induced diseases.

Over 300 environmental contaminants and their byproducts, including pesticides, are chemicals commonly present in human blood and urine samples and can increase neurotoxicity risk. For instance, 90 percent of Americans have at least one pesticide compound in their body, primarily from dietary exposure, like food and drinking water. These compounds have a global distribution, with evaporation and precipitation facilitating long-range atmospheric transport, deposition, and bioaccumulation of hazardous chemicals in the environment. Thus, exposure to these toxicants can cause several adverse environmental and biological health effects. With the increasing ubiquity of pesticides, current measures safeguarding against pesticide use must adequately detect and assess total chemical contaminants. 

The study concludes, “Identifying modifiable risk factors for disease progression may help identify new targets for research, perhaps leading to mechanistic insights important for medication development, and importantly help revise public health policy, aiming to reduce exposure to disease-modifying agents. Our study has implicated individual pesticides in Parkinson’s disease progression in several domains. For some, previous epidemiologic or experimental data are supportive of our findings. Further investigation should target both these individual pesticides and the cumulative risk of their mixtures to tease out potential synergistic effects.”

The scientific literature demonstrates pesticides’ long history of severe adverse effects on human health (i.e., endocrine disruption, cancer, reproductive/birth problems, neurotoxicity, loss of biodiversity, etc.) and wildlife and biodiversity. In addition to this research, several studies demonstrate autism, mood disorders (e.g., depression), and degenerative neurological conditions (e.g., ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s) among aquatic and terrestrial animals, including humans, exposed to pesticides. However, there are several limitations in defining real-world poisoning as captured by epidemiologic studies in Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database. The adverse health effects of pesticides, exposure, and the aggregate risk of pesticides showcase a need for more extensive research on occupational and nonoccupational pesticide exposure, especially in agriculture. For more information on the effects of pesticide exposure on neurological health, see PIDD pages on Parkinson’s disease, dementia-like diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, and other impacts on cognitive function. 

Parkinson’s disease has no cure, but preventive practices like organics can eliminate exposure to toxic PD-inducing pesticides. Organic agriculture represents a safer, healthier approach to crop production that does not necessitate toxic pesticide use. Beyond Pesticides encourages farmers to embrace regenerative, organic practices and consumers to purchase organically grown food. A complement to buying organic is contacting various organic farming organizations to learn more about what you can do. Those affected by pesticide drift can refer to Beyond Pesticides’ webpage on What to Do in a Pesticide Emergency and contact the organization for additional information. Furthermore, see Beyond Pesticides’ Parkinson’s Disease article from the Spring 2008 issue of Pesticides and You.

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

Source: Parkinson’s News Today, Science of the Total Environment

(Beyond Pesticides, January 11, 2022) Neonicotinoid insecticides can have detrimental effects on liver health, according to research published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. While this is the first study to investigate how these chemicals harm the liver, there is increasing evidence that neonicotinoids, otherwise notorious for their effects on pollinators and aquatic life, can cause direct harm to human health. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to protect the pesticide industry from any measure of meaningful regulation around these hazardous products, the job falls to advocates to place pressure on elected officials to make the changes necessary to safeguard long-term health and well-being.

Scientists postulated that neonicotinoids are neither metabolized by the liver nor excreted by urine. To test that hypothesis, 201 individuals from a hospital in China were enrolled into a study. Of the enrolled,  81 were cancer patients, and 120 were not. These individuals underwent a procedure called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography whereby samples of their bile, a fluid produced in the liver, were retrieved and analyzed. Researchers also performed a series of blood tests, measuring a range of biomarkers, including cholesterol, bilirubin, bile acids, white blood cells, platelets, and others. Lastly, scientists determined the amount of eight neonicotinoids in bile samples, including acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, imidaclothiz, nitenpyram, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam.   

Researchers found their hypothesis to be correct. Of all samples taken, at least one neonicotinoid was detected in 99% of individuals tested. However, different neonicotinoids were found to act in different ways. While the detection of acetamiprid was low (1% of samples), 97% contained nitenpyram. The widely used insecticide dinotefuran was detected in 86% of bile. Detections did not appear to differ between participants of different health backgrounds.

The results led scientists to believe that neonicotinoids found in bile will eventually be absorbed again by the intestines, make their way into blood, and eventually one’s liver. Biomarkers tested, such as cholesterol, bilirubin, and bile acids, were found to correlate with higher concentrations of certain neonicotinoids. Of the various neonicotinoids, dinotefuran, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin were found to pose the greatest risk to liver health.

In this context, it may be interesting for readers to see how far EPA got in making a determination on liver health and neonicotinoids. Using dinotefuran as an example, here is a link to the Human Health Draft Risk Assessment the agency produced in 2017. As part of tests on the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination studies on dinotefuran, EPA requires one single “special study” on neonatal rat metabolism to determine how the chemical absorbs once in the body. The results (EPA does not provide methodology, only results in its review documents) indicate that in 12 day old rats, “absorption was high (absorption could not be adequately determined but may have approached 80%) and the radiolabel was widely distributed within the body.” Furthermore, the results indicate that, “The test material was essentially not metabolized, the parent compound accounting for >97% of the radiolabel in the excreta, plasma, kidneys, and stomach, and nearly 61-83% in intestines (and contents), and liver.”

Thus, EPA has enough evidence to show that dinotefuran barely metabolizes at all in one’s body. Yet this result did not tip EPA off in any way. No further testing was conducted to understand or characterize the hepatotoxic (injurious to liver) nature of the insecticide, and it does not appear as though the results influenced any changes in the agency’s determination around use patterns. In other words, EPA has enough data to investigate this issue and make even minor protective changes. Instead, after decades of this chemical being on the market, it has taken an independent, peer reviewed study to extrapolate and further investigate the critical details of how a near complete lack of dinotefuran adsorption in the body affects the liver.

Most disturbingly, this is not the only neonicotinoid health impact that the agency has failed to address. EPA is now being sued for long-term failure to screen and regulate pesticides that have the potential to disrupt the endocrine (hormone) system. In the context of neonicotinoids, there is growing evidence that exposure to these chemicals can result in hormone-dependent breast cancer. A 2019 study found that imidacloprid and thiacloprid can increase expression of a gene linked to breast cancer, and a 2022 study also found associations between neonicotinoid exposure and breast cancer.

In addition to the direct effects of cancer and liver toxicity, the latest evidence also shows these chemicals are indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year as a result of their detrimental impact to pollinator populations relied on for healthy, nutrient-dense food.  

Join us in urging the Biden Administration, EPA and Congress to adopt a new direction for pesticide regulation, and Congress to once and for all pass the Saving America’s Pollinator Act.  

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

Source: News-medical.net, Journal of Hazardous Materials

(Beyond Pesticides, January 10, 2023) Pollinator losses are responsible for reducing the global production of nuts, fruits, and vegetables by 3-5%, and this loss of healthy, nutrient-dense food is resulting in over 425,000 excess deaths each year, according to research published late last year in Environmental Health Perspectives. While the connection between pollination, food production and health is intuitive, the study’s ability to trace how these impacts are directly harming the well-being of people living right now is shocking, and is a clear sign that pollinator losses must be taken seriously and addressed through meaningful action. To those who consider the decline of pollinators to be some vague, amorphous future threat, let this study end that myth. According to researchers, “Today’s estimated health impacts of insufficient pollination would be comparable to other major global risk factors: those attributable to substance use disorders, interpersonal violence, or prostate cancer.

Per a United Nations report, 75 percent of the world’s food crops depend at least in part on pollination, with pollinators contributing an estimated $235 to $577 billion to global crop production annually. Pollinator declines are already adversely impacting food production. A 2016 paper by many of the scientists in the current study determined that in general, when there is a difference between high and low production on a farm, regardless of crop type, lack of pollinator populations account for 25% of the yield gap.  

However, no study had yet investigated how these losses translate into real world impacts. Thus, the authors asked: if there were no pollinator losses, how much food would have been produced, who would have eaten it, and would that have averted any diet-related diseases or deaths? Further, the authors consider the economic cost of lost yields, particularly on low-income countries.

To answer how much food would have been produced were pollinators still thriving, scientists compare current yields to what they term ‘attainable yields,’ which represent the 90^th percentile of yield within a given region on a global scale. Having determined the yield gap, an average weight is then assigned to determine the contribution of pollinators to this disparity. Economic impacts are more complicated, as there are a multitude of variables for both supply and demand; on the supply side farmers may change what or how much they plant, and demand is determined by price and a consumer’s ability or willingness to pay. Researchers focuse their economic review on three low income countries – Nepal, Honduras, and Nigeria.

When cost increases, many consumers will not be able to afford to eat enough nutrient-dense, pollinator-dependent foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. To determine how this translates to health outcomes, a global risk-disease model is utilized, looking at risk factors associated with low consumption of fruits, vegetable, legumes, and nuts. Diseases used in the model include stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and an aggregated ‘all cause mortality’ associated with weight changes.  

Final calculations show that pollinator declines account for losses of 4.7% of all fruit production, 3.2% of vegetables, and 4.7% of nuts. Yield gaps are determined to be independent of other variables like geography and other landscape characteristics. Low income countries (as defined by the World Bank) are experiencing the most pronounced yield gaps, with an estimated 26% and 8% loss in overall vegetable and nut production in those areas on average.

Pollination declines also hit the economy of low-income countries hard. The annual lost economic value of all agricultural crops, as determined by researchers, is  -12% in Hondoras, -17% in Nigeria, and -31% in Nepal. Economic losses do not match up directly with production losses, which are -3%, -15%, and -19%, respectively, for the same countries. “The greater percentage economic loss compared with production loss (by weight) suggests that pollinated crops constituted high-value commodities for these countries,” the authors note, indicating that most value is lost through declines in fruit and vegetable production. In sum, these impacts result in annual lost value per farmer of $209, $250, and $325 (U.S. dollars) for the same countries, respectively. Such losses are staggering in the context where per farmer annual GDP tops out at less than $1,500 in these countries.

Not only are pollinator losses throwing farmers into financial turmoil, the impacts also result in a shocking 427,000 excess deaths each year, primarily from chronic disease. Interestingly, it is middle and high income countries where these excess deaths are most pronounced. According to the study, 1% of total annual mortality in upper-middle and high income countries can be attributed to loss of pollination. Lower fruit and vegetable intake accounts from 189,000 and 151,000 deaths, respectively, from stroke, heart disease, and cancer, and a reduction in nut consumption is resulting in an estimated 99,000 deaths each year.

Prior studies have shown that pollinator declines will result in increased malnutrition from lost micronutrient consumption, and nutrient deficiencies. But this latest research deals less with ‘the potential for’ impacts and makes determinations based on what is happening currently. To be clear: this study shows that people today, in the United States and around the globe, are dying because the loss of pollinators has resulted in them being unable to afford to eat healthy fruits and vegetables on a consistent basis. Extrapolating these data into the future paints an increasingly dismal picture should society not act on a coordinated basis to revive pollinator populations.

The authors note that there is hope, writing that, “Diverse research investigating the optimal policies to benefit pollination have shown remarkable consensus around a short list of highly effective strategies: increase flower abundance and diversity on farms, reduce pesticide use, and preserve or restore nearby natural habitat.” In order to reverse pollinator declines, these practices must be translated and institutionalized into enforceable policies.

We must continue to push lawmakers to take real and meaningful action. Not before it is too late – in many ways it is – but before even more harm is done. Act today to urge your member of Congress to  support the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, and tell the Biden Administration, EPA and Congress to adopt a new direction for pesticide regulation.

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

Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

(Beyond Pesticides, January 9, 2023) The Biden EPA still needs a new vision in order to meet the existential crises in public health, climate change, and biodiversity. The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reversed in four years much of the progress made by the EPA in decades. Despite a broad new perspective embodied in President Biden’s Executive Memorandum (EM) Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office, the Biden EPA has not adopted a new direction for regulating pesticides.

Tell President Biden, EPA, and Congress to adopt a new direction for pesticide regulation.

Immediately following his inauguration, President Joe Biden issued the EM, which directs the heads of all executive departments and agencies to produce recommendations for improving and modernizing regulatory review, with a goal of promoting public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations. This EM could reverse the historical trend of status-quo regulatory reviews required by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that typically support vested economic interests of polluters (e.g., petroleum-based pesticide and fertilizer manufacturers). The President’s EM sets the stage for the adoption of agency policy across government to seriously and with urgency confront the existential crises of climate change, biodiversity collapse, and public health threats, including disproportionate harm to people of color communities (environmental racism).

In order for EPA to live up to the vision embodied in the EM, the agency must make systemic changes that incorporate the new direction into every decision. Those systemic changes include:

 Challenge so-called “benefits” of pesticides.

The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) requires EPA to weigh risks against benefits when registering pesticides. Claimed “benefits” for toxic pesticides need to be judged in comparison to organic production, which is able to produce all types of food and feed. The Organic Trade Association reports that organic sales now exceed $63 billion per year, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds that organic producers in the U.S. produced $11.2 billion worth of organic food on 4.9 million acres in 2021. EPA assumes benefits, rather than measuring them, and does not take into account the development of resistance in target insects or plants.

Protect pollinators.

Agriculture relies on insect pollinators to facilitate fertilization and maintain annual crop yield. Globally, the production of crops dependent on pollinators is worth between $253 and $577 billion yearly. Yet, many agricultural pesticides are killing pollinators outright, making them more susceptible to parasites and disease, and destroying their habitat. Pollinator protection should be a priority of EPA.  

Protect workers.

Farmworkers are at greatest risk from pesticide exposure. A blatant example of systemic racism is imbedded in risk assessments in environmental regulation. In deciding on “acceptable” risks, exposure assessments inevitably discount the impact workers,  people of color, and those with preexisting health conditions or comorbidities. For example, EPA routinely calculates worker exposure separately from other exposures. In applying aggregate exposure assessments of pesticides, EPA does not include worker exposure. Risk assessments do not include exposures to multiple chemicals—and such exposures routinely occur in fenceline communities, farmworkers, and factory workers.

Protect biodiversity.

Roughly a quarter of the global insect population has been wiped out since 1990, according to research published in the journal Science. Monarchs are near extinction and beekeepers continue to experience declines that are putting them out of business. We continue to lose mayflies, the foundation of so many food chains, and fireflies, the foundation of so many childhood summer memories, for reasons that can be prevented with leadership in regulating pesticides. It is likely that the declines we are seeing in many bird species are closely linked to insect declines. Recent research finds that three billion birds, or 29% of bird abundance, has been lost since the 1970s. Pesticides cause biodiversity loss in aquatic ecosystems as well. Amphibians are also particularly at risk.

As if the loss of biodiversity was not bad enough in itself, it combines with the other existential threats to amplify the impacts. A study in the journal Nature finds that, “The interaction between indices of historical climate warming and intensive agricultural land use is associated with reductions of almost 50% in the 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.” And a study in Environmental Health Perspectives finds that resulting from the loss of pollinators, “3%–5% of fruit, vegetable, and nut production is lost due to inadequate pollination, leading to an estimated 427,000 (95% uncertainty interval: 86,000-691,000) excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases.” That study also finds the economic value of crops to be “12%–31% lower than if pollinators were abundant.”

EPA does not factor these impacts into its cost-benefit analysis.

Get rid of endocrine-disrupting pesticides.

Despite the Congressional mandate in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), EPA is not acting on endocrine disruptors linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and childhood and adult cancers. In 1998, EPA established a program to screen and test pesticides and other widespread chemical substances for endocrine disrupting effects. Despite operating for 21 years, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) has made little progress in reviewing and regulating endocrine-disrupting pesticides.  Now the program has stalled entirely.

To ensure appropriate follow-through, Congress gave EPA a timeline to: develop a peer-reviewed screening and testing plan with public input not later than two years after enactment (August 1998); implement screening and testing not later than three years after enactment (August 1999); and report to Congress on the findings of the screening and recommendations for additional testing and actions not later than four years after enactment (August 2000).

Despite these deadlines, EPA is stalled and ignoring its responsibility. It started a screening program (Tier 1) and reported results in 2009. According to EPA, Tier 1 Screening (which looks at high exposure chemicals) is not sufficient to implicate a chemical as an endocrine disrupting chemical. It is instead a step to define which chemicals must undergo Tier 2 testing – the only stage that can influence regulatory decision making. It is unclear when or how EPA will move forward with Tier 2 testing, and how, if at all, any Tier 2 findings will be used to inform actual regulation.

Only those registrations supported by testing showing a lack of endocrine-disrupting effects should be approved or allowed to continue.

Get rid of neurotoxic pesticides that harm children.

The target of action by which many pesticides kill is the nervous system. It is not surprising, then, that pesticides also target the nervous system in humans. They are particularly hazardous to children, who take in greater amounts of pesticides (relative to their body weight) than adults, and whose developing organ systems are typically more sensitive to toxic exposures.

The body of evidence in the scientific literature shows that pesticide exposure can adversely affect a child’s neurological, respiratory, immune, and endocrine system, even at low exposure levels. Several pesticide families, such as synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates, and carbamates, are also known to cause or exacerbate respiratory symptoms like asthma. The American Academy of Pediatrics wrote, “Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems.”

Action taken by this administration to ban food uses of the extremely neurotoxic insecticide chlorpyrifos is an important first step in eliminating neurotoxic pesticides, but a small one. Even the uses of chlorpyrifos that remain allow continued exposure to workers and children. In addition, many other neurotoxic pesticides continue to be used and threaten public health.

Tell President Biden, EPA, and Congress to adopt a new direction for pesticide regulation.

Letter to the Biden Administration (Council on Environmental Quality Chair Barbara Mallory and  EPA Administrator Michael Regan):

Pesticide regulation needs a change of direction in order to meet the existential crises in public health, climate change, and biodiversity. Despite a broad new perspective embodied in President Joe Biden’s Executive Memorandum (EM) Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office, the Biden EPA has not adopted a new direction for regulating pesticides. A program consistent with the EM requires EPA to:

1. Challenge so-called “benefits” of pesticides. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) requires EPA to weigh risks against benefits when registering pesticides. The standard for claimed “benefits” for toxic pesticides organic production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds that organic producers in the U.S. produced $11.2 billion worth of organic food in 2021. EPA assumes benefits, rather than measuring them, and does not take into account the development of resistance in target insects or plants.
2. Protect pollinators. Agriculture relies on insect pollinators to facilitate fertilization and maintain annual crop yield. Globally, the production of crops dependent on pollinators is worth between $253 and $577 billion yearly. Yet, many agricultural pesticides kill pollinators outright, make them more susceptible to parasites and disease, and destroy their habitat.
3. Protect workers. Farmworkers are at greatest risk from pesticide exposure. Systemic racism is imbedded in risk assessments in environmental regulation. In deciding on “acceptable” risks, exposure assessments inevitably discount the impact workers, people of color, and those with preexisting health conditions or comorbidities. EPA routinely calculates worker exposure separately from other exposures. In applying aggregate exposure assessments of pesticides, EPA does not include worker exposure. Risk assessments do not include exposures to multiple chemicals—that routinely occur in fenceline communities, farmworkers, and factory workers.
4. Protect biodiversity. Roughly a quarter of the global insect population has been wiped out since 1990. It is likely that declines in many bird species are closely linked to insect declines. Recent research finds that three billion birds, or 29% of bird abundance has been lost since the 1970s. Pesticides cause biodiversity loss in aquatic ecosystems as well. A study in the journal Nature finds reductions of almost 50% in the abundance and 27% in the number of species due to interaction with climate change. A study in Environmental Health Perspectives calculates an estimated 427,000 (95% uncertainty interval: 86,000-691,000) excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases resulting from the loss of pollinators and subsequent loss of production, as well as reduction in economic value of crops of 12%–31%. EPA does not factor these impacts into its cost-benefit analysis.
5. Get rid of endocrine-disrupting pesticides. Despite the Congressional mandate in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), EPA is not acting on endocrine disruptors linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and childhood and adult cancers. EPA is stalled and ignoring its responsibility.
6. Get rid of neurotoxic pesticides that harm children. The target of action by which many pesticides kill is the nervous system. It is not surprising, then, that pesticides also target the nervous system in humans. They are particularly hazardous to children, who take in greater amounts of pesticides (relative to their body weight) than adults, and whose developing organ systems are typically more sensitive to toxic exposures.

Please ensure that EPA acts on these existential threats.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators:

Pesticide regulation needs a change of direction in order to meet the existential crises in public health, climate change, and biodiversity. Despite a broad new perspective embodied in President Joe Biden’s Executive Memorandum (EM) Modernizing Regulatory Review issued on his first day in office, the Biden EPA has not adopted a new direction for regulating pesticides. A program consistent with the EM requires EPA to:

6. Challenge so-called “benefits” of pesticides. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) requires EPA to weigh risks against benefits when registering pesticides. The standard for claimed “benefits” for toxic pesticides organic production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds that organic producers in the U.S. produced $11.2 billion worth of organic food in 2021. EPA assumes benefits, rather than measuring them, and does not take into account the development of resistance in target insects or plants.
7. Protect pollinators. Agriculture relies on insect pollinators to facilitate fertilization and maintain annual crop yield. Globally, the production of crops dependent on pollinators is worth between $253 and $577 billion yearly. Yet, many agricultural pesticides kill pollinators outright, make them more susceptible to parasites and disease, and destroy their habitat.
8. Protect workers. Farmworkers are at greatest risk from pesticide exposure. Systemic racism is imbedded in risk assessments in environmental regulation. In deciding on “acceptable” risks, exposure assessments inevitably discount the impact workers, people of color, and those with preexisting health conditions or comorbidities. EPA routinely calculates worker exposure separately from other exposures. In applying aggregate exposure assessments of pesticides, EPA does not include worker exposure. Risk assessments do not include exposures to multiple chemicals—that routinely occur in fenceline communities, farmworkers, and factory workers.
9. Protect biodiversity. Roughly a quarter of the global insect population has been wiped out since 1990. It is likely that declines in many bird species are closely linked to insect declines. Recent research finds that three billion birds, or 29% of bird abundance has been lost since the 1970s. Pesticides cause biodiversity loss in aquatic ecosystems as well. A study in the journal Nature finds reductions of almost 50% in the abundance and 27% in the number of species due to interaction with climate change. A study in Environmental Health Perspectives calculates an estimated 427,000 (95% uncertainty interval: 86,000-691,000) excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases resulting from the loss of pollinators and subsequent loss of production, as well as reduction in economic value of crops of 12%–31%. EPA does not factor these impacts into its cost-benefit analysis.
10. Get rid of endocrine-disrupting pesticides. Despite the Congressional mandate in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA), EPA is not acting on endocrine disruptors linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and childhood and adult cancers. EPA is stalled and ignoring its responsibility.
11. Get rid of neurotoxic pesticides that harm children. The target of action by which many pesticides kill is the nervous system. It is not surprising, then, that pesticides also target the nervous system in humans. They are particularly hazardous to children, who take in greater amounts of pesticides (relative to their body weight) than adults, and whose developing organ systems are typically more sensitive to toxic exposures.

Please ensure that EPA acts on these existential threats.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 6, 2023) Plaintiffs in a recent pesticide lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reprise, in their arguments, a critique proffered repeatedly by Beyond Pesticides: the agency has failed, for many years, to evaluate and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides adequately. The suit, according to Progressive Farmer, argues that the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) — legislation that mandated that EPA establish “tolerances” for pesticides in foods and regulate on those bases — required EPA to develop an endocrine disruptor screening program (EDSP) and to implement it by 1999. The litigation goes on to note that “more than twenty-five years after the passage of the FQPA, EPA has yet to implement the EDSP it created and further, has failed to even initiate endocrine testing for approximately 96% of registered pesticides.” Plaintiffs are asking the court, among other requests (see below) to order “EPA to complete all actions required under the FQPA at issue in this case as soon as reasonably practicable, according to a Court-ordered timeline.”

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can, even at low exposure levels, disrupt normal hormonal (endocrine) function. Endocrine disruptors function by: (1) mimicking the action of a naturally produced hormone, such as estrogen or testosterone, thereby setting off similar chemical reactions in the body; (2) blocking hormone receptors in cells, thereby preventing the action of natural hormones; or (3) affecting the synthesis, transport, metabolism, and excretion of hormones, thus altering the concentrations of natural hormones.

ED compounds include many pesticides, exposures to which have been linked to infertility and other reproductive disorders, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and early puberty, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and childhood and adult cancers. ED chemicals can wreak havoc not only in humans, but also, in wildlife and their ecosystems.

The subject litigation was filed on December 20, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), the Center for Environmental Health, Pesticide Action Network of North America, Organizacion en California de Lideres Campesinas, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, and the Rural Coalition. A press release from plaintiff CFS asserts: “In the 26 years since [FQPA], EPA has tested fewer than 50 of more than 1,315 registered pesticides for endocrine-disruption effects and completed only 34 of those tests.”

Although an EDSP was created by EPA in 1998, the agency was sued by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1999 after failing to implement the program by the court-ordered August 3, 1999 deadline. That litigation resulted in the agency’s 2001 agreement to prioritize chemicals for screening “based on both effect and exposure data.” Progressive Farmer reports, “‘EPA committed to publishing a list of initial chemicals to evaluate by 2002. . . . Instead, EPA released a draft list of chemicals for evaluation in 2007 and a final list of 67 chemicals in 2009, seven years after their original promise.’ . . . EPA created a second list of 109 additional chemicals in need of testing. ‘At the same time as EPA only managed to complete . . . testing for 52 pesticides, EPA completed registration for 425 new pesticides without consideration of their potential endocrine effects, flouting the whole point of Congress’s FQPA mandates — bringing the total number of registered pesticides from 890 in 1990 to 1,315 in 2020. . . . There is little doubt that EPA’s failure to complete screening of all pesticide chemicals for possible endocrine effects has caused damage to plaintiffs’ members’ health.’”

That 2009 list was recommended for so-called “Tier 1” screening, based only on their pesticide registration status and/or exposure potential through drinking water. As Beyond Pesticides has written, “Tier 1 Screening is not sufficient to implicate a chemical as an endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC). In other words, Tier 1 findings do not hold much weight on their own. Rather, they are a tool for defining which chemicals must undergo Tier 2 testing. Tier 2 testing is intended to confirm and characterize endocrine effects, establishing dose-response relationships and other metrics typically used in conducting EPA risk assessments. EPA holds that only Tier 2, and not Tier 1 testing, can ‘provide definitive proof of a substance’s ability to interact adversely with these hormone systems in the intact organism.’ Therefore, Tier 2 testing is the only stage that can influence regulatory decision making.”

Progressive Farmer notes that the EPA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found, in both 2011 and 2021, that the agency had failed to make any progress on implementing an endocrine disruptor screen program (the EDSP). That OIG report asserted, “As of early 2021, the OCSPP has not issued any List 1–Tier 2 test orders for wildlife studies and has only issued test orders for two pesticides for human health studies. Likewise, although the EPA developed and published List 2 with 109 chemicals, the EPA did not issue any List 2–Tier 1 test orders. As a result, the EPA has not made meaningful progress in meeting its statutory obligation to test all pesticide chemicals for endocrine-disruption activity.”

As Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2019, EPA’s “Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) began, then virtually stopped, its review and regulation of endocrine disrupting pesticides, despite a mandate in the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) to develop a screening program within two years and then begin regulating.” (See p. 13 for a detailed chronicle of EPA’s EDSP failures.) A CFS news release provides this additional outrage: “The 2021 [OIG] report included the shocking revelation that some EPA staff were instructed to function as if the screening program had been eliminated from EPA’s budget, despite a $7.5 million allocation that same year — raising the prospect of EPA’s intentional violation of its statutory duty.”

Beyond Pesticides has weighed in on EPA’s lack of action on endocrine-disrupting (ED) pesticides many times, often in letters or testimony about the agency’s failures in the face of scientific evidence of their harms. In 2019, Beyond Pesticides wrote comprehensively about ED pesticides, and EPA’s shortcomings in evaluating and regulating them, in the journal, Pesticides and You (p. 9). Beyond Pesticides recently wrote to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) about the inadequacy of the agency’s review, and draft assessment, of the ED pesticide inpyrfluxam, particularly as it relates to the mandates of the Endangered Species Act. In 2022, the organization commented on EPA’s failures to meet its statutory responsibility to protect people and wildlife from the dire consequences of exposure to ED chemicals, including the agency’s interim decision on atrazine. In 2021, Beyond Pesticides wrote to OPP about pentachlorophenol; in 2022, EPA finally, after years of outcry, cancelled the registration of the toxic and endocrine-disrupting wood preservative.

The introduction to the plaintiff’s brief, after chronicling EPA’s failures in regard to ED evaluation and regulation, includes this pointed comment: “All these failings are indications of EPA’s lack of commitment to implement the EDSP and to achieve its congressional purpose of safeguarding public health, in violation of Congress’s commands.” Plaintiffs in the California case cite multiple requests in their complaint, chief among which is “ordering EPA to complete all actions required under the FQPA at issue in this case as soon as reasonably practicable, according to a Court-ordered timeline.” They also request that the court:

• declare that EPA has violated the FQPA and the APA by failing to implement the EDSP by August 3, 1999
• declare that EPA continues to be in violation of the FQPA and the APA by failing to implement the EDSP
• declare that EPA has violated the FQPA and the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] by failing to timely complete the testing of all pesticide chemicals for possible endocrine effects
• declare that EPA continues to be in violation of the FQPA and the APA by failing to complete the testing of all pesticide chemicals for possible endocrine effects
• retain jurisdiction of this action to ensure compliance with its decree

The California litigation is more evidence that health, farmworker, food system, and environmental advocates are frustrated with EPA’s functional ignoring of its mandates. In addition, there is the issue of just what impact an OIG report has “on the ground.” Beyond Pesticides points out that, when an OIG report identifies a problem, such as an issue of noncompliance (as this litigation maintains), the agency would theoretically correct the noncompliance problem. Had that been the case, EPA would have taken action on the 2011, never mind the 2021, findings.

The Inspectors General that are assigned to 74 federal agencies exist to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government, and to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in operations and programs. Though they are located within federal agencies, OIGs are designed to conduct their audits, investigations, evaluations, and special reviews independently from those agencies, resulting in relatively objective evaluations. That said, although OIG reports often make recommendations, Inspectors General have no authority to enforce changes in the agencies they oversee. And therein lies the “crapshoot” nature of outcomes from such reports — sometimes agencies will adopt recommendations or redress issues of noncompliance, but they may well not, as evidenced by EPA behavior on ED chemicals. (Learn more about OIGs here; see reports here.)

Beyond Pesticides Executive Director notes that such OIG reports do, however, provide substantive, if unfortunate, bases for lawsuits such as the CFS, et al. action in California. He goes on to lay out the landscape of EPA’s regulatory behavior and what is needed: “The problem with many of the laws is that they give agencies a tremendous amount of discretionary authority to meet a statutory goal or requirement. The thing with FQPA was just that: EPA under FIFRA did not use its statutory authority to protect children, and evaluate aggregate risk and common mechanisms of toxicity, endocrine disruptors, etc., so Congress indicated that EPA must act in these areas with a level of specificity that should not need to be required of a science-based agency. But because of corporate capture, this EPA has politicized science, so the specific requirements in the statute have been corrupted. OIG should help correct that, but it has not in too many cases. This demonstrates that relying on an agency to establish acceptable levels of harm from ED chemicals has not had acceptable public health and environmental protection outcomes. This unfortunate reality calls for a reorientation in law toward precautionary approaches that embrace alternative analyses that identify real solutions, such as nontoxic/organic approaches to food production, and land and building management.”

CFS attorney and counsel for the plaintiffs Peggy Mosavi has commented, “EPA’s failure to follow its duties to protect the public from the harmful endocrine effects of pesticides is as deplorable as it is unlawful. It’s been a quarter century since Congress recognized the risks of pesticides acting as endocrine disruptors to human and environmental health and directed EPA to test all pesticides for endocrine effects and take protective steps. Yet EPA has made only nominal progress toward that goal.”

The complaint document includes this: “There is little doubt that EPA’s failure to complete screening of all pesticide chemicals for possible endocrine effects has caused damage to Plaintiffs’ members health. A wealth of scientific studies conclude that many chemicals in use today are endocrine disruptors capable of devasting adverse health impacts. Plaintiffs’ members are routinely exposed to a myriad of pesticides, including the five EPA has flagged as possible endocrine disruptors, via their livelihoods and food consumption. EPA’s continued failure to implement the EDSP and complete testing of all pesticides for possible endocrine effects compounds Plaintiffs’ members’ exposure. Plaintiffs’ members are deeply concerned that EPA’s failure to complete testing for all pesticides, but particularly those EPA has already acknowledged as being possible endocrine disruptors, will result in their continued exposure to chemicals at levels that are causing harm to their health and that of their children and future children.”

The broad impacts of endocrine disruption, particularly on human health, comprise ample reason for EPA to meet its statutory responsibility to protect people and wildlife from the dire consequences of exposure to ED chemicals. Please consider reaching out to EPA and to your federal Senator and Representative to demand action on these toxic contaminants, as Beyond Pesticides recommended in 2021.

Source: https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2022/12/21/lawsuit-epa-fails-test-pesticides

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

(Beyond Pesticides, January 5, 2022) The use of insecticidal bed nets (IBNs) to prevent mosquito bites in malaria-endemic communities can result in resistance developing in secondary pests like bed bugs, according to research published in Parasites and Vectors. Decreased efficacy against bed bugs and other non-mosquito pests may result in misuse of both mosquito adulticides and bed nets, hampering efforts to stop the spread of malaria and other insect-borne disease. With resistance following a predicable pattern in both disease-transmitting and secondary pests, there is a critical need to embrace safer, nonchemical solutions, including both ecological and structural approaches to pest management.

Researchers investigated the efficacy of untreated bed nets along with those treated with the commonly used synthetic pyrethroids deltamethrin and permethrin against both a population of insecticide-susceptible and pyrethroid resistant bed bugs. Insecticidal netting was secured between two glass jars in both an aggregation and blood meal experiment. For the aggregation experiment, fully fed bed bugs were set up to cross through the bed net to reach a darker resting location. With the blood meal experiment, unfed bed bugs were set up to cross the netting to receive a blood meal.

Both experiments show the bed nets carrying little deterrent power to either insecticide-susceptible or pyrethroid-resistant bed bugs. In the aggregation experiment, insecticide-susceptible bed bugs in fact fared slightly better than resistant strains with 100% of them being collected in the aggregation jar at the end of the experiment. They were able to successfully pass through both untreated and permethrin-treated nets, while roughly 80% of susceptible bed bugs were able to pass through deltamethrin-treated nets. Researchers indicate that many resistant bugs failed to cross the bed nets, resulting in less than perfect aggregation numbers at the end of the experiment. Roughly 30% of resistant bed bugs did not make it through the untreated net, while over 90% were able to pass through deltamethrin and permethrin.

For the blood meal experiment, bed bugs were able to pass through the untreated nets with the permethrin treatment marking similar results, and deltamethrin only slightly decreasing the number of successful blood meals. Researchers indicate that maneuverability likely changes based on whether the bed bug has successfully fed, and that the size of the holes in the mosquito nets tested also likely played an important role in efficacy.

After passing through the insecticide-treated netting, only susceptible bed bug strains showed any mortality, with roughly 2% killed from permethrin and an average of 64% from deltamethrin. No bed bugs from the resistant population were killed.

The researchers argue that bed net pyrethroid exposure likely exacerbates resistance in bed bugs more than target mosquitoes. This is indicated because all life stages of bed bug are exposed, while with mosquitoes, only the adults come into contact with bed nets. Mosquitoes may also be repelled before actually settling on a bed net, while bed bugs may have prolonged contact by walking over the netting in search of an opening. Researchers also argue that while mosquitoes are short-lived and can fly away, bed bugs remain in the home and live much longer lives comparably. Lastly, researchers note that the bed bug’s biology and ecology inherently leads to a faster resistance. While bed bugs are highly inbred, leading to rapid exchange of resistance genes, mosquitoes have broad genetic pools in outdoor populations that in comparison slows the development of resistance.  

Roughly a decade ago, similar research not only found evidence that insecticidal nets are fueling bed bug resistance, but that this resistance was making its way to other parts of the world. While bed bugs prefer to stay where they are, human commerce is not nearly as static. “If bed-bugs emerged from local refugia, such as poultry farms, you would expect the bed-bugs to be genetically very similar to each other,” explained entomologist Coby Schal, PhD from North Carolina State University. “This isn’t what we found.”

“The obvious answer is the tropics, where they have used treated bed nets [and] high levels of insecticides on clothing and bedding to protect the military,” said Warren Booth, PhD, also from North Caroline State University.

As Beyond Pesticides has repeatedly reported, the best solution to eliminating pesticide resistance is to stop using the chemical in the first place. With bed bugs and mosquito management, pest infestations and disease spread are often only one symptom resulting from a broad range of economic inequalities, and it is lack of good public sanitation and infrastructure that provides disease-carrying insects footholds for community infection. A 2021 study backs this up, showing the prevalence of disease carrying mosquitoes to be much higher in urban areas of lower socio-economic conditions.

Safer, ecologically based approaches to mosquito and bed bug management are needed to successfully prevent disease in the long term, as short-term chemical fixes continue to show their lack of staying power. See Mosquito Management and Insect-Borne Diseases.

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

Source: Parasites and Vectors

(Beyond Pesticides, January 4, 2022) A study published in Environmental Science and Technology finds neonicotinoids (neonics) and their breakdown products (metabolites), like other chemical pesticide compounds, can readily transfer from mother to fetus. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) finds U.S. pregnant women experience frequent exposure to environmental pollutants that pose serious health risks to both mother and newborn. Many known pollutants (i.e., heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyl, and pesticides) are chemicals that can move from the mother to the developing fetus at higher exposure rates. Hence, prenatal exposure to these chemicals may increase the prevalence of birth-related health consequences like natal abnormalities and learning/developmental disabilities. Children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of pesticide exposure as their developing bodies cannot adequately combat exposure effects. Moreover, a mother’s pesticide exposure can have a stronger association with health disorders than childhood exposure, and a newborn can still encounter pesticides. Therefore, it is essential to understand how pesticides impact the health and well-being of individuals during critical developmental periods.

Beyond Pesticides has covered a variety of pregnancy risks from pesticides and other toxic chemicals, including these in just the last three years: pesticides and children’s sleep disorders; prenatal exposures to a multitude of chemicals; insecticides and childhood leukemia; insecticides and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

The study evaluated the transplacental transfer rates (TTR) of neonics from mother to fetus via prenatal exposure. Researchers collected 95 paired samples from mothers’ serum (MS) and accompanying (umbilical) cord serum (CS) to measure the levels of five neonics (acetamiprid, imidacloprid, clothianidin, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam) and two metabolites of acetamiprid and imidacloprid. After calculating the transplacental transfer efficiencies (TTEs) of each neonics and metabolite, researchers focus on three chemical mechanisms: passive diffusion, active transport, and pinocytosis. Lastly, a multilinear regression analysis explores the association between blood biomarkers for neonics in mothers and related birth outcomes among fetuses.

The most abundant neonic in MS and CS samples is imidacloprid, whereas acetamiprid’s metabolite is the most abundant in CS and MS. Both parent and metabolite neonics have a high TTE, with imidacloprid having the highest transfer rate (1.61). Even the neonic with the lowest TTE of 0.81, thiamethoxam, is within the high TTE range, indicating proficient placental transfer of these chemicals from mother to fetus. Researchers identify that transplacental transfer of these chemicals mainly occurs through passive mechanisms depending on chemical structure. Therefore, neonics like acetamiprid and thiacloprid (known as cyanoamidines) have higher TTE values than neonics like clothianidin and thiamethoxam (known as nitroguanidines). Lastly, the multilinear regression demonstrates that most neonics in MS samples have associations with blood biomarkers related to hepatotoxicity (liver toxicity) and renal (kidney) toxicity.

Studies find pesticide compounds in the mother’s blood can transfer to the fetus via the umbilical cord. A 2021 study finds pregnant women already have over 100 chemicals in blood and umbilical cord samples, including banned POPs. However, 89 percent of these chemical contaminants are from unidentified sources, lack adequate information, or were not previously detectable in humans. Considering the first few weeks of pregnancy are the most vulnerable periods of fetal development, exposure to toxicants can have much more severe implications. A 2020 study finds prenatal pesticide exposure can increase the risk of the rare fetal disorder holoprosencephaly. This disorder prevents the embryonic forebrain from developing into two separate hemispheres. Moreover, women living near agricultural areas experience higher exposure rates increasing the risk of neonatal abnormalities like acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Over the past 20 years, neonicotinoids have replaced four major chemical classes of insecticides in the global market (organophosphates, carbamates, phenyl-pyrazoles, and pyrethroids). These systemic agricultural pesticides are highly toxic, resembling nicotine, and affect the central nervous system of insects, resulting in paralysis and death, even at low doses. Like other pesticides, neonics readily contaminate water and food resources as traditional wastewater treatments typically fail to remove the chemical from tap water, and the systemic nature of neonics allows the chemical to accumulate within treated plants. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly half the U.S. population encounters at least one type of neonic daily, with children ages three to five having the highest exposure risk. Health impacts of exposure to neonics include neurotoxicity, reproductive disorders, liver/kidney damage, and an increase in gene expression and enzyme production linked to hormone-dependent breast cancer.

Although previous studies demonstrate pesticide classes like pyrethroids, organophosphate, carbamates, and organochlorines readily transfer from mother to fetus, this study is one of the first to document and identify the occurrence and distribution specific to neonics in MS and CS. This conclusion supports long-known concepts regarding the hazards of pesticides for children’s health. Early life exposures during “critical windows of vulnerability” can predict the likelihood or otherwise increase the chances of an individual encountering a range of pernicious diseases. In addition to findings on learning and development, early life exposures have links to increased risks of cancer, asthma, birth disorders, among others. Thus, a parent’s exposure to pesticides during these critical periods indicates an increased risk in childhood disease. 

Pesticide exposure not only poses a risk to mothers and their subsequent offspring but also to future generations. Current-use pesticides and metabolites (or breakdown products) of many long-banned pesticides still impart adverse effects on human health. These negative effects can continue into childhood and adulthood and may have multigenerational consequences. Researchers at Drexel University report that higher levels of some organochlorine compounds, like DDT, during pregnancy are associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disabilities. Although the United States bans many organochlorine compounds, the ongoing poisoning and contamination underscore how pervasive and persistent these chemicals are and their continued adverse impact on human health. Moreover, these exposures have real, tangible effects on society. Environmental disease in children costs an estimated $76.8 billion annually. Exposure that harms learning and development also impact future economic growth in the form of lost brain power, racking up a debt to society in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The study concludes, “This is the first study to associate maternal hematological parameters with p-NEOs [parent neonics] or their metabolites in MS, and further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm our findings. […]A recent study reported that urinary IMI  [imidacloprid] and ACE [acetamiprid] concentrations in pregnant women (n = 296) were significantly negatively associated with neonatal HC. This finding implied the influence of NEOs on cognitive and neurologic development in neonates.”

There is a strong consensus among pediatricians that pregnant mothers and young children should avoid pesticide exposure during critical windows of development. However, the general population should follow this advice as the effects of pesticide exposure can affect every individual. Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent studies on pesticide exposure through the Pesticide Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information on the multiple harms of pesticide exposure, see PIDD pages on learning/developmental disorders, Birth/Fetal Effects, Sexual and Reproductive Dysfunction, Body Burdens, and other diseases. 

Fortunately, the wide availability of non-pesticidal alternative strategies allows for choices in residential and agricultural management to promote a safe and healthy environment, especially among chemically vulnerable individuals. For instance, buying, growing, and supporting organic land management reduces human and environmental contamination from pesticides. Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits, which curtail the need for chemical-intensive agricultural practices. Numerous studies find that pesticide metabolite levels in urine significantly decrease when switching to an all-organic diet. For more information on how organic is the right choice for both consumers and the farmworkers that grow our food, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage on the Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture.

Organic agriculture represents a safer, healthier approach to crop production that does not necessitate toxic pesticide use. Beyond Pesticides encourages farmers to embrace and consumers to support regenerative, organic practices. A compliment to buying organic is contacting various organic farming organizations to learn more about what you can do. Additionally, learn more about the hazards posed to children’s health through Beyond Pesticide’s Pesticide and You Journal article, “Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix.”

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

Source: Environmental Science and Technology

(Beyond Pesticides, January 3, 2023) The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) announced new rules that remove existing limits on the use of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D or Telone), allowing Californians to breathe much more 1,3-D than state toxicologists in the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) say is safe and highlighting the dangers to which farmworkers are routinely exposed. It is outrageous that the state of California and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would allow farmworkers—whose labor was judged “essential” during the pandemic—to be routinely exposed to highly toxic pesticides, which could be replaced by organic practices. While the state of California describes its action as increasing protection, advocates point to continued use, unacceptable harm, and the availability of alternative organic agricultural production methods that eliminate the use of 1,3-D. Since over a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, most people who buy their food in a grocery store have a stake in how food is grown in the state and the impact that it has on those who live and work there.

Tell the state of California, U.S. EPA, an the U.S. Congress to cancel the registration of all toxic soil fumigants and encourage organic alternatives.  

1,3-D is a pre-plant soil fumigant registered for use on soils to control nematodes. It is allowed on all crops and is often used with chloropicrin, another highly toxic fumigant, to increase its herbicidal and fungicidal properties. 1,3-D causes cancer. In addition, the National Institutes of Health’s PubChem states, “Occupational exposure is likely to be through inhalation and via the skin. Irritation of the eyes and the upper respiratory mucosa appears promptly after exposure. Dermal exposure caused severe skin irritations. Inhalation may result in serious signs and symptoms of poisoning with lower exposures resulting in depression of the central nervous system and irritation of the respiratory system. Some poisoning incidents have occurred in which persons were hospitalized with signs and symptoms of irritation of the mucous membrane, chest discomfort, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and, occasionally, loss of consciousness and decreased libido.” Chloropicrin is extremely irritating to lungs, eyes, and skin. Inhalation may lead to pulmonary edema, possibly resulting in death.

These and other soil fumigants not only pose severe health threats to farmworkers and bystanders, but also threaten soil and water ecosystems. In contrast, organic production seeks to build healthy soils that resist plant pathogens, making fumigation unnecessary. Thus, these fumigants pose unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment and should be banned.

Consider the effects that food grown in chemical-intensive agriculture have on workers, communities, and the environment by checking out Eating with a Conscience.

Tell the state of California, U.S. EPA, and the U.S. Congress to cancel the registration of all toxic soil fumigants and encourage organic alternatives.  

Letter to State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation

Please stop tinkering with a toxic pesticide that should be banned for use. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) proposal to remove existing limits on the use of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D), allowing Californians to breathe much more 1,3-D than other state toxicologists say is safe, highlights the dangers to which farmworkers are routinely exposed. It is outrageous that the state would allow farmworkers—whose labor was judged “essential” during the pandemic—to be routinely exposed to highly toxic pesticides, which could be replaced by organic practices.

1,3-D is a pre-plant soil fumigant registered for use on soils to control nematodes. It is allowed on all crops and is often used with chloropicrin, another highly toxic fumigant, to increase its herbicidal and fungicidal properties. 1,3-D causes cancer. In addition, the National Institutes of Health’s PubChem states, “Occupational exposure is likely to be through inhalation and via the skin. Irritation of the eyes and the upper respiratory mucosa appears promptly after exposure. Dermal exposure caused severe skin irritations. Inhalation may result in serious signs and symptoms of poisoning with lower exposures resulting in depression of the central nervous system and irritation of the respiratory system. Some poisoning incidents have occurred in which persons were hospitalized with signs and symptoms of irritation of the mucous membrane, chest discomfort, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and, occasionally, loss of consciousness and decreased libido.” Chloropicrin is extremely irritating to lungs, eyes, and skin. Inhalation may lead to pulmonary edema, possibly resulting in death.

These and other soil fumigants not only pose severe health threats to farmworkers and bystanders, but also threaten soil and water ecosystems. In contrast, organic production seeks to build healthy soils that resist plant pathogens, making fumigation unnecessary. Thus, these fumigants pose unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment. Their registrations should be cancelled.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue.

Letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) proposal to remove existing limits on the use of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D), allowing Californians to breathe much more 1,3-D than other state toxicologists say is safe, highlights the dangers to which farmworkers are routinely exposed. It is outrageous that the Environmental Protection Agency would allow farmworkers—whose labor was judged “essential” during the pandemic—to be routinely exposed to highly toxic pesticides, which could be replaced by organic practices.

1,3-D is a pre-plant soil fumigant registered for use on soils to control nematodes. It is allowed on all crops and is often used with chloropicrin, another highly toxic fumigant, to increase its herbicidal and fungicidal properties. 1,3-D causes cancer. In addition, the National Institutes of Health’s PubChem states, “Occupational exposure is likely to be through inhalation and via the skin. Irritation of the eyes and the upper respiratory mucosa appears promptly after exposure. Dermal exposure caused severe skin irritations. Inhalation may result in serious signs and symptoms of poisoning with lower exposures resulting in depression of the central nervous system and irritation of the respiratory system. Some poisoning incidents have occurred in which persons were hospitalized with signs and symptoms of irritation of the mucous membrane, chest discomfort, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and, occasionally, loss of consciousness and decreased libido.” Chloropicrin is extremely irritating to lungs, eyes, and skin. Inhalation may lead to pulmonary edema, possibly resulting in death.

These and other soil fumigants not only pose severe health threats to farmworkers and bystanders, but also threaten soil and water ecosystems. In contrast, organic production seeks to build healthy soils that resist plant pathogens, making fumigation unnecessary. Thus, these fumigants pose unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment. Their registrations should be cancelled.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue.

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) proposal to remove existing limits on the use of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D), allowing Californians to breathe much more 1,3-D than other state toxicologists say is safe, highlights the dangers to which farmworkers are routinely exposed. It is outrageous that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would allow farmworkers—whose labor was judged “essential” during the pandemic—to be routinely exposed to highly toxic pesticides, which could be replaced by organic practices.

1,3-D is a pre-plant soil fumigant registered for use on soils to control nematodes. It is allowed on all crops and is often used with chloropicrin, another highly toxic fumigant, to increase its herbicidal and fungicidal properties. 1,3-D causes cancer. In addition, the National Institutes of Health’s PubChem states, “Occupational exposure is likely to be through inhalation and via the skin. Irritation of the eyes and the upper respiratory mucosa appears promptly after exposure. Dermal exposure caused severe skin irritations. Inhalation may result in serious signs and symptoms of poisoning with lower exposures resulting in depression of the central nervous system and irritation of the respiratory system. Some poisoning incidents have occurred in which persons were hospitalized with signs and symptoms of irritation of the mucous membrane, chest discomfort, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and, occasionally, loss of consciousness and decreased libido.” Chloropicrin is extremely irritating to lungs, eyes, and skin. Inhalation may lead to pulmonary edema, possibly resulting in death.

These and other soil fumigants not only pose severe health threats to farmworkers and bystanders, but also threaten soil and water ecosystems. In contrast, organic production seeks to build healthy soils that resist plant pathogens, making fumigation unnecessary. Thus, these fumigants pose unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment.

Please tell EPA that their registrations should be cancelled.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue.

(Beyond Pesticides, December 23, 2022—January 3, 2023) To all those who read Beyond Pesticides Daily News or take action with us through our Action of the Week, a healthy and happy holiday season and new year. The Beyond Pesticides staff will be taking a weeklong break to gather with family and friends and renew our spirits as we plan to elevate our voice for change in the new year. As a reader of these pages, you know that Beyond Pesticides puts major effort into tracking the science on pesticides—their health and environmental effects—as well as alternatives to chemical-intensive management with our heavy emphasis on the organic alternative.  

Our dedication to making science accessible to laypeople stems from our belief and experience that we are all effective advocates with our families, friends, school districts, parks departments, and the business community reliant on pesticides when we have access to the information necessary to make informed decisions. With this information, we are unrestrained to challenge decisions that are harmful to our families and communities, including our environment, and capable of advancing solutions that support a future that sustains life. And when it comes to alternatives, we are heavily invested in the organic alternative and continuous improvement of standards for organic land management. We helped to develop organic standards three decades ago and now work to ensure organic integrity that is central to organic food certification at the same time as we incorporate these rigorous soil-based standards in our Parks for a Sustainable Future program. We advance a transformation in our culture, policy, and practices that embraces the critical value of living in sync with nature. Our experience with the organic alternative teaches us that it works, both effectively and economically.  

As we move into 2023, we are super encouraged to take our institutional knowledge and experience and work with communities across the country to adopt organic management of all their public lands—as they teach residents about value of organic in mitigating the current day existential crises related to health, biodiversity, and climate. 

Our annual report for 2021-22, Collaborating with Communities: To meet the challenge for urgent change (posted on our website), offers our perspective in more detail. 

Beyond Pesticides’ program offers a bright spot amidst urgent challenges that threaten the health of people and ecosystems in the U.S. and worldwide. While the scientific literature defines existential threats to public health, biodiversity, and climate associated with petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, Beyond Pesticides charts a protective path forward. We are successfully partnering with communities nationwide and around the globe to urgently effect a shift to organic practices that eliminate the use of toxic pesticides. As we work to adopt community-based models for transitioning to organic systems, we move local, state, and national debate from individual bad actor chemicals to a holistic and transformational strategy that, through policy and practice, manages land and buildings without toxic chemicals.  

In our strategic work—whether with professionals or laypeople, local elected officials or concerned advocates—we play a critical role in enhancing public understanding of the science and the practical hands-on expertise to inform the urgent steps that must be taken. In this context, our strategies are informed by a recognition that with the escalating grave threats there is disproportionate risk to people of color communities and those with health vulnerabilities. At the same time, the chemical industry, and chemical-intensive agriculture and landscape sector, are fiercely fighting to retain the status quo and protect their vested economic interests. 

To achieve the changes necessary for a livable future, we maintain a rigorous program at the intersection of science and advocacy. Our tracking of the scientific literature provides the factual basis for action—made accessible to nonscientists, including government officials, through our Daily News and numerous, continually updated databases on pesticide hazards and alternatives.  

We are expanding our reach, as more people and communities utilize our content-rich website, contact us for information and strategic advice, and engage with our organic transition work. Our expanded Parks for a Sustainable Future program eliminates toxic inputs by evaluating existing community land management practices, providing a soil and landscape management plan, and training land managers. At the same time, we continue to coordinate, through our Keeping Organic Strong program, a national effort to ensure the integrity of certified organic food production standards, which establish the keystone list of organic compatible materials in land management practices that are in sync with nature. 

Through our Action of Week, thousands of people take part in timely, strategic action on key issues. We planned our three-part virtual National Forum Series, Health, Biodiversity, and Climate: A Path for a Livable Future, to bring together national and international leaders as we define the seriousness of the existential threats and the viability of organic solutions.  

With these programs, we are growing an informed and influential network for timely and meaningful change. Thank you for making a difference with your support of Beyond Pesticides! Healthy and Happy New Year!  

For even more details on our work in 2022, see A Year in Review for 2022. 

(Beyond Pesticides, December 22, 2022) International health and environmental groups submitted an urgent letter to  the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) late last month demanding “greater transparency and accountability” through termination of the agency’s two-year-old partnership with CropLife International (CLI), a global trade association representing the world’s biggest pesticide manufacturers. Addressed to FAO Deputy Director Beth Bechdol ahead of FAO Council 171 session in Rome and COP15, the letter outlines a unique opportunity for the organization to lead the phaseout of fossil-fuel based food systems and use of agrochemicals while upholding the agency’s responsibility to act in response to conflicts of interest and human rights violations.  

The original Letter of Intent (LOI), signed between CLI President and CEO Guilia Di Tommaso and FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu in October 2020, framed the partnership as a means to ensure humanity’s freedom from hunger while advancing Sustainable Development Goals. However, according to PAN Europe Policy Officer Manon Rouby, “While the private sector has been working with FAO for years, this official agreement with CropLife directly threatens FAO’s work on supporting farmers in the transition towards agroecology, while reducing the harms of synthetic pesticides worldwide. With CropLife members being the largest agrichemical companies in the world, this association is unacceptable and a direct threat to human rights. We once again urge the FAO to rescind this agreement.” 

According to the  original letter’s co-authors,  200,000 individuals from over 107 countries, over 430 civil society and Indigenous Peoples organizations, nearly 300 academics and scientists, and nearly 50 philanthropic groups, as well as the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, raised concerns in a report addressed in 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council. While the backlash prevented the LOI from moving forward into a more formal Memorandum of Understanding earlier this year, as of today’s publication, the agreement remains in place without a set expiration date, fundamentally undermining the agency’s support for alternatives to generate ecologically-based agrifood systems without toxic pesticides. 

With 11 subsidiary national associations and six member companies (BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, Sumitomo Chemical, and Syngenta), CLI has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. While claiming to champion the role of agricultural innovation in crop protection to advance sustainable agriculture, instead, the pesticide industry is leveraging “agricultural innovation and digital technology” to expand market opportunities and increase profits in the Global South. Private sector investments are actively being facilitated through the FAO’s Hand-In-Hand Initiative; for example, in October 2020, the Director General actively appealed to CropLife for investments in low and middle-income countries in his speech to the CLI Board of Directors.  

While CLI has not made any direct financial contributions to FAO since 2011, member companies outsized political and economic influence on pesticide-related policies, alongside global export and distribution, is bearing fruit in lucrative markets like Nigeria. Between 2015 and 2019, the country’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) registered approximately 822 pesticides, of which 63% are classified as highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) with glyphosate holding the highest share of imports (67.4 and 53.4 percent in kilograms and liters respectively). Across all 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, FAO estimates that the use of pesticides increased by 150% between 2006 and 2019, attaining over 100,000 tons per year. In addition to highly hazardous pesticide (HHP) sales being higher in the region, exponential impacts on health and environment reveal a vulnerability exploited by the partnership in the Global South. According to a survey by the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organization of Nigeria and Alliance for Action on Pesticides (AAPN) in Nigeria, 80 percent of pesticides used by women in four Northern Central states (Nasarawa, Benue, Plateau, and Abuja) are highly toxic to humans and require additional regulation. 

While the increased level of use has resulted in negative health, environmental and economic consequences in-country and around the world, FAO continues to expand private partnerships in hosting regional workshops this year on the “proper management of pesticides” in the Middle East and North Africa region, with over a dozen countries participating in Jordan despite obstacles to implementation such as insufficient staffing, lack of an adequate registration system, limited expertise, lack of risk assessment measures, and limited access to information.  

Considering these negative impacts surrounding CSI’s expanding sphere of influence, the group’s urgent letter strongly urges FAO to prevent CLI and its member companies from attaining permanent observer status, as such a move would “further the conflict of interest that exists between CLI and FAO, grant even greater privileges to the pesticide industry, and blur the areas of collaboration that already lack transparency.” Following the precedent pioneered by UN Women, which ends its Memorandum of Understanding with investment firm BlackRock after receiving feedback from civil society, FAO has reached a turning point.  

As an original signatory to the PAN UK June 9th letter, Beyond Pesticides echoes PAN UK in that it is imperative to “prioritize people-led agroecology as an innovative climate resilience solution and ensure that climate and science strategies do not give precedence to pesticide and fertilizer products, nor private sector entities affiliated with human rights violations or environmental destruction.” CSI’s fundamental objective is the maximizing of toxic pesticide sales and runs counter to reducing reliance. As Beyond Pesticides has constantly reiterated that “sustainable” pesticide use or incremental reductions will not prevent a variety of downstream impacts and existential crises. Pesticides are damaging pollinator populations, adding to the human chemical body burden, catalyzing disease processes, launching trophic cascades, degrading agricultural soils, and so much more. 

As FAO aims to “achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives”, truly sustainable, organic production with a focus on regenerative practices must lead the way. It is only through agricultural and other land management practices that eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, and organic production, on a global scale from the United Nations to local communities in the Global South at home, that we stand a chance of making sustainable change in the long run for ourselves, our children, and the world at large.  

Please consider helping Beyond Pesticides advocate for the transition to organic regenerative agriculture, and other benign land management approaches. You can join/contribute, take up the issue in your local community, organize with others for state-level action, and more; let us know if we can help: [email protected] or 202.543.5450.

Signatories of the late November letter included: Keith Tyrell, Chair, Pesticide Action Network International; Million Belay, Coordinator, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA); David Azoulay, Environmental Health Program Director, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL); Sofía Monsalve, Secretary General, FIAN International; Kirtana Chandrasekaran and Martín Drago, Food Sovereignty Program Coordinators, Friends of the Earth International; Sophia Murphy, Executive Director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP); Andrea Carmen, Executive Director, International Indian Treaty Council (IITC); Pam Miller and Tadesse Amera, Co-Chairs, International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN); Sue Longley, General Secretary, International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF); Laurent Gaberell and Carla Hoinkes, Agriculture and Food Experts, Public Eye; and Chee Yoke Ling, Executive Director, Third World Network. 

Source: Letter to UN FAO Deputy Director 

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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 21, 2022) Imagine plucking a flower and being able to find out every insect that recently visited that plant. Utilizing cutting-edge metabarcoding techniques, a team of Danish researchers has made that possibility a reality. By evaluating the environmental DNA (eDNA) left behind by insect pollinators alongside visual assessment surveys, a new study is providing an innovative way for farmers to improve pollination and protect on-farm biodiversity. Ultimately, study author Lene Sigsgaard, PhD, of the University of Copenhagen believes that, “With more knowledge of the pollinators in apples and other crops, we can begin to provide tailor-made flower mixes for individual crops, and improve our knowledge on the value of the surrounding landscape for wild pollinators.”

Scientists focused on four different apple orchards throughout Denmark, three of which utilize pesticides (though only one sprayed during the study period), and another following organic practices. For each orchard, five apple flowers were collected from four separate rows. These flowers were then brought to the laboratory from DNA extraction. Scientists also conducted visual monitoring, whereby an observer stood between two orchard rows and recorded all flower visitors within roughly eight feet of themselves.

The two methods of observation provide somewhat differing, yet complimentary results. Certain insects, such as hoverflies and hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants), are not detected through eDNA, but are identified visually. Conversely, blattodea (cockroaches, termites) insects are not identified visually but found to be present through eDNA barcoding. eDNA is able to trace certain insect pests, and other flower visitors more active at night that visual monitoring would likely miss. However, timing of eDNA flower collection appears to impact the eDNA traces left behind, as certain pollinator species like bees and wasps are missed because flowers were collected in early morning prior to insect pollination. While eDNA shows value as a supplemental monitoring tool, visual monitoring provides more information on abundance.

“A high level of insect biodiversity protects an environment against certain threats, therefore monitoring these levels is necessary to see if and when intervention is needed,” says Nerea Gamonal, first author from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. “Our study showed that eDNA adds a lot of value when compared against visual collecting techniques. This isn’t to say that visual census is unnecessary, in fact having an understanding of the insects in an area from observational techniques can provide prior knowledge of the specific community being assessed, making it a valuable complementary tool.”

Although not specifically investigated in this study, combined survey results also find that the organic apple orchard contains the highest richness of insect species. “The exciting thing about this study is that it can have an immediate, real-world impact on agricultural systems. The results and techniques in our study can be used to inform management practices such as the type of pest control used, the orchard design, and what additional floral resources surround the crops,” said Dr. Sugsgaard.

Real-time sampling eDNA sampling can provide a snapshot of insect visitation and help identify ecological alterations to address problematic pests, for instance, as opposed to approaches that rely on synthetic inputs like hazardous pesticides to correct natural imbalances. “Understanding how we can work with the environment, such as improving the surrounding landscape to attract beneficial insects, can help cross-pollination and lead to crops becoming more resilient against climate change. We hope this research can help our society become as environmentally friendly as possible, protecting our biodiversity, food sources and livelihoods,” says Physilia Chua, PhD, study co-author.

Knowledge of insect and pollinator visitation will be an increasingly important aspect of crop production in a progressively more precarious world. Earlier this year, research showed that for certain crops like watermelons, insect pollination, not pest pressure, is the most critical determining factor for yields. By delving into the details and rejecting a simplified, one-size-fits-all approach to agricultural production, farming can become a critical part of restoring, or in the least maintaining, natural balance and biodiversity.

Regenerative, organic farming practices have shown time and time again to be the best method of protecting biodiversity, ensuring on-farm sustainability, and meeting the challenges of a changing climate. For more information on the benefits of this approach, watch the recent talk from Rodale Institute’s Chief Operations Officer Andrew Smith on Organic Agriculture for Climate Mitigation.

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

Source: Environmental DNA, PhysOrg (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute press release)

(Beyond Pesticide, December 20, 2022) A meta-analysis published in Chemosphere finds prenatal pesticide exposure, or pesticide exposure during pregnancy has a positive association with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Particularly, exposure to chemical classes organophosphate (OP) and pyrethroid (PYR) insecticides, in addition to the mother’s age during pregnancy (≥30 years old), increased the risk factor of ASD. ADHD risk increases among offspring whose mothers encounter organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) during gestation. The etiology or cause of ASD and ADHD involves the interaction of multiple components, including lifestyle and genetics. However, emerging evidence indicates that environmental contaminants like pesticides (e.g., occupational exposures, air pollution, solvents, dietary residues, etc.) play a role in disease etiology. Pesticide contamination is widespread in all ecosystems, and chemical compounds can accumulate in human tissues resulting in chronic health effects. 

ADHD is estimated to affect 8-12% of school-age children worldwide. While it is a complex disease, and genetics may play a role, no specific genes have been identified, and there is increasing evidence that environmental factors like pesticide exposure facilitate the development of the condition. Additionally, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 54 children have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Rates of autism have skyrocketed over the last several decades. While some of the rise is due to the increase in testing, and an expansion of the diagnostic criteria for the disorder, it is unable to entirely account for the increase in ASD cases. In 1997, 0.1% of children had autism, while in 2010, that number rose to 1%. Considering several studies associate early-life exposure to toxic chemicals with adverse birth/health effects, additional exposure through maternal contamination poses an even greater risk to children’s health. The report notes, “The findings indicate that maternal pesticide exposure should be avoided, especially for older pregnant women in agricultural areas, to protect early brain development in offspring.”

Beyond Pesticides has covered a variety of pregnancy risks from pesticides and other toxic chemicals, including these in just the last three years: pesticides and children’s sleep disorders; prenatal exposures to a multitude of chemicals; insecticides and childhood leukemia; and, insecticides and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

The analysis reviews documents from five databases (i.e., PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Medline, PsycINFO) related to pesticide exposure during pregnancy and ASD and ADHD in children. Factors considered for ASD and ADHD risk include pesticide type, window of exposure, and mother’s age. The review identifies 949 studies but opted to use the 19 studies with more robust information. There were 11 studies on ASD, seven studies on ADHD, and one study on both disorders. The analysis confirms that a mother’s exposure to pesticides increases offspring’s risk of ASD and ADHD.

Pesticide exposure during pregnancy is of specific concern as health effects for all life stages can be long-lasting. Just as nutrients are transferable between mother and fetus, so are chemical contaminants. Studies find pesticide compounds present in the mother’s blood can transfer to the fetus via the umbilical cord. Therefore, pesticide exposure during pregnancy has implications for both the mother and child’s health. Many studies indicate prenatal and early-life exposure to environmental toxicants increases susceptibility to disease. A 2020 study finds the first few weeks of pregnancy are the most vulnerable periods during which prenatal exposure to pesticides can increase the risk of the rare fetal disorder holoprosencephaly. This disorder prevents the embryonic forebrain from developing into two separate hemispheres. Moreover, women living near agricultural areas experience higher exposure rates that increase the risk of birthing a baby with abnormalities, including cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

This determination, and the present study’s findings, are supported by previous scientific literature. Similar to this study, a range of research demonstrates that pregnant mothers’ exposure to specific pesticides has links to autism, evidenced by laboratory and epidemiological research. Scientific studies have consistently found elevated rates of ASD in areas of high pesticide use. A 2014 study from the University of California, Davis, found that pregnant women living near crops sprayed with organophosphates, like insecticide chlorpyrifos, increased the chance of their child being diagnosed with ASD by 60%. For women in their second trimester, chlorpyrifos increased ASD odds by 3.3x. Synthetic pyrethroids increased autism risk by 87 percent. Like the aforementioned insecticides, fungicides also have links to autism disorders. A separate study from California researchers connected autism to the herbicide glyphosate, the banned insecticide diazinon, the fumigant methyl bromide, and fungicide myclobutanil. Moreover, studies find that higher rates of ADHD have associations with direct exposure in children and pyrethroid metabolites found in children’s urine. The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center found a strong association between urinary pyrethroid concentrations and ADHD, primarily in boys. Any concentrations found above the level of detection corresponded to a three-fold increase in the chance of developing ADHD when compared to boys without detectable levels. Another study from Rutgers University found that, of over 2,000 children who had ever received an ADHD diagnosis, children with higher urinary pyrethroid metabolite levels were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.

While some well-meaning health advocates focus on controversial studies relating vaccines to ASD and ADHD, the connection to pesticide exposure has much research and is likely a contributing factor to the rise of the disorder over the last several decades. Although more research is needed to further define the connection, there is enough evidence to warrant a precautionary approach and restrictions on hazardous ASD and ADHD-linked pesticides. The study concludes, “Our findings contribute to our understanding of health risks related to maternal pesticide exposure and indicate that the in-utero developmental period is a vulnerable window-of-susceptibility for ASD and ADHD risk in offspring. These findings should guide policies that limit maternal exposure to pesticides, especially for pregnant women living in agricultural areas.”

There is a strong consensus among pediatricians that pregnant mothers and young children should avoid pesticide exposure during critical windows of development. However, the general population should follow this advice as the effects of pesticide exposure can affect every individual. Fortunately, the wide availability of non-pesticidal and nontoxic alternative strategies allows for choices in residential and agricultural management to promote a safe and healthy environment, especially among chemically vulnerable individuals. For instance, buying, growing, and supporting organic land management reduces human and environmental contamination from pesticides. Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits, which curtail the need for chemical-intensive agricultural practices. Numerous studies find that pesticide metabolite levels in urine significantly decrease when switching to an all-organic diet. For more information on how organic is the right choice for both consumers and the farmworkers that grow our food, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage on the Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture.

Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent studies on pesticide exposure through the Pesticide Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information on the multiple harms of pesticide exposure, see PIDD pages on learning/developmental disorders, Birth/Fetal Effects, Sexual and Reproductive Dysfunction, Body Burdens, and other diseases. Additionally, learn more about the hazards posed to children’s health through Beyond Pesticide’s Pesticide and You Journal article, “Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix.”

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

Source: Chemosphere

(Beyond Pesticides, December 19, 2022) As the new 118^th Congress convenes on January 3, 2023, one of the key issues on the agenda led by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives is preemption of local authority to restrict pesticide use—undercutting the local democratic process to protect public health and safety. In the 117^th Congress, H.R. 7266 was introduced to prohibit local governments from adopting pesticide laws that are more protective than federal and state rules. If H.R. 7266 were to pass or be incorporated into the 2023 Farm Bill, as the pesticide industry and proponents of the legislation plan to do, this bill would overturn decades of precedent as well as prevent local governments from protecting their residents from hazardous chemicals in their environment.  

This is a direct assault on nearly 200 communities across the country that have passed their own policies to restrict the use of toxic pesticides. Communities must maintain the right to restrict pesticides linked to cancer, water-contamination, and the decline of pollinators to protect their resident’s health and unique local ecosystems. 

 Take action today and tell your U.S. Representative and Senators to support communities by opposing H.R. 7266 (and successor legislation in the new Congress) and the inclusion of this anti-democratic language in the 2023 Farm Bill. 

The bill hinges on the concept of preemption: a legal theory that allows one jurisdiction to limit the authority of a jurisdiction within it to regulate a specific issue. In 1991, the Supreme Court specifically upheld the authority of local governments to restrict pesticides throughout their jurisdictions under federal pesticide law in Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier. The Court ruled that federal pesticide law does not prohibit or preempt local jurisdictions from restricting the use of pesticides more stringently than the federal government throughout their jurisdiction. According to Mortier, however, states may retain authority to take away local control.  
 
In response to the Supreme Court decision, the pesticide lobby immediately formed a coalition, called the Coalition for Sensible Pesticide Policy, and developed boilerplate legislative language that restricts local municipalities from passing ordinances on the use of pesticides on private property. The Coalition’s lobbyists descended on states across the country, seeking, and passing, in most cases, preemption legislation that was often identical to the Coalition’s wording. Since the passage of those state laws, there have been numerous efforts to prohibit localities from developing policies reflecting the unique needs and values of the people living there.  

If the pesticide industry is successful, the impacts for public health and ecological stability would be devastating. Only states and the federal government would be able to regulate pesticide use. With most state agencies allowing all uses on labels approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), local jurisdictions would be forced to follow the rulemaking of an agency that has been documented to be captured by industry interests. 

Preemption would quash a growing national grassroots movement encouraging alternatives to toxic pesticides where people live, work, and play. Federal preemption would prevent local governments from instituting pesticide regulations that are stricter than federal regulations, taking away communities’ basic right to secure their own safety and interrupting a burgeoning movement of local pesticide restrictions. H.R. 7266 and its successor legislation in the new Congress would also prevent states from giving localities the right to regulate pesticides. 

Many pesticides targeted by local city residents, including neonicotinoids, glyphosate, and atrazine, have been banned or restricted in other countries due to health or environmental concerns. However, in the U.S. the Environmental Protection Agency has not taken similar action on these pesticides. Given federal inaction and the previous administration’s failure to follow sound science, it is imperative that local governments retain the ability to tailor laws so localities can respond to federal actions that permit the use of toxic chemicals that residents do not want in their community.  

Having failed to curtail prohibitions against local restrictions into the 2018 Farm Bill after massive pushback from health advocates, local officials, and Congressional allies, the chemical industry is renewing its attack. The industry continues to flex its muscle in Congress through attempts to add preemption language in the 2023 Farm Bill as a growing number of communities are deciding to act.  

Take action today and tell your U.S. Representative and Senators to support communities by opposing H.R. 7266 (and successor legislation in the new Congress) and the inclusion of this anti-democratic language in the 2023 Farm Bill. 

Your support is needed to defend local governments’ rights to pass regulations that protect their communities against toxic pesticides. If you are interested in taking action this January by contacting your local officials and encouraging them to send a letter to the new Congress opposing preemption, please check the box under “Additional Information” on the Action form and we will reach out to you with more information at the beginning of 2023. 

(Beyond Pesticides, December 16, 2022) A report released last week — Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide — exposes not only Bayer/Monsanto malfeasance in its “promotion” of its glyphosate-based herbicide products, including the notorious Roundup®, but also, the broader landscape of corporate efforts to white- or green-wash products that companies know are harmful to people and the environment. The report was issued by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK, a nonprofit investigative research group focused on promoting transparency for public health), Friends of the Earth (FOE), and Real Food Media. It carries the pithy subtitle, “A case study in disinformation, corrupted science, and manufactured doubt about glyphosate,” a description cited by the Friends of the Earth press release as “at the core of the pesticide industry’s public relations playbook.” Beyond Pesticides welcomes this report, which comports with much of our previous coverage of the pesticide industry’s egregious misbehavior, and of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide.

FOE calls the report the “first comprehensive review” of the Bayer/Monsanto “defense strategy” employed in attempts to deny science, manufacture doubt, and discredit critics who have researched, reported on, and/or advocated against the company’s flagship glyphosate products because of the harms they cause. Merchants of Poison focuses on the swirl of bad actors and activity around glyphosate, including disinformation strategies used to manipulate the science of glyphosate, and disparage journalists and scientists who dared to publicize concerns about the compound’s damage. According to FOE, it also “reveals the astroturf operations, as well as front groups, professors, journalists, and others that [Bayer/]Monsanto relied on to protect its profits from glyphosate despite decades of science linking the toxic chemical to cancer, reproductive impacts, and other serious health concerns.” (See this recent Beyond Pesticides summary of the health risks of pesticide exposures, and a deeper dive on glyphosate’s and pesticides’ broad environmental harms, pp. 9 and 17, respectively.)

The report, produced by lead author, journalist, and founder of USRTK Stacy Malkan, and co-authors Anna Lappé and Kendra Klein, PhD also places those activities in the historical context of the campaigns of Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Indeed, the tactics used by those industries show up at nearly every turn in the corporate pro-pesticide campaigns, which have even involved some of the same people and groups as the earlier efforts. Public “spin” operations by pesticide companies were especially robust after the 2015 release, by the United Nations International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), of findings concluding that there was “sufficient evidence of [glyphosate’s] carcinogenicity.”

As the report pointedly 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 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.”

Ms. 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.” The pesticide industry similarly indulges in deceptive and unethical public relations strategies in order to keep its so-called “freedom to operate” — essentially, with few or no restrictions — even while its products have dangerous consequences for public health and the environment.

The industry has, for decades, engaged in knowingly deceptive and aggressive tactics to (1) 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 and improve the lot of producers — as well as being key to turning around the public health, biodiversity, and climate crises. Merchants of Poison asserts: “In recent years, groundbreaking global studies have shown the grave threat agricultural chemicals pose to biodiversity and public health and how they fail to deliver on their promises for greater agricultural productivity, leading to crop loss and weed and pest resistance. Yet despite the mounting evidence, the pesticide industry has doubled down on deceptive messaging.”

Merchants of Poison is the result of a years-long USRTK investigation, starting in 2015, which analyzed documents from all levels of government, universities, and industry, as well as from the work of investigative journalists, such as Cary Gillam, author of the groundbreaking Monsanto Papers. The tens of thousands of pages of documents reviewed were secured through a combination of publicly available information, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and state-level public records requests, and proceedings from litigation — sometimes obtained as a result of judicial enforcement of public records laws — brought by groundskeepers, farmers, and just plain gardeners who (often successfully) sued Monsanto over claims that exposure to its glyphosate herbicide, Roundup®, caused their subsequent cancers, often non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Many of those documents can be accessed here.

The report sets out several key points:

• “Monsanto employees ghostwrote scientific papers on the safety of glyphosate and strategized how to discredit journalists raising concerns about the pesticide.
• Major universities, including UC Davis and University of Florida, played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying pesticide industry product-defense efforts. 
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cornell University, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s most prestigious scientific organizations, also provided essential aid and cover for pesticide industry propaganda.
• Key Monsanto-connected front groups that led attacks on scientists and journalists (Genetic Literacy Project and American Council on Science and Health) frequently push industry messaging to the top of the Google News search. 
• Pesticide industry propaganda is a huge business: 
  • Seven of the front groups named in Monsanto’s documents spent $76 million over a five-year period to push corporate disinformation, including attacks on scientists.
  • Six industry trade groups named in Monsanto’s PR documents spent more than $1.3 billion over the same five year period, including for PR and lobbying to influence regulation over glyphosate.”

The unsavory, unethical, 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.

Dr. Klein has commented, “Pesticide companies fight tooth and nail to keep their toxic products on the market, and the public pays for their deceit with our health and our lives. . . . Meanwhile, the rampant use of toxic pesticides is unraveling the web of life as bees, birds, and other critical biodiversity face increasing threats of extinction. The ‘silent spring’ that Rachel Carson warned of six decades ago is here.”

David Michaels, PhD, epidemiologist and long-time head of OSHA (the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration), wrote in 2020 a trenchant summary in the Boston Review of the denial, obfuscation, and outright unethical behavior that seems to characterize some corners of the scientific, corporate, academic, and even governmental, worlds: “Science is supposed to be constant, apolitical, and above the fray. This commonsense view misses the rise of science-for-sale specialists over the last several decades and a ‘product defense industry’ that sustains them — a cabal of apparent experts, PR flaks, and political lobbyists who use bad science to produce whatever results their sponsors want.”

The U.S. needs to get off the toxic pesticide treadmill in agriculture and land management, and adopt organic regenerative approaches that obviate the use of these compounds. What we 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 a 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 law 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.”

Among Beyond Pesticides’ hopes is that exposure of these behaviors — as Merchants of Poison has so comprehensively done — by industry, as well as by some in government, academia, and media across the “pesticide landscape,” will inform and encourage the public to learn more, speak up in opposition, and support science. Please do so via the Daily News Blog and Take Action features on the website homepage, and by joining Beyond Pesticides and/or donating to support our campaign to end the use of toxic pesticides, such as glyphosate, in the next decade.

Sources: https://foe.org/news/merchants-of-poison/ and https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Merchants_of_Poison_Report_final_113022.pdf

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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 15, 2022) Industrial agriculture has both created and amplified the spread of the now highly problematic waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus) plant, according to research published this month in the journal Science. Over the last 80 years, the push to increase monoculture plantings, expand cropland, and utilize chemical fertilizers and pesticides has changed waterhemp from a tame riparian wild plant into an aggressive, weedy intruder able to compete with row crops like corn and soybean. “The genetic variants that help the plant do well in modern agricultural settings have risen to high frequencies remarkably quickly since agricultural intensification in the 1960s,” said study author Julia Kreiner, PhD with the University of British Columbia’s Department of Botany. “The types of changes we’re imposing in agricultural environments are so strong that they have consequences in neighbouring habitats that we’d usually think were natural.”

To better understand how this plant went from a waterside obscurity to North America’s most notorious “weed,” researchers tracked the shifts occurring within the plants genome. Using data from herbarium samples first collected in 1828 until 2011, scientists sought out alleles (genetic mutations) that corresponded with agricultural intensification and analyzed the frequency of their occurrence over the nearly two centuries of records.

Mutations favored by intensive farming practices were identified by determining genes that were overrepresented in plants found at agricultural sites, compared to its natural riparian habitat. The 154 agriculturally associated alleles corresponded for reproduction, growth and development, plant metabolism, and responses to stimuli, including chemical stimuli such as herbicides. Scientists found chemical adaptation to be the most significant driver of genetic shifts. Many of the changes found are analogous to the sort of selection that plant breeders seek –including faster development and adaptation to high-stress, high disturbance environments.

“While waterhemp typically grows near lakes and streams, the genetic shifts that we’re seeing allow the plant to survive on drier land and to grow quickly to outcompete crops,” said coauthor Sarah Otto, PhD. “Waterhemp has basically evolved to become more of a weed given how strongly it’s been selected to thrive alongside human agricultural activities.”

Directly alongside rapid changes in land use and the rise of industrial agriculture came a significant increase in the frequency of mutations associated with intensive farming practices. While waterhemp in natural environments saw the frequency of these mutations increase by 6% since the 1870s, waterhemp in agricultural environments had these mutations increase by 22%. This is well above natural genetic shifts that models predict would occur without the pressure of intensive agricultural practices on the plant.

Scientists determined that although significant changes had occurred since the 1870s, mutations in both agricultural and natural habitats were negligible until the 1960s. The authors note that, “Change subsequent to 1960 nearly completely accounts for the observed rise in frequency of modern agricultural alleles.” Only the advent of widespread herbicide use explains this shift.

“Modern farms impose a strong filter determining which plant species and mutations can persist through time,” said Dr. Kreiner. “Sequencing the plant’s genes, herbicides stood out as one of the strongest agricultural filter determining which plants survive and which die.”

Each year since 1960, waterhemp plants carrying mutations ascribed to herbicide resistance reproduced 1.2x more than plants without those mutations.

Waterhemp’s ability to withstand herbicides is only increasing. A study published in 2018 found that waterhemp on Missouri croplands were resistant to six different herbicides of different classes. In fact, a 2021 study found that waterhemp displayed herbicide resistance stronger than commercial crops, and was even found to have resistance to herbicides it had never encountered before.

The findings are somewhat similar to what is currently occurring with “weedy rice,” a form of rice that was “re-wilded,” or “de-domesticated” from cultivated rice. In the early 2000s, multinational chemical corporation BASF developed a line of rice cultivars, produced through traditional breeding, that conferred resistance to imidazolinone class herbicides. Now, that line of rice is interbreeding with rewilded weedy rice, resulting in hybrid weedy rice that is placing significant economic costs on farmers throughout the United States.

The solution to this crisis is simple; we must stop the rampant use of toxic chemicals in agriculture and move toward safer solutions. By deindustrializing agricultural production, removing unnecessary synthetic inputs in favor of natural products supported by practices that work with, rather than against existing ecological processes we can forge a sustainable path for the future. Organic production is already showing these benefits and a proof of concept, as the 40 year Rodale Organic Systems Trial finds organic production to be more profitable with competitive yields that do better in drought periods, benefit the climate, and do not result in runoff of toxic pesticides to nearby natural lands.

For more information on the benefits of organic production, see Beyond Pesticides page “Why Organic?”

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

Source: University of British Columbia press release, Science