(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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 14, 2022) Ultraviolet (UV-C) light has the potential to successfully manage mite (Tetranychus urticae) populations without reducing yields or resorting to toxic pesticides, according to research published by scientists at University of Florida. “Since very few miticides (sprays) are currently effective in suppressing twospotted spider mites in strawberries, the use of UV light provides an effective physical control method that can be used in fields and in high-tunnel strawberry production systems,” says study author Sriyanka Lahiri, PhD. The findings provide an encouraging technique for farmers, but further investigation is needed to observe the success of this approach in other cropping systems.  

Researchers compared the efficacy of four treatment approaches, including use of the insecticide spinetoram, a low powered application of UV-C light twice a week, a high-powered application of UV-C light twice a week, and an untreated control. Researchers also looked closely at mite egg hatchability by rearing eggs in the laboratory and then transferring them out to the field for treatment with UV-C light.

Results were not consistent across the two-year trial as researchers indicate that in most of the field trials, no effect was seen due to low levels of natural infestation. However, during the second year’s field trial, it was found that high-powered applications of UV-C light were effective at suppressing mite populations without negatively impacting yield. Researchers determined that spinetoram also adequately suppressed the pests, but it should be noted that the field trial did not follow organic practices and included a broader chemical approach that separately employed chemical weed suppression, fungicide use, and soil fumigation. The authors further note that T. urticae mites have a propensity to develop resistance to insecticidal sprays, noting data on their ability to withstand active ingredients like abamectin, bifenazat, bifenthrin, fenpyroximate, and spirodiclofen.

“An added advantage is that UV light does not leave any residue behind and can be applied using automated robotic units already in production by commercial sources,” Dr. Lahiri says.

The results of the study line up with prior research conducted by the same University of Florida team regarding the use of UV-C radiation for powdery mildew control on strawberry plants. “UV treatments applied once or twice weekly were as effective as the best available fungicides applied on similar schedules for control of strawberry powdery mildew,” study author Natalia Peres, PhD said at the time. “It’s not a one-time fluke.”

While the results are promising for both pest and fungal problems, any level of human intervention can carry both risk and rewards. A study published in 2012 found that reducing, rather than increasing and treating with UV light, was effective at suppressing aphid infestations. Using netting that filtered UV radiation, researchers were able to reduce aphid populations compared to those consistently exposed to UV light.

Any level of disturbance to a natural system will result changes to that system that are difficult to account for. And there are emerging studies on pest management that call into question a range of accepted knowledge. Research published last month came to the conclusion that putting up with moderate levels of pests, in this case scale insects on landscaped trees, actually had the effect of promoting the numbers of beneficial pest predators, while not causing significant damage to trees. As study coauthor Caleb Wilson, PhD, noted in an article discussing the paper, “Treating a tree with pesticides could kill off natural enemies that would otherwise help manage nearby pests. In other words, treating a tree with pesticides could alleviate pest problems within the tree but could result in pest outbreaks in shrubs beneath the tree as natural enemies are killed off.”

In a similarly surprising study published last month, it was determined that managing cucumber beetles on watermelon crops had no significant impact on the ultimate yields farmers enjoyed; it was the number of visits by wild pollinators that had the greatest influence.

In this context, it is unsurprising that organic systems, which require an approach that focuses on maintaining or improving soil, and limits even natural pesticide use in favor of ecological approaches, represents the most profitable approach for farmers. For more information on the importance of transitioning to organic agriculture, see Beyond Pesticides’ Organic program page.

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

Source: UF/IAS press release, Pest Management Science

(Beyond Pesticides, December 13, 2022) Pesticides have a long history associated with hormone (endocrine)-disrupting properties that induce various molecular changes, prompting disease development. Adding to the science, a review published in Environmental Exposure, Biomonitoring and Exposure Assessment highlights how specific estrogen-mimicking pesticides increase the risk of disease, particularly hormone-related cancers among women (i.e., breast, ovarian, endometrial cancer) and men (i.e., testicular, prostate cancer). Like pesticides, endocrine disruptors are xenobiotic (i.e., chemical substances foreign to an organism or ecosystem). Many reports demonstrate that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals can adversely affect human, animal—and thus environmental—health by altering the natural bodily hormones responsible for conventional reproductive, physical, and mental development. Endocrine disruption can lead to several health problems, including hormone-related cancer development (i.e., thyroid, breast, ovarian, prostate, testicular), reproductive dysfunction, and diabetes/obesity that can span generations. Therefore, studies related to pesticides and endocrine disruption help scientists understand the underlying mechanisms that indirectly or directly cause cancer, among other health issues.

Pesticides are one of the most potent xeno-estrogenic compounds, as estrogenic strength and environmental half-life exceed those of other xeno-estrogenic compounds. Focusing on organochlorine pesticides (OCs), the study evaluates the chemical effects on the physiological (anatomic) system to increase cancer risk. Using human studies, researchers assessed how estrogen-medicated cancer develops in women and men. Various OCs, including aldrin, dieldrin, endosulfan, HCH, DDT, 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, phenoxy acid herbicides, and methoxychlor, have associations with hormone-related cancers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies many of these chemicals as potent carcinogens in animal studies. Cancer development also depends on genetic susceptibility, as impaired genes responsible for xenobiotic detoxification (elimination) increase disease risk sensitivity.

It is evident that OCs’ hormone-like activity disrupts natural estrogen function, which is concerning since these chemicals stay in the environment for extended periods (from years to decades). Despite the ban on many OCs across the globe, these chemicals remain in the environment. Many OCs can exist in the body for at least three to six years, in soil for decades, and in water for at least a century. Moreover, consumption of food and water resources contaminated with OCs can cause these chemicals to bioaccumulate in the body, resulting in the biomagnification of OCs.

The mechanisms involved in the endocrine-disrupting potential of OCs include four different actions:

1. “Mimicking the effect of endogenous steroidal hormones (androgens and estrogens).
2. Antagonizing steroidal hormones.
3. Altering the synthesis and metabolism of endogenous steroidal hormones.
4. Modifying hormone receptor expression in different tissues.”

The review notes the association between hormone-related cancers and OCs. Studies document excess estrogen can promote breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers among women and elevate testicular and prostate cancer among men. In women, numerous studies link exposure to OC contaminants (e.g., DDT and its metabolites [DDE and DDD], heptachlor, dieldrin, and hexacyclohexane) as the prime cause of higher breast cancer risk, since these chemicals stimulate estrogenic activity. Nearly 40 percent of breast cancer incidents have direct links to environmental factors (e.g., chemical exposure) in women over 30. Although the review notes the mechanisms involved in increasing breast cancer risk are unclear, studies suggest OCs downregulate the expression of estrogen receptors (ER, a common event in many breasts cancer cases) through disruption of essential pathways. In men, although estrogen’s role in male cancer risk is much less understood, gestational and neonatal exposure to estrogen-related compounds significantly contribute to testicular cancer risk in men. Regarding OCs, studies find both work-related and non-worker-related exposure increase testicular dysfunction risk 1.29-fold, promoting testicular cancer. Furthermore, the review assessed the potential relationship of xeno-estrogenic pesticides with prostate cancer risk. Although direct connections between xeno-estrogenic pesticides and prostate cancer are lacking in establishment, animal studies suggest endocrine-disrupting chemicals can alter prostate stem cells, elevating prostate cancer risk. Additionally, maternal exposure to low doses of xeno-estrogens during gestation increases the weight of the prostate in male offspring. Increased prostate weight is a characteristic of a prostate disorder that can lead to prostate cancer. In particular, higher levels of OCs influence prostate weight, which is consistent in patients with more aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

The connection between pesticides and associated cancer risks is not a new finding. Many pesticides are “known or probable” carcinogens (cancer-causing agents), and widespread uses only amplify chemical hazards, adversely affecting human health. Several studies link pesticide use and residue to various cancers, from the more prevalent breast cancer to the rare kidney cancer, nephroblastoma (Wilms’ tumor). Sixty-six percent of all cancers have links to environmental factors, especially in occupations of high chemical use. At least 45 different cancers have associations with work-related chemical exposure. Although the link between agricultural practices and pesticide-related illnesses is stark, over 63 percent of commonly used lawn pesticides and 70 percent of commonly used school pesticides have links to cancer. U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute also finds many cancer-causing substances are endocrine disruptors. The entire endocrine system directly affects traditional endocrine glands and their hormones and receptors (i.e., estrogens, anti-androgens, thyroid hormones), greatly influencing hormone cancer incidents among humans (e.g., breast, prostate, and thyroid cancers). Several studies and reports, including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, identify hundreds of chemicals as influential factors associated with hormone-related cancer risk. There are grave concerns over exposure to endocrine (hormone) disrupting chemicals and pollutants that produce adverse health effects. Considering not only OCs, but over 296 chemicals in consumer products can increase breast cancer risk through endocrine disruption, it is essential to understand how chemical exposure impacts chronic disease occurrence. 

This review is one of the first to consider all-gender estrogen-mediated cancer risk modification by xeno-estrogenic OCs. However, OCs are not the only chemical associated with endocrine-disrupting mechanisms. The World Health Organization (WHO), European Union (EU), and endocrine disruptor expert Theo Colborn, Ph.D. (deceased), classify over 55 to 177 chemical compounds as endocrine disruptors, including various household products like detergents, disinfectants, plastics, and pesticides. Unlike many OCs, these chemicals are still in use across most parts of the world.

Previous studies demonstrate the sex-specific effect of endocrine-disrupting pesticide exposure. In 2017, scientists presented a study at the 99th meeting of the Endocrine Society, demonstrating instances of early onset puberty in boys after exposure to common pyrethroid insecticide, which exhibits endocrine-disrupting properties that interfere with the proper regulation of the human body’s hormonal system. Furthermore, a 2021 study demonstrates that exposure to current-use pesticides, like organophosphates, poses a greater health risk to women.

The review concludes, “These chemicals [xeno-estrogenic pesticides] must be completely phased out and replaced with less toxic and affordable alternatives that have negligible adverse health effects on mammalian systems.…[B]reast cancer in females and prostate cancer in males have become the top causes of morbidity and mortality, and both are estrogen-mediated cancers. More studies are needed to find out how much this increased incidence can be attributed to such harmful environmental factors.”

There is a lack of understanding of the etiology of pesticide-induced diseases, including predictable lag time between chemical exposure, health impacts, and epidemiological data. Exposure to pesticides can increase the risk of developing chronic illnesses that may be rare and disproportionately impact various populations. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with over eight million people succumbing to the disease every year. Notably,  IARC predicts an increase in new cancer cases from 19.3 million to 30.2 million per year by 2040. Therefore, studies related to pesticides and cancer will aid in understanding the underlying mechanisms that cause the disease.

It is essential to understand the health implications of pesticide use and exposure for humans, particularly when pesticides increase chronic disease risk. Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent news and studies on pesticides and related topics through the Daily News Blog and Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). For more information on the adverse effects of pesticides on human health, see PIDD pages on cancer, endocrine disruption, and other diseases.

Moreover, proper prevention practices, like buying, growing, and supporting organics, can eliminate exposure to toxic pesticides. Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits, given that it curtails the need for chemical-intensive agricultural practices. Regenerative organic agriculture nurtures soil health through organic carbon sequestration, while preventing pests and generating a higher return than chemical-intensive agriculture. For more information on why organic is the right choice, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

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

Source: Environmental Exposure, Biomonitoring, and Exposure Assessment

(Beyond Pesticides, December 12, 2022) It is time for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to follow through on its duty to assess individual “inert” ingredients used in organic production. In creating the original regulations for the National Organic Program (NOP), USDA—based on the recommendation of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—decided to postpone the evaluation of so-called “inert” ingredients until active materials had been reviewed for the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. In this context, “inert” is a misleading legal term since the ingredient may be chemically or biologically active, but not included for purposes of attacking a target organism. The first regulation and all subsequent revisions have allowed the use of “inert” ingredients on EPA’s former Lists 4A (“minimal risk inert ingredients”) and 4B (“other ingredients for which EPA has sufficient information to reasonably conclude that the current use pattern in pesticide products will not adversely affect public health or the environment”). A limited number on List 3 (“inerts of unknown toxicity”) were allowed in pheromone products.

[This action requires a submission at Regulations.gov. You can copy and paste from the suggested comment below. Comments are due December 31, 2022.]

Tell USDA that the National Organic Program must evaluate “inert” ingredients used in organic production.
[Need help in submitting comments? Regulations.gov requires more than a single click, but it is not difficult. Please feel free to cut-and-paste language from the comments above into Regulations.gov and add or adjust the text to personalize it. See this instructional video. (Regulations.gov has changed its look since this video was made.)]

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) requires that no synthetic substance may be used in organic production unless evaluated and recommended by the NOSB and entered on the National List, which is contained in NOP regulations. Now USDA is accepting comments on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) on “inert” ingredients used in organic production. The ANPR reflects a lack of understanding on the part of the USDA authors of the character of so-called “inert” ingredients and the requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act, as well as the history of efforts by the NOSB to address this issue. USDA refers to time, effort, and work required to implement the NOSB’s recommended reviews of individual “inert” ingredients. These references are disingenuous at best, considering the time that has elapsed since the issue became critical when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was no longer supporting the lists to which NOP regulations refer—16 years ago.

Some crucial facts must be acknowledged by USDA:

* “Inert” ingredients are not biologically or chemically inert. The Beyond Pesticides report “’Inert’ Ingredients in Organic Production” compares the toxicity of active substances and “inert” substances used in organic production. In almost every category, there are more harmful “inerts” than active substances.
* OFPA allows the use of a synthetic substance in organic production only if it is listed on the National List “by specific use or application” based on a recommendation by the NOSB, following procedures in OFPA.
* The NOSB has repeatedly passed recommendations telling NOP to evaluate individual “inerts.”

In moving forward,

* There must be no more delay.

* The first step must be the immediate publication in the Federal Register of all “inerts” known to be used in organic production, with a request that registrants of products approved for use in organic production to notify AMS if their products contain other “inert” ingredients.

* USDA must allocate resources needed to review substances that are identified.

* Former List 3 “inerts” must be relisted according to the Spring 2012 NOSB recommendation.

* USDA must establish a process for production of technical reviews of substance on former Lists 4A and 4B.

* The NOSB must evaluate the substances according to a process designed to complete the review of all “inerts” within five years of publication of the list, and USDA must complete rulemaking in accordance with OFPA and NOSB recommendations.

* Known endocrine disrupting and persistent organic pollutants—such as nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenols, and orthophthalates—should not be permitted.

* Every five years the materials will be subject to sunset review.

This action requires a submission at Regulations.gov. You can copy and paste from the suggested comment below. Comments are due December 31, 2022.

Tell USDA that the National Organic Program must evaluate “inert” ingredients used in organic production.
[Need help in submitting comments? Regulations.gov requires more than a single click, but it is not difficult. Please feel free to cut-and-paste language from the comments above into Regulations.gov and add or adjust the text to personalize it. See this instructional video. (Regulations.gov has changed its look since this video was made.)]

Suggested comment:

It is time for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to follow through on its duty to assess individual “inert” ingredients used in organic production. In creating the original regulations for the National Organic Program (NOP), USDA—based on the recommendation of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—decided to postpone the evaluation of so-called “inert” ingredients until active materials had been reviewed for the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. The first regulation and all subsequent revisions have allowed the use of “inert” ingredients on EPA Lists 4A (“minimal risk inert ingredients”) and 4B (“other ingredients for which EPA has sufficient information to reasonably conclude that the current use pattern in pesticide products will not adversely affect public health or the environment”). A limited number on List 3 (“inerts of unknown toxicity”) were allowed in pheromone products.

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) requires that no synthetic substance may be used in organic production unless evaluated and recommended by the NOSB and entered on the National List, which is contained in NOP regulations. Now USDA is accepting comments on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) on “inert” ingredients used in organic production. The ANPR reflects a lack of understanding on the part of the USDA authors of the character of so-called “inert” ingredients and the requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act, as well as the history of efforts by the NOSB to address this issue. USDA refers to time, effort, and work required to implement the NOSB’s recommended reviews of individual “inert” ingredients. These references are disingenuous at best, considering the time that has elapsed since the issue became critical when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was no longer supporting the lists to which NOP regulations refer—16 years ago.

Some crucial facts must be acknowledged by USDA:

* “Inert” ingredients are not biologically or chemically inert. The Beyond Pesticides report “’Inert’ Ingredients in Organic Production” compares the toxicity of active substances and “inert” substances used in organic production. In almost every category, there are more harmful “inerts” than active substances.

* OFPA allows the use of a synthetic substance in organic production only if it is listed on the National List “by specific use or application” based on a recommendation by the NOSB, following procedures in OFPA.

* The NOSB has repeatedly passed recommendations telling NOP to evaluate individual “inerts.”

In moving forward,

* There must be no more delay.

* The first step must be the immediate publication in the Federal Register of all “inerts” known to be used in organic production, with a request that registrants of products approved for use in organic production to notify AMS if their products contain other “inert” ingredients.

* USDA must allocate resources needed to review substances that are identified.

* Former List 3 “inerts” must be relisted according to the Spring 2012 NOSB recommendation.

* USDA must establish a process for production of technical reviews of substance on former Lists 4A and 4B.

* The NOSB must evaluate the substances according to a process designed to complete the review of all “inerts” within five years of publication of the list, and USDA must complete rulemaking in accordance with OFPA and NOSB recommendations.

* Known endocrine disrupting and persistent organic pollutants—such as nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenols, and orthophthalates—should not be permitted.

* Every five years the materials will be subject to sunset review.

Thank you for your consideration of this urgent issue.

(Beyond Pesticides, December 9, 2022) Representatives from more than 195 countries have descended on Montreal for the December 7 start of COP15 — the United Nation’s (UN’s) Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The UN Development Programme sets out the context for this summit: “Despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide, and this decline is projected to worsen with business-as-usual. The loss of biodiversity comes at a great cost for human well-being and the global economy.” Beyond Pesticides has documented many aspects of this decline in biodiversity, and the implications for ecosystem, human, and planetary health. In this COP15 context, the data points to the importance of broad adoption of organic regenerative / agroecological systems, which can very significantly address the interactive health, biodiversity, and climate crises.

Close on the heels of November’s UN COP27 summit on climate, COP15 has commenced, with the goal of adopting a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (CBF) to provide “a strategic vision and a global roadmap for the conservation, protection, restoration, and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems for the next decade.” The first such summit was called the Convention on Biological Diversity and was held in 1993. Out of it and subsequent meetings have come several international agreements — the 2003 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (focused on environmental protection from potential risks of genetically modified organisms), and the 2014 Nagoya Protocol (aimed at sharing benefits of the use of genetic resources in equitable ways), as well as other actions related to environmental integrity, community rights, and rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Prior to that, in 2010 the conference adopted a Strategic Plan for Biodiversity — the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for the 2011–2020 period. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, “[a]t the global level none of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed by Parties to the CBD in 2010 [were] fully achieved.”

Subsequently, CBD focus shifted to the development of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework via the current (through December 19) meetings in Montreal. NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth and the CBD Alliance — the latter a network of civil society organizations — are engaged in the COP15 process. The CBD Alliance has forwarded equity and transparency concerns about that process, as demonstrated in this letter, and has set out its long list of “ingredients” it wants included in a successful COP15 GBF.

Among those is a serious and ambitious focus on the role of agroecological approaches to agriculture (and forestry) operations around the world. Agroecology overlaps broadly with organic regenerative agricultural approaches — for which Beyond Pesticides advocates strongly, and which it has described and explained here, here, and here (at 46:55). Agroecological approaches are generally described as: holistic and diversified; integrating ecological principles into the design and management of food production systems; incorporating social justice and cultural concerns; and embracing of multiple kinds of outputs, as well as spatial and temporal diversification. In addition, they center the health of the soil, the organismic ecosystems beneath the soil surface, and the resultant ability to drawn down and hold carbon.

Such approaches show up “on the ground” in multiple strategies, including crop rotation; no (or very limited) chemical inputs, such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; interplanting and succession planting; use of cover crops; no- or low-tillage (without use of herbicides); and no or few off-farm inputs (and in the former case, typically because crop production is supported by and integrated with maintaining some on-farm livestock). The UN Food and Agriculture Organization provides a primer on the elements of agroecology.

Many organic producers operate according to a majority of these principles, although U.S. organic standards (i.e., U.S. Department of Agriculture Certified Organic) do not mandate use of all the practices described above. Some consider organic farming practices to be roughly synonymous with agroecological practices, but agroecology, as it is practiced in some parts of the world, also attends to the health of forests and their management. (See an illustrative case study, of an agroecological farm in Ethiopia, in an Organic Without Boundaries blog entry.)

According to Beyond Pesticides Executive Director Jay Feldman, U.S. “organic” does not require and codify all of those agroecological features in its National Organic Standards (NOS). But the NOP (National Organic Program) “does have defined standards that are enforceable and subject to public review. Because issues of cost are not factored into producers’ meeting OFPA [the Organic Foods Production Act] standards, and because scale is often based on inputs or practices that are not allowed in organic, the USDA National Organic Program has, embedded in it, standards that are generally not friendly to industrial agriculture. At the same time, with agribusiness pushing for entry into the organic market, we are vigilant in Keeping Organic Strong.” (For more on what is allowed and not allowed in organic production, see the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.)

The global transition to these approaches to agricultural production is imperative. In addition to Beyond Pesticides’ long-standing and ardent endorsement of the transition, The Rodale Institute has studied and advocated for organic systems for decades, and in 2016, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) issued a report calling for a “paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems.”

In recent years, multiple national and international entities have encouraged the transformation of food and agriculture systems, including aspects of the European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, and the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which issued a 2019 report — Our Future in the Land — calling for radical transformation of the UK food and agricultural system to sustainable, agroecological farming by 2030.

In his introduction to Beyond Pesticides’ recent 2022 Forum Series seminar, Tackling the Climate Emergency, Mr. Feldman said, “We [in the U.S.] don’t have to be theoretical about this. We have organic systems in place, governed by a clear definition and requirements for compliance with standards. Under the OFPA in the U.S. (and similar statutes worldwide), those selling products as organic are required to adhere to a legal definition of soil management practices, a list of allowed and prohibited substances, a certification and inspection system that establishes compliance with defined organic standards, and a participatory public decision-making process for continuous improvement. This approach, whether in agriculture or in our parks and playing fields, eliminates the reliance on fossil fuel-based toxic chemicals that release greenhouse gases. It also employs the ability of healthy soil, rich in biodiversity, to draw down atmospheric carbon.”

Seminar speakers emphasized the need for, and evidence of the many benefits of, the critical transition to organic regenerative / agroecological agriculture for rescuing and sustaining biodiversity, health, and climate. One of the seminar presenters was Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr, PhD, a researcher and expert on sustainable African agriculture, and on climate change adaption, who is also participating in COP15 discussions. (See Dr. Kerr’s presentation at Beyond Pesticides’ climate seminar, beginning at 5:48.)

Dr. Kerr recently Tweeted: “Agroecology is key to ensuring the success of the Global Biodiversity Framework,” and pointed to a recent study of agroecological practices in Ethiopia as demonstrative of their potential benefits. That research paper calls agroecology “key . . . [to] meeting significant increases in our [future] food needs . . . while ensuring no one is left behind. . . . [A]groecology can promote the transition towards social-ecological sustainability. Unlike other approaches to sustainable development, agroecology helps to deliver contextualized solutions to local problems. It is based on bottom-up and territorial processes, involving the co-creation of knowledge, and combining science with the traditional, practical, and local knowledge of producers. It is characterized by its participatory approach,” and enhances farmers’ income, achieves food security, and protects the environment.

A report by another agroecology expert, Faris Ahmed of Carleton University, has been core to the case, pressed by advocates at COP15, to re-center the role of agriculture in recovering and supporting biodiversity, and in the GBF. His report for Friends of the Earth, Replanting Agricultural Biodiversity in the CBD, maintains that “agriculture needs to be dealt with both as a destructive force, and [for] its ability to nurture and restore biodiversity. Today’s industrially driven, large-scale agriculture and intensive livestock production is identified as the biggest driver of land use change, ecosystem exploitation and destruction, and a significant contributor to climate change. However, agriculture is also a solution: in contrast to industrial agriculture, peasant agriculture and food provision, practiced by the majority of the world’s small-scale farmers, nurtures and safeguards agricultural biodiversity.”

Beyond Pesticides concurs. We have recently underscored the benefits of organic practices for biodiversity, drought resilience, climate, farm operation economics, and soil health, and amplified our call for a rapid phase-out of the use of toxic, petrochemical pesticides within a decade — a critical component in progress toward restored biodiversity and health for ecosystems and humans. Mr. Feldman adds, “The agroecology movement is critical. We need a big tent to bring communities together worldwide and eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers in a short timeframe. At the same time, we need strong domestical and international standards, and governmental systems — with legal requirements and enforcement — that move agriculture to sustainable, agroecological / organic regenerative practices that can restore biodiversity and, simultaneously, address the climate and health crises.”

Source: https://www.foei.org/what-we-do/forests-and-biodiversity/convention-on-biological-diversity/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 8, 2022) Children with higher levels of certain pesticide metabolites are more likely to go through early puberty, according to research published recently in Environmental Pollution. The findings by a team of Spanish researchers speak to a need for greater protections for children from toxic pesticide exposure. Children are much more sensitive to pesticide exposure than adults as they take in greater amounts of toxics relative to their body weight and have developing organ systems. Managing homes and yards without chemicals and purchasing organic food whenever possible can significantly reduce childhood pesticide exposure.  

Researchers began their investigation with children aged 7-11 participating in the Spanish state’s Environment and Childhood multicenter birth cohort stud, an ongoing project aimed at understanding the effect of environmental exposures on pregnancy, fetal, and childhood development in the country. Out of over 3,000 children enrolled in the project, 1,539 had their urine sampled for the presence of pesticide metabolites. Scientists focused on four insecticides breakdown products—a chlorpyrifos metabolite ‘TCPy’, a metabolite of the organochlorine diazinon ‘IMPy’, a general organophosphate metabolite ‘DETP’, the pyrethroid metabolite ‘3-PBA’, and a metabolite of ethylene-bis-dithiocarbamate fungicides ‘ETU’.

Urinary levels of these pesticide metabolites were then compared against parental-reported stages of pubertal development. Researchers worked to control for confounders, and did explore the further interaction between pubertal development, chemical exposure, and body mass index.

For girls, urinary concentrations of DETP and ETU above the 75^th percentile were associated with a greater chance of pubertal development, with ETU fungicide metabolites specifically resulting in greater development among girls who are underweight or normal weight (with odds ratios averaging a 10x increased risk). For boys, any detection of TCPy was found to influence more rapid genital development than boys without evidence of exposure. 3-PBA and ETU above the 75^th percentile in boys was associated with greater development in overweight/obese and underweight/normal weight children respectively. Interestingly, DETP was found to be associated with lower odds of pubertal development in overweight/obese boys.

“[T]hese findings represent a potential cause of concern, due to the widespread exposure to children in the general population to pesticides and the possibility that altered pubertal timing may increase the risks of behavioral disorders during adolescence and of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and endocrine-related cancers later in life,” the authors write.

This area of research has been developing consistently since the turn of the century. In 2008, a study on the synthetic pyrethroid esfenvalerate found that it delayed the onset of puberty in rats at doses as much as two times lower than levels EPA classified as having no adverse effects. Nearly a decade later, another study on synthetic pyrethroids, this time looking directly at the association between urinary levels and puberty onset, found similar results with the insecticide cypermethrin. Not only did this study find an association, it was able to characterize the effects driving the process. In rodent models, researchers found that cypermethrin was accelerating puberty through hormonal release. Rather than a response from the hypothalamus, which controls the release of pituitary luteinizing (affecting the reproductive system) and follicle-stimulating hormones, scientists found that cypermethrin acts directly on cells within the testis and pituitary glands.

Advocates concerned with the impacts of pesticide exposure on children emphasize pesticide use and agrichemical industry profits should not be prioritized of the children’s health. Yet, in the United States, toxic pesticides are regularly sprayed in and around schools, parks, and playgrounds where children play, and food served in school cafeterias is more frequent than not grown through chemical, rather than organic farming practices.

Research finds that children who eat an organic food diet score higher on tests measuring fluid intelligence and working memory. Help prevent the hazards effects that pesticides can cause to children by encouraging your child’s school to serve organic food, and working to eliminate the unnecessary of toxic pesticides on community lawns and landscapes.

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

Source:  Environmental Pollution