(Beyond Pesticides, July 5, 2022)  Plastics are a huge environmental problem, yet organic production and handling continue to exacerbate the problem instead of solving it. There are opportunities for change with different mulching systems, intercropping, and packaging materials. It is time to ensure organic’s commitment to addressing the existential crises associated with a petroleum-based economy and lead the way in combatting the climate crisis by ending plastic use in agricultural production and food packaging.

Tell the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) it must lead in phasing out plastic at all stages of production and handling.

Plastic production and use aggravate the climate emergency via the production and use of plastics. Researchers have found, “The U.S. plastics industry is responsible for at least 232 million tons of CO₂ gas emissions per year. This amount is equivalent to the average emissions from 116 average-sized (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants.”

Plastic is intentionally added to organic farms in the form of mulch, netting, tree guards, plant containers, irrigation tubing, feed bags, and many other items. The largest use, and the one that has received attention by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is plastic sheet mulch.

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), in recognition of current practices by organic farmers, allows non-PVC plastic mulch if it is removed at the end of the growing or harvest season. The fact that huge quantities of plastic are carted off to landfills every year from organic farms created a demand for plastic mulch that will degrade on site. As of 2014, organic growers are allowed to use “biodegradable biobased mulch film” (BBMF) which does not need to be removed. However, there are still no available products that meet the regulatory definition of biodegradable. Furthermore, while BBMF may be “biodegradable” in name, it is now apparent that it does not totally degrade, but leaves microplastic particles in the soil.

Microplastics cause harmful effects to humans and other organisms through physical entanglement and physical impacts of ingestion. They also act as carriers of toxic chemicals. Studies on fish have shown that microplastics and their associated toxic chemicals bioaccumulate, resulting in intestinal damage and changes in metabolism. Soil organisms and edible plants ingest microplastic particles. Earthworms can move microplastics through the soil, and microplastics can move through the food chain to human food. Microplastics can have a wide range of negative impacts on the soil, including reduction in growth and reproduction of soil microfauna. Microplastics serve as hotspots of gene exchange between different microorganisms, potentially increasing the spread of antibiotic resistant pathogens in water and sediments.

BBMFs are not removed from the field by the grower but are tilled into the soil, purposefully creating microplastics to be degraded by soil organisms. However, growers report that fragments persist in the soil, and research on the eventual fate of biodegradable mulch films is ongoing. Still, some research indicates that the BBMFs do not completely degrade and may degrade more slowly when tilled under the surface, that they contain components that may be hazardous, and particles may adsorb persistent toxicants.

The use of natural organic materials in compost and mulch is foundational to organic production, which is intended to mimic natural ecosystems. In natural systems, plants are fed by the action of soil organisms breaking down plant residues and excreting substances that are plant nutrients. Natural mulches are the organic alternative—providing a steady diet of organic matter for soil organisms.

The NOSB has not examined organic food packaging and placed on hold consideration of “Packaging materials including BPA.” BPA (bisphenol A) is the molecular building block for polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. The epoxy resins are also used as a coating for metal cans and other containers. BPA was listed as a reproductive toxicant by the state of California in 2015. The Technical Review (TR) commissioned by the National Organic Program provides further documentation of human exposure, citing studies showing that BPA leaches from the plastic linings of metal cans. BPA leaching from the linings of cans violates the prohibitions in law against the “use or reuse of any bag or container that has been in contact with any substance in such a manner as to compromise the organic integrity of any organically produced product or ingredient placed in those containers.”

Plastic packaging is a major source of environmental contamination. The National Academies of Sciences find, “Plastic containers and packaging comprise the largest fraction of the plastic waste stream (41%) and enter the waste stream most quickly after production in the year they are produced.”

In addition to plastic used in crop production and packaging, plastics enter into every aspect of organic food production. Plastic containers, tubing, and implements may be used in processing. All these uses pose potential hazards as chemicals migrate from plastic to food.

Eliminating plastic will not be easy, but in view of the numerous threats that are now recognized, it is important for organic production and handling to lead the way in making the transition. The NOSB should add the development of a strategy for eliminating plastic to the NOSB work agenda.

Tell the NOSB to get plastic out of organic.

This is a Regulations.gov action, which requires you to go to Regulations.gov and insert a comment into a form. Please copy and paste some or all of the above text, as a comment to the NOSB. The above link takes you directly to Docket # AMS-NOP-22-0042, where you can comment.

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 the three 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.)

(Beyond Pesticides, July 1, 2022) The European Commission (EC) introduced on June 22 new rules that ban all pesticides in “public parks or gardens, playgrounds, recreation or sports grounds, public paths, as well as ecologically sensitive areas.” In agriculture, the policy adopts strategies for achieving the pesticide use- and risk-reduction goals of its Farm to Fork initiative. The EC — the European Union’s (EU’s) politically independent executive arm — proffered new rules that are binding on all EU Member States. Those states must, in turn, adopt their own binding targets to help meet the overall EU targets — a 50% reduction in use and risk of chemical pesticides, and a 50% reduction in use of more-hazardous pesticides, by 2030. Beyond Pesticides has covered the shortcomings of the EU’s previous approach, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy and its 2021 disparagement by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, and his apparent turnaround in the large and recently announced USDA investment in the U.S. transition to organic agriculture (albeit without metrics or acreage goals), a transition F2F seeks to advance for the EU.

Regarding the ban of pesticides in parks, the policy says:

“Use of plant protection products may have particularly negative impacts in certain areas that are frequently used by the general public or by vulnerable groups, communities in which people live and work and ecologically sensitive areas, such as Natura 2000 sites protected in accordance with Directive 2009/147/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Council Directive 92/43/EEC34. If plant protection products are used in areas used by the general public, the possibility of exposure of humans to such plant protection products is high. In order to protect human health and the environment, the use of plant protection products in sensitive areas and within 3 metres of such areas, should therefore be prohibited. Derogations from the prohibition should only be allowed under certain conditions and on a case by-case basis.” [According to the policy: ‘sensitive area’ means any of the following: (a) an area used by the general public, such as a public park or garden, recreation or sports grounds, or a public path; (b) an area used predominantly by a vulnerable group as defined in Article 3(14) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/ 2009. . .] The policy goes into effect on twentieth day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The EC says, “We need to redesign our food systems, which today account for nearly one-third of global GHG emissions, consume large amounts of natural resources, result in biodiversity loss and negative health impacts . . . and do not allow fair economic returns and livelihoods for all actors, in particular for primary producers.” F2F is one major component of the European Green Deal — a plan to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent and “transform the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, ensuring (1) no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, (2) economic growth decoupled from resource use, [and] (3) no person and no place left behind.”

F2F aims to accelerate the transition to what it calls a “sustainable food system” — one that would:

• ensure food security, nutrition, and public health, ensuring that everyone can access sufficient safe, nutritious food
• have a neutral or positive environmental impact
• help mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts
• reverse biodiversity loss
• preserve affordability of food while generating fairer economic returns, fostering competitiveness of the EU supply sector, and promoting fair trade

The new rules proposed by the EC introduce several provisions in pursuit of such a sustainable food system, including:
• legally binding pesticide-use-reduction targets

• strict enforcement of “environmentally friendly” pest control, i.e., ensuring that all farmers practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM), in which all alternative methods of pest control are considered first, before chemical pesticides can be used as a last resort; Beyond Pesticides notes that this is not the same as organic production, wherein (in the U.S.) nearly no chemical pesticides are permitted
• a ban on the use of all pesticides in sensitive areas (such as ecologically vulnerable areas, public parks and gardens, recreational/sports fields, playgrounds, and public paths)
• EU financial support for farmers (“for 5 years, Member States can use the CAP to cover the costs of the new requirements for farmers”)

The EC rationale for these new rules rests on its recent evaluation of the previous iteration of the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive, and the commission’s subsequent conclusion that existing rules have been both far too anemic and implemented unevenly. The EC evaluation, as well as conclusions from the European Court of Auditors (the EU’s independent financial oversight body) and the European Parliament, demonstrated insufficient progress on the reduction of the risks and impacts of pesticide use on human health and the environment. (It should be noted that the F2F strategy strives for what it defines as “sustainable” use of pesticides, rather than “zero” use.)

The EC announcement added that those bodies identified “insufficient progress in promoting the use of Integrated Pest Management and alternative approaches or techniques, such as non-chemical alternatives to pesticides, in part, because already now chemical pesticides can harm human health and continue to contribute to biodiversity decline in agricultural areas, contaminate the air, the water and the wider environment.”

The EC cited several catalytic factors driving these new strategies: (1) major health risks from chemical pesticide exposure; (2) detection of pesticides above their effect threshold at 13–30% of all surface water monitoring sites in lakes and rivers across the EU; and (3) the pollinator and insect decimation, particularly as Europe already faces a pollination deficit. It also noted, “In case of inaction, the outlook for all environmental indicators is bleak with further declines in biodiversity.”

The announcement included this: “Our food production systems need to reduce their negative impact on climate change and biodiversity loss. The costs of inaction hugely outweigh the costs related to the transition towards sustainable food systems. The new rules will ensure that farmers and consumers can benefit from sustainable food systems and that our long-term food security is safeguarded.”

The EC offered information on how the outcomes of the new rules, once active (likely in a couple of years), will be monitored and measured. Data on the use and risks of pesticides will be ascertained annually through data on the sale of pesticides (or PPPs, Plant Protection Products), as reported to the EC by EU Member States. The baseline from which to calculate reductions will be the average pesticide sales in 2015, 2016, and 2017. All PPPs on the market will be assigned to one of four groups, each of which is assigned a “weighted” significance in terms of the compounds’ inherent risks; higher weightings reflect higher risk. The system aims to encourage the use of PPPs containing low-risk active substances (many of which are non-chemical), and to discourage the use of PPPs containing more-hazardous substances.

The focus on high-hazard compounds is well placed. Recent research, published in Environment International, concluded: all of the current 230 active EU-approved, synthetic, open-field-use herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides are hazardous to humans and/or ecosystems; none of those 230 has a completed hazard profile; and 124 of them are “top hazard” compounds. The researchers investigated the potential ability of seven different pesticide-use reduction scenarios to achieve the 50% reduction goals, and concluded that the 50% use and risk reduction target will be achieved only if the number (“pool”) of pesticide compounds available on the EU market is significantly reduced, or their uses strongly restricted. The study co-authors asserted that “strong restrictions are needed to match the Farm to Fork pesticide reduction goals.”

Environment and public health advocates across the EU are largely in support of F2F. Back in March, when pushback emerged in some other quarters (related to food supply chain issues in light of the Russian war on Ukraine), entities such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Compassion in World Farming, Climate Justice, and the Pesticide Action Network wrote a letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and other EU officials, saying: “We ask you to address this immediate crisis without undermining the environmental and social progress to which you committed in the European Green Deal.”

Pushback came largely from producer associations, but also, from government officials. The NGO’s concern, as reported by Agri-Pulse, arose specifically in response to a comment by European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who said, “If food security is in danger, then we need to have another look at the objectives (of Farm to Fork) and possibly correct them.” The trade association Copa-Cocega chimed in with a comment asserting that European farmers need to concentrate on producing more corn, wheat, sunflower, and other crops to make up for the gap caused by Ukraine’s current inability to export crops.

In early June, Czech Director General for European Affairs Štěpán Černý told EURACTIV, “Let’s maybe forget for a while on [the] Farm to Fork strategy […] for a couple of months, and let’s mobilise the foodstuff production as much as we can.” He added, wrongly, that “The ambition of Farm to Fork . . . is to reduce the amount of food we are producing. And I don’t think that’s the wise thing to do only this right now when you’re being threatened by hunger.”

These kinds of comments trot out tired and short-sighted (and arguably, incorrect) arguments that serve profit and/or political ends. Food supply issues during the Ukraine crisis are real and important; yet, they can be dealt with as noted by the United States Institute of Peace and CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), without sacrificing the critical long-term strategies of F2F. The agrochemical industry, producers who have become dependent on chemical-intensive production practices, politicians and officials who may fear the power of industry and/or trade groups, and — indirectly — consumers who are accustomed to unreasonably cheap food, may resist the “strictures” of F2F.

But such attitudes fail to see the long-term forest for the cheap and immediate trees: conventional chemical agriculture damages everything that humans care about — health, natural resources and ecosystems, pollinators, economic well-being, and climate chief among them. Organic regenerative agriculture obviates the needs for these chemical inputs, and would slash the damage they cause across the globe. F2F rarely uses the term “organic” in its frameworks and rules; nevertheless, they approximates many of the tenets of what the National Organic Standards set out here in the U.S. Further, F2F includes actions aimed to increase organic farming in the EU — to 25% of the EU agricultural land use by 2030.

On this side of the pond, USDA recently announced significantly greater funding for the transition of U.S. agricultural acres to organic production. The agency’s early June press release echoed some of F2F’s goal language; USDA asserted that this and other newly directed funding aim “to transform the food system to benefit consumers, producers and rural communities by providing more options, increasing access, and creating new, more, and better markets for small and mid-size producers.” As Beyond Pesticides wrote then, “it will be critical that this [USDA framework] result in concrete goals that set out specific metrics and timelines — particularly around the magnitude of acres shifted to organic production and the pace of the phaseout of non-organic substances and protocols.”

Whether the enactment of F2F strategies “on and in the ground” ends up comporting with top-level goals of F2F — to transition the agricultural and food sector to one that is “fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly” — is TBD (to be determined). What is clear is that the U.S. would do well to create a paradigm-shifting framework, roughly analogous to what the European Green Deal and F2F have set out, for its domestic agricultural sector. USDA’s National Organic Program is a robust toolkit already in place; what is required next is legislative and executive action to bring conventional producers into a “big organic tent” that would benefit everyone (save for the pesticide industry) and all of Nature.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_22_3694

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 30, 2022) A study by Zhongnan University and Shandong University in China finds that the broad-spectrum fungicide maneb increases Parkinson’s disease (PD) risk and development through alterations in protein and metabolite pathways, resulting in neurotoxicity. Several studies find exposure to chemical toxicants, like pesticides, have neurotoxic effects or exacerbate preexisting chemical damage to the nervous system. Although the mechanism by which pesticides induce disease development remains unclear, this study suggests neurological damage from oxidative stress, cell dysfunction, and synapses impairment, among others, increases the incidence of PD subsequent to pesticide exposure.

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 molecular mechanisms involved in altering chemical processes in the body that cause severe and even fatal health effects. The researchers note that the study reveals “the molecular mechanisms of maneb and other pesticides” that induce PD.

Researchers exposed the human cell line SH-SY5Y to environmentally relevant concentrations of maneb and evaluated mice with the common pathological feature of neurogenerative disease, α-synuclein, in the presence of asparagine endopeptidase (AEP) enzyme activation. Using an in vitro assay, researchers determined cell viability related to dose-dependent maneb exposure at environmentally relevant levels. The results show that α-synuclein mice display PD-like motor impairment behavior after maneb exposure, with proteomics and metabolomics (omics) analyses on mice brain and blood serum constituents indicating alterations in protein and metabolite pathways involved in neurotransmission. To verify the results of the omics studies, researchers used the Western blot analysis and targeted metabolomics, demonstrating maneb induces neurological disturbances related to PD pathways. These disturbances include phenylalanine and tryptophan metabolism pathways, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, dopaminergic synapse, and synaptic vesicle cycle.

Parkinson’s disease occurs when there is damage to the dopaminergic nerve cells (i.e., those activated by or sensitive to dopamine) in the brain that are 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 is that some personal protection equipment (PPE) may not adequately protect workers from chemical exposure during application. However, nonoccupational (residential) pesticide exposure, such as proximity to pesticide-treated areas, also presents a risk for PD development. 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 residue 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), 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 the first to thoroughly investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in PD symptom development from maneb exposure, indicating a reduction of neurotransmitters and disturbance of neurotransmission systems. However, prior studies indicate that a pathological (disease-causing) agent, like pesticides, may infiltrate the nervous system via the olfactory bulb, gut, or both and circulate throughout the nervous system to increase PD risk. This study adds to the large body of scientific studies strongly implicating pesticide’s involvement in Parkinson’s disease development. Pesticides themselves, mixtures of chemicals such as Agent Orange (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T) or dioxins, and therapeutic hormones or pharmaceutical products can possess the ability to disrupt neurological function. Moreover, 90 percent of Americans have at least one pesticide compound in their body, primarily from dietary exposure, like food and drinking water. These toxic 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. Therefore, the impacts of pesticides on the nervous system, including the brain, are hazardous, especially for chronically exposed individuals (e.g., farm workers) or during critical windows of vulnerability and development (e.g., childhood, pregnancy). Considering health officials expect Parkinson’s disease diagnoses to double over the next 20 years, it is essential to mitigate preventable exposure from disease-inducing pesticides.

Although the exact cause of PD remains unknown, studies continuously identify pesticide exposure and specific gene-pesticide interactions as significant adverse risk factors. However, only a small percentage of PD is genetic, and PD is quickly becoming “the world’s fastest-growing brain disease.” Therefore, research like this is vital for examining how various pesticides and their exposure routes present potential risk factors for developing diseases like Parkinson’s. Environmental triggers like occupational exposure to pesticides can prompt PD in individuals with or without the genetic precursor.

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 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: Zhongnan University and Shandong University

(Beyond Pesticides, June 29, 2022) A virus present in low levels in the United States is effective at managing populations of non-native fire ants, according to research. Although only focused on one particular fire ant, Solenopsis invicta (the red imported fire ant), the study published in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology shows promise for gardeners, land managers, and the public looking to manage fire ants without the use of hazardous chemical insecticides. As climate change and global trade facilitate the spread of dangerous non-native species, there is a strong need for new and cutting edge approaches that target these pests without significant harm to public health or the surrounding environment.

Prior testing by scientists involved in the current study had indicated that Solenopsis invicta virus 3 (SINV3), found sparsely throughout the U.S., was able to successfully infect and kill imported red fire ants in a laboratory setting. Scientists find that the virus modifies the behavior of worker ants, impeding their ability to either acquire or distribute food to larval ants. Worker neglect caused by the virus results in high larval mortality and degraded queen health, eventually leading to colony failure.

Based on the promising laboratory data, scientists initiated a field trial in Gainesville, Florida. In an area regularly mowed with high fire ant pressure, twelve imported red fire ant colonies were infected with SINV3 using a bait. Testing ensured that the virus was not already present in the field, and a control plot was established nearby to compare efficacy.

After 77 days, fire ants in the area treated with SINV3 show a 7-fold decrease in the overall number of nests and a 60% reduction in the size of their nests. This shows that the virus can quickly replicate and establish itself in a field setting. While virus-infected ant colonies decreased, colonies in the control group increased the size of their nests by roughly 9%. Follow up showed that infected colonies did recover somewhat after the initial exposure, but nonetheless continued to grow more slowly than colonies in the control area. Researchers were still able to detect the virus in the treated areas and found that it had begun to spread to fire ants in the control region.

Testing has confirmed that the virus does not present risks to non-target species. The study notes, “The virus causes no known detrimental ecological impacts, is host specific, and sustained in the environment.”

The imported red fire ant was first found in Alabama in the 1930s, having hitched a ride from South America. It has since spread across the U.S. South, with colonies present from California across through Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia. The ants often move by hitchhiking on agricultural commodities like moved soil and bales of hay. The ants in the wrong place can cause significant economic and ecological damage, and put public health at risk. Eating common crops from corn to citrus, fire ants will also attack young and newborn animals, particularly birds and lizards. They will aggressively defend their nest, responding by swarming a perceived threat and stinging its target repeatedly. Millions of individuals are stung by fire ants every year, and roughly 1% of the population is allergic to their venom. Those allergic comprise the vast majority of the roughly 80 individuals that have been killed by fire ants.

While SINV3 appears to be an effective biocontrol, it is unlikely the silver bullet that many continue to hope for. In other words, it is highly unlikely that these opportunistic species will ever be completely eradicated from their new range. However, this is not the only new biological approach being developed. A study published last year on another non-native fire ant Mymirca ruba (the European fire ant) found that a necromenic nematode known as Pristionchus entomophagus, and pathogenic the bacteria it carries on its skin, may represent an effective biocontrol against fire ants.

As researchers continue to develop new, safer approaches to fire ant management not reliant on chemical pesticides, those dealing with an existing fire ant problem are encouraged to employ an organic approach. To do so, follow Beyond Pesticides ManageSafe resource on Fire Ant Management.

As pressure builds on local land managers to employ toxic pesticides to manage opportunistic weeds and pests, join us in telling your city and county officials to embrace a safer, organic approach to invasive and non-native species.

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

Source: Journal of Invertebrate Pathology

(Beyond Pesticides, June 28, 2022) There is a strong connection between pesticide use and cancer rates in the Western United States, finds research recently published by scientists at University of Idaho and Northern Arizona University. Two studies (here and here) published in the peer-reviewed journal GeoHealth used geospatial data and publicly available pesticide databases to uncover the relationship between chemical heavy agricultural practices and cancer in both adults and children. As the rate of chronic diseases like cancer continue to increase in the United States, and more and more studies find these diseases to be pesticide-induced, it is imperative for the public to put increased pressure on regulators and lawmakers to enact meaningful measures that eliminate pesticide use and the hazards these chemicals pose.

Of the two studies conducted by the research team, the first study modeled the connection between pesticide use and cancer incidence for adults and children in 11 western states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming), while the second study focuses on childhood cancer rates in Idaho’s 44 counties. Both studies utilized databases established by public entities, including U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pesticide National Synthesis Project database, EPA Pesticide Industry Sales and Usage Estimates, National Cancer Institute (NCI) State Cancer Profiles, and the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho. Rather than focus solely on the impacts of pesticide use to farmers or agricultural workers, the studies consider the broader effects of agricultural pesticide use on the public at large.

For the first study, researchers took the top 25 most used pesticides identified by EPA estimates, and cross-referenced them with USGS data to determine the amount of each pesticide used by state and county. These data were then modeled against NCI county-level cancer incidence.

At the state level, an association is found between the total amount of all pesticides evaluated and both overall and pediatric cancer incidence. Delving deeper into specific pesticide types, a strong connection is found between the amount of fumigants applied in each state and the rate of pediatric cancers. Specifically, the fumigant pesticide metam sodium has a strong connection between its higher use and total cancer rate. These findings are even more prevalent at the county-level. A cutting edge model regarding fumigant use and cancer rate matches quite closely to currently observed cancer rates in the over 450 counties that comprise the 11 western states.

Notably, the areas where fumigant use is high are those with more vegetable and fruit production, rather than grain crops like corn and soy. Regarding the cancer connection to fumigant use, study co-author Naveen Joseph, PhD says, “We have not seen it expressed in a fumigant like this before, and it’s absolutely striking.”

The second study by this research team likewise aimed to create a model able to describe county-level childhood cancer rates. Focusing in on Idaho’s 44 counties, researchers this time used groundwater contamination, as recorded by the Idaho Department of Water Resources, as a variable and proxy for children’s environmental exposures. The same 25 pesticides as the first study were reviewed, but researchers also included other environmental toxins like heavy metals, and nitrate/nitrites. These data are consolidated into an Environmental Burden Index (EBI), and overall environmental contamination within each county is subsequently deemed as either low, medium, or high on the EBI.  

The model finds that EBI correlates closely with the pediatric cancer rate. Idaho counties with high scores on the EBI have higher rates of childhood cancer. As the study further notes, “The variables predominantly contributing to the environmental burden index were pesticides.” Like the first study, a model created by the researchers using these available data was able to accurately predict pediatric cancer incidence currently occurring in Idaho counties.  

Geospatial mapping is providing new insights into the hazards presented by pesticide use, uncovering trends in public health that are systemic, yet rarely considered. Case in point is a study published in 2020, which looks at the connection between Parkinson’s disease, agricultural pesticide use, and one’s zip code in Louisiana. That study found that Parkinson’s rates are significantly higher in zip codes with commercial forests, woodlands, and pastures where the pesticides 2,4-D, chlorpyrifos, and paraquat were often sprayed.  

As with other systemic injustices, one’s zip code and place of residence often determines one’s destiny. Uncovering this information and relating it to the public is of critical importance, but oftentimes those in disaffected communities are well aware of the dangers and threats they are exposed to daily. What is needed is action.

With pesticide use, we have enough evidence to know that we should be rapidly embracing time-tested, organic approaches to farming and land care that do not utilize toxic pesticides. Data elucidating the public health ills produced by pesticides must be accompanied by meaningful action from regulators and lawmakers at every level – local, state, and federal. For assistance in changing pesticide practices in your community, reach out to Beyond Pesticides at [email protected]

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

Source: University of Idaho press release, GeoHealth (First study, Second Study)

(Beyond Pesticides, June 27, 2022) It is now—more than ever—up to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to recognize glyphosate (Roundup and other products) as a carcinogen and remove it from the market. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voided EPA’s “interim registration review” decision approving continued use of glyphosate, issued in early 2020 saying, “EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and shirked its duties under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),” and the Supreme Court refused to consider (deny certiorari) a Bayer petition to save the company from being held accountable to those diagnosed with cancer after using glyphosate herbicides, EPA’s failure to act speaks to the capture of the agency by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

Tell the EPA to ban glyphosate immediately. Tell Congress to ensure that EPA performs its job as required by law. 

The Ninth Circuit court held that EPA unlawfully concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk. Despite overwhelming evidence and high profile lawsuits against Bayer—with jury verdicts against the company in the tens of millions of dollars—EPA came to “no conclusion” on glyphosate’s connection to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Notably, the agency did not assess how much glyphosate gets into a user’s bloodstream after skin contact with the herbicide, a major route of exposure for the chemical. The court criticized EPA for its “disregard of tumor results;” its use of “bare assertions” that “fail[] to account coherently for the evidence;” making conclusions that do not “withstand[] scrutiny under the agency’s own framework,” and “fail[ing] to abide by” its cancer guidelines. In sum the court noted EPA’s “inconsistent reasoning” made its decision on cancer “arbitrary,” and struck it down.

Meanwhile, courts have been granting large settlements to people who contracted cancer as a result of using glyphosate. In June 2020, facing approximately 125,000 suits for Roundup’s role in cancer outcomes, Bayer announced a $10 billion settlement to resolve roughly 75% of current and potential future litigation; claimants who signed on to the settlement were to receive compensation and were not to pursue any additional legal action. However, roughly 30,000 complainants did not sign on to the settlement, leaving the queue of potential lawsuits potentially enormous. Seeing the writing on the wall, Bayer tried for a second settlement (of roughly $2 billion) to handle any future claims, but in 2021, a U.S. District Court judge (for the Northern District of California) rejected Bayer’s settlement proposal, saying that it was inadequate for future victims diagnosed with cancer after using the herbicide.

Other evidence is mounting against glyphosate, with research showing disruption of bumblebee reproduction, negative impacts on the gut microbiome, increased greenhouse gas emissions, oxidative stress and DNA damage, body burdens, threats to endangered species, and more. If EPA is to convince citizens that it is worthy of the job entrusted to it and not captured by the pesticide industry—in particular, Bayer/Monsanto—it must do a thorough review of all the evidence that finds glyphosate to be carcinogenic.

That evidence shows that glyphosate must be banned immediately.

Tell the EPA to ban glyphosate immediately. Tell Congress to ensure that EPA performs its job as required by law. 

Letter to EPA Administrator and Assistant Administrator, and Office of Pesticide Programs Director:

It is now—more than ever—up to EPA to recognize glyphosate (Roundup and other products) as a carcinogen and remove it from the market. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voided EPA’s “interim registration review” decision approving continued use of glyphosate, issued in early 2020 saying, “EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and shirked its duties under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),” and the Supreme Court refused to consider (deny certiorari) a Bayer petition to save the company from being held accountable to those diagnosed with cancer after using glyphosate herbicides, EPA’s failure to act speaks to the capture of the agency by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

The Ninth Circuit court held that EPA unlawfully concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk. Despite overwhelming evidence and high profile lawsuits against Bayer—with jury verdicts against the company in the tens of millions of dollars—EPA came to “no conclusion” on glyphosate’s connection to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Notably, the agency did not assess how much glyphosate gets into a user’s bloodstream after skin contact with the herbicide, a major route of exposure for the chemical. The court criticized EPA for its “disregard of tumor results;” its use of “bare assertions” that “fail[] to account coherently for the evidence;” making conclusions that do not “withstand[] scrutiny under the agency’s own framework,” and “fail[ing] to abide by” its cancer guidelines. In sum the court noted EPA’s “inconsistent reasoning” made its decision on cancer “arbitrary,” and struck it down.

Meanwhile, courts have been granting large settlements to people who contracted cancer as a result of using glyphosate. In June 2020, facing approximately 125,000 suits for Roundup’s role in cancer outcomes, Bayer announced a $10 billion settlement to resolve roughly 75% of current and potential future litigation; claimants who signed on to the settlement were to receive compensation and were not to pursue any additional legal action. However, roughly 30,000 complainants did not sign on to the settlement, leaving the queue of potential lawsuits potentially enormous. Seeing the writing on the wall, Bayer tried for a second settlement (of roughly $2 billion) to handle any future claims, but in 2021, a U.S. District Court judge (for the Northern District of California) rejected Bayer’s settlement proposal, saying that it was inadequate for future victims diagnosed with cancer after using the herbicide.

Other evidence is mounting against glyphosate, with research showing disruption of bumblebee reproduction, negative impacts on the gut microbiome, increased greenhouse gas emissions, oxidative stress and DNA damage, body burdens, threats to endangered species, and more. If EPA is to convince citizens that it is worthy of the job entrusted to it and not captured by the pesticide industry—in particular, Bayer/Monsanto—it must do a thorough review of all the evidence that finds glyphosate to be carcinogenic.

Please ban glyphosate immediately.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative and Senators:

Please ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) performs its job as required by law.

It is now—more than ever—up to EPA to recognize glyphosate (Roundup and other products) as a carcinogen and remove it from the market. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voided EPA’s “interim registration review” decision approving continued use of glyphosate, issued in early 2020 saying, “EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and shirked its duties under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),” and the Supreme Court refused to consider (deny certiorari) a Bayer petition to save the company from being held accountable to those diagnosed with cancer after using glyphosate herbicides, EPA’s failure to act speaks to the capture of the agency by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

The Ninth Circuit court held that EPA unlawfully concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk. Despite overwhelming evidence and high profile lawsuits against Bayer—with jury verdicts against the company in the tens of millions of dollars—EPA came to “no conclusion” on glyphosate’s connection to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Notably, the agency did not assess how much glyphosate gets into a user’s bloodstream after skin contact with the herbicide, a major route of exposure for the chemical. The court criticized EPA for its “disregard of tumor results;” its use of “bare assertions” that “fail[] to account coherently for the evidence;” making conclusions that do not “withstand[] scrutiny under the agency’s own framework,” and “fail[ing] to abide by” its cancer guidelines. In sum the court noted EPA’s “inconsistent reasoning” made its decision on cancer “arbitrary,” and struck it down.

Meanwhile, courts have been granting large settlements to people who contracted cancer as a result of using glyphosate. In June 2020, facing approximately 125,000 suits for Roundup’s role in cancer outcomes, Bayer announced a $10 billion settlement to resolve roughly 75% of current and potential future litigation; claimants who signed on to the settlement were to receive compensation and were not to pursue any additional legal action. However, roughly 30,000 complainants did not sign on to the settlement, leaving the queue of potential lawsuits potentially enormous. Seeing the writing on the wall, Bayer tried for a second settlement (of roughly $2 billion) to handle any future claims, but in 2021, a U.S. District Court judge (for the Northern District of California) rejected Bayer’s settlement proposal, saying that it was inadequate for future victims diagnosed with cancer after using the herbicide.

Other evidence is mounting against glyphosate, with research showing disruption of bumblebee reproduction, negative impacts on the gut microbiome, increased greenhouse gas emissions, oxidative stress and DNA damage, body burdens, threats to endangered species, and more. If EPA is to convince citizens that it is worthy of the job entrusted to it and not captured by the pesticide industry—in particular, Bayer/Monsanto—it must do a thorough review of all the evidence that finds glyphosate to be carcinogenic.

Please ensure that EPA bans glyphosate immediately.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 24, 2022) As reported by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), on June 16 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released final Biological Evaluations, for three neonicotinoid insecticides, that indicate that these pesticides are “likely to adversely affect” the vast majority of endangered or threatened species and/or their designated critical habitats. These evaluations for imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam have been a long time coming, and represent, according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the first time EPA “has completed biological evaluations of any neonicotinoids’ harms to the nation’s most imperiled plants and animals.” These evaluations evidence what CFS, CBD, Beyond Pesticides, and others have maintained for years: that neonicotinoid compounds are very serious threats to the survival and well-being of myriad organisms and habitats.

A Biological Evaluation (BE) is an EPA analysis of potential harmful impacts of a registered pesticide on any species federally listed, per the Endangered Species Act, as endangered or threatened, or on their critical habitats. EPA was legally required to issue the determinations by the June 2022 deadline, per CFS litigation and a subsequent 2019 legal settlement. EPA was the defendant in 2017 litigation brought by CFS, with Beyond Pesticides, several beekeepers, and the Center for Environmental Health as co-plaintiffs.

The original suit charged that EPA had violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when it registered these neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides. CBD has written that EPA has, for decades, essentially not complied with its obligations under ESA “to assess pesticides’ harms to protected species. The agency was finally forced to do these evaluation under the terms of legal agreements with the Center for Food Safety and the Natural Resources Defense Council.”

Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2021, “Under the [ESA], EPA is required to consult with federal wildlife agencies and conduct a biological evaluation of the impacts a pesticide may have on endangered species and their habitats, prior to the agency formally registering the pesticide. This almost never happens. EPA regularly fails to conduct this evaluation, requiring environmental and conservation organizations to sue the agency in order to force compliance with the law. EPA has been subject to a number of legal challenges over the last decade for its failure to comply with ESA when it registered neonic pesticides.”

Neonicotinoids are a class of systemic (i.e., affecting all parts of a plant), neurotoxic insecticides used to “control” a variety of piercing and sucking pests; they make the entire plant toxic, including nectar, pollen, and fruit. The use of neonics has escalated dramatically since the mid-2000s. Largely banned in the European Union (EU), neonics are used extensively in the U.S. CBD has written that “hundreds of studies have shown they play a major role in population-level declines of bees, birds, butterflies and freshwater invertebrates. More-recent studies are showing they cause significant harm to mammals, as well.”

The compounds are deployed through various means, including spraying, soil drenches, injections into trees, and most ubiquitously, as crop seed coatings. Neonics are very persistent in soils, and are readily moved off of target sites through the air, and via water and soil dusts. As CFS has noted, “After seeds coated with neonics are planted, the chemicals spread far beyond the crop they are intended for and can contaminate nearby wildflowers, soil and water — all of which pose significant threats to bees foraging and nesting in the area. It has been known for several years that these chemicals can kill or weaken more than just the targeted pests. Non-target harm can occur to beneficial invertebrates, as well as to birds and other wildlife, through both direct and indirect effects.”

The “other wildlife” that can be affected, according to CFS’s announcement of the BEs, includes many non-insect organisms. The final documents released by EPA indicated that each of the three neonics is “likely to adversely affect” from two-thirds to more than three-fourths of the nation’s endangered species — a staggering 1,225–1,445 discrete species. CFS point out in its announcement, “This includes all [39 species of] amphibians, and the majority of already endangered fish, birds, and mammals, as well as pollinators and the plants they pollinate. Species found likely to be adversely affected include the Chinook salmon, Florida panther, Indiana bat, whooping crane, California red-legged frog, Karner blue butterfly, yellow larkspur, and many more.”

EPA’s “likely to adversely affect” determination means that the agency “reasonably expects that at least one individual animal or plant, among a variety of listed species, may be exposed to the pesticide at a sufficient level to have an adverse effect.” The BEs of the three neonic insecticides yielded the following results, respectively. Clothianidin is likely to adversely affect 67% of species and 56% of critical habitats; imidacloprid is likely to adversely affect 79% of species and 83% of critical habitats; and thiamethoxam is likely to adversely affect 77% species and 81% of critical habitats.

CBD’s Environmental Health Director, Lori Ann Burd, commented, “These deeply troubling findings leave no doubt that these dangerous pesticides are silencing the songs of frogs, the flutter of butterfly wings and the buzz of bees. Many of the species harmed by neonicotinoids are experiencing precipitous declines, and [thus], EPA’s choices may well determine whether or not they go extinct. . . . We’re in the midst of a heartbreaking extinction crisis and neonicotinoids are playing an outsized role in driving it. Now that the EPA has completed its analysis, the only question is whether it will muster the courage to stand up to Big Ag and ban these chemicals or will choose to facilitate extinction.”

Industrial agriculture groups, such as the American Soybean Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, are voicing distress at the BEs, insisting that “the evaluations for several neonicotinoid pesticides don’t incorporate scientific and commercial data that could have provided a more realistic picture of the potential impacts of the chemistries on different species. . . . American Soybean Association President Brad Doyle says, ‘Growers have, time and again, pointed EPA to real-world data to improve their endangered species assessments, and the agency has again chosen to disregard the data.’”

EPA perhaps anticipated this reaction when it published this in its FAQ on the BEs: “Did EPA consider real world pesticide usage data in the final biological evaluations? Yes. Under EPA’s Revised Method for conducting biological evaluations, the agency considers real world data on pesticide applications, including how much, when, and where pesticides are applied. EPA evaluates these usage data to determine whether a species is likely or not to be adversely affected by a pesticide (step 2 in EPA’s biological evaluation). Before incorporating usage data, EPA evaluates the quality and relevance of the data to determine their applicability, utility, and soundness. In general, EPA considers the most recent 5 years of usage data to represent current labeled uses.”

In January 2020, EPA issued affirming interim decisions on registration of several neonics (including imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam) despite, as Beyond Pesticides wrote, “EPA’s own findings of evidence of serious threats posed by neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides to pollinators, aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife, that disregard the science on the pesticides’ impacts . . . it appears that the agency is prepared to finalize these registrations late in 2022.” Then, in August 2021, EPA issued draft BEs on these three compounds, finding that they were likely to “adversely affect over 1,000 endangered species out of 1,821 listed under the law.”

As reported by The Guardian in March 2022, it was widely expected that the agency would nevertheless allow their continued use — to great hue and cry from the wildlife, health, and environmental advocacy community. That such huge proportions of species are at risk from use of these neonics — which EPA knew when it appeared poised to continue to allow their use — is not only a violation of the intent of the ESA, but also, a biological and moral outrage.

The question now is whether the release of these BEs will change EPA’s behavior on neonics. The FAQ the agency published offers this: “Could there be additional mitigation measures that EPA may need to adopt to protect threatened and endangered species from these neonicotinoid pesticides? Yes, through the registration review of the neonicotinoids, EPA is currently proposing mitigations to protect non-target species. EPA may need to adopt additional mitigations in the future to ensure that the neonicotinoids are not likely to jeopardize listed species or adversely modify their designated critical habitats.”

The release of these BEs means, for endangered species and habitats, a far-too-familiar waiting game — to see what actions EPA will actually take to protect them. To Beyond Pesticides, the agency’s language here sounds concerning — “mitigations to protect non-target species,” and “additional mitigations in the future.” Beyond Pesticides advocates that EPA ban neonicotinoid insecticides.

The EU banned use of imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam in 2013 and thiacloprid in 2019. Last year, Maine passed a law prohibiting consumer use of neonicotinoid pesticides containing any of these active ingredients — dinotefuran, clothianidin, imidacloprid, or thiamethoxam. New York and New Jersey have begun restrictions on some uses of neonics; other states, including California and Massachusetts, have made efforts to rein in the use of neonics.

Although these local efforts are laudable, they nevertheless represent a piecemeal, fractured approach, across myriad state and local authorities, to restrict use of these highly destructive pesticides. The fix lies with EPA — to get these out of agriculture, the materials stream, and the environment. Now is not too soon. Please contact EPA Administrator Michael Regan [202.564.4700 or [email protected]] and the director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, Edward Messina [202.566.1245 or [email protected]] to insist on urgency in de-registering these compounds.

Sources: Center for Food Safety press release and Center for Biological Diversity press release

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 23, 2022) In the first California statewide bumble bee census in 40 years, a University of California—Riverside (UCR) study, published in Ecology and Evolution, reveals that once common bumble bee species in California are disappearing from the ecosystem. Wild pollinators like bumble bees provide pollination to billions of dollars worth of crops each year as these insects can flourish in cooler habitats and lower light levels than commercial honey bees. However, pollinators (such as bees, monarch butterflies, and bats) are a bellwether for environmental stress as individuals and as colonies. Both wild and commercial bees and other pollinators encounter multiple stressors, including pesticides, parasites, and poor nutrition, that act together to increase the risk of bee mortality. Therefore, studies like these highlight the need to establish monitoring and conservation frameworks incorporating varying habitats and species to assess fluctuations in biodiversity. The study notes, “Specifically, our study shows that greater monitoring of the diverse bumble bees of California is needed in order to better understand the drivers of biodiversity and decline in this genus, and to more effectively manage bumble bee conservation in the state.” 

Researchers compared data on bumble bee populations in California in 1980 and 2020. After collecting bumble bees from 17 sites in Southern California with six varying ecosystems, the researchers note that they could not locate more than ten bees at each site. The researchers collected 17 types of bumble bees, representing only 68 percent of bee species that inhabit the state. The Western bumble bee is an important pollinator of wild plants and crops; however, the researchers could not find any western bumble bees. The yellow-faced bumble bee represents over half of all bees collected in the study. Although this species is the most dominant in California, the researchers find the number of suitable habitats for pollinators has decreased since the last statewide survey in 1980. The UCR entomologist Hollis Woodard, who led the study, notes, “Although we found that relative to other sites the mountains are home to the most diverse bumble bee populations, even at those sites we also failed to find some species that used to be there.”

Seventy-five percent of the 115 top global food crops depend on insect pollination, with one-third of all U.S. crops depending on pollinators. However, research finds that many insect populations are declining primarily from habitat fragmentation, climate change, and extensive pesticide use. Pesticides are of great concern as these toxic chemicals are everpresent in the environment, and many are toxic to bees, including neonicotinoids, sulfoxaflor, pyrethroids, fipronil, and organophosphates. Pesticides intensify pollinators’ vulnerability to health risks (such as pathogens and parasites) with pesticide-contaminated conditions limiting colony productivity, growth, and survival. Research shows that residues from neonicotinoids (including seed treatments) and sulfoxaflor accumulate and translocate to pollen and nectar of treated plants, increasing the potential risk to pollinators. Moreover, systemic neonicotinoid insecticides put 89 percent or more of U.S. endangered species at risk. Both pyrethroids and fipronil impair bee learning, development, and behavioral function, reducing survivability and colony fitness. However, inert ingredients in these products cause similar or more severe impacts on bee populations, such as disruption in bee learning behavior through exposure to low doses of surfactants. With the global reliance on pollinator-dependent crops increasing over the past decades, a lack of pollinators threatens food security and stability for current and future generations.

This study is the first to provide a broad overview of California bumble bee populations in nearly 40 years, demonstrating a decrease in wild bumble bee diversity and abundance. Pollinators across the globe are in danger from multiple interacting stressors, from climate change to pesticide use, disease, habitat destruction, and other factors. As plants die off or adapt to fewer pollinators, pollinators play less of a role, finding less food and resulting in further stress. In the U.S., an increasing number of pollinators, including the American bumblebee and monarch butterfly, are being added or considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Most recently, the Sacramento-based California Court of Appeal ruled bumblebees and other invertebrates eligible for protection as endangered or threatened “fish” under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) after being left out of CESA protection for decades. Therefore, adequate legislation protecting species’ health can alleviate harmful effects on farmed and natural environments. The study concludes, “Key barriers to successfully implementing species-specific conservation actions include the lack of large-scale monitoring studies to identify general patterns, as well as knowledge gaps in life history and drivers of species decline. Overcoming these barriers and protecting important species, like bumble bees, is necessary to prevent cascading negative impacts on agricultural and natural ecosystems.”

Wild and managed pollinators provide many ecosystem services that contribute to the well-being of all plant and animal species globally. Thus, for Pollinator Week 2022, Beyond Pesticides suggests actions to create pollinator habitat, go organic with your community, and urge comprehensive action at the federal level to protect declining populations. With the crisis continuing, we must redouble these efforts. Concerned residents and pollinator advocates are encouraged to take these steps not only in and around their properties but at their place of work and in their community in local parks and natural areas. Ending toxic pesticide use can alleviate the harmful impacts of these chemicals on species and ecosystem health. Commit to taking meaningful action to protect pollinators, the plants, people, and entire ecosystems that rely upon them. 

Learn more about the science and resources behind pesticides’ impact on pollinators, including bee pollinator decline, and take action against the use of pesticides. Additionally, find more about what you can do to protect bees and other pollinators by checking out information on the BEE Protective Campaign, pollinator-friendly landscapes, pollinator-friendly seeds, pesticide-free zones, bee-friendly habitats, and what you, or your state representative, can do to protect our pollinators. For more information on the insect apocalypse, see the Beyond Pesticides article in our Pesticides and You newsletter, Tracking Biodiversity: Study Cites Insect Extinction and Ecological Collapse.

Furthermore, buying, growing, and supporting organic agriculture can help eliminate the extensive use of pesticides in the environment. Organic land management eliminates the need for toxic agricultural pesticides. For more information on the benefits of organic, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

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

Source:  Science Daily, Ecology and Evolution

(Beyond Pesticides, June 22, 2022) Bad news is piling up for Bayer (Monsanto) and its carcinogenic flagship weed killer, glyphosate (Roundup). Last week, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down a ruling that held the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2020 approval of its notorious weed killer glyphosate unlawful. Then, yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider (deny certiorari) Bayer’s “Hail Mary” petition attempt to save the company from being held accountable to those diagnosed with cancer after using Roundup (glyphosate) herbicides. In both cases, the courts are acting as a check on a company, while EPA regulators charged with stopping this behavior continue to rubber stamp the agrichemical industry’s dangerous decisions.

This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of victims of the pesticide industry. In 2004, Bates v. Dow Agrosciences (U.S. Supreme Court, No. 03-388), the court found:
“The long history of tort litigation against manufacturers of poisonous substances adds force to the basic presump­tion against pre-emption. If Congress had intended to deprive injured parties of a long available form of compen­sation, it surely would have expressed that intent more clearly. See Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U. S. 238, 251 (1984). Moreover, this history emphasizes the im­portance of providing an incentive to manufacturers to use the utmost care in the business of distributing inherently dangerous items.”

“In rejecting Bayer’s effort to reverse jury verdicts for harming people with its cancer causing weed killer glyphosate, the Supreme Court is preventing the company from running roughshod over the environment and public health, poisoning people and flaunting health and safety laws, while EPA regulators shrug off the rule of law,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.

Regarding the Ninth Circuit decision, Mr. Feldman said: “EPA’s failure to act on the science, as detailed in the litigation, has real-world adverse health consequences for farmworkers, the public, and ecosystems. Because of the Appeals Court lawsuit, the agency’s obstruction of the regulatory process will not be allowed to stand, and EPA should start shifting food production to available alternative non- and less-toxic practices and materials that meet its statutory duty.” Represented by Center for Food Safety, the petitioners in the lawsuit included the Rural Coalition, Farmworker Association of Florida, Organización en California de Lideres Campesinas, and Beyond Pesticides. A consolidated case is led by Natural Resources Defense Council and includes Pesticide Action Network.

In the Ninth Circuit decision, the court voided EPA’s “interim registration review” decision approving continued use of glyphosate, issued in early 2020. “EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and shirked its duties under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),” the court wrote in its opinion.

The court held that EPA unlawfully concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk. Despite overwhelming evidence and Bayer’s high profile lawsuits, EPA came to “no conclusion” on glyphosate’s connection to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Notably, the agency did not assess how much glyphosate gets into a user’s bloodstream after skin contact with the herbicide, a major route of exposure for the chemical. Skin irritation was noted as one of the initial concerns for Dewayne Johnson, the school groundskeeper who won the first legal case against Bayer/Monsanto after contracting NHL.  

The court criticized EPA for its “disregard of tumor results;” its use of “bare assertions” that “fail[] to account coherently for the evidence;” making conclusions that do not “withstand[] scrutiny under the agency’s own framework,” and “fail[ing] to abide by” its cancer guidelines. In sum the court noted EPA’s “inconsistent reasoning” made its decision on cancer “arbitrary,” and struck it down.

“We welcome and applaud the court on this significant decision,” said Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida, a plaintiff in the case. “While it comes too late for many farmworkers and landscapers who suffer after glyphosate exposure, we are grateful for the court’s ruling, and hope that now EPA will act quickly to protect future workers from illness and disease resulting from this toxic pesticide.” Represented by Center for Food Safety, the petitioners in the lawsuit included the Rural Coalition, Farmworker Association of Florida, Organización en California de Lideres Campesinas, and Beyond Pesticides. A consolidated case is led by Natural Resources Defense Council and includes Pesticide Action Network.

The Ninth Circuit also held that EPA violated the Endangered Species Act in reapproving glyphosate. After this lawsuit was launched, EPA filed a motion confessing that the agency made errors in its review of endangered species, including specifically the ways in which glyphosate harms imperiled monarch butterfly habitat. While asking the court for a re-do to study the dangers monarchs are already being subject to, EPA nonetheless asserted that glyphosate should stay on the market.

As a result of the decision, EPA is required to redo and/or finish all remaining glyphosate determinations within four months, by October 2022. Specifically, EPA must redo its ecological toxicity assessment, cost analysis on the impacts of pesticide harms to farmers, and its endangered species analysis and mitigation.  

Advocates and court watchers reacting to the Ninth Circuit case had been concurrently waiting for the Supreme Court to issue a determination on whether it would take up Bayer’s ongoing civil court cases holding it liable to those diagnosed with cancer after using Roundup (glyphosate). That case centered on the legal theory of preemption, with Bayer arguing that the “failure to warn” lawsuits it was subject to were preempted by federal law. In other words, Bayer argued that because EPA’s registration process allowed the chemical to market, it was under no obligation to convey health dangers about its weed killer.

In response to the Supreme Court petition, the Biden administration’s Solicitor General sided with Roundup victims and in an amicus brief urged the Supreme Court not to take up the case. In reaction, Bayer tried to get tough, and employed proxy organizations to put pressure on the Biden Administration and Department of Justice to rescind the letter, expressing “grave concern” about the Solicitor General’s opinion.

As the Ninth Circuit case shows, EPA’s review of glyphosate was lackluster, incomplete and failed to adequately capture the dangers posed by the herbicide. Of Bayer’s “Five Point Plan” for addressing the catastrophe around glyphosate, a significant amount hinged on a favorable decision from the Supreme Court. Without review by the high court, Bayer will need to reengage with the over 31,000 plaintiffs it decided to ignore right after it launched its petition. According to news reports, the corporation “respectfully disagrees” with the Supreme Court decision. It also indicates it will continue to gum up federal courts with its frivolous requests.    

“While [the Supreme Court] decision brings an end to the Hardeman case, there are likely to be future cases, including Roundup cases, that present the U.S. Supreme Court with preemption questions like Hardeman and could also create a circuit split,” Bayer said in a statement posted by Progressive Farmer DTN about a $80 million jury verdict against the company in Edwin Hardeman v. Monsanto Co. “The company is strongly encouraged by the widespread support from public officials, agricultural organizations and other stakeholders following the U.S. government’s legal reversal in Hardeman.”

The “widespread support” Bayer enjoys is generally associated with its business alliances and efforts to wield corporate influence over elected officials and in regulatory affairs. While the courts continue to act as a last resort for the rule of law and science-based decision making, advocates are calling for the overhauling of government agencies that ensure that they are meeting their charge to protect people and the environment, not the profits of giant corporations like Bayer/Monsanto.

Without needed reforms, EPA redoing their work, as required by the Ninth Circuit ruling, is unlikely to result in an outcome that is clearly protective. Advocates insist that with clear evidence on the dangers posed by glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup, there is no more time for games that placate industry at the expense of public health and environmental sustainability.

When challenged by the influence of concentrated money and power, Beyond Pesticides aims to bring scientific transparency, advocacy, sound policy, and meaningful legal actions to the table. But our success depends on your help in promoting these critical messages. Get active today by taking action to protect pollinators like the monarch butterfly, putting pressure on Congress to reform America’s pesticide law.

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

Source: Center for Food Safety press release, Progressive Farmer DTN, PBS News Hour

(Beyond Pesticides, June 21, 2022) June 20-24 is Pollinator Week, during which we recognize—and take action to protect—this important ecosystem link. Pollinators––bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other organisms––make a critical contribution to plant health, crop productivity, and the preservation of natural resources, but their existence is threatened by their pesticide-contaminated habitat. Pesticides have consistently been implicated as a key contributor to dramatic pollinator declines. Of the 100 crop varieties that provide 90% of the world’s food, 71 are pollinated by bees. Honey bees alone pollinate 95 kinds of fruits, nuts and vegetables, such as apples, avocados, almonds, and cranberries.

Take action to protect pollinators.

Providing protection for pollinators also protects the ecosystem in which they live. That protection requires eliminating harm as well as providing safe habitats where they can live and reproduce. 

Provide organic habitat on your own property and encourage your town to go organic. Since plant starts in many garden centers across the country are grown from seeds coated with bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, or drenched with them, Beyond Pesticides has compiled a comprehensive directory of companies and organizations that sell organic seeds and plants to the general public. Included in this directory are seeds for vegetables, flowers, and herbs, as well as living plants and seedlings. In partnership with major retailers like Natural Grocers and Stonyfield Organic, the Beyond Pesticides’ Parks for a Sustainable Future program provides in-depth training and demonstration sites to assist community land managers in transitioning public green spaces to organic landscape management, while aiming to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to eventually transition all public areas in a locality to these sustainable and safe practices. Through this program, Beyond Pesticides is now assisting local leaders and municipal landscapers to convert parks and recreational areas across the country to exclusively organic practices, which eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Tell your U.S. Representative and Senators to support the Saving America’s Pollinators Act. By introducing this critical piece of legislation, U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) continues the fight against to protect pollinators in the face of the vested economic interests of chemical companies, chemical service industry, and an unresponsive U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And as a result of pollinator heroes like yourself, they’ve already enlisted 73 cosponsors to join the effort. The bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate, so Senate sponsors are needed.

Saving America’s Pollinators Act (H.R.4079) will not only cancel specific bee-toxic pesticides, it will reshape the EPA process for permitting pesticides to be used in our communities and homes in the first place. Current law is filled with language that allows chemical lobbyists to unduly influence EPA decisions and loopholes that favor pesticide dependency instead of incentivizing alternatives like organic practices and products. 

Under SAPA, pesticides that pose risks to pollinators will undergo a higher level of review by a board of unbiased pollinator experts. If these experts, who will not have conflicts of interest with the chemical industry, determine a pesticide is too toxic, then it will be removed or never allowed on the market in the first place. 

SAPA creates a sustainable model for pollinator protection, including an annual, ongoing review on the health of pollinator populations. In the face of an EPA captured by chemical company corruption, SAPA will become an important tool to prevent ongoing chemical crimes against pollinators and the environment.

Independent laboratory testing of items that children and families typically eat, including cereal, apples, applesauce, spinach, and pinto beans, finds that Kroger’s private-label foods contain toxic pesticides—glyphosate, organophosphates, and neonicotinoids. These pesticides are linked to adverse human health impacts ranging from increased risk of cancer and infertility to harm to children’s developing brains and endocrine disruption. They are also associated with harm to bees and other pollinators.

Tell the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and President Biden to ban all pesticides and treated seeds that harm pollinators—from neonicotinoids, fipronil, synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphate insecticides to the herbicide glyphosate—and assist land managers, from farmers to landscapers, to transition to organic practices that prohibit the use of these deadly chemicals. Tell the Biden administration to reestablish a national strategy to work across agencies to eliminate our reliance on toxic pesticides and assist in the transition to organic land management—in the interest of protecting ecosystems against the ongoing dramatic destruction of biodiversity and the insect apocalypse.

Take action to protect pollinators.

Letter to President and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:
During this Pollinator Week, it time to act to get serious about protecting pollinators and in so doing eliminate toxic pesticides that are contributing to dramatic declines in biodiversity. As The New York Times wrote in November 2018, “The Insect Apocalypse is Here.” Scientists and researchers have identified three broad contributors to the crisis: pesticide use, habitat destruction, and climate change. With your leadership, we can shift to alternative products and practices, improve biodiversity, and begin to repair the damage done by chemical-intensive land management practices.

To ensure a serious and meaningful effort to address the threat to pollinators, we need to remove from the market pesticides and treated seeds that have been shown, through independent peer-reviewed scientific review, to harm pollinators. This requires comprehensive action against neonicotinoids and related compounds, fipronil, synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphate insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate. At the same time, it is critical that you bring the resources of government to assist land managers, from farmers to landscapers, to transition to organic practices that prohibit the use of these and other deadly chemicals.

I urge you to reestablish a national strategy to work cross-agency to eliminate our reliance on toxic pesticides that harm pollinators and assist in the transition to organic land management in the interest of protecting ecosystems and dramatic destruction of biodiversity, identified by researchers as the insect apocalypse.

In a systematic review of insect declines by researchers Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, PhD and Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, PhD, pesticide use is identified as a critical component in addressing the crisis at large. “A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends, allow the recovery of declining insect populations and safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide,” they write.

Without your leadership to elevate the response to the threat to pollinators, our future is threatened. As renowned UK ecologist and coauthor of the study “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas,” David Goulson, PhD, has said, “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

I look forward to learning that you are moving forward with this recommendation to save our future. Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative:

Letter for new potential cosponsors
In order to reverse the devastating declining in the U.S. pollinator populations, your support of HR 4079, Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA) is urgently needed.

While EPA updated its guidelines for pollinator risk assessments in 2014, the agency continues to either fail to conduct full assessments or dismiss concerning data it receives. EPA appears to discount threats like the insect apocalypse, evidenced by a 75% decline in insect abundance, which threatens not only global ecosystems, but also food production that depends on animal pollination. As pesticides move through the food web, birds numbers are down 29% since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962.

The problem is highlighted by EPA’s recent Interim Decision on fenbuconazole, in which the agency notes that, “For larval bees, RQs (risk quotients) exceed the LOC (level of concern) for all pollinator attractive uses including when assessed at the lowest application rate of 0.0938 lb a.i./Acre (RQ = 1.1).” Yet in the same document, the agency declares that “…the benefits of fenbuconazole (e.g., efficacy in management of fungal pathogens) outweigh any remaining risk and that continuing to register fenbuconazole provides significant benefits, including its ability to increase crop yields and help with resistance management.” While the agency added additional restrictive language on spray drift, it implemented no new precautionary measures for pollinators. With the only indications that this chemical is dangerous to pollinators deep in EPA’s dense review documents the public rarely if ever reads, the agency continues to fail pollinators, farmers, and the public.  

The toxic pesticides addressed by this legislation are acute and chronic poisons for pollinator populations. Studies show these chemicals can be taken up by flowering plants and exuded in the pollen, nectar, and dew droplets honey bees and other pollinators feed on. Exposure then impairs pollinator reproduction, navigation, and foraging, suppresses immune system functioning, and weakens the ability to respond to parasites, pathogens, and other stressors.

There is widespread consensus in the scientific community that systemic insecticides are responsible for pollinator declines and need to be restricted. The European Union and Canada have already taken action to address these pesticides – it is time for the United States to take a stand.

SAPA not only cancels the more dangerous pollinator toxic pesticides, it also puts in place lasting protections for pollinator populations. Pesticides that pose risks to pollinators would undergo another level of review by a board of unbiased pollinator experts. If these experts determine a pesticide is too toxic, the pesticide would be removed from market or not permitted for sale in the first place. In the face of ongoing EPA inaction, we need SAPA passed today, before it is too late, and we lose the one in three bites of food that pollinators enable us to produce.

Please support pollinators by cosponsoring HR 4079, Saving America’s Pollinators Act.

Thank you.

Letter to Current Cosponsors
Thank you for being a pollinator hero and co-sponsoring HR 4079, Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA).

While EPA updated its guidelines for pollinator risk assessments in 2014, the agency continues to either fail to conduct full assessments or dismiss concerning data it receives. EPA appears to discount threats like the insect apocalypse, evidenced by a 75% decline in insect abundance, which threatens not only global ecosystems, but also food production that depends on animal pollination. As pesticides move through the food web, birds numbers are down 29% since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962.

The problem is highlighted by EPA’s recent Interim Decision on fenbuconazole, in which the agency notes that, “For larval bees, RQs (risk quotients) exceed the LOC (level of concern) for all pollinator attractive uses including when assessed at the lowest application rate of 0.0938 lb a.i./Acre (RQ = 1.1).” Yet in the same document, the agency declares that “…the benefits of fenbuconazole (e.g., efficacy in management of fungal pathogens) outweigh any remaining risk and that continuing to register fenbuconazole provides significant benefits, including its ability to increase crop yields and help with resistance management.” While the agency added additional restrictive language on spray drift, it implemented no new precautionary measures for pollinators. With the only indications that this chemical is dangerous to pollinators deep in EPA’s dense review documents the public rarely if ever reads, the agency continues to fail pollinators, farmers, and the public.  

The toxic pesticides addressed by this legislation are acute and chronic poisons for pollinator populations. Studies show these chemicals can be taken up by flowering plants and exuded in the pollen, nectar, and dew droplets honey bees and other pollinators feed on. Exposure then impairs pollinator reproduction, navigation, and foraging, suppresses immune system functioning, and weakens the ability to respond to parasites, pathogens, and other stressors.

There is widespread consensus in the scientific community that systemic insecticides are responsible for pollinator declines and need to be restricted. The European Union and Canada have already taken action to address these pesticides – it is time for the United States to take a stand.

SAPA not only cancels the more dangerous pollinator toxic pesticides, it also puts in place lasting protections for pollinator populations. Pesticides that pose risks to pollinators would undergo another level of review by a board of pollinator experts. If these experts determine a pesticide is too toxic, the pesticide would be removed from market or not permitted for sale in the first place. In the face of ongoing EPA inaction, we need SAPA passed today, before it is too late, and we lose the one in three bites of food that pollinators enable us to produce.

Thank you for hearing this call and acting to protect pollinators.

Letter to U.S. Senators:
In order to reverse the devastating declining in the U.S. pollinator populations, your support of HR 4079, Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA) is urgently needed. Although SAPA has 79 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, it has not yet been introduced in the Senate. Please be the supporter that pollinators need by introducing SAPA in the Senate.

While EPA updated its guidelines for pollinator risk assessments in 2014, the agency continues to either fail to conduct full assessments or dismiss concerning data it receives. EPA appears to discount threats like the insect apocalypse, evidenced by a 75% decline in insect abundance, which threatens not only global ecosystems, but also food production that depends on animal pollination. As pesticides move through the food web, birds numbers are down 29% since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962.

The problem is highlighted by EPA’s recent Interim Decision on fenbuconazole, in which the agency notes that, “For larval bees, RQs (risk quotients) exceed the LOC (level of concern) for all pollinator attractive uses including when assessed at the lowest application rate of 0.0938 lb a.i./Acre (RQ = 1.1).” Yet in the same document, the agency declares that “…the benefits of fenbuconazole (e.g., efficacy in management of fungal pathogens) outweigh any remaining risk and that continuing to register fenbuconazole provides significant benefits, including its ability to increase crop yields and help with resistance management.” While the agency added additional restrictive language on spray drift, it implemented no new precautionary measures for pollinators. With the only indications that this chemical is dangerous to pollinators deep in EPA’s dense review documents the public rarely if ever reads, the agency continues to fail pollinators, farmers, and the public.  

The toxic pesticides addressed by this legislation are acute and chronic poisons for pollinator populations. Studies show these chemicals can be taken up by flowering plants and exuded in the pollen, nectar, and dew droplets honey bees and other pollinators feed on. Exposure then impairs pollinator reproduction, navigation, and foraging, suppresses immune system functioning, and weakens the ability to respond to parasites, pathogens, and other stressors.

There is widespread consensus in the scientific community that systemic insecticides are responsible for pollinator declines and need to be restricted. The European Union and Canada have already taken action to address these pesticides – it is time for the United States to take a stand.

SAPA not only cancels the more dangerous pollinator toxic pesticides, it also puts in place lasting protections for pollinator populations. Pesticides that pose risks to pollinators would undergo another level of review by a board of unbiased pollinator experts. If these experts determine a pesticide is too toxic, the pesticide would be removed from market or not permitted for sale in the first place. In the face of ongoing EPA inaction, we need SAPA passed today, before it is too late, and we lose the one in three bites of food that pollinators enable us to produce.

Please be the supporter that pollinators need by introducing SAPA in the Senate.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 19, 2022) 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.

Of 40 most commonly used lawn pesticides, 26 are possible and/or known carcinogens, 24 have the potential to disrupt the endocrine (hormonal) system, 29 are linked to reproductive effects and sexual dysfunction, 21 have been linked to birth defects, 24 are neurotoxic, 32 can cause kidney or liver damage, and 33 are sensitizers and/or irritants. Of those same 40 lawn pesticides, 21 are detected in groundwater, 24 can leach into drinking water sources, 39 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to our ecosystem, 33 are toxic to bees, 18 are toxic to mammals, and 28 are toxic to birds. Although suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre than agriculture (2.7 lbs. per acre on average), pesticide drift from nearby farms can worsen pesticide exposure in these areas. However, the same issues that impact suburban areas, which are majority non-POC, also impact urban areas that are disproportionately people of color, but at greater rates.

Protecting workers
People of color make up most employees who work in occupations with high levels of chemical exposure—including industrial factory workers, laborers, construction workers, landscaping, custodians, and agricultural workers. Farmworkers are at the greatest risk from pesticide exposure. A blatant example of systemic racism is embedded in risk assessments in environmental regulation. According to Farmworker Justice, 76% of all farmworkers identify as Latinx/Hispanic. Unfortunately, persistent exposure to pesticides decreases the average lifespan of a farmworker to just 49 years, a 29-year difference from the average lifespan of the general population (78 years). Considering the average life expectancy for those in the Latinx communities was above the national average before the Covid-19 pandemic, this is a glaring revelation.

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies determine “acceptable” risks of pesticides, exposure assessments inevitably discount the impact on 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 to fenceline communities, farmworkers, and factory workers. Disparities in protection from agrochemicals in low-income and black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities yield elevated instances of pesticide-induced diseases (e.g., respiratory illness, neurological disorders, endocrine/immune disruption, cancers, etc.). Although there are regulatory systems to evaluate and monitor pesticide use and exposure limits (i.e., the Federal, Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act [FIFRA] and the Food Quality Protection Act [FQPA]), pesticide-related illnesses continue to harm communities due to environmental racism that ignores people of highest risks or increased vulnerability due to preexisting health conditions—many associated with socioeconomic conditions. For example, federal pesticide law does not take into consideration the combined effect of high-exposure, high-risk occupations with the exposures that are endured as a result of pesticide use in residential areas, around the home and garden, parks, schools, and even residues on food, hair, and clothing. 

Taking a systemic approach

We must widen the lens even further and recognize that the experiences of the past cry out for broader and deeper systemic change—requiring that we look at the interaction of all the pieces that allow the system to work. Some important teachings from the Covid-19 pandemic include: that different population groups have disproportionate vulnerabilities, from children to older people; essential workers (from hospital personnel to grocery store workers, landscapers, to farmworkers) suffer elevated risk factors due to exposure patterns, creating disproportionate rates of disease; those with preexisting conditions or comorbidities face higher risks; a lack of complete scientific knowledge requires a precautionary approach or standard. In this spirit, we must evaluate the introduction of toxic pesticides, which are developed to disrupt biological systems. As a part of ecosystems, from humans to microbial life in the soil or mayfly nymphs (keystone species at the bottom of the aquatic food web), we coexist and depend on each other.

Beyond Pesticides executive director Jay Feldman said: “By eliminating toxic pesticide use, we will provide critical protections for community health, particularly for children, the elderly, and vulnerable population groups, which includes people of color in the highest risk population group.”

The fact that racial disparities accompany the production, transportation, use, and disposal of toxic pesticides and other chemicals makes the industries and sectors that produce and use these toxic materials unsustainable. It is necessary to recognize that while children and people of color face disproportionate harm from pesticide exposure, the hazards associated with the toxic chemicals inflict multi-generational diseases like diabetes, asthma, respiratory illness, and learning disabilities. Therefore, it is critical to reimagine our nation’s laws to eliminate toxic pesticides and advance the adoption of organic practices that respect the complexity of life and the ecosystems, and put an end to institutional biases that codify environmental racism.

We work to move forward to correct the policies and practices that establish reliance on pesticides and other toxic chemicals and result in elevated harm to people of color. We commemorate Juneteenth as a day to redouble our efforts to create an equitable and sustainable society and world.

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 17, 2022) Hundreds of civil society groups and organizations of indigenous people worldwide have called on the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to end its nearly two-year-old partnership with CropLife International, the trade association for the world’s largest pesticide manufacturers. The organizations’ June 9 letter to the Member State Representatives of the FAO Council was signed by 430 entities, from 69 different countries. The letter asserts that the UN agency’s agreement with CropLife International (CLI) is incompatible with FAO’s obligations to uphold human rights, and urges it both to review the partnership agreement on the basis of human rights concerns, and to “consider directing the Director-General of FAO to rescind the agreement.” The call comes from this huge group of advocates, but it is also coming from “inside the house”: UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri is one of the signatories; Beyond Pesticides is one among 65 U.S. signatories.

CropLife International’s corporate members — BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, Sumitomo Chemical, and Syngenta — are huge synthetic pesticide companies with global reach. CLI also counts as members 11 subsidiary national associations in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, Canada, and the U.S. (CropLife America). The trade organization bills itself as the “voice and leading advocates for the plant science industry . . . [that] champion the role of agricultural innovations in crop protection and plant biotechnology to support and advance sustainable agriculture.”

But Beyond Pesticides asserts that CLI’s member companies make, promote, and sell chemical (and biotech) agricultural “solutions” that represent the antithesis of genuinely sustainable agriculture. The ubiquitous availability and use of toxic pesticides supports conventional, chemically intensive agricultural practices whose impacts are broad and complex, and include damage to the health of soil, ecosystems, humans, organisms, natural resources (clean water and air), farmworkers, and environmental justice communities. The use of pesticides is also a dominant factor in biodiversity loss generally, and degraded insect and pollinator populations, in particular. And, as Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International notes, at least 385 million farmers and farmworkers suffer from acute pesticide poisoning annually.

Consider the example of just one kind of pesticide damage: microbial communities in the soil contribute to plant growth and health, which is critical to the human and organismic food supply, to carbon sequestration, to insect and pollinator habitat, and more. In soil, those communities include bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and other invertebrate decomposers that break down organic matter and make nutrients available to plants; bacteria and fungi engage in reciprocal exchanges of nutrients with plants. Chemical destruction of these microbes with pesticides degrades soil health and all the services it can provide to ecosystems, growers, and all living things. According to advocates and scientists, It is the height of short-sightedness to use pesticides that destroy soil organisms when, in fact, these microbial communities — as happens in organic agriculture — support and benefit agricultural production.

In 2020, FAO issued an LOI (Letter of Intent) to cooperate with CLI in multiple areas, as part of the agency’s Private Sector Engagement Strategy. In its announcement, CLI wrote, “This new partnership with the FAO provides us with an exciting opportunity to work together and accelerate progress in areas where we share common ambitions.” But as the advocate letter notes, “FAO deepening its collaboration with CropLife International directly counters any efforts toward progressively banning Highly Hazardous Pesticides [HHPs], as recommended for consideration by the FAO Council as early as 2006.” Roughly 35% of the revenue of the corporate members of CLI is attributed to sales of HHPs.

HHPs are defined by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) as “pesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment. . . . In addition, pesticides that appear to cause severe or irreversible harm to health or the environment under conditions of use in a country may be considered to be and treated as highly hazardous.”

The mission of FAO is to “achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives.” The FAO partnership with CropLife International undermines any modern and systemic understanding of what “high-quality food” and “healthy lives” mean, and how truly sustainable, organic production must be at the heart of that mission.

In addition to the business of these corporations, which is inherently damaging, the letter from the 430 organizations says that the six corporate members of CLI have “interfered in national policy and exert enormous pressure on governments that take measures to protect people and the environment from pesticide harms.” It adds that the “use of hazardous pesticides is inconsistent with the rights protected by the United Nations to: health; [a] clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; safe working conditions; adequate food; safe and clean water and sanitation; a dignified life; and rights of indigenous peoples, women, children, workers, and peasants and other people working in rural areas. . . . We believe that FAO’s agreement with CropLife International is incompatible with FAO’s obligations to uphold human rights.”

Advocates added that FAO’s own due diligence process concluded that “companies involved in human rights abuses can be excluded from potential partners[hip].” PAN International, a network of 600+ NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), institutions, and individuals across 90 countries, works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. In June 2022, the organization published a briefing to FAO Member States, Addressing the Conflict of Interest and Incompatibility of FAO’s Partnership with CropLife International. The briefing elaborates on examples of CLI’s undue influence on policy and science:

• “Bayer played a key role in Thailand’s decision to overturn its ban on the cancer-causing glyphosate. Communications between U.S. government officials and Thailand were largely scripted and pushed by Bayer, which lobbied support from USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], warning of trade impacts to U.S. commodity exports.
• Syngenta consistently refused to modify its deadly weedkiller formula of paraquat, claiming it was safe. It manipulated scientific data to circumvent a ban and keep paraquat on the market for 40 years. As a result, hundreds of people, especially in rural communities in the Global South, continue to use it and die from paraquat poisoning.
• Bayer exerted enormous pressure against Mexico upon the Presidential decree to phase out glyphosate and GMOs. CropLife lobbied the USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] and U.S. EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] which then took up industry’s concerns against Mexico to pressure them to drop the ban.”

In that briefing, PAN International also noted that FAO’s collaboration with CLI on “‘reducing pesticide risks through sound management and crop production intensification’ goes directly against the FAO and WHO’s International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management. The Code’s implementation document, Guidance on Pest and Pesticide Management Policy Development, goes beyond only reducing risks: It puts reducing reliance on pesticides as the first, and thus most critical, step towards pesticide risk reduction. The reduction in use and dependency on agrochemicals is underscored as a priority for concerted action in other UN fora, and conventions.”

The partnership also runs counter to the 2006 guidance of the FAO Council, developed through its participation in the SAICM (Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management) initiative. In its International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management Guidelines on Highly Hazardous Pesticides, FAO wrote: “the activities of FAO could include pesticide risk reduction, including the progressive banning of Highly Hazardous Pesticides.” In addition, in 2015, the SAICM International Conference on Chemicals Management adopted a resolution recognizing HHPs as an issue of concern and called for concerted action to address HHPs, with emphasis on promoting agro-ecologically based alternatives and strengthening national regulatory capacity to conduct risk assessment and risk management.”

FAO’s partnership with CropLife International is destructive to the goals the agency has identified, and to the millions of people whose health and well-being are compromised by the actions of its corporate members. In addition, the relationship and actions of these corporate CLI members undercut the FAO’s (purported) and several Member States’ support for agroecology — defined by UNEP as an ecological approach to food production that centers: minimal use of external inputs; soil health; regenerative capacity of land; adaptive latitude re: the changing climate; biodiversity; and conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It also values the importance of the social context of agriculture, farmer empowerment, and short/local value chains. Most of these features are common to what in the U.S. we understand to be organic agriculture, as defined and managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program.

PAN International Chair Keith Tyrell has commented, “This [FAO–CLI) partnership has been in effect for over a year and a half now, and FAO’s efforts to push global action to phase out and ban HHPs have ground to a halt. As the signers underscore in this letter, Member States and the FAO must promote agroecology, a viable approach for generating ecologically-based food and farming systems without the use of toxic pesticides.”

FAO has no legitimate business partnering with a trade group for the pesticide industry. Here in the U.S., and globally, we urgently need a new direction for agriculture — organic, regenerative approaches and away from the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and abusive land practices. FAO should heed the call of the 430 organizations, and end this devil’s bargain.

Sources: https://pan-international.org/release/430-civil-society-and-indigenous-peoples-groups-to-fao-council-end-partnership-with-pesticide-industry/ and https://pan-international.org/wp-content/uploads/English-CSO-and-IP-Letter-to-FAO-Council-RE-Ending-CLI-Partnership.pdf

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 16, 2022) Farmed salmon serves as an inferior food source, accumulating more toxic chemicals in fatty tissue with fewer healthy nutrient properties based on a study from the University of Bergen, Norway and Alternative Medicine Review. However, the issue of toxic chemical contamination in fish dates back decades with investigations demonstrating high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) flame retardants restricted or banned in the U.S. and U.K., polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), dioxin (a by-product of pesticide manufacturing), and ethoxyquin (a pesticide preservative in fish feed). The aquaculture industry (e.g., farmed seafood/fish) repeatedly faces sustainability issues, failing to adhere to environmental regulations and threatening marine health. Extensive use of pesticides in local marine ecosystems has induced coastal habitat loss and increased genetic and health risks to wild marine populations. Moreover, insecticides used to kill salmon parasites (e.g., fish lice) has led to widespread disease persistence and pest resistance. Marine species biodiversity is rapidly declining due to overfishing, global warming, pathogens, and pollution. Thus, further biodiversity loss can change aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem functions and reduce ecosystem services.

Food analysis results find the consumption of farmed salmon fillets contributes to higher rates of metabolic disorders, including diabetes and obesity. These farmed salmon also contain levels of toxins, including PCBs and dioxin, that are five times higher than levels in other tested foods. The report suggests the primary causes of farmed salmon toxicity stem from the toxicants in fish feed, like ethoxyquin, and environmental concentrations of the chemicals, whether from terrestrial sources or farmed fish itself. 

Farmed fish, like salmon, use one of the most high-risk aquaculture practices, open-net pens in coastal and offshore regions. These pens allow easy exchange of waste (i.e., feces), chemicals (i.e., pesticides and pharmaceuticals), and parasites/diseases (i.e., sea lice) between the farm and the surrounding ocean environment. The discharge of waste, chemicals, and parasites/pathogens can have a disastrous impact on marine organisms and plants, disrupting ecosystem services. Generally, these pens are in relatively remote areas, somewhat “hidden” from public view. However, these fish live in very crowded conditions, unlike wild-caught fish. The fish consume food that may contain various pharmaceuticals (e.g., antibiotics) or insecticides to control diseases and pest infestations that frequently occur in these conditions. Furthermore, the farm pens can attract predators, such as marine mammals, that can tangle and drown in fish farm nets.

The U.S. permits the use of the pesticide ethoxyquin on fruit, vegetables, and meat meant for animal feed, with no intended uses on fish. However, fish feed manufacturing companies fail to address the use of ethoxyquin as a preservative to prevent oxidization/spoilage of fatty tissue. Farmed salmon testing reveals levels of ethoxyquin are up to 20 times higher than levels allowed in fruits, vegetables, and meats. Despite there being no intended uses of ethoxyquin on food for human consumption, the chemical can pass to humans from contaminated food sources. Although claims suggest ethoxyquin has no human health effects, scientific evidence establishes that the chemical can induce DNA damage in human lymphocyte cells and chromosome aberrations.

Although current pesticide use and pollution contaminate both farmed and wild salmon populations, banned legacy pesticides like DDT, dieldrin, chlordane, and toxaphene continue to contaminate many major waterways, including shorelines where fishing is common. Legacy pesticides remain in the environment for decades as these products are relatively stable, with long half-lives. This slower breakdown rate and affinity to lipids (fats) allow these toxicants to accumulate in the fatty tissue of many marine species, including fish. Farmed salmon has a much higher fat content than wild salmon and thus has the potential to accumulate more lipophilic (fat-loving) toxic chemicals. Hence, the report advises individuals to consume wild-caught Alaskan salmon, not only due to the lower fat content but a shorter life cycle as well. Moreover, fish with shorter lifecycles, like small fish such as sardines and anchovies, tend to have a lower fat content and prove a better choice to mitigate chemical exposure. “With their low contamination risk and higher nutritional value, [these fish] are win-win alternative[s]. Other good choices include herring and fish roe (caviar), which is full of important phospholipids that nourish your mitochondrial membranes.”

The oceans are essential to human health and well-being, feeding billions, supporting millions of jobs, and supplying medicinal materials. However, environmental contaminants like pesticides and the subsequent effects of exposure, such as pest resistance, profoundly impact the ecosystem and its inhabitants. Pesticides are pervasive in all water ecosystems—from rivers, lakes, and oceans to glaciers in the Arctic, exacerbating the ubiquity and distribution of pesticide resistance among sea lice populations across the globe. Therefore, it is essential to understand how parasites may develop resistance to pesticides used to control populations in order to safeguard human, animal, and environmental health. Toxic pesticide use must end in order to protect the nation’s and world’s waterways and reduce the number of pesticides and resistant parasites found in our food, water, and wildlife resources. Learn more about how pesticides are hazardous to wildlife and what you can do through Beyond Pesticides’ wildlife program page.

There are many resources individuals can use to help gain knowledge and apply practices to avoid pesticide use and its adverse effects. These include news stories, local organizations, school pesticide policies, regulatory contacts, and least-toxic pest control operators. Organic practices can successfully eliminate toxic pesticide use. Replacing pesticides with organic, non-toxic alternatives is crucial for safeguarding public health and ecosystems from pesticide toxicity. Buying, growing, and supporting organic helps eliminate the extensive use of pesticides in the environment and from your diet. For more information on why organic is the right choice for consumers and the farmworkers who grow our food, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

Source: PLOS One Journal, Alternative Medicine Review Journal, Epoch Times

(Beyond Pesticides, June 15, 2022) The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is cracking down on companies and individuals that took advantage of Americans desire for antimicrobial products that would work against coronavirus during the height of the Covid pandemic. Late last week, a New Jersey man pled guilty to selling nearly $3 million worth of unregistered pesticides he claimed were approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to combat the coronavirus. And yesterday, U.S. Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York announced a record $1.5 million settlement with TZUMI Innovations LLC for illegal distributing millions of products claiming to have antimicrobial properties, while specifically targeting low-income customers.

The case in New Jersey centers around chemist Paul Andrecola, 63, who established an elaborate scheme to sell a product he named “GCLEAN.” Mr. Andrecola used the pesticide registration numbers of a different company on his product, and forged documents to support his advertised claim that his product was “EPA approved to kill coronavirus.” From March 2020 to May 2021, Mr. Andrecola made over 150 sales, making a profit of more than $2.7 million. He specifically defrauded a number of government agencies, including a Delaware police department, Virginia fire department, Georgia medical clinic, school in Wisconsin, and janitorial supply company in New Work. He also targeted U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Marshal’s Service, Moody Air Force Base, the National Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mr. Andrecola is facing a significant sentence. Each count of illegal pesticide sales can carry a one year prison sentence and fine up to $25,000. Wire fraud, which he is also accused of committing, carries a maximum 20 year prison sentence, and making false claims against the United States can result in up to five years in prison. Both of the aforementioned crimes also include fines of $250,000, or twice the profits he received, or twice the loss the victims suffered. Mr. Andrecola took a plea agreement to forfeit $2.74 million. He is scheduled for sentencing in October.

“Andrecola not only cheated dozens of people out of millions of dollars, but also endangered the health of those who relied on his fraudulent virucidal products,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting such crimes to the fullest extent possible.”

TZUMI Innovations recently settled with the Southern District of New York for $1.5 million after selling range of products called “Wipe Out!” that made antimicrobial pesticide claims without going through EPA registration. TZUMI products made claims such as “KILLS GERMS FAST*” and on the back in part “To decrease bacteria on the skin that could cause disease”; “Cleans and sanitizes”; “KILLS 99.9% OF GERMS*”;“*Escherichia Coli (E. coli), Staphylococcus Aureus (Staph), Candida Albicans”; and “Use it Anytime, Anywhere.” TZUMI sold these products to retailers, who subsequently sold them alongside registered antimicrobials making similar claims. According the U.S. Attorney’s, TZUMI explicitly stated that their products were intended to be sold to “lower income level customers.”

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “At the height of the pandemic, Tzumi misled consumers and retailers and exposed the public to pesticide products that had not been found by EPA to be safe and effective. It compounded matters by targeting low-income customers, who face disproportionate environmental burdens. Today’s settlement ensures that Tzumi pays the price for its misconduct.  We will continue to pursue justice in environmental enforcement matters.”

In addition to the payment, under the settlement TZUMI is required to develop a campaign to inform retailers and the public about the appropriate uses for their products. While the settlement requires TZUMI not distribute or sell unregistered pesticide products in the future, the settlement is currently waiting for public comment and court approval.

In the meantime, just as in the story of illegal pesticide smuggling Beyond Pesticides reported on yesterday, the products in question are still easily available for purchase online. “Wipe Out!” products listed by TZUMI are currently available through WalMart online, advertised as “Antibacterial Wipes.” “GCLEAN” products were quickly found for sale on a website called AOE.net.  

As DOJ continues to prosecute those that take advantage of the public to sell toxic pesticides, it is critical that the Department take action regarding continued online sales.

During public health emergencies involving infectious diseases, consumers must take care to scrutinize practices and products very carefully so that hazards presented by the crisis are not elevated because of the unnecessary threat introduced with toxic chemical use. While many of the products registered by EPA pose significant hazards, those without any level of oversight present an even greater concern for public health.

For information about how you can stay safe, and avoid hazardous chemical use in your cleaning routine, see Beyond Pesticides fact sheet Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 (coronavirus) without Toxic Sanitizers and Disinfectants. And for more information see Beyond Pesticides program page on Disinfectants and Sanitizers.

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

Source:  U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York press release, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey press release

(Beyond Pesticides, June 14, 2022) The ringleader of a pesticide smuggling operation conducted across the United States border with Mexico has been sentenced to eight months in prison by a U.S. District Court Judge. According to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, Sofia Mancera Morales used individuals recruited over social media Bovitraz and Taktic, pesticide products banned in the US that pose hazards to pollinators and cancer risks to humans. “In exchange for ill-begotten profits, this cavalier smuggling operation was more than willing to risk the public’s health and the honeybee industry, which is critical to pollinating our food supply,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. While the Department of Justice deserves praise for this enforcement action, health and environmental advocates say that more must be done to stop illegal pesticide sales. A quick search for the two pesticide products in question brings up webpages, including well-known sites like Etsy.com, where the same illegal pesticides cited in this case are currently being sold to U.S. consumers.

Over Facebook, Ms. Morales offered to pay individuals between $40-150 per package of pesticide products they delivered across the border. Those recruited were instructed to open a self-storage unit in their name, place the products in the unit, and send Ms. Morales a picture to ensure proof before payment. Ms. Morales was provided the key to these storage units. The U.S. Attorney’s office indicates that most recruits completed deliveries between 2-5 times per week, while one recruit delivered nearly 1,000 bottles within a single month.

Bovitraz and Taktic are acaricide/miticides that contain high concentrations of the active insecticide ingredient amitraz. While their pesticide products containing amitraz registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they are at a roughly 3% concentration, whereas the illegal products have a 12.5% concentration. At this lower concentration, the product is allowed for use on dog flea collars and by chemical beekeepers to manage varroa mites. Those purchasing the illegal products may be using them for tick, mite, or mange management in domestic cattle, sheep or pigs.  

A product called Mitcur, which contains 10% amitraz, was previously registered with EPA, and prior to cancellation, represented the majority of bee kill incidents recorded by the agency associated with amitraz. Reports of bee kills associated with Amitraz stretch as far back as 1993, yet EPA approved amitraz for use under an emergency exemption in 2012, and subsequently provided full registration to products containing the lower amount of the chemical. For its use on dogs, EPA reported 109 amitraz poisoning incidents, of which over half were of moderate severity.

In honey bees, amitraz has been shown to weaken honey bee immune systems and their ability to fight off viral infections. Honey bee parasites, like the varroa mite, are also known to rapidly develop resistance to amitraz. Since reregistering use of the chemical for honey bees in 2013,  amitraz resistance has been detected in hives in Louisiana, New York, and South Dakota.

The chemical poses a range of hazards to humans as well. “In addition to posing risks to the bee population, misuse of amitraz-containing products in beehives can result in exposures that could cause neurological effects and reproductive effects in humans from consumption of contaminated honey,” notes the US Attorney’s press release. The chemical is also associated with declines in male fertility in laboratory animal studies, and is a possible human carcinogen. Exposure through pet collars, including an expected activity like hugging one’s dog, is associated with a cancer risk of 2.8 to 5.6 individuals per 100,000.  

Despite registering use for dogs on flea collars, EPA indicates dogs are the most sensitive species to the chemical among animals tested. Studies indicate harmful impacts on the dog’s central nervous system, recording also low pulse rate, hypothermia, increased sugar in urine, increase liver rate, and liver lesions.

While amitraz poses significant hazards under the current EPA allowances, the illegally smuggled products do represent an even greater risk. “This office and our law enforcement partners will not stand idly by in the face of pesticide smuggling. Perpetrators of environmental crimes will be investigated and held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Grossman. With that in mind, advocates are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to go after the illegal online sales of Bovitraz, Taktic, and the wide range of other highly hazardous pesticides that are being sold on widely available websites.

A “star seller” on Etsy.com, named BeeKeepingTreasures, is currently selling Taktic with an indication that it ships from Laredo, Texas. The product has customer reviews as recent as June 11, 2022.  Likewise, the product Bovitraz was quickly found through a web search sold on the site All4Rooster.com where free shipping to the US is advertised.

Beyond Pesticides reached out to the Southern District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment regarding the continued online sales of these illegal pesticide products, but did not receive a response in time for publication. If a comment is provided this article will be updated.  

Stopping the illegal importation of toxic pesticides is an essential task for pesticide enforcement agencies. It is critical that the Department of Justice continue to go after sellers, both small and large, including repeat offenders like Amazon.com, which recently entered into a consent decree with the state of Washington and agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine for illegal pesticide sales.  

Concerned consumers are encouraged to avoid the use of toxic registered pesticides in general, including those sold through insecure websites. If pest problems arise, consult Beyond Pesticides resources for nontoxic management before even considering organic certified or minimum risk pesticide products. If necessary, aim to purchase pesticides directly from your local home and garden centers, If they don’t carry less these less toxic products, use tools like the Making the Switch webpage to start a conversation about transitioning to safer product selections.

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

Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, South District of California press release

(Beyond Pesticides, June 13, 2022) Birds are beautiful. They fill our world with color, song, and acrobatics. Most songbirds eat insects during the nesting season, thus contributing to management of insects in crops and gardens. It is no wonder that Rachel Carson chose their absence as an indicator of ecosystem collapse in Silent Spring.

Tell your U.S. Senators to cosponsor S. 4187, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Enhancements Act. Tell your U.S. Senators and Representative to ensure that EPA does not allow pesticides that threaten birds or their insect food supply. 

It’s not always easy to be a bird. About half of the world’s bird species migrate up to tens of thousands of miles each year. Whether at home or on the way to warmer climates for the winter, birds face harsh weather conditions, barriers like windows and radio towers, and the problem of storing enough energy for the flight in a tiny body. About 72 million birds are killed by pesticides and other toxic chemicals every year. In addition, pesticide use has contributed to the collapse of insect populations—the source of protein and fat that birds need to raise their young.

Congress has passed laws to help prevent a “silent spring”—including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. In spite of these laws, birds continue to be at risk. U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH) have just introduced S. 4187 to enhance the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA). The NMBCA is an innovative and cost-effective approach to the conservation of the more than 350 neotropical bird species in the U.S. that travel to Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Canada every year, such as the Scarlet Tanager, Purple Martin, and Baltimore Oriole. It supports the conservation of bird habitat as well as research, monitoring, outreach, and education.  

As a matching grant program, it catalyzes funding from a range of sources beyond the U.S. government and will triple the investment NMBCA can make in on-the-ground habitat protection, restoration, education, and research, ensuring that those funds are leveraged by other governments and partners. It will also provide greater capacity to implement the grant program by raising the amount the Fish and Wildlife Service can allocate toward managing it. 

Tell your U.S. Senators to cosponsor S. 4187, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Enhancements Act. Tell your U.S. Senators and Representative to ensure that EPA does not allow pesticides that threaten birds or their insect food supply. 

Letter to U.S. Senators:
Birds are beautiful. They fill our world with color, song, and acrobatics. Most songbirds eat insects during the nesting season, thus contributing to management of insects in crops and gardens. It is no wonder that Rachel Carson chose their absence as an indicator of ecosystem collapse in Silent Spring.

It’s not always easy to be a bird. About half of the world’s bird species migrate up to tens of thousands of miles each year. Whether at home or on the way to warmer climates for the winter, birds face harsh weather conditions, barriers like windows and radio towers, and the problem of storing enough energy for the flight in a tiny body. About 72 million birds are killed by pesticides and other toxic chemicals every year. In addition, pesticide use has contributed to the collapse of insect populations—the source of protein and fat that birds need to raise their young.

Congress has passed laws to help prevent a “silent spring”—including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. In spite of these laws, birds continue to be at risk. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH) have just introduced S. 4187 to enhance the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA). The NMBCA is an innovative and cost-effective approach to the conservation of the more than 350 neotropical bird species in the U.S. that travel to Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Canada every year, such as the Scarlet Tanager, Purple Martin, and Baltimore Oriole. It supports the conservation of bird habitat as well as research, monitoring, outreach, and education.  

As a matching grant program, it catalyzes funding from a range of sources beyond the U.S. government and will triple the investment NMBCA can make in on-the-ground habitat protection, restoration, education, and research, ensuring that those funds are leveraged by other governments and partners. It will also provide greater capacity to implement the grant program by raising the amount the Fish and Wildlife Service can allocate toward managing it. 

Please cosponsor S. 4187 and ensure by your oversight that EPA does not allow pesticides that threaten birds or their insect food supply.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative:
Birds are beautiful. They fill our world with color, song, and acrobatics. Most songbirds eat insects during the nesting season, thus contributing to management of insects in crops and gardens. It is no wonder that Rachel Carson chose their absence as an indicator of ecosystem collapse in Silent Spring.

It’s not always easy to be a bird. About half of the world’s bird species migrate up to tens of thousands of miles each year. Whether at home or on the way to warmer climates for the winter, birds face harsh weather conditions, barriers like windows and radio towers, and the problem of storing enough energy for the flight in a tiny body. About 72 million birds are killed by pesticides and other toxic chemicals every year. In addition, pesticide use has contributed to the collapse of insect populations—the source of protein and fat that birds need to raise their young.

Congress has passed laws to help prevent a “silent spring”—including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. In spite of these laws, birds continue to be at risk. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH) have just introduced S. 4187 to enhance the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA). The NMBCA is an innovative and cost-effective approach to the conservation of the more than 350 neotropical bird species in the U.S. that travel to Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Canada every year, such as the Scarlet Tanager, Purple Martin, and Baltimore Oriole. It supports the conservation of bird habitat as well as research, monitoring, outreach, and education.  

As a matching grant program, it catalyzes funding from a range of sources beyond the U.S. government and will triple the investment NMBCA can make in on-the-ground habitat protection, restoration, education, and research, ensuring that those funds are leveraged by other governments and partners. It will also provide greater capacity to implement the grant program by raising the amount the Fish and Wildlife Service can allocate toward managing it. 

Please ensure by your oversight that EPA does not allow pesticides that threaten birds or their insect food supply. Support S. 4187 when it reaches the House of Representatives.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 10, 2022) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on June 1 that it will provide a potential 15-fold increase in funding aimed at organic food production — up to $300 million. The subject Organic Transition Initiative provision is embedded in a new USDA Food System Transformation framework (FSTF), whose raison d’être is captured in the press release: “to transform the food system to benefit consumers, producers and rural communities by providing more options, increasing access, and creating new, more, and better markets for small and mid-size producers.” That funding for organic transition, the invocation of climate as a significant driver of multiple features of the initiative, and a focus on equity concerns are all welcome news. Beyond Pesticides maintains that it will be critical that this FSTF result in concrete goals that set out specific metrics and timelines — particularly around the magnitude of acres shifted to organic production and the pace of the phaseout of non-organic substances and protocols.

The headline of the press release bespeaks the rationale: “Shoring Up the Food Supply Chain and Transforming the Food System to Be Fairer, More Competitive, More Resilient.” Broadly, the initiative addresses four sectors of agricultural activity: production, processing, aggregation/distribution, and markets/consumers.

The FSTF sets out four top-level goals; the appendix to the announcement includes more-detailed sections on each of these:

1. building a more resilient food supply chain that provides more and better market options for consumers and producers while reducing carbon pollution; the press release notes that the increase in funding is geared to providing comprehensive supports for farm transition to organic production, including mentoring, comprehensive, wrap-around technical assistance, direct funding through conservation financial assistance and additional crop insurance assistance, and support for developing product markets in targeted areas
2. creating a fairer food system that combats market dominance and helps producers and consumers gain more power in the marketplace by creating new, more, and better local market options; this section points to the huge reduction in producers’ power in the marketplace during the past five decades, due to massive consolidation in the food system, and to the “perils of a food system dominated by a few corporate players”; this initiative, USDA asserts, will “deliver a better deal for farmers, ranchers, growers and consumers”
3. making nutritious food more accessible and affordable for consumers; in this section, USDA emphasizes the unacceptability of food and nutrition insecurity, and commits to its elimination
4. emphasizing equity; here, the agency says that “rural communities, underserved communities, communities that experience persistent poverty, and the people who live there have been left behind”; it further asserts that the FSTF will create more economic opportunities in such communities and help them keep more of the food system dollar — accelerating more-equitable growth, and helping more of the created wealth remain in small towns and underserved communities

USDA’s press release notes that the effort “supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s broader work to strengthen critical supply chains as directed by Executive Order 14017 America’s Supply Chains.” Funding for the initiative will come from the American Rescue Plan Act (and other pandemic relief legislation), and a good number of the features address “lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.” USDA has emphasized that this new initiative builds on its 2021 provision of pandemic assistance to cover certification and education expenses for certified organic producers and those making the transition to organic. (See more about pandemic support for farmers here.)

The appendix section (of the USDA press release) on Food Production spotlights two initiatives: the increased funding (up to $300 million) for the new Organic Transition Initiative, and up to $75 million to support urban agriculture. Roughly $20 million for the latter will go to processing a backlog of applications from a 2018 grant program to support urban agriculture; in 2020 and 2021, a mere 6% of applications were processed. Another $40 million will help fund outreach and training programs for urban farmers, which USDA says will “expand access to nutritious foods, foster community engagement, increase awareness of climate change and mitigate the effects within urban areas, provide jobs, educate communities about farming, and expand green spaces.” The People’s Garden Initiative, recently revived, will get an infusion of $5 million for 18 flagship gardens across the country, which are used to “grow fresh, healthy food and support resilient, local food systems; teach people how to garden using conservation practices; nurture habitat for pollinators and wildlife; and create greenspace for neighbors.”

Other noteworthy features of the initiative include:

• $40 million to support doctors’ ability to prescribe fresh — and ideally organic and local/regional — produce, aka, food as medicine for patients who have poor access to proper nutrition
• advancement of economic equity and environmental justice
• $375 million to catalyze more independent poultry and meat processing enterprises (because currently, there are four multinational companies doing all of this in the U.S.)
• a food supply chain loan guarantee program to shore up independent investment in mid-chain operations (te.g., rucking, cold storage, and processing) for meat and poultry
• up to $600 million to support supply chain infrastructure beyond the meat and poultry sector
• funds for food safety certification training for specialty crops
• funds to levy commodity purchasing through the Farm-to-School program and other procurement programs, increasing markets for local/regional farms
• additional support for the Community Compost and Food Waste Reduction Program, and a feasibility study (and corresponding actions) for a National Food Loss and Waste Strategy
• increased funding to a variety of programs focused on access to healthful food — for seniors, those who live in so-called “food deserts,” patients with inadequate food and nutrition security (via the “food as medicine” or food prescription initiative mentioned above), students who participate in school feeding programs, and others; also, $25 million to support SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) technology improvements

There is a big focus on animal food processing in the FSTF, largely as a response to the pandemic experiences related to this industry. This is hardly an ideal focus in terms of climate impacts because the consumption of animal products represents a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. This is especially true of the giant CAFO (confined animal feeding operations) sector and conventional dairy sector, from which most “industrial” meat and dairy products come. This may (or may not) be somewhat offset by the multiple other aspects of the FSTF that appear to support local small- and mid-sized, as well as organic and regenerative, farms whose practices have a far smaller climate and environmental footprint.

As the organization Moms Across America points out in its coverage of the FSTF, the initiative may have the additional impact of reducing “the dependency on GMO mono-crops that have been the reason for the destruction of rainforests and sacred lands.” The organization could be speaking for Beyond Pesticides when it writes, “Are we naive to the corruption that could result from these hundreds of millions of dollars being doled out to organizations and companies? No. Are we skeptical if the money will merely line the pockets of more Fat Cats? Yes. But is there also a possibility that we have made progress?” But the organization also asks, “Has the food movement educated Tom Vilsack and his team that regenerative organic farming and access to organic food are essential?”

On that last question, Beyond Pesticides must return to its earlier coverage of Secretary Vilsack’s unhelpful behavior in 2020, when he used a G20 summit to diss the European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, a primary goal of which is to reduce damaging climate, environmental, and health impacts of agricultural activities, and indirectly, its overall aim to create a “fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system.” At the time, Beyond Pesticides wrote, Secretary Vilsack “chose to counter the F2F efforts by promoting an ‘alternative strategy’ — under the moniker ‘Coalition for Productivity Growth’ — through which ‘other nations pledge not to follow the European path on farm policy.’ He has described this alternative, U.S.-led strategy as ‘a market-oriented, incentive-based, voluntary system [that] is effective’ at slashing agricultural carbon emissions.”

This corporate-friendly approach rankled the health and environment advocacy community, but the criticism was not confined to those circles. The staid outlet Forbes magazine published an article titled, “Why Tom Vilsack Is Wrong About Farm To Fork and What We Can Do About It.” The piece included this: “USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has recently downplayed the European Union’s ambitious Farm To Fork strategy. Farm To Fork [F2F] is the cornerstone of the European Green Deal, and puts sustainability at the heart of the world’s largest food import and export market. But Vilsack’s dismissal of the E.U. are [sic] out of step with consumer sentiments, food justice advocacy and the latest cutting edge research on agroecology. . . . Vilsack’s alignment with agribusiness downplays the vast inequities at the heart of the U.S. food system.”

It continued, “The USDA secretary is promoting an alternative strategy called the Coalition for Productivity Growth, based on market-oriented, incentive-based systems. . . . The Vilsack approach is music to the ears of Big Food conglomerates like Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva (Dow/Dupont), Cargill and JBS, as well as trade groups such as Vilsack’s former employers at the Dairy Export Council.”

Forbes continued to surprise with these comments: “The grassroots sustainability momentum in the U.S. is consistent with recent scientific studies that expose the yield/productivity myth of chemical intensive agribusiness. . . . The European Union Farm To Fork plan is not perfect, but shows that public food system governance is possible and that a sustainable food system is already busy being born. And grassroots efforts in the U.S. are already building such a foundation domestically. A U.S. Farm To Fork strategy based on good food purchasing principles could ensure that healthy, fresh, affordable food grown and processed with justice, transparency and equity are available to all. Now that would be the way to go.”

In a Civil Eats interview that challenged some of the Secretary’s previous positions, he said, “This announcement is designed to do is to say, ‘We’d like to see that higher-value opportunity [that farmers access through the organic premium] more available and even more easily obtainable.’ We know it’s a problem: [organic certification is] complicated. It’s expensive. It’s tough. And they need help. So, here’s money to get a mentoring program in place. Here’s money to potentially look at ways in which we can either right-size the market where there’s too much supply and not enough market or right-size the demand where there’s a lot of market but not enough demand, not enough supply. That’s what we’re trying to do with the $300 million. I think it’s a very important signal about the significance and importance we place on organic as part of the overall system.” Civil Eats coverage calls the FSTF emphases on regionalism, support for organic and urban farming, and nutrition “a significant shift for the agency, which has historically prioritized efficiency over all else.”

Response from elsewhere in the nonprofit world has included this from the Organic Farming Research Foundation’s Gordon Merrick, Policy & Programs Manager: “In the past year, OFRF has had numerous meetings with USDA officials and provided in-depth written comments on how the agency can best support farmers and ranchers transitioning to organic production systems. . . . This is a meaningful first step to truly working towards a just and equitable food system. We at OFRF are excited to see the details of this historic investment into the National Organic Program.”

Beyond Pesticides advises that, in its development of specific goal metrics and plans, USDA look to the example of EU’s F2F plan, particularly in regard to such metrics on transition to organic production and reduction of the use of synthetic inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) on a specified timetable. For example, F2F:

• sets out an objective of moving at least 25% of the EU’s agricultural land to organic farming by 2030
• directs major funding to boosting sustainable practices, such as precision agriculture, agro-ecology (including organic farming), carbon farming, and agroforestry
• establishes the goal of reducing, by 2030, overall use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50%, and the use of more-hazardous pesticides by 50%
• makes changes to outdated regulations governing sourcing and use of pesticide data in order to address data gaps and promote evidence-based policymaking

What to make of USDA’s (and presumably the Secretary’s, given that he is promoting FSTF) apparent shift to greater organic, climate, and equity focus via this initiative? Certainly, the Biden/Harris administration’s concerns and priorities about the food system, climate, environment, and equity are a likely and significant impetus. Experiences during the pandemic have clearly been catalysts, as well, including problems such as supply chain issues, transportation problems, staffing shortages, insufficient inventory, and lack of redundancy in systems. Other issues are emerging as a function of the Russian war on Ukraine.

The press release on FSTF concludes with this: “In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on creating new, more, and better markets to support farmers, ranchers, and consumers. USDA will do this by building more resilient local and regional food production [and] fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America.”

Such a values-driven, rather than corporate interest–driven, approach at USDA would be far preferable and appropriate to the needs of people and the planet; perhaps this FSTF signals movement in that direction. Critically, the federal government needs to heed Beyond Pesticides’ call for ending our ubiquitous use of toxic pesticides over the next decade, and for protection of strong organic standards and integrity in the National Organic Program and National Organic Standards, for which we regularly advocate. (An important feature of those standards is the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances, which controls what can and cannot be used in organic crop and livestock production.)

The devil, as always, will be in the details of this new Organic Transition Initiative. For now, Beyond Pesticides is cautiously hopeful that this new injection of funding, and greater focus on the importance of the organic transition, will bear out on the ground — in more acres under organic production and significant reduction in use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, as well as for the other environmental, climate, equity, and economic benefits it may engender.

Source: https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/06/01/usda-announces-framework-shoring-food-supply-chain-and-transforming

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 9, 2022) 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.” 

The father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard, Ph.D., defines environmental racism as any policy or practice that unequally affects or disadvantages individuals, groups, or communities based on their race. Dr. Bullard stated that, until the 1980s, environmentalism and pollution were separate. During the Jim Crow Era—succeeding slavery—segregation propagated disparities between black and white communities, causing the primary focus of justice issues to vary among the communities. Both the civil rights and environmental justice movements spread nationwide during the 60s and 70s. However, the two movements rarely coincided as the American environmental movement largely focused on preserving beautiful outdoor areas and ignored issues in urban environments. This separation created the perception among advocates for racial equality that environmentalism catered to white organizations and populations and ignored people of color (POC) and their struggles.

However, this does not mean environmental justice was completely void of addressing racial inequalities. Many early environmental justice leaders came out of the civil rights movement, bringing to the environmental movement the same tactics they had used in civil rights struggles—marches, petitions, rallies, coalition building, community empowerment through education, litigation, and nonviolent direct action. For instance, Warren County, NC., a poor, rural county, became the epicenter of the growing environmental justice movement—drawing nationwide attention to racial disparities in the siting of toxic waste sites. Unlike the collective action against the disparities in the location of toxic waste sites in the late 1960s, the Warren County case sparked a national debate about environmental racism. Warren County connected the dots between racial injustice, environmentalism, and public health disparities. New green policies for waste disposal and waste-to-energy incineration aimed to benefit the environment, but actively sacrificed the poorest communities.

Mr. Porter evaluated reports of adverse environmental and health impacts that agrochemical use (e.g., pesticides, fertilizers) causes in North America, particularly Mexico, Canada, and the South and West Coasts of the United States. In all North American regions, agrochemicals predominantly affect communities of color and low socioeconomic.

Southern United States

The report reveals that counties or cities with larger BIPOC populations encounter more pesticide exposure from manufacturing and use. Specifically, the U.S. agricultural industry spends roughly eight times more money on pesticides in rural regions where people of color (POC) comprise 40 percent of the population compared to counties where POC comprise less than six percent. After the abolition of slavery, mechanization and agrochemicals, like fertilizers and insecticides, replaced a lot of slave labor. However, these chemicals did not fully replace black laborers, who remained working on farms, increasing the burden of chemical use without protective equipment and educational support. The Mid-Atlantic region’s growing agrochemical industries supplied the south with pesticides and fertilizer for decades, with Baltimore, MD, quickly becoming the first epicenter of agrochemicals. Waterfront regions in the southernmost part of Baltimore containing high populations of BIPOC communities became an idyllic sacrifice zone for chemical manufacturing.

Western United States

During westward expansion, white settlers seized lands from dozens of Indigenous communities, like the Yokuts, Miwok, and Kawaiisu, importing migrant laborers to aid agricultural development. However, the migrant workers were POC, and most farmers of color could not participate in the agricultural development as landowners. Although as new agricultural technology grew, it served to concentrate wealth, industrialize farming practices, and advance practices and products that farmers and farm workers of color exposed to the occupational hazards of pesticides. Currently, nearly one-third of farmworkers live in California in regions of low-socioeconomic status and largely Latinx populations. However, these regions are not subject to pesticide laws that protect occupational workers and residents from exposure and subsequent health effects. Thus, the agricultural industry is able to use otherwise banned chemicals like chlorpyrifos for commercial use. Chlorpyrifos has been used intensively in agriculture (e.g., almond, apricot, cotton, and other crops) in the central California San Joaquin Valley for many decades. Despite California’s pesticide regulatory system and data on environmental protection, reports identify higher rates of asthma, cognitive disabilities, and developmental delays among children in San Joaquin Valley from maternal exposure to chlorpyrifos. 

North American Expansion

World War I and II aided in the expansion of arsenic-based insecticides as U.S. agricultural companies sought a new global market. California’s agricultural industry spread across the U.S. border into Mexico, establishing sites to experiment with different U.S.-made agrochemicals. Although leaders in both countries believed agrochemicals could be a solution to urban poverty and crop yields, these chemicals eroded financial protection and public health, especially in experimental regions. This report argues that agrochemicals helped the U.S. expand its power beyond national borders. Mr. Porter states, “[It is] important to really see how the United States has imperial relationships with so many different places, both within the United States and outside the United States. Environmental justice needs to move beyond U.S. exceptionalism.”

At the height of the Green Revolution in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, warning the world of pesticide exposure and associated harms. After the end of slavery, the U.S. relied on pesticides to attack pests and drive up yield. However, this reliance on pesticides resulted in a series of silent springs, where the environment is void of birds singing due to growing pesticide poisonings. Although Carson was not the first to highlight concerns involving arsenic pesticides (first-generation), she was one of the first to argue that DDT (second-generation organochlorinated pesticide) was the greatest pesticide threat to human and environmental health. Both chemicals are highly present in the environment, remaining in soil, plant and animal tissues, as well as water resources for decades.

Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), many environmental agencies have banned or restricted the use of pesticides like organochlorines, organophosphates, and carbamates for their devastating toxic—sometimes lethal—effects, particularly on vertebrates, including humans. However, the banning of DDT started a treadmill that resulted in new generations of pesticides (e.g., neonicotinoids, pyrethroids) replacing older ones that were deemed too hazardous or were no longer effective due to insect and weed resistance.  Although newer generation pesticides may be more target-specific, requiring lower chemical concentrations for effectiveness, they have over double the toxic effects on invertebrates, like pollinators. For example, systemic pesticides that coat seeds are applied to specific plants but cause indiscriminate poisoning through contaminated pollen, nectar, and guttation droplets.

A section of Beyond Pesticides’ recent mega-issue of Pesticides and You, “Retrospective 2021: A Call to Urgent Action,” is devoted to the inequities resulting from pesticide use. 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].”

The report’s findings are similar to other resources demonstrating disparities in protection from agrochemicals in low-income and BIPOC communities, yielding frequent instances of pesticide-induced diseases (e.g., respiratory illness, neurological disorders, endocrine/immune disruption, cancers, etc.). Although there are regulatory systems to evaluate and monitor pesticide use and exposure limits (i.e., the Federal, Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act [FIFRA] and The Food Quality Protection Act [FQPA]), pesticide-related illnesses continue to harm communities due to environmental racism that ignores people of highest risks or increased vulnerability due to preexisting health conditions—many associated with socioeconomic conditions. For example, federal pesticide law does not take into consideration the combined effect of high-exposure, high-risk occupations with the exposures that are endured as a result of pesticide use in residential areas, around the home and garden, parks, schools, and even residues on food, hair, and clothing. 

The report notes that although science, technology, and a shift to organic can aid in the reduction of surface-level food system issues, including growth and distribution, leaders must incorporate social justice into the agricultural industry for permanent structural change. Informing activists in BIPOC communities about the impact of agrochemicals on the community and environment can be a start to alleviating inequalities. However, changes in policy are required in the food system so that the burdens placed on people of color communities are no longer overlooked.

With the report’s findings, Mr. Porter established a lesson plan that “aims to engage with students in discussions about the origin of pesticides and how they affect poor, Black, and Latinx communities. By encouraging students to use history and geography, the lesson plan facilitates discussions about the ways industrial agriculture and agrochemicals may impact their own communities and surrounding environments[…]The lesson plan also invites students to consider whether environmental racism or environmental injustice has inspired any forms of grassroots environmental justice in their own cities or communities.”

The concept of a Silent Spring does not exist outside our reality—it is an ever-present threat. Forgoing toxic pesticide use for cosmetic purposes on lawns and landscapes is one of the easiest ways to stop polluting local waterways. You can make a change by eliminating pesticides on your property and working toward the passage of organic land care policies in your community. To get started, see Beyond Pesticides Tools for Change webpage. Beyond Pesticides will continue to monitor progress on inequities related to pesticides, agriculture, farmworker well-being, and health of BIPOC communities in the U.S. For current reporting on matters related to environmental justice, see Beyond Pesticides’ Daily News Blog EJ archives.

One important way to reduce human and environmental contamination from pesticides is to buy, grow, and support organic. Beyond Pesticides advocates a precautionary approach to pest management in land management and agriculture by transitioning to organic. Furthermore, given the wide availability of non-pesticidal alternative strategies, families, chemical occupational workers, and the agricultural sector can apply these methods to promote a safe and healthy environment. For more information on the benefits of organic for both consumers and farm workers, see Beyond Pesticides’ webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

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

Source: The Organic Center, Food Tank

(Beyond Pesticides, June 8, 2022) A new biological agent to manage the destructive pest spotted wing drosophila (SWD) (Drosophila suzukii) is set to be released this month after approval was granted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Ganaspis brasiliensis, a parasitic wasp with a specific affinity for SWD, has the ability to significantly curtail the use of toxic pesticides otherwise employed to manage the pest. The move is an important step forward for biological pest management in the United States, an approach that has already added billions of benefits to agricultural economies, and has the potential to help farmers eliminate the regular use of hazardous pesticides.

SWD is a small fruit fly originally from southeast Asia. In 2009, it was discovered on the U.S. West Coast and rapidly became a major pest, leading to significant crop loss estimated at over $700 million each year. The insect attacks nearly all soft bodied fruits, including blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes, and others. It has an apparent preference for blueberries, costing that industry alone $100 million per year. It lays its eggs inside of ripe fruit, which hatch into larvae and ruin the entire fruit as it feeds. Female SWD reproduce rapidly, laying up to 600 eggs per year and producing as many as 13 generations per season.

Current nonpesticidal management approaches to SWD include cultural practices, like good sanitation, pruning, and the use of drip irrigation. Some growers have had success with traps baited with apple cider vinegar and wheat dough. Farmers are encouraged to bag infested fruit, but larger scale operations often have difficulty with this approach, and are likely to attempt to harvest early when pest levels are high.

G. brasiliensis, the parasitic wasp, was recently discovered along the Canadian border in Washington State, having made its way there naturally. But USDA had been carefully studying the parasitoid for over 10 years prior to its impending release in Oregon, undergoing extensive testing on its viability and behavior.

Scientists ultimately concluded that G. brasiliensis would be a viable biological control agent. “It’s kind of the best of both worlds,” said Elizabeth Beers, PhD, an entomology professor at Washington State University. “It’s great that we have a lot of research showing that Ganaspis is very host-specific and safe to spread around. But there are also benefits to it being found here in nature.”

The parasitoid kills SWD by laying eggs in the larvae of SWD. The parasitoids eggs develop and hatch inside of SWD, subsequently consuming the pest. “It’s a bit like the movie Alien,” said Dr. Beers. “It’s unpleasant to think about in sci-fi movie terms, but really effective for killing spotted-wing drosophila.” Preliminary reports indicate that the parasitoid can reduce SWD populations by up to 65%.

“This will have a huge impact,” said Vaughn Walton, PhD, entomologist at Oregon State University. “Growers are really interested and are excited about a biological control that will work along with cultural management tools to decrease SWD and not cost them any money. It’s a natural resource available to them. We think this is going to change things.”

Researchers are also studying another parasitic wasp known to attack SWD in its home range, Pachycrepoideus vindemmiae. A study published in 2019 found that it had the potential to readily replace pesticide use for SWD, killing up to 600 SWD during its lifespan. However unlike G. brasiliensis,  P. vindemmiae is more of a generalist feeder, and there are some lingering concerns that it may kill other insects in addition to SWD.

While the introduction of a new biological control agent is positive, some advocates say that 10 years is far too long to wait for a permit. As opportunistic pests cross national and state boundaries at increasing speed, more research and funding for biological controls are needed in many areas of pest management. A 2020 study found that biological pest management has added billions of dollars in benefits to agricultural economies over the last 100 years, even more so than the benefits often cited from the ‘green revolution’ in agriculture.

In the context of the 10 year delay in introducing the SWD parasitoid, the authors of the 2020 study note that “a small number of ill-advised introductions” from the middle of the 20^th century led to “a more risk-adverse attitude,” which “eclipsed its myriad societal benefits.” Referring to introductions like the cane toad, first introduced in Australia to control sugarcane insects, but became a pest in its own right.

Increased funding and use of biological controls is necessary for a sustainable future for agriculture. Fortunately, there is important progress being made for a range of problematic pests. Parasitoid wasps are being released in Southern California to manage the destructive Asian citrus psyllid. In 2020, OSU scientists discovered a nematode that had the ability to “liquify” exposed slugs. A specific nematode was also recently found to be a promising control against non-native fire ants invading the US. And scientists have discovered a small mite that has the potential to knock down tree of heaven populations.

Those wishing to manage pests with biological controls in their own home gardens and landscapes can find resources and purchase biological control agents from online retailers like Arbico-Organics. More information to help eliminate the use of toxic pesticides in one’s home and yard can be found on Beyond Pesticides’ ManageSafe portal.

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

Source: Oregon State University press release, Washington State University press release

Photo Credit: Washington State University

(Beyond Pesticides, June 7, 2022) Bumblebee colonies exposed to low levels of the weed killer glyphosate are unable to adequately regulate nest temperature, imperiling the next generation of bumblebees and long-term colony growth and survival. This latest finding, published this month in the journal Science, is a stark reminder that a pesticide does not have to kill an animal outright in order to create effects that ultimately result in death and population declines. “Sublethal effects, i.e. effects on organisms that are not lethal but can be seen, for example, in the animals’ physiology or behaviour, can have a significant negative impact and should be taken into account when pesticides are approved in future,” said Anja Weidenmüller, PhD, of the University of Konstanz, Germany. With regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refusing to adequately account for sublethal impacts, and myopically focused on the acute effects of pesticide exposure, bumblebee populations in the United States are in free fall and require urgent protective action.

To better understand how glyphosate exposure affects bumblebee colony growth and brood (young larval bee) development, researchers first split colonies in two. One side of the colony was fed sugar water containing 5mg/liter of glyphosate, while the other side was fed pure, unadulterated sugar water. This practice accounts for natural variation in strength that can occur between different bumblebee colonies. Although the colonies were separated by a mesh screen, each day the scientists switched the queens between the two sides.

Bees did not die from exposure to this level of glyphosate, living at least 32 days, a typical worker bumblebee life span. While bees exposed to glyphosate did display slightly reduced investment in brood development, the most outsized effect of glyphosate exposure was on colony thermoregulation. Bumblebee colonies require temperatures between 82.4°F and 95°F (28°C and 35°C) in order for eggs and brood to properly develop. “Just as we humans keep our body temperature constant, the animals in a colony collectively show homeostasis in the temperature regulation of their brood,” says Dr. Weidenmüller.

Glyphosate exposure alone did not impair thermoregulation, but when researchers dialed back on the sugar syrup, the effects became pronounced. Compared to the unexposed control colony halves, the sides treated with glyphosate dropped below 82.4°F much more rapidly. In sum, glyphosate-exposed sides maintained adequate brood conditions 26% less time than the unexposed side of the colony. Most of the contaminated sides had no region in the nest that was above the 82.4°F mark, and thus viable for new eggs. “When resources become scarce, you see very clearly that the collective thermal behaviour of colonies that have been chronically exposed to glyphosate is affected,” says Dr. Weidenmüller. “They cannot keep their brood warm for as long.”

Impairing nest thermoregulation has major knock-on effects that place the colony in existential danger. Even temperatures at 77°F reduce brood development speed by 50% of its potential maximum and give new eggs a success rate as low as 17%. “Bumblebee colonies are under really high pressure to grow as quickly as possible within a short period of time,” says Dr. Weidenmüller. “Only when they reach a certain colony size during the relatively short growth period are they able to produce the sexually reproductive individuals of a colony, i.e. queens and drones.” Further modeling of the study’s findings show that low temperatures are likely to further impair this process.  

One of the most critical time in a colony’s development is after queen hibernation, when there is an urgent need to replenish their energy stores in order to start constructing a nest. Bumblebee queens waking up in the cold, early spring to relatively low floral resources, and a contaminated landscape represents a slow moving disaster that is likely playing out in regions across the world.

As it stands currently, the American bumblebee has experienced an 89% decline in its population over the last 20 years. The rusty patched bumblebee has seen a similar 91% decline since the 1990s and in 2017 was listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  under the Endangered Species Act.

Glyphosate is far from the only chemical stressor harming bumblebees. Systemic neonicotinoid insecticides represent an even more potent threat, posing both acute and chronic hazards to a range of pollinators. In fact, there is evidence that neonicotinoids pose a threat to bumblebees at every single step in their life stage.

Reinforcing the present study, research published in 2020 by researchers at University of California, Davis revealed that mason bees experiencing a combination of food scarcity and exposure to the neonicotinoid imidacloprid saw a 57% reduction in offspring, compared to unexposed bees.

In addition to a wide range of chemical exposure, and the lack of floral resources from development and industrialized agriculture, are the effects of climate change. A 2015 study published in Science determined that North American and European bumble bees are unable to colonize new warmer habitats north of their historic range, while simultaneously disappearing from the southern portions of their range.

At this point, it almost feels contrived to say that pollinator declines are a result of many factors. But it is critical to understand that chemical use is one of the most easily modifiable factors in this equation. Despite a profound body of independent, peer-reviewed literature associating various pesticides with a myriad of different lethal and sublethal effects on pollinator populations, EPA regulators are permitting the continued use of these hazardous chemicals. Glyphosate and the neonicotinoids alone represent millions of pounds of pesticides applied throughout the United States. Although EPA has the power to order more comprehensive reviews that will result in actions that truly protect pollinators, it is repeatedly refused to do so. Not only that, we have seen that even the lackluster requirements added at the beginning of the pollinator crisis are falling by the wayside, as EPA skips over pollinator assessments while nonetheless declaring how “benefits…outweigh any remaining risk.”

If you’re appalled by a taxpayer-funded agency tasked with environmental protection declaring the benefits of a chemical pesticide over deliberately unknown risks to the future of insect pollination, you’re not alone. Pressure on EPA and other regulators must come from all sides – from scientists and academics, advocates, and policymakers at every level. Take action today by urging EPA to do its job to protect pollinators, and insisting Congress add pressure to that call. But don’t stop there. Get active at your local and state level to implement strong protections from toxic pesticides for our remaining, and greatly imperiled pollinators. For assistance, reach out to Beyond Pesticides at [email protected].

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

Source: University of Konstanz press release, Science

(Beyond Pesticides, June 6, 2022) In spite of the known harm to migratory and residential birds, salmon, forage fish, other wildlife and their primary feeding areas, and a recommendation by the National Marine Fisheries Service that “an alternative site be identified in a location that results in less potential impacts to wildlife that is more appropriate for aquaculture and meets the goals of the tribe,” permitting agencies approved permits and a lease for a 50-acre industrial oyster farm for private financial gain inside the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. This decision, which is in violation of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, must be reversed.

Agencies are well aware of the potential damage to the lands it is their mission to protect.

Tell the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the Dungeness National Wildlife lease must be rescinded.

 The Dungeness Bay Wildlife Refuge was created by Executive Order in 1915 by Woodrow Wilson, directing the area to be set aside as a “refuge, preserve and breeding ground for native birds and prohibits any disturbance of the birds within the reserve.” The Refuge provides habitat, a preserve and breeding grounds for more than 250 species of birds and 41 species of land animals.

 The front page of the Refuge website states: “Pets, bicycles, kite flying, Frisbees, ball-playing, camping, and fires are not permitted on the Refuge as they are a disturbance for the many migrating birds and other wildlife taking solitude on the Refuge.” With this level of concern, it is counterintuitive to allow destructive industrial aquaculture.

These detrimental effects to the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge are NOT minimal.

Among the negative impacts of this project are: 50% reduction in bird primary feeding grounds;  20,000 – 80,000 toxic plastic oyster bags that exclude the probing shorebird flocks from feeding deeply into the substrate, entrapment of fish and birds, add macro- and micro-plastic bits to the sediment throughout the refuge, and shift the benthic community composition; diminishment of the ecological benefits provided by eelgrass to threatened fish and birds, such as nourishment and cover from predators and, with warming waters, increased toxic algal blooms that will leave a graveyard of dead oysters. Additionally, commercial shellfish operations attract pathogens and non-native species that threaten the area ecosystem and the shellfish. Decision makers should not place financial benefits to the corporation above the long term and cumulative impacts to the refuge.

Tell the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the Dungeness National Wildlife lease must be rescinded.

Letter to Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Commissioner Hilary Franz)

I am writing to ask that your agency rescind the lease from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to reestablish oyster farming in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge.  They have four other sites, one of which has space to expand.

In spite of the U.S. Corps of Engineers predicted harm to the Refuge birds, salmon, forage fish, and other wildlife, and a recommendation by the National Marine Fisheries Service that “an alternative site be identified in a location that results in less potential impacts to wildlife that is more appropriate for aquaculture and meets the goals of the tribe,” permitting agencies approved an industrial oyster farm inside the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. This decision, which is in violation of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, must be reversed.

The Dungeness Bay Wildlife Refuge was created by Executive Order in 1915 by Woodrow Wilson, directing the area to be set aside as a “refuge, preserve and breeding ground for native birds and prohibits any disturbance of the birds within the reserve.” The front page of the Refuge website states: “Pets, bicycles, kite flying, Frisbees, ball-playing, camping, and fires are not permitted on the Refuge as they are a disturbance for the many migrating birds and other wildlife taking solitude on the Refuge.” With this level of concern, it is counterintuitive to allow destructive industrial aquaculture.

Industrial shellfish aquaculture is known to reduce or eliminate eelgrass. Shifts in the sediment from the thousands of bottom bags containing the oysters will damage the eelgrass beds. This shellfish operation involves large-scale use of plastics that are hazardous to marine organisms and can trap and entangle wildlife. Commercial shellfish aquaculture, already a major industry in Washington State, has significant impacts on the nearshore marine environments, which provide essential habitat for many species, including invertebrates, fish (including herring and salmon), and birds (migratory and shorebirds).

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts the negative impacts of this project are: 50% reduction in bird primary feeding grounds;  plastic oyster bags that exclude the probing shorebird flocks from feeding deeply into the substrate, entrap fish and birds, add macro- and micro-plastic bits to the sediment throughout the refuge, and shift the benthic community composition; diminishing of the ecological benefits provided by eelgrass to threatened fish and birds, such as nourishment and cover from predators; and increased algal blooms that will leave a graveyard of dead oysters. These detrimental effects to the Dungeness Bay National Refuge are NOT minimal. Decision makers should not place financial benefits to the corporation above the long term and cumulative impacts to the refuge.

Please revoke the lease and prevent damage to the wildlife refuge and the harm that would come to the wildlife that depend on it.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Interim Regional Director Hugh Morrison):

I am writing to ask that your agency reinstate your opposition to establish oyster farming in Dungeness Bay.

In spite of demonstrated harm to birds, salmon, forage fish, and shellfish, and a recommendation by the National Marine Fisheries Service that “an alternative site be identified in a location that results in less potential impacts to wildlife that is more appropriate for aquaculture and meets the goals of the tribe,” permitting agencies approved a lease for an industrial oyster farm inside the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. This decision, which is in violation of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, must be reversed.

The Dungeness Bay Wildlife Refuge was created by Executive Order in 1915 by Woodrow Wilson, directing the area to be set aside as a “refuge, preserve and breeding ground for native birds and prohibits any disturbance of the birds within the reserve.” The front page of the Refuge website states: “Pets, bicycles, kite flying, Frisbees, ball-playing, camping, and fires are not permitted on the Refuge as they are a disturbance for the many migrating birds and other wildlife taking solitude on the Refuge.” With this level of concern, it is counterintuitive to allow destructive industrial aquaculture.

Among the negative impacts of this project, as predicted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are: 50% reduction in bird primary feeding grounds;  toxic plastic oyster bags that exclude the probing shorebird flocks from feeding deeply into the substrate, entrap fish and birds, add macro- and micro-plastic bits to the sediment throughout the refuge, and shift the benthic community composition; diminish the ecological benefits provided by eelgrass to threatened fish and birds, such as nourishment and cover from predators; and increased algal blooms that will leave a graveyard of dead oysters. These detrimental effects to the Dungeness Bay National Refuge are NOT minimal. Decision makers should not place financial benefits to the corporation above the long term and cumulative impacts to the refuge.

Your mission is to protect refuges. Please reinstate USFWS opposition to the lease and prevent damage to the wildlife refuge and the harm that would come to the wildlife that depend on it.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, June 3, 2022) It is hardly news that plastics are a huge environmental problem, but three features of the plastic saturation of our planet are not well or widely recognized. One is the exacerbation of the climate emergency via emissions from the feedstocks for, and production and use of, plastics. Another is that proffered in a late 2021 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: “the land we use to grow our food is contaminated with even larger quantities of plastic pollutants” than the well-publicized amount of plastics in our oceans. The third is the little-known issue of the plastic coating of some synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, as investigated by a recent report from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Beyond Pesticides has written about the “contributions” of plastics to the climate crisis, as well as issues related to uses of plastics in organic agriculture and the scourge of chemically intensive farming.

An enormous amount of plastic in thousands of forms is produced globally each year. Toxic plastic pollution is now found, as The Guardian puts it, “from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans.” A frequently cited and chilling metric is this: the total mass of plastics on Earth now exceeds the total mass of all living mammals. How did we get here?

With the chemical “boom” years during and following World War II, the invention, and industrial, defense, medical, and consumer applications of synthetic polymers grew robustly in the U.S. These materials seemed remarkable in the early, pre-war and WWII years — strong, flexible, lightweight, resistive, easy to mass produce, and chemically inert. As Beyond Pesticides wrote earlier in 2022, “during the war, U.S. plastic production increased by 300%. The plastic surge continued throughout the rest of the 20^th century, and is unabated today [although much of the production has shifted to Asia]. Indeed, 2020 estimates clocked the amount of plastic in the world at roughly 8.3 billion tons — with 6.3 billion of those tons being ‘trashed’ plastic. As the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) invites us to consider: ‘Imagine 55 million jumbo jets and that’s how much plastic exists.’”

The “chemically inert” property of plastics has proved supremely problematic, in part because it turns out that under some conditions, many plastics are actually not inert, but can and do leach toxic chemicals into their surrounds. Also, plastics do not break down chemically into their constituent compounds, and because plastics are synthetic materials, they cannot exist “benignly” in nature after their useful lives. In addition, the “inert” quality is causing massive damage to environments and organisms because, centrally, plastics can break down only mechanically, into smaller and smaller bits until, as “microplastics” — pieces less than five millimeters in diameter — they mobilize and travel everywhere.

Microplastics have suffused every ecosystem on the planet (including the heights of Everest, the depths of the oceans, and Antarctica), and have entered the food chain, atop which humans sit. Thus, they are now in marine organisms, terrestrial livestock, and human bodies (bloodstream, placentas, lungs, feces). Microplastics are in our drinking water and in the soils that grow our food. Humans are inhaling and ingesting plastics — and whatever toxins they may contain — through multiple exposure routes.

Multiple research efforts have identified the role of plastics in the entropic climate trajectory along which the fossil fuel industry has driven the globe. Carbon and methane are the two primary actors in human causation of the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. The Environmental Defense Fund has notes that “at least 25% of today’s warming is driven by methane from human actions. One of the largest methane sources is the oil and gas industry.”

Beyond Pesticides has explained that this hegemonic industry provides the petrochemical feedstocks for the production of plastics, as well as of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Worse, as the industry is more often and more vociferously called out for its role in the climate crisis, it has come to view plastics (and fertilizers and pesticides) as important future markets for its petrochemical products, and is creating facilities geared for that future.

The Executive Summary for the 2019 report, Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, asserts that plastic pollution is “not only destroying the environment and endangering human health, but also, undermining efforts to reduce carbon pollution and prevent climate catastrophe. . . . Nearly every piece of plastic begins as a fossil fuel, and greenhouse gases are emitted at each of each stage of the plastic lifecycle: 1) fossil fuel extraction and transport, 2) plastic refining and manufacture, 3) managing plastic waste, and 4) plastic’s ongoing impact once it reaches our oceans, waterways, and landscape. . . . At current levels, greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic lifecycle threaten the ability of the global community to keep . . . temperature rise below 1.5°C. With the petrochemical and plastic industries planning a massive expansion in production, the problem is on track to get much worse.”

The particular roles and magnitude of plastic use and pollution in agriculture have generally received little public or advocacy attention, but they certainly merit it. Plastics are used in agricultural production, by associated value chains, and in food packaging. Farmers use plastic for sheet mulches, netting, tree guards, plant containers, irrigation tubing, feed bags, and many other items, to the tune of roughly 816 million pounds annually in the U.S. Plastic sheet mulches account for 126 million of those pounds, and plastic containers for another 422 million — one third of all that in Florida alone. There are no policies in the U.S. that require or encourage recycling of agricultural plastics.

Plastic mulching films have become, over the past couple of decades, an extremely popular product for use on crops to suppress weeds, increase soil temperatures, reduce moisture loss from surface evaporation, and reduce nutrient runoff due to heavy rains. These mulch products are commonly produced from LDPE (low-density polyethylene) or synthetic polymers, including PVC (polyvinyl chloride, a particularly nasty material that releases carcinogenic dioxins when produced or burned). Farmers increasingly rely on such synthetic mulching films rather than on traditional materials such as cover crops, composted manures, straw, and others.

For all their utility to producers, these huge sheets of mulching film are creating more environmental havoc. After sitting on the soil for a season, they often have been damaged by farmworkers’ tools or motorized farm equipment; acquire clinging globs of soil and plant residue; and are further degraded by effects of sunlight, water, and wind, causing some tearing and mechanical breakdown that ends up contaminating agricultural soils with microplastics. Indeed, the 2021 FAO report indicates that there is more microplastic pollution in soils than in the oceans.

In addition, even if farmers try to recycle these plastic mulching sheets (and facilities that can do so are not especially common), the sheets are often so fragmented that they are difficult to retrieve post-harvest, and recycling them becomes nearly impossible. Typically, this mulching film is pulled up, leaving plenty of microplastics behind, and either burned in the field — releasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and toxic compounds into the air — or dumped eventually into landfills.

Ohio’s Country Journal noted in a 2020 article that “the plastic left in the soil is changing the soil environment. At first, the remnants in the soil were a nuisance, clogging farm equipment, blowing in the wind, getting caught on fencing and washing into ditches. Now, more than 20 years of plastic building up in the soil has started to interfere with roots and water movement, reducing crop yield and canceling out some of the benefits of the plastic mulch.”

The FAO report makes recommendations, chief among which is to return to one of the “alternatives” — which are actually entirely traditional — organic mulch materials, cover crops, and other methods that are largely what organic farmers use. The co-benefits of these practices include savings on inputs, avoidance of the GHGs embedded in plastic production and disposal, incorporation of carbon-holding biomass into the soil, yielding long-term improvements in soil health, and when coupled with organic, non-chemical management (no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers), potential access to premium markets. The report also recommends avoiding petrochemical plastic use, banning of toxic PVC for these materials, and increasing the thickness of mulching sheets so as to make them less likely to degrade in the field.

There are other kinds of alternatives, such as so-called “bioplastic” mulching film, made from the starches in corn, soy, wheat, or sugarcane. Manufacturers of these promote them as biodegradable, i.e., capable of breaking down and being incorporated into the soil after harvest. However, the decomposition of such plastics in different soils and climatic conditions varies widely, and the long-term impact on soils of the use of biodegradable mulch films is not well understood. A genuinely biodegradable mulch film that breaks down adequately, is readily decomposed by soil microbes, and has no deleterious impacts on soil or those microorganisms, is not yet a reality.

In the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) National Organics Program (NOP), the issue of plastic mulches has been a controversial one since biodegradable biobased mulch film (BBMF) was first added to the NOP National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances in 2014. Beyond Pesticides, which has been active in advocating for the integrity and strength of the National Organic Standards (NOS), has repeatedly weighed in on the issue. (See our Keeping Organic Strong webpage for an orientation to these issues.)

In its most-recent (2021) missive to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), Beyond Pesticides wrote: “While BBMF was supported enthusiastically by those who saw an opportunity to have the benefits of plastic mulch without the wasteful and labor-intensive practice of carting it off to the landfill at the end of every growing season, others . . . warned that the available products were ‘not ready for prime time.’ As predicted, the Organic Materials Research Institute (OMRI) soon announced that no products met the criteria in the National List — that is, 100% biobased and biodegradable.”

In addition to the inadequate character of the available products — which per se fail to meet NOSB requirements — Beyond Pesticides’ testimony identified other problems with their deployment. “BBMFs are not removed from the field by the grower. Instead, they are tilled into the soil. The tillage process purposefully creates microplastics, with the intention that the action of soil organisms will degrade these small particles. However, as reported in OMRI’s 2016 Supplemental Technical Review, many growers report that fragments persist in the soil. OMRI reports that research on the eventual fate of biodegradable mulch films is ongoing. There is, nevertheless, research reported by OMRI indicating that the BBMFs do not completely degrade and may degrade more slowly when tilled under the surface, that they contain components that may be hazardous, and particles may adsorb persistent toxins.”

Beyond Pesticides affirms that synthetic mulches should not replace organic mulches in the National List, noting that organic mulches have long been a hallmark of organic production. It justifies this position on the basis of the NOSB Principles of Organic Production and Handling, which state: “Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It emphasizes the use of management practices in preference to the use of off-farm inputs, taking into account that regional conditions require locally adapted systems. These goals are met, where possible, through the use of cultural, biological, and mechanical methods, as opposed to using synthetic materials to fulfill specific functions within the system.”

The use of plastics in coating pesticides and fertilizers, purportedly to allow for controlled release of chemicals or nutrients, is an additional and alarming branch of global petrochemical saturation. (Beyond Pesticides is compelled to note that organic fertilizers, by their nature, provide “controlled release” nutrition without all the toxic downsides of synthetic fertilizers coated in polymers.) In addition, agrochemical companies add microplastics to synthetic fertilizers (e.g., as anti-caking agents), proffer them as soil conditioners, and coat some seeds with polymers.

The CIEL report, Sowing a Plastic Planet: How Microplastics in Agrochemicals Are Affecting Our Soils, Our Food, and Our Future, dives deep into the many issues around microplastics, including the coating, or “encapsulation,” of pesticides and fertilizers. It notes that agriculture is one of the largest users of products with intentionally added microplastics, and that this use is rising (11% growth is projected for 2018 to 2025). Microplastics remain in the soil long after the encapsulation’s function — slow release — ends, polluting the soil and readily dispersing into the air or water.

The report clarifies that this application of “plastic-coated agrochemicals to soils and crops directly introduces microplastic into the environment and potentially into the food supply. It also compounds the health and environmental hazards posed by agrochemicals themselves. . . . Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, derived primarily from oil- and gas-based feedstocks, are already some of the most toxic substances in use today. Encapsulating them in microplastic, itself fossil fuel in another form, only heightens the risks. Because of its deliberate and controlled nature, microplastic pollution from plastic-coated agrochemicals is especially egregious, but it is also readily preventable. The only barriers are public awareness of the problem and political will to tackle it at its source by regulating the plastics industry.”

Though encapsulation is not a new technology, industry’s promotion of its use in synthetic pesticides and fertilizers has taken a perverse turn — to greenwashing these products as “planet-safe” choices. The CIEL report asserts that the “repackaging” of this microplastic technology in this context sometimes involves no mention of “plastics,” but instead, use of less well-known and poorly understood terms, such as “polymer,” in describing the coating material. Further, “plastic encapsulation may be portrayed as a plus for the environment. Agrochemical industry marketing and messaging around controlled-release products emphasizes the technology’s purported efficiency as a key to more sustainable farming.”

The report concludes: “Plastic-coated fertilizers and pesticides are not only dangerous, but also unnecessary, because effective alternatives exist. There are a multitude of strategies for reducing the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, including high-performing agroecological techniques that do not rely on fossil fuel-based agrochemical inputs at all.”

Beyond Pesticides agrees, and reiterates that organic regenerative approaches to agriculture are the solution, and beat out chemical approaches on virtually every front: safety for humans, organisms, and the environment; soil health; a nutritive food supply; and even yields and economics, in many cases. Use of chemical pesticides to achieve agricultural and other goals is by nature a dead end, both because these compounds cause great and broad damage, and because resistance inevitably develops over time, rendering them ineffective — to which industry responds with new, additional, and potentially more harmful, formulations.

Making the transition to non-chemical management in farming, turf care, and other maintenance and protection protocols is beyond urgent. The chemical — and plastic — ubiquity in our materials stream, environment, food, and bodies, coupled with the climate emergency (and the enormous catalysis of it by the petro- and agrochemical industries) threaten every single thing humans value. Join Beyond Pesticides in advocating for the protection of our world from the risks imposed by these industries.

Sources: https://www.fao.org/3/cb7856en/cb7856en.pdf and https://www.ciel.org/reports/microplastics-in-agrochemicals/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, June 2, 2022) A California judge ordered state-run pesticide spraying to cease on public, agricultural, wild lands, and private properties. The judge states that government officials fail to consider and minimize the potential health and environmental risk associated with pesticide use. Moreover, officials failed to notify the public on the risks of pesticide spraying. The suit was brought by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the City of Berkeley and ten other public health, conservation and food safety organizations, including Beyond Pesticides. Board member of the California Environmental Health Initiative Nan Wishner states, “The court made the right decision to throw out CDFA’s plan to cement into place for the indefinite future the agency’s ‘spray now, ask questions later approach to pest management, which would have perpetuated the existing situation, in which Californians learn their yards or neighborhoods are to be sprayed only when the treatments are about to happen and have little or no recourse to stop the use of pesticides.” 

On May 19, 2022, the Superior Court of California – County of Sacramento ruled to remove an environmental impact report allowing California’s Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to spray pesticides at any time and any place. Removal of the environmental impact report also brings an end to chemical pest management under the CDFA pesticide spray program. State and local agencies must provide research on how pesticide spraying projects may affect the health of humans, animals, and the environment while finding solutions to eliminate the potential threat.

Moreover, the law requires CDFA to research and reveal environmental and health threats from 75 pesticides used across California. However, the geography and ecosystem of regions in California differ, and CDFA failed to analyze the adverse environmental and health effects in specific locations. The geography (e.g., lowland) and ecosystem (e.g., temperature, light exposure, moisture) of a region can significantly affect the severity of pesticide toxicity. Moreover, CDFA’s pest management program used pesticides known to be toxic to pollinators like bees, butterflies, bats and birds, and aquatic organisms. The impact of pesticides on wildlife—including mammals, bees and other pollinators, fish and other aquatic organisms, birds, and the biota within the soil—is extensive. Many studies document how exposure to these toxic chemicals causes reproductive, neurological, renal, hepatic, endocrine, and developmental damage and cancers in various species. Although there are policies to protect wildlife from harm, such as the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, a 2013 report by the National Academy of Sciences identifies shortcomings in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) evaluation and analysis of pesticides on endangered species. Like CDFA, the agency regularly disregards discussing how to take precaution to protect threatened and endangered species from pesticide harms. 

This litigation requires CDFA to cease state-run pesticide spraying programs due to the understudied and undisclosed risks. Although pesticide spraying under CDFA will reduce, many of these same chemicals remain in use through other programs and in various regions like wildlife refuges. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), some of these chemicals include: 

• Neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticides are highly toxic to pollinators like bees that encounter the chemical through pollen or nectar. Songbirds encounter neonic through consumption of pesticide-treated seeds, with one seed being enough to result in death. Moreover, the chemical is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, which share a similar morphology to insects on land.
• The toxic fumigant methyl bromide, known to deplete the ozone layer, can cause children to develop autism in their first year of life after exposure in the womb. 
• Chloropicrin, a soil fumigant also used as a fungicide and herbicide, has links to a catalogue of health effects, including genetic damage, respiratory ailments, skin irritation, and headaches. Moreover, the chemical is prone to drift. 

California director of government affairs for EWG, Bill Allayaud, concludes, “The court was right to rule against the Department of Food and Agriculture’s outrageous effort to keep the public in the dark about how and when it plans to spray toxic pesticides and to downplay the risks these chemicals pose to pollinators, the environment and the health of those who live near farm fields.[…] It is our hope that this court decision moves the CDFA to join the state’s movement toward sustainable pest management, as represented by the governor’s Sustainable Agriculture budget initiative and the state Department of Pesticide Regulation’s Sustainable Pest Management Work Group.”

The use of pesticides should be phased out and ultimately eliminated to protect the health of humans, wildlife, and the ecosystem. Pesticide spraying threatens the survivability and recovery of many species, and litigation such as this helps curb the effects of chemical exposure. The globe is currently going through the Holocene Extinction, Earth’s 6th mass extinction, with one million species of plants and animals at risk and an increasing rate of biodiversity loss. However, advocating for local and state pesticide reform policies can protect all species’ health. For more information on pesticide impacts on wildlife and human health, visit Beyond Pesticides’ wildlife page and Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database.

Furthermore, buying, growing, and supporting organic can help eliminate the extensive use of pesticides in the environment. Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits that eliminate the need for chemical-intensive agricultural practices across the nation. For more information on how the organic choice 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.

Sources: Environmental Working Group