(Beyond Pesticides, September 27, 2022) Exposure to widely used neonicotinoid insecticides harms amphibians at multiple life stages, adversely affecting their ability to survive in the wild, according to research published in the Journal of Zoology. As long-lived, systemic insecticides, neonicotinoids are consistently found in U.S. waterways,  often above federal safety limits, making these findings particularly dangerous for frogs and other amphibians throughout the country. As troubling data piles up on this class of dangerous insecticides, which are damaging pollinators, birds, deer, aquatic wildlife, and human health, it is left to the public to place pressure on federal regulators and members of Congress to act.

To understand the impact of neonicotinoids on amphibian life stages, researchers conducted a range of  experiments. These were designed to investigate how exposure to the neonicotinoid imidacloprid affected larval survival, sexual development, locomotor skills, and avoidance behavior of the wood frog (Rana sylvatica).

Larval survival was examined by exposing tadpoles to 10 parts per billion (ppb) of imidacloprid, a rate lower than the lethal concentration expected to kill half of other frogs species in acute toxicity tests. Four treatment protocols were established, adding the variable of natural pond drying to half of the tested frogs to see if there was interplay between chemical exposure and natural stressors in the environment. Of the four groups, two were exposed to imidacloprid, one in a non-drying tank and another in a slowly drying tank, while the other two acted as controls, including one non-drying and one drying tank. Researchers observed larval survival, size at metamorphosis, and sex ratio.

To see how pesticide exposure affected frogs at the terrestrial stage of their life, they were also subject to endurance trials, assessing their ability to jump on a circular track. Frogs exposed to imidacloprid as tadpoles were evaluated, and then exposed to imidacloprid again and tested to see how subsequent environmental exposures impacted overall fitness. Lastly, neonicotinoid exposed frogs were placed in a tank where half of it was sprayed with imidacloprid to see if the frogs attempted to avoid exposure to the chemical.

Moreover, results showed that frogs exposed to imidacloprid in drying ponds experienced the highest mortality rate. Chemical exposure also resulted in an altered sex ratio. Unexposed frogs had 10% more males survive metamorphosis. And over 15% of exposed frogs could not be sexed due to “unclear morphology of the reproductive organs,” while one exposed frog was “clearly hermaphroditic,” implicating imidacloprid as a likely endocrine disruptor.”

Yet interestingly, exposed frogs developed into larger and heavier frogs than those in the unexposed control. However, this story is quite complicated and ultimately does not indicate a benefit from this phenomenon, but instead a likely detriment.

Study coauthor Cassandra Thompson, PhD, explained the situation in an Ohio University release: “Unexpectedly, we found that frogs from Imidacloprid treated tanks were significantly larger than control frogs and prior to exposing them to pesticides in the terrestrial environment, they outperformed control frogs in endurance trials. They may be able to travel further distances and are overall better marathon runners! Unfortunately, they also seem to crash harder,” Dr. Thompson said. “We wanted to know what would happen to a frog if [it] travel[s] across and temporarily settle in areas that have been recently sprayed with Imidacloprid. After 12-hour exposure to imidacloprid, we found reduced endurance capabilities of frogs from all treatments. Additionally, pre-exposure to imidacloprid as a tadpole caused greater declines in locomotor capability when exposed to imidacloprid again as a recently metamorphosed frog. So if you were exposed as a tadpole and were exposed again in the terrestrial stage, you could have reduced endurance capabilities or how far you can move in the environment.””

In the study, researchers indicate that neonicotinoid exposed frogs may have grown larger for a number of reasons, including greater access to food, and/or lack of competition due to the higher mortality rate among exposed tadpoles in their experimental group.

Neither exposed nor unexposed tadpoles appear to recognize or attempt to avoid imidacloprid in the environment. “If these frogs come across one of these drenched soil sites, they not only won’t be able to behaviorally assess and avoid the pesticide, but also risk mortality if they settle there for a short period as their locomotor abilities will be hampered,” said Dr. Thompson.

Frogs and amphibians are not specifically tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prior to the registration of a pesticide. At best, they are provided “aquatic life benchmarks” which are unenforceable, arguably arbitrary ranges that EPA indicates can be helpful “in identifying and prioritizing sites and pesticides that may require further investigation.”

While EPA effectively ignores the impacts of pesticides on sensitive amphibians with complex life cycles, independent science has shown a range of harm. Earlier research, published in 2017, found that imidacloprid-exposed wood frogs experience delayed metamorphosis, placing populations at risk of increased mortality. Frogs exposed to neonicotinoids have also been shown to display a weakened response to a predator attack. While unexposed frogs hopped away to avoid researchers mimicking a heron attack, those in contact with imidacloprid did effectively nothing to avoid becoming lunch.

Data indicating a disrupted endocrine system response with imidacloprid exposure is concerning in light of research on how other pesticides affect frog sexual reproduction. Renowned scientist Tyrone Hayes, PhD, of the University of California Berkeley, has published extensive research documenting a range of impacts to various amphibian species from exposure to the herbicide atrazine. Results have shown the ability for atrazine not only to skew sex ratios, but also cause hermaphroditism in male frogs, and in some cases make male frogs completely female with the ability to lay eggs.

Despite a range of concerning independent data on chronic effects that, while not outright killing an animal, increases its likelihood of death in the wild, EPA has done little to rein in the use of the insidious pesticides harming the health of both wildlife and humans. Skewed sex ratios in frogs, birth defects and increased mortality in fawns, immune system damage and lower nutritional value in shrimp and oysters, inability for songbirds to orient during migration, reduced fruit productivity resulting from disoriented and uncoordinated pollinators, and evidence of hormone-dependent breast cancer in humans are all findings in independent, peer-reviewed studies. Yet, EPA discounts or dismisses this data and relies on non-peer reviewed studies produced by the manufacturer of the pesticide in accordance with EPA protocol, but not subject to regular unannounced audits. 

If this information makes you queasy, take a breath, catch your breath, and then take action. Educate friends, family, neighbors, and your broader community about the dangers posed by neonicotinoids and other EPA registered pesticides. Protecting wildlife doesn’t mean reverting to a different pesticide or different way of applying a toxic pesticide, but by changing practices that embrace the pest management abilities of natural systems. Help move your community toward that approach by asking your local leaders to embrace organic land management, and push for changes at the top by urging your federally elected representatives to cosponsor the Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA). By eliminating neonicotinoids, SAPA would not only protect pollinators, but frogs and entire ecosystems currently contaminated with these long-lived insecticides.  

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

Source: Ohio University press release, Journal of Zoology

(Beyond Pesticides, September 23-26, 2022) Comments are due 11:59 pm EDT September 29.  The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is receiving written comments from the public through September. This precedes the upcoming public comment webinar on October 18 and 20 and deliberative hearing October 25-27—concerning how organic food is produced. Sign up to speak at the webinar by September 29. Written comments must be submitted through Regulations.gov by 11:59 pm EDT September 29. Links to the virtual comment webinars and the public meeting will be posted on this webpage in early October.

For a complete discussion, see Keeping Organic Strong and the Fall 2022 issues page. In the spirit of “continuous improvement,” we urge you to submit comments (please feel free to use our comments on the KOS page) that contribute to an increasingly improved organic production system. Here are some high priority issues for us:

> The NOSB must take a precautionary approach in view of the unknown. Peroxylactic acid (POLA) is petitioned as an antimicrobial agent to be used in processing meat. While a comprehensive review of the needs for sanitizers and disinfectants in organic processing may reveal a need for additional materials, the existing data concerning POLA is incomplete, depending mainly on patents rather than peer-reviewed research. The petition should not be allowed.

• In its examination of ion exchange, the NOSB has learned that its application results in chemical change. Therefore, organic foods, such as apple juice or sugar, that have been processed with ion exchange are synthetic. Such synthetic “foods” must only be allowed if the NOSB has reviewed them and placed them on the National List.

> Genetic engineering is considered an “excluded method” according to organic regulations. The NOSB should continue to catalog excluded methods, and their use should be excluded at all levels of production—from crop production through inputs in processing.

> Organic Agriculture is Climate-Smart Agriculture. The NOSB draft letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack is an excellent primer on how organic agriculture responds to the climate emergency. However, the letter needs to stress the need for USDA to promote conversion to organic farming. More important to addressing the climate crisis than the questions posed by NOP are questions concerning how USDA programs can assist organic producers and those seeking to convert to organic. The draft letter addresses these as well. It also points out the resiliency of organic agriculture: “Organic is the solution to mitigating climate change and responding to it.”In view of the climate benefits of organic and the incentives inherent in organic marketing, the real question is whether USDA will abandon its promotion of chemical-intensive agriculture supported by the biotech/chemical industry in favor of whole-hearted support for organic agriculture—because despite the astronomical growth in organic consumption in the U.S., conversion to organic agriculture lags behind demand. USDA could and should make adoption of organic/climate-smart practices a prerequisite for receiving the benefits of its programs.

> Biodegradable Biobased (Bioplastic) Mulch Film (BBMF) is under consideration for sunset this year. This is part of a larger issue of the use of plastic in organic production and handling. Awareness is growing about the impacts of plastic—and the microplastic particles to which it degrades—on human health and the environment. BBMF should not be relisted. Moreover, the NOSB should initiate action to eliminate all uses of plastic in organic production and handling—including packaging.

> The NOSB should use the sunset process to eliminate non-organic ingredients in processed organic foods. Materials listed in §205.606 in the organic regulations are nonorganic agricultural ingredients that are allowed to be used as ingredients as part of the 5% of organic processed foods that is not required to be organic. Materials should not remain on §205.606 if they can be supplied organically, and anything that can be grown can be grown organically. The Handling Subcommittee needs to ask the question of potential suppliers, “Could you supply the need if the organic form is required?” Two materials on §205.606 are up for sunset this year—pectin and casings. Both are made from agricultural products that can be supplied organically and thus should be sunsetted.

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 23, 2022) According to a September 15 Environment California press release, California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) data confirm more bad news on neonicotinoid (neonic) contamination: nearly all urban waterways in three counties show the presence of the neonic imidacloprid at levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) chronic benchmark for harm to aquatic ecosystems; in five other counties, well over half showed its presence at similar levels. Neonic use is strongly correlated with die-offs and other harms to a variety of bees and pollinators, and to other beneficial organisms. These startling metrics will make the state’s efforts to protect such organisms even more challenging, according to Environment California (EC). See Beyond Pesticides’ Poisoned Waterways report for a deep dive on neonics and their impacts in U.S. rivers, lakes, and streams.

The data represent 405 surface water samples taken between 2000 and 2020; those from urban waterways in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties showed that nearly 92% are contaminated at EPA benchmark violative levels; in Alameda, Contra Costa, Placer, Sacramento, and Santa Clara counties, 58% of waterways showed such levels. Many of the counties with significant contamination are in the central coast and southern regions of the state. Some of this contamination no doubt comes from intensive agricultural use of imidacloprid, causing migration of the compound into waterways, but some may also be from non-agricultural uses — such as flea prevention for pets and building pest control products — common in developed urban areas. According to CDPR, there are 253 pesticide products containing imidacloprid registered for use in California.

Environment California’s webpage hosts an interactive map of sampling sites (across much of the state) that are represented in those imidacloprid metrics. The percentage of samples from each location that contained the compound range from 0 to 91.67. The EC page notes that “very few samples were tested for imidacloprid prior to 2010. . . . [and that] the percentage of samples that detect imidacloprid remains fairly constant over time.” Detailed results can be found in CDPR’s Surface Water Database.

The 2017 Beyond Pesticides report mentioned above cited similarly alarming results in other of the state’s waterways a decade ago: “A 2012 [CDPR] study using 2010 and 2011 surface water monitoring data from three agricultural regions in the state finds imidacloprid in 89% of the samples collected. . . . In the three agricultural regions studied, imidacloprid was detected in 85% of samples in Salinas, 93% in Imperial Valley, and 100% in Santa Maria Valley. These levels exceed currently established chronic aquatic benchmark concentrations.”

Neonicotinoids (such as imidacloprid, acetamiprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and dinotefuran) are a family of insecticides that harm the central nervous systems of insects and can paralyze or kill them, as well as have deleterious effects on baby bee brains. They are used as foliar sprays, plant root drenches, and granules to kill or render impotent a variety of pests — particularly sap-feeding insects, such as aphids, and root-feeding grubs. But a very significant vector for these compounds is through seed coatings, often for commodity crops (e.g., corn, soy, cotton). Ironically, years ago EPA released a report concluding that neonic seed coating provides little or no overall benefit in controlling insects or improving yield or quality in soybean production.

No matter how they are deployed, neonics are systemic pesticides, meaning that plants germinate from coated seeds and/or take up the applied compound through their roots, after which it permeates the entire plant. This makes the plant’s pollen, nectar, guttation droplets, and fruits toxic to creatures that feed on them. Non-target organisms, such as birds, bees, butterflies, and bats, are poisoned when they forage among such contaminated plants. In addition to insects’ exposures through foraging for food, it turns out that soil contaminated by neonics can also harm ground-nesting bees.

Neonics can persist over long periods of time in soils and are highly water soluble; thus, they can be transported via rain and/or irrigation systems into groundwater and waterways. They are detected regularly in sampling of the nation’s waterways at concentrations that exceed acute and chronic toxicity values for sensitive organisms (as laid out in Beyond Pesticides “deep dive” report). Through a 2017 risk assessment, EPA found that “[C]oncentrations of imidacloprid detected in streams, rivers, lakes and drainage canals routinely exceed acute and chronic toxicity endpoints derived for freshwater invertebrates.” Imidacloprid, one of the oldest neonics in commercial use, is especially persistent in aquatic environments and does not biodegrade easily; its half-life in water is generally longer than 30 days.

The neonic contamination of waterways — in California and across the nation — is very concerning because these compounds pose serious threats to keystone aquatic organisms, and can result in a complex, cascading impact on ecosystems. Aquatic insects and crustaceans are highly sensitive to neonicotinoids; the mayfly, a keystone species, has been identified as the most sensitive.

As Beyond Pesticides’ Poisoned Waterways report notes, “Impacts on aquatic invertebrates can have cascading effects on food webs and healthy ecosystem function. [Even] low-level, sublethal exposures can result in decreases in species abundance, altered predator-prey relationships, [and] reduced water filtration and nutrient cycling.” In addition, it points out that current federal aquatic life benchmarks for neonics may underestimate the risks: standard test organisms used by EPA to establish these benchmarks are, by orders of magnitude, more tolerant of neonicotinoid exposure than other vulnerable species.

Beyond impacts on aquatic life, terrestrial insects, pollinators, birds, and bats, neonics — touted by the agrochemical industry as safe for mammals — nevertheless are associated with a host of human health issues, including reproductive and endocrine system harms; possible renal, hepatic, developmental, and neurological damage; and possibly, indirect carcinogenic impacts related to the endocrine system.

In response to this new CDPR dataset, Environment America’s Conservation Program Director Steve Blackledge commented, “Every Californian knows the importance of having access to safe, clean water. Neonics like imidacloprid are causing harm not only to our pollinators and birds on land but also to our aquatic wildlife. Neonics are also being found in our bodies and despite being framed as ‘mammal-safe,’ recent research suggests that neonic exposures may increase the risk of developmental and neurological harms.”

EPA has been extremely negligent in taking protective action against the neonic family of insecticides. Indeed, in March 2022, Beyond Pesticides covered its draft decisions on the registration review of five neonics: imidacloprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and acetamiprid. We wrote then, “Despite the agency’s own findings of evidence of serious threats to pollinators, aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife, it issued interim decisions on these neonics . . . that disregard the science on the pesticides’ impacts. EPA appears to be prepared to finalize these registrations. . . . [T]his would, barring further action, extend the use of these harmful compounds for 15 years.” The schedule for the review processes for these compounds can be found here.

California legislators have passed a “Save the Bees Bill,” Assembly Bill 2146, which currently awaits the governor’s signature. The bill aims to end nonagricultural uses of neonics on lawns, golf courses, and home gardens, beginning in 2024. News outlet KSBW8 has opined that if signed, the enacted law “could significantly impact the Central Coast and its agriculture.” No doubt this would also be true for other regions, watersheds, and waterways in the state.

Environment California is encouraging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the bill ASAP. Said the organization’s state director, Laura Deehan, “We want to make California the next state, and the largest, to take this important step. The bill already passed through the Legislature, so we’re now urging Gov. Newsom to sign the bill into law. We must prioritize the preservation of our pollinators over the short-term convenience of massive pesticide use.”

Beyond Pesticide agrees that Governor Newsom should sign this bill, which would enact some protections in the state against the ravages of neonic use. We encourage readers who live in California to contact the governor to advocate for his signature: 916.445.2841 or via the state website. Other states, localities, and entities have taken action to restrict uses of this class of pesticides, including Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Portland, Oregon, and Emory University. At the federal level it is imperative that EPA create much stronger regulation of neonics — a ban being the most protective of organisms, ecosystems, public health, and water resources.

Source: https://environmentamerica.org/california/media-center/pesticide-linked-to-bee-die-offs-found-in-californias-urban-waterways/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 22, 2022) A study published in the International Journal of English, Literature, and Social Science (IJELS) finds an association between pesticide exposure and anemia among female farmers in Indonesia. Anemia is an autoimmune blood disorder negatively affecting the number of red blood cells (RBCs) and subsequent oxygen distribution via available hemoglobin proteins in RBCs. Types of anemia include iron deficiency, pernicious (lack of vitamin B-12 absorption), aplastic (lack of RBC production), and hemolytic (RBC destruction). Although risk factors for anemia consist of age, genetics, lifestyle, and gender, environmental factors such as pesticide use and exposure contribute to disorder development. Pesticides can interfere with cells in the body, causing blood profile abnormalities that affect blood cell formation and immune system function.

Anemia disproportionately impacts women and children across the globe, prevalent in over half a billion women. The disorder was more prevalent among pregnant individuals because of blood loss and iron deficiency, causing adverse reproductive outcomes among children. These outcomes include preterm delivery, low birth weight, and decreased iron stores, impairing cognitive and motor development. Considering research already demonstrates many chemicals (e.g., pesticides, heavy metals) can enter the bloodstream through ingestion, absorption through the eyes and skin, or inhalation, studies like this highlight the importance of understanding how chemical accumulation in the body can impact long-term health and disease prognosis. The study notes, “The contribution of this study is to increase public understanding that exposure to contaminants in the environment, especially pesticides, can worsen health conditions including the incidence of anemia. So that the community can make efforts to prevent the incidence of anemia, especially related to exposure to pesticides.”

While many studies demonstrate pesticide use and exposure negatively affect farmworkers’ and children’s health, few examine the correlation between pesticide exposure and blood disorder incidents among women farmers. Using a cross-sectional design, a type of observational analysis, researchers measured the exposure and health outcomes of 50 women farmers in Bandungan Sub-District, Semarang District, Indonesia. The results demonstrate an association between the length of pesticide spraying, the number of pesticides, and the type of pesticides with anemia in women farmer participants.

Toxic compounds can transfer from the blood to other organs and vice versa. Over 300 environmental contaminants and their byproducts, including pesticides, are chemicals commonly present in human blood and urine samples and can increase adverse health risks when crossing the brain barrier. Several studies find pesticide compounds in a mother’s blood can transfer to the fetus via the umbilical cord. Furthermore, a 2021 study finds that pregnant women already have over 100 detectable chemicals in blood and umbilical cord samples, including banned persistent organic pollutants (POPs). However, 89 percent of these chemical contaminants are from unidentified sources, lack adequate information, or were not previously detectable in humans. Blood diseases and disorders can also represent precursors for other severe chronic diseases like cancer. For instance, women with chronic anemia are at greater risk for certain cancers and other serious illnesses. Moreover, persistent symptoms from anemia can increase the risk for fatigue, heart palpitations, headaches, mood changes, infertility, poor circulation, and heart failure in severe cases.

This study is one of the few to identify an association between pesticides and anemia development. Blood tests analyzed the effects pesticide use over three days has on health indicators. Pesticide exposure significantly affected the percentage of monocytes and red blood cells, hemoglobin, average blood cell volume, the average concentration of red blood cell hemoglobin, red blood cell distribution, platelet count, and width of platelet distribution. Although the study shows that effects on health indicators decreased after three days, this may not be the case for farmworkers consistently exposed to pesticides outside of their occupation.

In this study, after exposure to various organochlorine pesticides (e.g., DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, and lindane) and organophosphate pesticides, individuals report greater incidents of aplastic anemia. However, studies find long-term exposure to permethrin and legacy organochlorine pesticides increase the risk of developing monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a blood disease that likely precedes multiple myeloma (MM)—a type of blood cancer. Therefore, the co-occurring risk of blood diseases can result in more severe health consequences and even death. 

It is vital to understand how exposure to environmental pollutants like pesticides can increase chronic disease risk, especially if these diseases can progress to more severe health consequences. Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent studies on pesticide exposure through our Pesticide Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information, see PIDD pages on body burdens, immune system disorders, sexual and reproductive dysfunction, and cancer, among others.

One way to reduce human and environmental contamination from pesticides is by buying, growing, and supporting organic. Numerous studies find that pesticide metabolite levels in urine significantly drop when switching to an all-organic diet. Furthermore, given the wide availability of non-pesticidal alternative strategies, families, and farmers can apply these methods to promote a safe and healthy environment, especially among chemically vulnerable individuals. For more information on how organic is the right choice for consumers, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. Furthermore, learn more about farmworker protection by visiting Beyond Pesticide’s Agricultural Justice page.

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

Source: International Journal of English, Literature and Social Science (IJELS)

(Beyond Pesticides, September 21, 2022) Strawberry plants pollinated by wild bees exposed to neonicotinoid insecticides produce smaller berries than those pollinated by unexposed bees, finds research published in the journal PLOS One. The findings are yet another piece of evidence pointing to the need for major reforms in the way pesticides are evaluated and pollinators are protected in the United States. As decades of evidence have piled up on the dangers posed by long-lived, systemic, neonicotinoid insecticides, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done little to address the damage to pollinator populations, while needed legislation, the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, has languished in Congress without a hearing or a vote, despite having over 75 cosponsors.

This new study describes a novel consideration for how neonicotinoids may harm pollinators and impact the food supply. “Previous studies have shown that clothianidin affects wild bees negatively in terms of foraging speed, development and reproduction. Our results indicate that it can also impair the bees’ ability to pollinate strawberry flowers,” says study coauthor Lina Herbertsson, PhD.

Scientists established 12 outdoor cages each with 10 strawberry plants and 11 canola plants. For half of the cages, the canola plants were grown with seeds coated in the neonicotinoid clothianidin and the synthetic pyrethroid cyfluthrin. A small population (5 male, 4 female) of the generalist foraging mason bee Osmia bicornis was permitted to forage within each cage. While cyfluthrin poses a range of risks to pollinators and may run off into water supplies, it is not systemic. As a result, despite its presence as a seed coating, it does not make its way into the pollen and nectar that bees forage, and researchers evaluated the bees under the expectation they would only be exposed to clothianidin.

Observations began by following a female bee from nest to forage and back, but this became too time consuming. As a result, the approach was shifted to observations on the time it took the first female pollinator out of the nest to visit 10 different flowers. Researchers also specifically observed strawberry plant visitation over the course of two minute intervals, which included 34 different sessions over the course of 5 days. At the end of the experiment, strawberries were harvested when completely red and weighed. Canola plants were removed and tested to confirm the presence of clothianidin.

Data analysis shows no significant difference in foraging during the first stage of the experiment, but this changed when observations focused on time to forage 10 flowers. Bees feeding on canola that had been seed-treated with neonicotinoids foraged 10% slower than those in the unexposed canola cages. There were also outliers where exposed bees took nearly triple the average time to visit 10 flowers.

In addition to slowing the bees rate of forage, strawberry harvests were recorded to be between 8 and 13% lower in cages were bees foraged on neonicotinoid exposed canola. “We studied bees that ingested clothianidin, a pesticide that was previously used in rapeseed to control flea beetles. Our study indicates that the substance made the bees slower and impaired their ability to pollinate the strawberry flowers,” said Dr. Herbertsson.

Scientists also found that as females constructed nests, more than one third of those in exposed cages did not seal their nest hole with mud, a common practice for the species. All but one nest in the control cages performed this action.

Impaired pollination associated with neonicotinoid exposure has been recorded in past research, adding weight to the study results. A 2015 paper in Nature found that bumblebees exposed to thiamethoxam visited apples less often and collected less pollen when they did. Critically, this resulted in apples with fewer seeds. Likewise, research published in 2016 in the journal Functional Ecology found that neonicotinoid exposure altered bumblebee foraging behavior of wild plants, affecting their ability to learn how to extract nectar and pollen, and causing them to take longer to do so.  

While decreases in foraging efficiency may not seem significant at first glace, extrapolating these data alongside real-world observations brings the problem into sharp contrast. In 2020, a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that wild pollinator declines in the U.S. are already limiting crop production. This problem is quantifiable – with researchers finding the value of wild pollination services at $1.5 billion annually, with all pollinator-dependent crops totaling $50 billion each year. At the global scale, production of crops dependent on pollinators is worth between $253 and $577 billion. Even these numbers mask the true extent of how precarious a world with fewer, and less efficient pollinators would be. According to research published in PLOS One in 2015, such a world would be subject to rampant malnutrition. As lack of pollination reduces crop yields, access healthy crops like strawberries, apples, and others is likely to become accessible only to the wealthiest individuals in a given region.

We can avoid these worst case scenarios by making sure our leaders take this research seriously, and act upon these real and present risks. It is unacceptable for the U.S. to be a straggler on this issue, failing to meaningfully restrict neonicotinoids while the European Union eliminated them in 2018. As U.S. regulators and politicians fret over short-term impacts to farmers from the loss of a chemical tool, we are piece by piece losing our long-term ability to produce healthy, nutritious food. The Saving America’s Pollinators Act would address the pollinator crisis by eliminating neonicotinoids and establishing a board of experts without chemical industry influence to review pesticides for their impacts to pollinator health or habitat. Despite being introduced each year now for roughly a decade, and consistently attracting dozens of co-sponsors, members of the House Agriculture committee have still not even given the legislation a proper hearing. Help build momentum for this bill in Congress by urging your Representative to take action before it is too late.

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

Source: Lund University press release, PLOS One

(Beyond Pesticides, September 20, 2022) A federal court this month declared that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acted unlawfully in allowing food retailers to label genetically engineered (GE, or GMO) foods with only a “QR” code. The decision, made by U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, comes as a result of a lawsuit against USDA by a coalition of nonprofits led by Center for Food Safety, along with organic retailers Natural Grocers and Puget Consumers Co-op. “This is a win for the American family. They can now make fully informed shopping decisions instead of being forced to use detective work to understand what food labels are hiding,” said Alan Lewis, Vice President for Advocacy and Governmental Affairs at Natural Grocers. “The public’s rejection of hidden GMOs has been weighed by the Court to be greater than the agrochemical industry’s desire to hide GMOs behind incomprehensible bureaucratic rules.”

In 2016, Congress passed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standards Act, which established federal standards around labeling GE foods. That bill, dubbed by GE transparency advocates as the DARK (Denying Americans the Right to Know) Act, was the result of a deal between U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MO) and Pat Roberts (R-KS), and widely seen as an effort to block a strong GE labeling law passed by the state of Vermont as part of a wave of grassroots advocacy around the issue. Under the new law, all state-level GE labeling efforts became preempted (prohibited) by federal law, a weak definition of “biotechnology” provided several loopholes, and food retailers were to be given a choice of labeling options to be determined by USDA.

Congress mandated that USDA study the challenges associated with using electronic or digital “QR” code links. Based on the study, the USDA Secretary was to determine whether consumers would have sufficient access to information about the presence of GE materials in one’s food. If not, the Secretary was required to consult with retailers and provide additional disclosure options.

USDA refused to release the results of this study when it was completed. It took a 2017 lawsuit from Center for Food Safety to force the department’s hand, resulting in a public release less than two weeks after the legal challenge was launched. The study found that low-income, rural, and elderly Americans were most likely to encounter technological challenges in receiving information from a QR code. Reasons include lack of equipment like a smartphone, unreliable internet connections, and difficulty using QR technology. In general, it found Americans of all ages and backgrounds to be unfamiliar with QR codes.

The USDA study did find that over half of U.S. adults care and want to know whether their food is genetically engineered, a figure that cut across region, age, gender, and income. Yet USDA’s takeaway was not to embrace transparency, but instead the discriminatory approach of QR codes that keeps low-income, rural, and elderly Americans in the dark. Further, instead of utilizing the term genetically engineered or genetically modified organisms, names most Americans are familiar with, the department opted to have these products labeled as “bioengineered.” In its original proposal, USDA went as far as to suggest the use of a happy, smiling sun that would read either “bioengineered” or “may be bioengineered food.”

USDA significantly curtailed foods subject to the disclosure requirement, allowing a range of loopholes for manufacturers to avoid labeling foods that may in fact contain GE ingredients. For instance, foods that list either meat, poultry, eggs, broth, stock or water as the first ingredient are not required to be labeled, even if other ingredients in the product are GE. Even more egregiously, food products containing “refined” GE ingredients (such as oil from GE soybeans, or candy bars with high fructose corn syrup from GE corn) do not require disclosure as long as the refining process is “validated” by USDA.

CFS’s lawsuit challenged USDA on all of these aspects. “Americans deserve nothing less than clear on-package labeling, the way food has always been labeled,” said CFS legal director George Kimbrell. “Allowing companies to hide genetically engineered ingredients behind a website or QR code is discriminatory and unworkable.”

The court victory requires USDA to revise portions of its rules implementing GE disclosure, removing the option to use QR codes on the package, and adding an additional disclosure option that is accessible to all Americans. However, the court is continuing to permit USDA to use the unfamiliar term “bioengineered.” It also took no action on USDA’s loopholes for “highly refined” products. CFS indicates it is not ruling out an appeal on those unaddressed issues.

“We are very gratified that the District Court has acknowledged the flawed nature of the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard and has removed at least one of the very egregious aspects of it from the labeling standard,” said Mark Squire, co-owner and manager of Good Earth Natural Foods. “We will continue to fight for complete honesty and transparency in food labeling.”

Lax regulations are permitting more and more GE foods in the aisles of American supermarkets. Just recently, USDA approved a GE purple tomato, an unnecessary invention that adds pigments widely found in other fruits and vegetables. Yet most concerning among GE crops are those developed to withstand repeated spraying with highly hazardous pesticides. Not only are these crops likely to contain higher levels of toxic chemicals that threaten public health, but they also result in indirect damage to wildlife, water quality, and the wider environment.

Beyond Pesticides has long maintained that consumers should be able to discern whether the products they purchase are putting themselves or the local community where the crops were grown at risk. For more information on GE agriculture and the decades long fight for GE labeling transparency, see Beyond Pesticides’ Genetic Engineering program page.

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

Source: Center for Food Safety press release

(Beyond Pesticides, September 19, 2022) Schools have been deeply concerned about providing safety from COVID-19, but often overlook that the toxic pesticides to which students, teachers, and other staff may be exposed in going back to school threaten their health, both short- and long-term. Beyond Pesticides identifies the health hazards that pesticides pose to the nervous, immune, and respiratory systems, as well as brain function, and their association with cancer and other chronic effects. At the same time, practical, and cost-effective pest management practices are available that do not utilize toxic pesticides (including disinfectants).

Tell your Governor to ensure that children, teachers, and staff in all schools throughout your state are protected from toxic chemicals.

Children face unique hazards from pesticide exposure. In the food they eat and the air they breathe, children take in greater amounts of pesticides (relative to their body weight) than adults, and their developing organ systems are typically more sensitive to toxic exposures. Children also come into closer contact with chemicals than adults, as a result of crawling behavior and hand to mouth contact.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a landmark report on children and pesticide use, wrote, “Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity. Acute poisoning risks are clear, and understanding of chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure is emerging. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems.” Infants and toddlers in childcare are at risk of developmental delays.

The body of evidence in the scientific literature shows that pesticide exposure can adversely affect a child’s neurological, respiratory, immune, and endocrine system, even at low exposure levels. Several pesticide families, such as synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates, and carbamates, are also known to cause or exacerbate respiratory symptoms like asthma. See the scientific references on why Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix.

As the science on the dangers that pesticides pose to public health continue to mount, school administrators, staff, and parents are working to change practices for the better. More and more school buildings and grounds are employing ecological pest management principles that focus on prevention, rather than the regular use of toxic pesticides.

Custodial staff and pest managers can ManageSafe by following simple steps. These include properly identifying pests, setting action or damage thresholds, monitoring and recordkeeping, and the use of structural, mechanical, cultural, and biological controls before using even least-toxic pesticides or organic compatible products. These principles can be applied to both indoor and outdoor environments, with ecological and organic methods.

In the indoor environment, an ecological pest management approach focuses on fostering a culture of pest prevention among both students and staff. It’s nothing special – just emphasize building good habits, such as cleaning up after eating, storing food in sealed containers, not leaving food or water out, and other methods that eliminate a pest’s access to food, water, or shelter.

In the outdoor environment, the organic principles apply with a focus is fostering healthy soils. School groundskeepers and landscapers play a pivotal role in this process. Rather than reaching for a chemical when a weed appears, the organic approach cultivates healthy soil biology through practices that work with, rather than against nature. We can help improve turfgrass resilience to pest and weed intrusions by caring for building the soil biological life and organic matter. Combine the use of natural soil supplements with cultural practices like mowing high, aeration, and overseeding. All of this leads to long-term cost savings from eliminating pesticides and fertilizers that are replaced by natural cycling of nutrients, and reduced watering because of increased soil tilth and water retention. In sum, these practices will save schools money and prevent children’s exposure to toxic pesticides while they focus on learning.

Tell your Governor to ensure that children, teachers, and staff in all schools throughout your state are protected from toxic chemicals.

Letter to Governor:

I am writing to ask you to ensure that our children are safe from toxic pesticides as they go back to school. Our schools have been deeply concerned about providing safety from COVID-19. Let’s not forget the toxic pesticides to which students, teachers, and other staff may be exposed. Please ask the Superintendent of Schools and your Commissioner of Education to eliminate pesticides from our schools.

Children face unique hazards from pesticide exposure. In the food they eat and the air they breathe, children take in greater amounts of pesticides (relative to their body weight) than adults, and their developing organ systems are typically more sensitive to toxic exposures. Children also come into closer contact with chemicals than adults, as a result of crawling behavior and hand to mouth contact.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a landmark report on children and pesticide use, wrote, “Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity. Acute poisoning risks are clear, and understanding of chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure is emerging. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems.”  

The body of evidence in the scientific literature shows that pesticide exposure can adversely affect a child’s neurological, respiratory, immune, and endocrine system, even at low exposure levels. Several pesticide families, such as synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates, and carbamates, are also known to cause or exacerbate respiratory symptoms like asthma.

As the science on the dangers that pesticides pose to public health continue to mount, school administrators, staff, and parents are working to change practices for the better. More and more school buildings and grounds are employing ecological pest management principles that focus on prevention, rather than the regular use of toxic pesticides.

Custodial staff and pest managers can ManageSafe by following simple steps. These include properly identifying pests, setting action or damage thresholds, monitoring and recordkeeping, and the use of structural, mechanical, cultural, and biological controls before using even least-toxic pesticides or organic compatible products. These principles can be applied to both indoor and outdoor environments, with ecological and organic methods.

In the indoor environment, an ecological pest management approach focuses on fostering a culture of pest prevention among both students and staff. It’s nothing special – just emphasize building good habits, such as cleaning up after eating, storing food in sealed containers, not leaving food or water out, and other methods that eliminate a pest’s access to food, water, or shelter.

In the outdoor environment, the organic principles apply with a focus is fostering healthy soils. School groundskeepers and landscapers play a pivotal role in this process. Rather than reaching for a chemical when a weed appears, the organic approach cultivates healthy soil biology through practices that work with, rather than against nature. We can help improve turfgrass resilience to pest and weed intrusions by caring for building the soil biological life and organic matter. Combine the use of natural soil supplements with cultural practices like mowing high, aeration, and overseeding. All of this leads to long-term cost savings from eliminating pesticides and fertilizers that are replaced by natural cycling of nutrients, and reduced watering because of increased soil tilth and water retention. In sum, these practices will save schools money and prevent children’s exposure to toxic pesticides while they focus on learning.

Please tell the state school superintendent to eliminate pesticides. Further information is available at: https://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/children-and-schools/hazards-of-pesticides.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, September 16, 2022) A report issued on September 7 analyzes the U.S. regulatory structure that is supposed to protect agricultural workers from the harms of pesticide use. Its conclusion? The current, “complex system of enforcement . . . lacks the capacity to effectively protect farmworkers. . . . [and] the cooperative agreement[s] between federal and state agencies makes it nearly impossible to ensure implementation of the federal Worker Protection Standard.” The report, Exposed and At Risk: Opportunities to Strengthen Enforcement of Pesticide Regulations for Farmworker Safety, was developed by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School, in partnership with the nonprofit advocacy group, Farmworker Justice. Beyond Pesticides’ coverage of farmworker exposure to pesticides and resultant harms began in the late 1970s; it continues today, most recently with attention to incidence of kidney damage, systemic racism in the farmworker policies of EPA (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), and extra risks endured by farmworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exposed and At Risk is issued as part of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) Food System Workers Law and Policy Project. Previously, CAFS issued a report in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, titled, Essentially Unprotected: A Focus on Farmworker Health Laws and Policies Addressing Pesticide Exposure and Heat-Related Illness. The report authors, in addition to executing extensive other research, conducted interviews and gathered “stories from the fields” in Washington, Illinois, Florida, and California.

Pesticide risks to agricultural workers (and pesticide applicators) are significant. The farming sector uses roughly 90% of the one billion pounds of various pesticides deployed annually in the U.S. (across all sectors). Thus, agricultural workers are regularly exposed, at atypically high rates, to chemicals that can pose considerable safety and health risks to humans (in addition to their impacts on the environment, non-human organisms, and ecosystems broadly). These risks to farmworkers and pesticide applicators are made worse, according to the report, by inadequate training in handling pesticides, and subsequent improper handling and application “in the farm field” or on other kinds of sites, as well as by bureaucratic, regulatory, and policy issues, as detailed below.

The federal Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS) is the premier regulation, authorized under a provision of FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), for protection of farmworkers and pesticide handlers from “pesticide poisonings and injuries.” Although the WPS is a federal regulation, it is largely administered by states through “cooperative agreements” — negotiated with states by EPA’s 10 regional offices — that allow states to enact enforce federal pesticide protections (e.g., via WPS and FIFRA). Farmworkers are uniquely not generally covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The chief goal of these cooperative agreements is to enforce federal law and tailor the enforcement to regional/state needs. Typically, a state will task a lead agency, such as a department of agriculture, with primary enforcement responsibility (more on this below). These state systems (of enforcement) vary widely, exacerbating the risks to agricultural workers, causing disproportionate risks from one state to the next, and in some cases, reflecting what the report calls, “the persistent realities of systemic racism and the routine dehumanization of noncitizen workers.” For more about pesticides and structural racism, read Beyond Pesticides’ 2021 reporting, Disproportionate Pesticide Harm Is Racial Injustice / Documenting Victimization: Structural Racism.

The CAFS report outlines the parameters of how this all works: “As with many environmental laws in the United States, the federal government sets broad national standards and works cooperatively with states to enforce them. In addition, states may enact laws regarding the use of pesticides, with the caveat that FIFRA expressly preempts states from creating supplemental or different labeling requirements. However, FIFRA provides only the floor of protection for the issues states are not preempted from regulating. This means, for example, that states can prohibit use of a pesticide that EPA would otherwise allow, but it cannot allow use of a pesticide that is prohibited by EPA.”

Beyond Pesticides has written that the original, 1974 WPS “offered virtually no occupational safety standards for workers being exposed to highly toxic pesticides.” Indeed, in 1983, EPA finally and “officially” found it inadequate to offer adequate protections, but it was not until 1992 that the agency updated the regulation. (Read about the role Beyond Pesticides played in the 1983 assessment here.) We wrote: “Those 1992 updates to the WPS were intended to eliminate or reduce exposure to pesticides, mitigate exposures that occur, and inform employees about the hazards of pesticides. Despite these intentions, the updated WPS still did not adequately protect farmworkers.”

In 2015, the Obama EPA again updated the WPS, this time strengthening the regulation via, for example, more training for handlers, and a minimum age at which children would be allowed to work around pesticides. Then, the Trump administration weakened the standard, including reducing protections via Application Exclusion Zones (AEZs, or buffer zones), which were to have gone into effect in late 2020. In early 2021, the federal GAO (Government Accountability Office) issued a report asserting that EPA was failing to administer the 2015 changes to WPS effectively.

In early 2021, Beyond Pesticides noted that the protection of farmworkers from the threats of pesticide exposures had been the subject of multiple recent developments and actions, including a finalized rollback of aspects of EPA’s pesticide Application Exclusion Zone (AEZ) rules; a temporary stay on implementation of those rule changes by SDNY; the recommendations from GAO mentioned above; and advocacy by Beyond Pesticides and others, including Farmworker Justice and Earthjustice. Beyond Pesticides has called attention to the inadequate state of farmworker protections from pesticides, and advocated for robust regulation to ensure the health of these essential workers, including extra protections during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another of those developments was 2020’s litigation against EPA, by a five-state coalition led by New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, for the agency’s retrograde October 2020 rule on AEZs. The suit argued that “EPA violated federal law when it adopted a regulation that allows pesticide spraying to continue even if farmworkers or other persons are within the area immediately surrounding the spraying equipment, if that area is outside the farm’s boundaries.” Plaintiffs added that the AEZ regulation “puts many more people at significant risk of dangerous exposures to pesticides,” and that EPA was “ignoring its obligation to identify and address the disproportionately high and adverse effects of this policy change on minority and low-income populations.”

Ms. James commented, at the time of the announcement, that pesticides are “extremely dangerous to the health of farming communities. . . . Trump’s EPA knowingly increased the risk that farmworkers, their families, and others will be exposed to these dangerous chemicals. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, farming communities have been our front-line workers, underpinning our economy and ensuring we have enough food on our tables. To further endanger their health and safety is as unconscionable as it is illegal.”

An important aspect of the CAFS report’s findings is that, even with regulations and laws for farmworker protection in place — such as the federal WPS — enforcement of these is weak. In a fairly clear “fox and henhouse” example, the report notes that, often, the very state agencies (such as agriculture departments) that are charged with enforcement of federal and state pesticide laws are also the entities whose tasks include promotion of the state’s agriculture sector and its economic interests. Thus, the report opines that “the agencies charged with pesticide regulation at the state and federal level may not be the best suited for this [enforcement] role. Further, because the current enforcement system lacks capacity to inspect all farms, the likelihood of catching violators is low, resulting in frequent violations by growers.”

The report names multiple problems the research has unearthed in its section titled, “Effect of our Current Structure of Pesticide Regulation Enforcement” (p. 22):

• inappropriate agencies take the lead on pesticide regulation enforcement at the federal and state levels
• different agencies sharing some degree of regulatory jurisdiction can create confusion
• substantial discrepancies between data reported by EPA and the states make it difficult to understand the performance of pesticide regulation enforcement programs
• EPA rarely exercises its authority to conduct inspections
• EPA has failed to issue standard expectations for state enforcement programs
• EPA lacks meaningful recourse to discipline states for poor enforcement
• states lack sufficient mandatory reporting requirements
• the rate of state inspections is low and many inspections are substandard
• nationally, the rate of violations resulting from inspections is high while the rate of enforcement actions taken in response to violations is low
• penalties for violations are disproportionately low
• farmworker victims of WPS violations have limited individual recourse for enforcement and no opportunities to receive support under FIFRA

Exposed and At Risk notes that, not only is there often inadequate state agency response to reported worker protection violations, but also, that farmworkers themselves are frequently reluctant to report violations of such regulations because of poor access to resources and/or fear of retaliation or even deportation. According to a press release from Vermont Law and Graduate School, the report “identifies gaps in pesticide safety enforcement and proposes a set of policy recommendations that were formulated with the lived experience of farmworkers in mind,” and focuses on recommendations to address structural flaws in the enforcement system.

The reports introduces its recommendations with this: “To ensure that [farmworkers] receive sufficient health and safety protection, significant social, cultural, and political conditions must be addressed. At a minimum, the regulatory system that has the potential to protect them should not be working against them. To start, law and policymakers must address the structural flaws in pesticide law enforcement. The following recommendations reflect steps that can be taken to further this objective.” The report goes on to make recommendations to Congress, to EPA, and to states:

1. Congress should:

• restore partial jurisdiction over the regulation of pesticide-related occupational hazards to OSHA (the federal Occupational, Safety and Health Administration) to ensure better coordination between OSHA and EPA
• consider amending FIFRA to model other environmental statutes administered by EPA
• grant EPA greater authority to respond to states failing to meet enforcement goals, including the authority to impose sanctions related to the agriculture industry
• appropriate more funds to NIOSH’s SENSOR program to support states in consistently reporting data on acute pesticide-related illness and to expand the number of states in the program

2. EPA should:

• incorporate more “pick-list” program areas (see p. 13 of the report) into its required program area list, especially those areas that affect human health and safety, such as spray drift and emerging public health pesticide issues
• through its rulemaking process, engage stakeholders in order to understand what factors are most important in assessing compliance with WPS (e.g., number of exposures, quality of response to exposures, etc.), and establish clear metrics through which it can measure that compliance
• issue mandatory and universal standards for inspections and responses to violations, at least for federally funded enforcement activities
• mandate “whole of program” annual reporting as a condition of receiving federal grants
• require that state lead agencies for pesticide regulation enforcement be departments of labor, departments dedicated to pesticide regulation, or another department whose main priority is human health and safety
• Also, regional EPA offices should conduct more inspections as part of their routine oversight duties; EPA should consider a public-private partnership to fulfill this obligation.

3. States should:

• streamline their administration of pesticide regulations
• commit to reducing the influence of industry over pesticide regulation
• implement a neighbor notification system to reduce the incidence of exposure caused by pesticide drift, and receive federal assistance to do so
• implement mandatory reporting requirements, both for pesticide use and for incidents of pesticide exposure
• conduct more routine inspections without providing advance notice to growers

Additional recommendations are (1) state legislatures should grant state departments of health more authority to conduct inspections and investigations of suspected pesticide exposure incidents, independent of the state’s designated lead agency; and (2) penalties for violations of the WPS (or state-equivalent regulations) should be increased to reflect the grave harm caused to human health and safety.

This report responds to the somewhat chaotic state of enforcement of pesticide regulations across the country. Its recommendations would likely be helpful in addressing the risks experienced by farmworkers and others vocationally exposed to pesticides. (See Beyond Pesticides’ webpage on Agricultural Justice.)

That said, Beyond Pesticides maintains that a far better use of the energy, time, and expense that goes into evaluating and regulating pesticides, and enforcing rules about them, would be to undertake the broad and necessary transition away from toxic synthetic pesticide use and to employment of organic regenerative agricultural systems. Organic practices avoid industrial agriculture’s reliance on these chemical pesticide inputs (and on harmful synthetic fertilizers). They have been proven to be successful, cost-effective, and beneficial for soil health, the environment, the food supply, public health, biodiversity, climate, and natural resources.

The removal of toxic pesticides from agriculture through adoption of these practices would also be a huge boon for farmworkers, on whose work we all depend for sustenance, and who deserve a work environment free of pesticide risks and harms. To these ends, please join Beyond Pesticides, participate for the balance of our 2022 National Forum Series on Health, Biodiversity, and Climate, and/or reach out to us about pesticide concerns for your own community.

Sources: https://www.vermontlaw.edu/news-and-events/newsroom/press-release/new-report-exposes-significant-gaps-in-pesticide-safety and https://www.vermontlaw.edu/sites/default/files/2022-09/Exposed-and-At-Risk.pdf

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 15, 2022) A review published in Scientific African finds pesticide exposure contributes to the increase in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Tanzania, reflecting implications for global health. There are four main NCDs, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, respiratory diseases, and endocrine-disrupting diseases like diabetes. These diseases have no bacterial, viral, or fungal causes, but are chronic diseases with risk factors like genetics, tobacco/alcohol use, physical activity, and diet, thus lacking transmission between people. However, research is now investigating the role environmental factors play in NCD risks, such as outdoor and indoor air pollution, exposure to chemicals, radiation, and occupation. Regardless of whether working together or separately, these risk factors contribute to NCDs and subsequent health conditions. Non-communicable diseases are on the rise, and the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies non-communicable diseases as the number one cause of death globally, affecting 41 million individuals. Moreover, WHO estimates NCD death rates to increase by 17 percent in the next decade, significantly surpassing deaths from communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional diseases combined. Therefore, the report notes, “This review is informative to the policy, practices, and intervention towards the existing situation of pesticides in Tanzania. In addition, it calls for further investigation of the absence of data on pesticide exposure and NCDs.”

The review highlights existing information on pesticide exposure, health effects, and handling/management for current pesticide regulations in Tanzania. From 2017 to 2018, the authors observed an increase in pesticide imports, up to 4.5 million liters, and the registration of 1,114 pesticides. Ecological evaluations demonstrate the pervasiveness of pesticide residues in food, water, and soil resources, identifying intolerable contamination levels. Moreover, residents of Tanzania lack proper awareness of the harms of pesticide exposure among the population. Regardless of existing pesticide regulations in Tanzania, mismanagement of pesticides has led to higher exposure. The report also identifies occupational threats to public health as many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) greatly depend on agriculture and take insufficient precautions during pesticide preparation and application to fields. Thus, the report finds an association between pesticide NCDs in Tanzania. 

There are a wide range of diseases and ecological effects linked to pesticides. Of the 40 most commonly used lawn and landscape pesticides in the U.S., 26 are possible or known carcinogens, 24 have the potential to disrupt the endocrine (hormonal) system, 29 have links to reproductive and sexual dysfunction, 21 have associations with birth abnormalities, 24 are neurotoxic, 32 can cause kidney or liver damage, and 33 are sensitizers or irritants. Regarding adverse environmental effects, 21 are detectable 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. Thus, pesticides are ubiquitous in the environment, remaining in soils, water (solid and liquid), and the surrounding air at levels exceeding U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, with 90 percent of Americans having at least one pesticide compound in their body. However, the widespread and direct exposure from applications or indirect exposure from residues poses a threat to human health, especially during vulnerable life stages like childhood, puberty, pregnancy, and old age. A mother’s exposure to environmental toxicants while pregnant may increase the likelihood of developing brain abnormalities as most developmental disabilities begin before birth. Moreover, individuals living near agricultural areas experience higher exposure rates that increase the risk of birth defects, neurological disorders, respiratory diseases, and cancers. 

These results are significant, not only as a reflection of chemical exposure effects throughout developing/LMICs, but in small regions within developed countries. Pesticide uses (from farming, occupation, pollution) in many low-middle income regions are much higher than wealthier regions. With elevated exposure in low- and middle-income communities, there is a disproportionate risk to occupational workers and individuals in these communities. The report concludes, “The findings from this review identify a need to investigate the contribution of pesticide exposure to the increased rates of NCDs and other related co-morbidities in Tanzania. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture, through TPRI in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and research institutions, should conduct an epidemiological study to investigate the extent of pesticide effects on human health in the country.”

Numerous studies indicate chemical exposure mainly stems from dietary exposure, like food and drinking water, and researchers caution that humans are likely to encounter hundreds to thousands of these chemicals. 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. Therefore, understanding the risk that pesticide exposure plays in disease development is essential to consider since these chemicals can cause disproportionate health effects on individuals, especially in LMICs. With numerous global diseases associated with pesticide exposure, including NCDs, eliminating toxic pesticide use is crucial for safeguarding public health and addressing cost burdens for local communities. In response to current findings, policies should enforce stricter pesticide regulations that phase out hazardous chemical use. Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent studies on pesticide exposure through our Pesticide Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the clear need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. Learn more about how pesticides can adversely affect human and environmental health by reading Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticides and You article, “Highly Destructive Pesticide Effects Unregulated.”

One way to reduce human and environmental contamination from pesticides is by buying, growing, and supporting organic. Numerous studies find that pesticide metabolite levels in urine significantly drop when switching to an all-organic diet. Furthermore, given the wide availability of non-pesticidal alternative strategies, families and agro-industry workers can apply these methods to promote a safe and healthy environment, especially among chemically vulnerable individuals. For more information on how organic is the right choice for consumers, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture.

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

Source: Scientific African

(Beyond Pesticides, September 14, 2022) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is confirming that PFAS (per and polyfluorinated alykyl substances) forever chemicals leach into pesticides from their storage containers, and is taking steps to remove 12 “inert” PFAS ingredients that are currently allowed to be added to pesticide products. The agency’s move is a step toward some measure of health protections from chemicals that may have been widely sprayed throughout many American communities, and have been linked to cancer, liver damage, birth and developmental problems, reduced fertility, and asthma. However, many advocates indicate EPA’s actions on PFAS inerts do not go far enough, and the agency’s findings regarding leaching storage containers are accompanied by no meaningful restrictions on their use.

Following reports and preliminary testing conducted in 2020 showing that PFAS chemicals are present in a widely used mosquito adulticide, EPA began investigating the source of this contamination. Testing on the product Anvil 10+10, produced by the company Clarke, resulted in detection of nine different PFAS chemicals. Early indications indicate that the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers used to store pesticides contained PFAS substances on their walls, and that those chemicals are leaching into the liquid pesticides stored in contaminated barrels.

These results led EPA to conduct more comprehensive testing, considering the length of time a pesticide product is stored, and whether the type of liquid stored in the barrel made a difference. At the time, Kyla Bennet, PhD, Policy Director at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, whose testing of the insecticide first raised the alarms, noted that, “EPA’s discovery has opened a Pandora’s Box of health risks.” The findings on HDPE containers have broad implications, as these barrels are often used to store food products. The chilling initial findings that widely used food storage containers may be leaching forever chemicals into America’s food supply forced EPA’s hand, leading the agency to issue a warning to manufacturers, processors, distributors, users, and those that dispose of fluorinated HDPE containers that they may be in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

As part of EPA’s more comprehensive testing, the agency purchased barrels of fluorinated and non-fluorinated containers from three different manufacturers. For each of the brands, the agency filled one container with water, and anther with methanol (methanol was used to mimic a pesticide). Sampling was conducted at one day, one week, four weeks, 10 weeks and 20 weeks. While the agency tested for 31 different PFAS compounds, many are concerned that this range is insufficient, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates there are over 9,000 different synthetic chemicals that could fall under the term PFAS.

The agency found that leaching occurs with both water and methanol stored in the containers, though methanol generally results in higher levels of PFAS. Levels increase over the course of time, though some brands leach at a random rate, increasing and decreasing over the course of the study. The highest detection is seen at week ten in a fluorinated container labeled ‘Brand A’ by the agency, which recorded 14.72 parts per billion PFAS. EPA indicates that this could be a result of different manufacturers’ production processes, information the agency indicates it did not seek out before testing for each brand. Although the agency indicates that the detection is likely a result of background levels and lab equipment, even non-fluorinated containers measured some level of PFAS leaching  (0.045 ppb) over the course of the 20 week study.

Given that EPA itself has set health advisory levels for certain PFAS in the parts per quadrillion, these results raise significant public health concerns for all Americans. Yet, after this extensive study, the agency announced no substantive measures to rein in their use.

“Unfortunately, EPA’s pace of action on this issue is more glacial than galloping,” said Dr. Bennet of PEER. “Without the threat of a regulatory cudgel, private companies have no incentive – if not a distinct disincentive – to test. EPA should require testing and immediately ban the use of fluorinated containers, especially for food products and pesticides sprayed on food.”

Where the agency did take action surrounded a route of pesticide contaimaition that the agency had already precluded – inerts. Inert ingredients in pesticides are materials intentionally included in a pesticide by the manufacturer, including surfactants, aerosols, propellants, fragrances, dyes, or emulsifiers. Despite the innocuous sounding name ‘inerts,’ these chemicals are often anything but. They could be truly inert, such as cocoa powder or canola oil, or as toxic as formaldehyde or hydrochloric acid. As EPA now admits, the inert ingredient on a pesticide label could have been a PFAS chemical. Despite these potential health risks, the agency does not require manufacturers disclose the full formulation of pesticides sold to consumers.  

According to the agency, the twelve PFAS chemicals removed from EPA’s list of allowed inerts “are no longer used in any registered pesticide product…” Yet, EPA provided no indication of where they may have been used in the past, meaning that many individuals throughout the country may have an old bottle of pesticide containing PFAS. In regards to the chemicals not removed, the Massachusetts Sierra Club notes in a tweet that, “there are at least 13 other remaining fluorinated chemicals such as Teflon that can still be used as ‘inert’ pesticide ingredients, including on food crops.” The group notes examples like chlorofluoromethane, which is not generally considered PFAS but is a closely related fluorinated chemical. Further, there are a range of fluorinated active pesticide ingredients, like broflanilide, pyrifluquinazon, noviflumuron, which meet EPA’s PFAS definition, and fluorinated synthetic pyrethroid bifenthrin, discussed at length in a recent Scientific American article.

While EPA has not been completely silent on the issue, its actions have not yet matched the danger posed by the continued spread of these chemicals. Already, research shows that these chemicals are ubiquitous in rainwater, making it unfit for consumption anywhere around the world and surpassing the earth’s planetary boundary for safety. To date, only the state of Maine has taken meaningful action to ban pesticides containing PFAS chemicals. It is critical for the future of public health and the safety of the food we eat that EPA take more substantive actions on the intersection between PFAS and pesticides. Join Beyond Pesticides or sign up for our alerts today in order to stay up to date on the latest information in this ongoing story.

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

Source: EPA press release (PFAS inerts), EPA press release (PFAS HDPE container study), PEER press release

(Beyond Pesticides, September 13, 2022) Every store-bought milkweed sample tested in a recent study contains multiple toxic pesticides, placing monarchs reliant on these plants in harm’s way at a time the species can ill afford any further loss to its population. Pollinator declines have influenced many residents throughout the U.S. to take action into their own hands and transform their home yards or businesses into an oasis for bees, birds, and butterflies. Yet the recent study published in Biological Conservation finds that many retailers are dousing their ‘wildlife-friendly’ plants with pesticides that put this vulnerable species in further danger.

“That was the most shocking part,” said lead author Christopher Halsch, a doctoral study at University of Nevada, Reno. “The fact that plants labeled as potentially beneficial or at least friendly to wildlife are not better and in some cases might be worse than other plants available for purchase. This research sheds light on how pesticides may impact western monarchs, but many other butterflies are facing even steeper population declines, and pesticides are likely one driver.”

Testing was conducted by purchasing milkweed plants at 33 different stores spanning 15 different states. A sample of each plant was cut after purchase, and then sent to the lab for chemical analysis. Screening was conducted for 92 different pesticides, including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and the synergist piperonyl butoxide.

Out of the 92 pesticides tested, 61 compounds were discovered in milkweed samples. Every sample contains at least two pesticides, though certain plants contain over 25 different chemicals. Despite the importance of this iconic species, data on harmful effects of most pesticides on monarchs is sparse or lacking. Only 9 of the 61 compounds detected have been tested for their impact on monarch health. Yet for the data that is available, researchers find that 89 samples exceed levels associated with sublethal effects in monarchs — exposures that may not outright kill a monarch, but may increase the likelihood of death in the wild. These sublethal effects were seen in 17 of 25 locations, driven primarily by the elevated presence of the fungicides azoxystrobin and trifloxystrobin. Milkweed sold from larger retailers generally contain more pesticide than those sold at smaller stores, but the effect was not statistically strong.

“In a previous study in California that primarily looked at milkweed in agriculture and urban interfaces, we had looked at a small number of plants from retail nurseries, and found that they contained pesticides,” study coauthor Matt Forister, PhD, said. “So we were prepared for this much larger sample of nursery plants to again uncover contamination, but it was surprising to see the great diversity of pesticides found in these plants. In many ways, they are as contaminated or even worse than plants growing on the edges of agricultural fields. That was a surprise, at least to me.”

Prior investigations from the same research team did find wild milkweed growing in a range of habitats to be ubiquitously contaminated with pesticides. Published in 2020, their study found 262 different pesticides from over 200 milkweed samples collected from around 20 sites within California’s Central Valley. “From roadsides, from yards, from wildlife refuges, even from plants bought at stores—doesn’t matter from where—it’s all loaded with chemicals” Dr. Forister said of the previous study.

Monarchs on both sides of North America are fairing extremely poorly in the face of multiple interacting stressors, including climate change, habitat destruction, and pesticide exposure. Eastern populations have declined by 80% since 2005, and western monarchs have shrunk an astounding 99.9% from their population of over 10 million in the 1980s. These numbers pose a significant risk of migratory collapse, and with it, potential extinction.

Despite this dismal state of affairs, Aimee Code, study coauthor and pesticide program director at the national nonprofit Xerces Society, notes that, “Everyone can take steps to address the risks we uncovered.” In the context of this study, it’s important get active in your purchases and the milkweed plants being sold in your community.  “Consumers can let their nurseries know they want plants that are free from harmful pesticides. Nursery outlets can talk with their suppliers and encourage safer practices, and government agencies can improve oversight,” she said.

Instead of immediately ripping out your milkweed, Ms. Code indicates there are steps that can be taken to protect butterflies from the likely contamination. “And it’s important to keep gardening for pollinators for the long term, just take steps to reduce pesticide exposure: cover new plants the first year, water heavily, discard the soil before planting, as it may be contaminated, and avoid pesticide use.” 

It is critical that every possible step is taken to protect these iconic pollinators before it is too late. While the international conservation group, International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is listing the monarch as endangered, the U.S. government has not taken similar action. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) determined in 2020 that monarchs were eligible for protection under the endangered species, act but their listing was “precluded by higher priority actions..” Is the ubiquitous threat of pesticides throughout the monarch habitat the reason USFWS is dragging its feet? In another recent listing, concerning the officially endangered Rusty-Patched bumblebee, USFWS declined to declare the species’ critical habitat, precluding rules that could place restrictions that protect the species from toxic pesticide exposure. Some conservationists speculate that the federal government is failing to take action on pollinators as a result of the significant implications of listing would cause to the pesticide industry.

Meaningful action at the federal level will take immense pressure from local residents and communities. Join Beyond Pesticides in telling U.S. Fish and Wildlife to officially list monarch butterflies as endangered species, so that they have access to additional protections needed to recover the population.

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

Source: University of Reno press release, Biological Conservation

(Beyond Pesticides, September 12, 2022) Comments are due by 11:59 pm EDT September 29. The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is receiving written comments from the public through September. This precedes the upcoming public comment webinar on October 18 and 20 and deliberative hearing October 25-27—concerning how organic food is produced. Sign up to speak at the webinar by September 29. Written comments must be submitted through Regulations.gov. by 11:59 pm EDT September 29. Links to the virtual comment webinars and the public meeting will be posted on this webpage in early October.

The NOSB is responsible for guiding the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its administration of the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), including the materials allowed to be used in organic production and handling. The role of the NOSB is especially important as we depend on organic production to protect our ecosystem, mitigate climate change, and enhance our health

The NOSB plays an important role in bringing the views of organic producers and consumers to bear on USDA, which is not always in sync with organic principles. There are many important issues on the NOSB agenda this Spring. For a complete discussion, see Keeping Organic Strong and the Fall 2022 issues page. Here are some high priority issues for us:

Organic Agriculture is Climate-Smart Agriculture. The NOSB draft letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack is an excellent primer on how organic agriculture responds to the climate emergency. However, the letter needs to stress the need for USDA to promote conversion to organic farming. More important to addressing the climate crisis than the questions posed by NOP are questions concerning how USDA programs can assist organic producers and those seeking to convert to organic. The draft letter addresses these as well. It also points out the resiliency of organic agriculture: “Organic is the solution to mitigating climate change and responding to it.”In view of the climate benefits of organic and the incentives inherent in organic marketing, the real question is whether USDA will abandon its promotion of chemical-intensive agriculture supported by the biotech/chemical industry in favor of whole-hearted support for organic agriculture—because despite the astronomical growth in organic consumption in the U.S., conversion to organic agriculture lags behind demand. USDA could and should make adoption of organic/climate-smart practices a prerequisite for receiving the benefits of its programs.

Biodegradable Biobased (Bioplastic) Mulch Film (BBMF) is under consideration for sunset this year. This is part of a larger issue of the use of plastic in organic production and handling. Awareness is growing about the impacts of plastic—and the microplastic particles to which it degrades—on human health and the environment. BBMF should not be relisted. Moreover, the NOSB should initiate action to eliminate all uses of plastic in organic production and handling—including packaging.

The NOSB should use the sunset process to eliminate non-organic ingredients in processed organic foods. Materials listed in §205.606 in the organic regulations are nonorganic agricultural ingredients that are allowed to be used as ingredients as part of the 5% of organic processed foods that is not required to be organic. Materials should not remain on §205.606 if they can be supplied organically, and anything that can be grown can be grown organically. The Handling Subcommittee needs to ask the question of potential suppliers, “Could you supply the need if the organic form is required?” Two materials on §205.606 are up for sunset this year—pectin and casings. Both are made from agricultural products that can be supplied organically and thus should be sunsetted.

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(Beyond Pesticides, September 9, 2022) One kind of solution to the biodiversity crisis that is likely not on most folk’s bingo cards comes from a Nevada cattle rancher, who has shifted his relationship with . . . wait for it . . . beavers. As climate change impacts ramp up their toll in the U.S. via intensified droughts, floods, and wildfires, solutions are widely and eagerly sought, if deployed at insufficient pace. In this Nevada case, Agee Smith — unlike his rancher father, who reportedly “waged war against the animals, frequently with dynamite” — welcomes beavers and their industry on his ranch land. Doing so has yielded multiple benefits for his operation, the environment, and biodiversity. As reported by The New York Times, “Mr. Smith has become one of a growing number of ranchers, scientists and other “beaver believers” who see the creatures not only as helpers, but as furry weapons of climate resilience.”

Many landowners, of all stripes, consider beavers to be destructive “nuisance” animals that wantonly fell trees, and in so doing sometimes flood farm fields, back yards, roads, forests, or grazing acreage. Public complaints about such behaviors resulted in the federal government’s killing of more than 25,000 beavers in 2021. Such “reduction” is conducted by the Wildlife Services division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); the program targets some invasive species that threaten ecosystems (e.g., feral hogs or the giant nutria, a swamp rodent). It also kills huge numbers of native species, such as beavers, coyotes, Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds, wolves, black bears, bobcats, foxes, deer, prairie dogs, and others.

In 2021, more than 400,000 native animals were decimated. The Guardian reports that in 2021, 1.75 million total animals were killed — an astonishing metric but lower than in some years; in 2010 the figure was roughly 5 million; in 2018, the number was northward of 2.5 million. Among the techniques employed is use of noxious M-44 cyanide “bombs,” which have resulted in the death of a child, the blinding of another, and deaths of non-target species, such as dogs, opossums, raccoons, a wolf, ravens, and skunks.

According to The NYT, experts say that when human–beaver conflict does arise, as it will inevitably sometimes, there are non-lethal solutions. For example, fencing and paint can protect specific trees from powerful beaver incisors. There are also devices that stealthily undo the creatures’ handiwork via pipes that drain water from beaver settlements — even while the animals keep building. Wildlife advocates say that such tactics are actually highly effective, compared to killing the animals, because new beavers are likely to move into existing and desirable beaver habitat that has been vacated. When peaceful coexistence just does not work out, advocates encourage relocation of the animals, rather than their destruction.

Mr. Smith and some other landowners are seeing real benefits of their welcoming beavers on their land — many related to greater resilience to climate change impacts. The NYT reports on Mr. Smith’s experience: “When Nevada suffered one of the worst droughts on record, beaver pools kept his cattle with enough water. When rains came strangely hard and fast, the vast network of dams slowed a torrent of water raging down the mountain, protecting his hay crop. And with the beavers’ help, creeks have widened into wetlands that run through the sagebrush desert, cleaning water, birthing new meadows and creating a buffer against wildfires.”

Beaver dams — constructed to create safe impoundment areas for their lodges — help store water (a real livestock and wildlife “lifesaver” during now-frequent droughts in the West), slow down its flow during heavy rains or rapid snowmelt, reduce erosion from torrential downpours, and help recharge groundwater. The persistent wetlands beavers sometimes create also store carbon, thus, keeping it out of the atmosphere. In addition, beaver activity keeps the surrounding landscape damper, reducing the risk of wildfire. And the cherry on the whipped cream on the sundae is that the beavers’ work helps create new or restored habitat for myriad species, including fish, mammals, waterfowl, birds, amphibians, and insects. Plusses for the climate? Check. For biodiversity? Check. For Mr. Smith’s hay and cattle? Check. We believe this is called a “win-win-win.”

Not for nothing are these creatures considered by some to be consummate ecosystem/environmental engineers. Chris Jordan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, and Emily Fairfax of California State University Channel Islands wrote in early 2022: “It may seem trite to say that beavers are a key part of a national climate action plan, but the reality is that they are a force of 15–40 million highly skilled environmental engineers. . . . We cannot afford to work against them any longer. We need to work with them.” California’s Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot sums up the sentiment: “We need to get beavers back to work. Full employment for beavers!” Beaver believer Agee Smith notes that welcoming beavers to work on his land has been one of his best decisions, adding, “They’re very controversial still. But it’s getting better. People are starting to wake up.”

The Orianne Society, which advocates for the conservation of reptiles and amphibians and their ecosystems, describes “ecosystem engineers” well: “Ecosystem engineers are species that modify their environment in a significant manner, creating new habitats or modifying existing ones to suit their needs. Through their activities ecosystem engineers significantly affect other species by providing and maintaining microhabitats that would not otherwise exist. In fact, ecosystem engineers can often (but not always) be defined as keystone species, meaning that they play a critical role in their environments and affect many other species in the ecosystem. Ecosystem function and biodiversity would be significantly reduced without the presence of a keystone species. . . . The beaver is probably the most well-known example of a typical ecosystem engineer that also acts as a keystone species. Beavers cut down trees and build dams in small waterways, backing up water and creating beaver ponds. Beavers manipulate waterways for their own benefit, but these manipulations also provide habitat for many other species. Beaver dams and ponds also play important roles in many abiotic ecosystem processes (e.g., nutrient cycling and siltation). Without beavers to modify existing environments, these important wetlands would not exist and many species would be negatively affected.”

However, river scientist Caroline Nash, who has done research on beaver-related restoration, emphasizes that human cooperation with the engineering activities of beavers should be deployed after case-by-case evaluation, asserting, “It’s all about identifying those locations where beavers’ survival interests align with humans’ survival interests, and they’re not always aligned. . . . [S]o suggesting that they’re always going to be aligned is creating a recipe, I think, for broken hopes and expectations and a loss of trust.”

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sees merit in the efforts to “employ” beavers to benefit the creatures themselves, as well as ecosystems and human interests. It is working with partners in Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Nevada, Idaho, and Colorado to “seed” beaver-like dams that, it is hoped, beavers will inhabit and expand. California’s state budget has earmarked roughly $1.5 million annually for restoration of beavers — for their roles in advancing climate resiliency and biodiversity.

As such efforts reference, the biodiversity crisis travels hand in hand with the climate crisis; the causes and solutions are necessarily interactive. And as noted in an article in the European Commission magazine, Horizon, “Climate change and biodiversity loss should be tackled together”: “In a two-way process, climate change is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, but destruction of ecosystems undermines nature’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and protect against extreme weather, thus accelerating climate change and increasing vulnerability to it. This explains why the two crises must be tackled together with holistic policies that address both issues simultaneously and not in silos.”

The chief causes of the significant global loss of biodiverse organisms are generally acknowledged to be changes in land use (largely for large-scale food production, such as the clearing of Amazonian rainforest land for cattle grazing); overexploitation of organisms for food, wood, and medicines (via hunting, fishing, and harvesting beyond sustainable boundaries); climate change; and chemical overuse (in nearly every sector of human activity, and pointedly, in agriculture) that harms organisms and their ecosystems.

[A brief sidebar on cattle: environment and food system advocates, including the World Wildlife Fund, have pointed repeatedly to the devastation caused by cattle ranching in the Amazon region, where 80% of the deforestation of the “lungs of the world” is caused by the beef cattle sector. Though this is by far the most dramatic example of the unsustainability of this livestock practice, the huge land area and water resources devoted to raising beef cattle in the U.S. — never mind the problematic waste and methane production associated with the CAFOS (concentrated animal feeding operations) on which most domestic livestock is raised — warrant a serious reconsideration of the role of this industry’s commodity in the American diet.]

By their very nature, pesticides are designed to reduce biodiversity — to suppress any population seen as a threat to economic enterprise, human health, and/or human convenience. Beyond Pesticides laid out the case, a few years ago, for how pesticide use is ravaging, especially, insects (including many critical pollinators) and soil micro-organisms, and their ecosystems and food sources, and how organic agriculture supports biodiversity.

Indeed, the 2019 United Nation’s (UN’s) Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report said that the species extinction rate is accelerating and that Nature, broadly, is declining at a rate “unprecedented in human history.” The subheads of the comprehensive report are telling: “Current global response insufficient; ‘Transformative changes’ needed to restore and protect nature; Opposition from vested interests can be overcome for public good; [and] 1,000,000 species threatened with extinction.”

IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson, commented at the report’s release: “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. . . . The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global.” 

There are efforts — in addition to rancher peacemaking with beavers — to restore diverse populations and habitats. In 2021, U.S. House Representatives Joe Neguse, Alan Lowenthal, and Jared Huffman reintroduced a resolution calling for a national biodiversity strategy. Rep. Lowenthal commented, “It is imperative that we work to correct this immediately — not only to protect the world’s disappearing biodiversity but because the impacts to our environment and climate also impact our economies, human health, and our ability to live on this planet.”

In June 2022, the U.S. House passed the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA), which would invest $1.397 billion per year in state, local and tribal efforts to help wildlife at risk. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) endorses this legislation, which is now in the hands of the Senate, saying that RAWA would “invest in time-tested, locally driven strategies to restore species and the ecosystems that sustain them.” In addition, there is, according to TNC, much discussion of pairing this bill with one that would end the abuse of conservation easements for tax shelter purposes [— a favorite ploy of very wealthy landowners, including large corporations]. The bipartisan Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act would put a stop to these fraudulent actions and, in doing so, cover most of the cost of RAWA.”

Early in President Biden’s term, the administration announced a U.S. Interior Department initiative, 30 by 30, that joins the U.S. with 50 other countries in aiming to conserve 30% of each nation’s land and water by 2030. A laudable goal, but the announcement of 30 by 30 underscores an inexplicable fact: the U.S. is the only United Nations (UN) member that has not ratified what is arguably the most important international treaty on biodiversity — the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. (See a list of signatories, as well as of those countries that have ratified the treaty, here.)

As reported by Vox, the U.S. helped craft the treaty, and signed on to it in 1993, but for nearly three decades, “Republican lawmakers have blocked ratification, which requires a two-thirds Senate majority. They’ve argued that CBD would infringe on American sovereignty, put commercial interests at risk, and impose a financial burden, claims that environmental experts say have no support.” Environmental advocates assert that the U.S. refusal to ratify the treaty causes real harm to biodiversity efforts when, never more than now, the crisis makes them imperative.

The need for action on protecting Nature’s creatures and habitats could not be more urgent. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) quotes UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s pithy assessment: “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century, it must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

Beyond Pesticides continues to do its part in bringing this issue forward, including through the second, October 12, session of its (rapidly) upcoming 2022 National Forum Series: Meeting the Health, Biodiversity, and Climate Crises with a Path for a Livable Future. The plenary sessions for that day will focus on various topics on the biodiversity crisis and solutions. We call attention particularly to the presentation of Dr. Lucas Garibaldi, who is a member of IPBES and contributed to its most recent report. He is also co-chair the Transformative Change Assessment for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); the group is tasked with identifying options for achieving the CBD 2050 vision for biodiversity.

Please join us for this important series on addressing the related and growing biodiversity, climate, and health crises. Register here. We look forward to your participation.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/climate/climate-change-beavers.html

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 8, 2022) A study published in Environmental Pollution finds parental exposure to real-world, sublethal concentrations of pesticide residues on grains is a major contributor to unfavorable offspring development among foraging birds. Parents’ ingestion of grains with conventional pesticide residues, whether from contaminated or pesticide-treated seeds, results in chronic exposure that adversely affects offspring health, even at low doses.

The adverse effects pesticides and other environmental pollutants have on birds are amply documented and researched. Although many studies evaluate acute or chronic health implications associated with pesticide exposure in a single generation, there is a lack of information on multi-generational impacts that can provide vital information on the fundamental survivability or fitness of bird species. Considering this study emphasizes parental exposure to environmental pollutants can have adverse consequences for future generations, it is necessary that future risk assessments for birds address these implications when implementing agricultural pesticide policies. The study notes, “[S]ublethal effects of such compounds [pesticides] on non-target species should be included in the regulation. Moreover, as agroecosystem pollution is not resulting only from pesticides, there is an urgent need to analyze cocktail effects, not only between molecules of pesticides but also between pesticides and other pollutants such as heavy metals.”

The study considers the impact that mixtures of different pesticide residues at environmentally relevant levels have on foraging birds, specifically the grey partridge. Researchers fed 24 breeding pairs of birds grain from conventional agriculture containing pesticide residues and organic grains without pesticide residues as a control. The diet of grains mimics that of food availability encountered by wild birds in the environment. The researchers assess how the consumption of grain with pesticide residue impacts offspring growth and health through parental effects upon reproduction. The results demonstrate that grains with pesticide residues in this study do not affect the parental birds’ condition (body mass index, red blood cell count, energy conversion) or egg-laying abilities. However, researchers find that ingestion of low pesticide residues in grain has consequences on reproduction and offspring quality without altering mortality. Chicks whose parents consume grains with pesticide residues are more petite in size, lack proper skeletal growth, and have lower red blood cell counts with increasing body mass index as a trade-off.

Inheritance of genetic dysfunction relating to hereditary influence on gene expression is a familiar phenomenon. Various studies note that adverse genomic alterations can phase down to future generations. As far back as 15 years ago, a Washington State University study linked pesticide exposure to multi-generational impacts on male fertility in rodents. More recently, researchers found that glyphosate (patented as an antibiotic) has adverse multi-generational effects, causing negligible observable impacts on pregnant rodents, but severe effects on the two subsequent generations, including reproductive (prostate and ovarian) and kidney diseases, obesity, and birth anomalies. New findings suggest exposure to the pesticide atrazine causes multi-generation resistance to the chemical in wasps by altering gut bacteria composition. Even banned pesticides like DDT still impact current and future generations, as the chemical (and subsequent metabolites) can cause multi-generational cancer, multi-generational obesity, and generational reproductive abnormalities via endocrine disruption. Moreover, chemical byproducts made during the pesticide manufacturing process, such as dioxin, have multi-generational consequences on reproductive health.

This study is one of the few to evaluate current levels of multiple pesticide residues in the ecosystem and their potential impact on birds in the wild. However, plenty of research demonstrates the toxicity pesticides pose to bird populations. As far back as 2013, the American Bird Conservancy published a report finding that just a single kernel of neonicotinoid (neonic)-coated corn is toxic enough to kill a songbird, highlighting the acute toxicity of pesticides on bird declines. A 2017 study found that neonicotinoids can disrupt songbird migration, making it more likely that a bird will die during its perilous migration route. As confirmed by a 2019 study, pesticides like neonics usually are not killing migratory birds outright. Instead, exposure to these pesticides precipitates a cascade of sublethal impacts that reduces songbird fitness in the wild, making them more likely to die or be killed. Thus, this study reflects similar consequences among many foraging bird species, cautioning, “The consequences of parental exposure on chicks might partly explain the decline in wild Grey partridge populations, which raises questions for avian conservation and demography if current ARGOSystems approaches are continued.”

Beyond Pesticides believes that we must eliminate pesticide use to mitigate the multi-generational impacts these chemicals pose on human and animal health. Identifying pesticide residues on grain as a source of pesticide exposure is relevant when assessing the future risks pesticides expound unto bird species. In addition to toxicity exposure, improper control regulations, poor manufacturing, and high application variability make pesticide residues problematic. The data from this study has implications for many bird species exposed to toxic chemicals at environmentally relevant levels. Therefore, future policy decisions on related pesticides should advocate for formidable safeguards on the agrochemical industry that ensure the ecosystem is safe from chemical hazards. In doing so, we can shift away from unnecessary reliance on pesticide. Adopting regenerative-organic practices and using least-toxic pest control can reduce harmful exposure to pesticides. Switch to organic to reduce wild birds’ exposure to toxic pesticide residues and replace pesticide-treated seeds with organic seeds from Beyond Pesticides’ organic seed directory. Learn more about pesticide-treated seeds and their harm by viewing Seeds that Poison. To see how you can protect your local bird population, learn more about pesticides’ impact on birds and how an organic diet can help eliminate pesticide exposure.

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

Source: Environmental Pollution

(Beyond Pesticides, September 7, 2022) Neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticides are causing widespread contamination within deer populations in Minnesota, with recent data showing significant increases over sampling that took place just two years earlier. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) began sampling the spleens of deer in the state after research conducted in South Dakota found widespread contamination, but also links to harmful effects as a result of the exposure. The latest findings will result in further testing, yet the sum of research on the dangers of neonicotinoids – not only to deer, but pollinators, birds, aquatic wildlife, and even human health – demands, according to advocates, a precautionary approach and meaningful restrictions on these potent systemic pesticides.

Officials at MDNR have no explanation for the increase in contamination over the last sample period. “We’re not exactly sure why we saw that increase,” said Department of Natural Resources Ungulate Research Scientist Eric Michel, PhD, to mprnews.org. “But regardless, the two years of data are showing us that neonics are being detected pretty much across the state. When we look for them we find them in deer spleens. So that’s kind of the big takeaway from what we’re seeing right now.”

Results of the 2019 sampling showed ubiquitous contamination of deer spleens throughout the state. Of 799 deer spleens analyzed that year, 61% of them contained neonics. The 2021 results focus in on the southwest area of the state, where there is more farming and forestland. Of the 496 samples tested in that area, 94% of samples analyzed find neonics.

Not only did prevalence of the chemicals increase, so did concentration. The research conducted on neonics and deer in South Dakota determined that a body burden of neonics over .33 parts per billion represents a risk threshold for adverse effects. At this level, exposed fawns in laboratory experiments died. The South Dakota study found 77.5% of 367 spleen samples in wild deer were above this threshold. The 2019 results in Minnesota saw only 29% of samples exceeding this risk threshold. But the latest findings show 64% of neonic detections above this level.

“So we had quite a big increase,” said Dr. Michel to mprnews.org. “We went from about a third of the samples to two-thirds of the samples.”

MDNR is receiving its spleen samples from hunters in the region. Despite the contamination, the state is not currently warning hunters not to eat venison. While the results show cause for concern for deer in agricultural regions, officials note that the contamination is everywhere. “We’re finding neonics statewide, this isn’t just in our agricultural regions. This isn’t just an agricultural issue, if anything, our data showing that,” said Dr. Michel to mprnews.org. “So I think it’s just really important to remember that this is something we’re finding across the state. And we’re just trying to better understand it.”

Plans are underway to conduct more intensive sampling where deer hunting is permitted in the state, but specific locations have not yet been determined. There are also efforts in the legislature to fund a fawn mortality study to better understand impacts on the ground. However, advocates underscore that these efforts do not represent a precautionary approach. With strong evidence of widespread contamination at concerning levels, and data showing harmful effects at these low concentrations, advocates say it is incumbent upon lawmakers to take action, not merely continue to observe an ongoing catastrophe.

Several states have already taken measures to address the widespread contamination that has resulted from the use of neonicotinoids. Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island have taken measures to address neonicotinoid contamination. California is set to join this group through the recent passage of legislation. Yet even these state level measures are not enough. Most state bills passed to date generally restrict consumer uses of pesticides, at best restricting all outdoor nonagricultural uses. The gold standard for restrictions on these harmful insecticides remains the European Union, which eliminated all outdoor uses (including agriculture) of the major neonicotinoid insecticides in 2018.

Minnesota, for its part, passed legislation in 2014, giving consumers more information about whether their garden had been sprayed with neonicotinoids. But the following year, after a change in political power at the state house, this protective language was repealed.

Neonicotinoid contamination is a cross-cutting issue that raises concerns for a range of groups – from hunters to farmers, environmentalists, public health advocates, and conservationists. Yet these chemicals are still permitted in some of our most pristine environments, where wildlife are highly likely to be exposed at concerning levels. Join Beyond Pesticides in urging U.S. Fish and Wildlife to protect the nation’s wildlife refuges from contamination from neonics and other hazardous pesticides. See actions from Pollinator Week 2022 for more about steps you can take to safeguard the natural world from these dangerous chemicals.

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

Source: MPRnews.org, Field and Stream

(Beyond Pesticides, September 6, 2022) Beyond Pesticides is holding its National Forum series, Health, Biodiversity, and Climate: A Path for a Livable Future, beginning on September 15. The National Pesticide Forum has undergone tremendous change in the format, giving participants easier access to timely, bite-sized, and provocative learning experiences and empowering action to fuel change. This year, it focuses on meeting the health, biodiversity, and climate crises with a path for a livable future. We examine both the existential problems associated with current public health and environmental crises and chart a course for a future that solves these urgent problems—public health threats, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency. The first seminar launches September 15, the second on October 12, and a third will be announced for November. Register for free!

The Forum will address both the science that defines the problems associated with the threats and the solutions, some of which are contained in legislation such as the Zero Food Waste Act and the Compost Act. Two ways of helping to reduce agricultural carbon emissions and reduce hunger are addressed in these two bills—by maximizing the amount of food that is eaten and ensuring that food waste is composted to build soil health instead of generating methane in a landfill.

Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-CA), Congresswoman Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced two bills, the Zero Food Waste Act (H.R. 4444) and the Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion Of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act (H.R. 4443), to reduce the amount of food wasted in the U.S. and to redirect food waste to composting projects. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced companion legislation, Zero Food Waste Act (S.2389) and Compost Act (S.2388), in the U.S. Senate. 

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to sponsor the Zerio Food Waste and Compost Acts legislation and, if you are represented by a sponsor of the legislation, thank them for their leadership.

Seminar 1 > HEALTH > September 15, 1-2:30 pmThe Problem: We start the Forum Series with a medical doctor who has both treated and studied the effects of toxic chemical exposure, with a focus on pesticides, throughout our daily lives. Claudia Miller, M.D. provides us with a framework for understanding the dire health implications of the current dependency on pesticides and toxic chemicals and the failure of the regulatory system to fully evaluate and control for the range of adverse effects and complexity of their interactions. Dr. Miller is the author of the acclaimed book, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes, and her recent research focuses on the relationship between synthetic chemical exposures and disruption of the gastrointestinal microbiome.   
 
The Solution: The solution is found in a transition to management practices that are no longer dependent on toxic inputs and respect the value of nature and works in partnership with the diversity that it offers. This discussion will be led by indigenous farmer Kaipo Kekona who is working in Hawai’i to regenerate and sustain traditional farming production on former sugarcane land. Mr. Kekona and his family run the 12.5-acre Ku’ia Agriculture Education Center in the ahupua’a of Ku’ia on Legacy Lands of Keli’i Kulani in the foothills of the West Maui Mountains. He started in conventional, chemical-intensive farming as a laborer, and now practices 100% natural farming. In June, Mr. Kekona was featured in The Guardian piece, “The farmers restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forests that once fed an island.” See the full program.

Seminar 2 > BIODIVERSITY > October 12, 1:00-2:30 pm JUST ADDED!

The Problem: Life depends on biodiversity. According to the Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), “Harmful economic incentives and policies associated with unsustainable practices of fisheries, aquaculture, agriculture (including fertilizer and pesticide use), livestock, forestry, mining and energy (including fossil fuels and biofuels) are often associated with land/sea-use change and overexploitation of natural resources, as well as inefficient production and waste management.” In this compelling session, you’ll hear from Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi, PhD, professor and director, Institute for Research in Natural Resources, Agroecology and Rural Development, Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro, Argentina, and member of the Secretariat for IPBES and a contributor to its landmark IPBES report.

The Solution: The IPBES report endorses the transition away from pesticide-laden agricultural practices and toward sustainable agriculture to meet the challenges of protecting and enhancing biodiversity. Organic land management systems that eliminate fossil fuel-based toxic pesticides and fertilizers makes a substantial contribution in addressing the dire threat to biodiversity. You’ll hear directly from Bob Quinn, PhD, an organic farmer and miller with Montana Flour and Grains in Big Sandy, Montana, who will share his personal insights on the value of organic food production and land management. Dr. Quinn is coauthor of Grain by Grain: A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs and Healthy Food. Learn more.

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to sponsor the Zerio Food Waste and Compost Acts legislation and, if you are represented by a sponsor of the legislation, thank them for their leadership

Letter to U.S. Representatives not current cosponsors:

I am writing to ask you to cosponsor H.R. 4443, the Zero Food Waste Act, and H.R. 4444, the Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act.

As Representative Chellie Pingree states, “Food waste has a massive environmental footprint and squanders perfectly good food as millions are going hungry.” Nearly half of all food produced in this country is lost or wasted, so an estimated $408 billion is spent on growing, processing, transporting, storing, and disposing of food that is never consumed. Landfills are now the third-largest source of methane in the U.S., and food is the single largest input by weight in our landfills and incinerators.

The Zero Food Waste Act would create a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administered grant program for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and for nonprofits, which would offer three types of grants: planning grants, measurement grants, and reduction grants. Planning grants could be used to investigate the kinds of food waste mitigation projects or policies would be most impactful within a given community. Measurement grants could be used to better understand the amount of food waste generated in the state or community.

Reduction grants could be used to fund an assortment of different types of projects—such as food waste prevention projects to stop the generation of food waste, recycling projects to reuse food waste as a feedstock for other uses like composting, rescuing projects that redirect surplus food to places like food shelters, and upcycling projects that make new food from ingredients that would otherwise go to landfills. Additionally, localities could use the grant funding to implement food waste landfill disposal or incineration restrictions designed to stop food waste.

Composting is one of the most environmentally friendly means of disposing of food waste and other organic waste. Not only does composting emit a smaller quantity of greenhouse gases compared to alternative disposal methods, it also yields a valuable soil additive that enhances soil health, which in turn makes the soil a better absorber of carbon, while also making the land more resilient to climate change-fueled disasters like wildfires and floods. While there is growing interest by individuals and businesses across the country to compost food scraps and compostable packaging, there is not enough composting infrastructure in the U.S. to meet this demand.

The Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act would add composting as a conservation practice for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation programs. Both the act of producing compost from organic waste and using compost on a farm would qualify as a conservation practice. It also would create new USDA grant and loan guarantee programs for composting infrastructure projects, including both large-scale composting facilities as well as farm, home, or community-based projects.

Please cosponsor these bills, H.R. 4443 and H.R. 4444.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Representative currently cosponsoring:

Thank you for cosponsoring H.R. 4443, the Zero Food Waste Act, and H.R. 4444, the Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act.

As Representative Chellie Pingree states, “Food waste has a massive environmental footprint and squanders perfectly good food as millions are going hungry.” Nearly half of all food produced in this country is lost or wasted, so an estimated $408 billion is spent on growing, processing, transporting, storing, and disposing of food that is never consumed. Landfills are now the third-largest source of methane in the U.S., and food is the single largest input by weight in our landfills and incinerators.

Composting is one of the most environmentally friendly means of disposing of food waste and other organic waste. Not only does composting emit a smaller quantity of greenhouse gases compared to alternative disposal methods, it also yields a valuable soil additive that enhances soil health, which in turn makes the soil a better absorber of carbon, while also making the land more resilient to climate change-fueled disasters like wildfires and floods.

These two bills offer substantial remedies to these pressing problems.

Thank you.

Letter to U.S. Senators not current cosponsors:

I am writing to ask you to cosponsor S. 2389, the Zero Food Waste Act, and S. 2388, the Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act.

As Representative Chellie Pingree states, “Food waste has a massive environmental footprint and squanders perfectly good food as millions are going hungry.” Nearly half of all food produced in this country is lost or wasted, so an estimated $408 billion is spent on growing, processing, transporting, storing, and disposing of food that is never consumed. Landfills are now the third-largest source of methane in the U.S., and food is the single largest input by weight in our landfills and incinerators.

The Zero Food Waste Act would create a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administered grant program for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and for nonprofits, which would offer three types of grants: planning grants, measurement grants, and reduction grants. Planning grants could be used to investigate the kinds of food waste mitigation projects or policies would be most impactful within a given community. Measurement grants could be used to better understand the amount of food waste generated in the state or community.

Reduction grants could be used to fund an assortment of different types of projects—such as food waste prevention projects to stop the generation of food waste, recycling projects to reuse food waste as a feedstock for other uses like composting, rescuing projects that redirect surplus food to places like food shelters, and upcycling projects that make new food from ingredients that would otherwise go to landfills. Additionally, localities could use the grant funding to implement food waste landfill disposal or incineration restrictions designed to stop food waste.

Composting is one of the most environmentally friendly means of disposing of food waste and other organic waste. Not only does composting emit a smaller quantity of greenhouse gases compared to alternative disposal methods, it also yields a valuable soil additive that enhances soil health, which in turn makes the soil a better absorber of carbon, while also making the land more resilient to climate change-fueled disasters like wildfires and floods. While there is growing interest by individuals and businesses across the country to compost food scraps and compostable packaging, there is not enough composting infrastructure in the U.S. to meet this demand.

The Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act would add composting as a conservation practice for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation programs. Both the act of producing compost from organic waste and using compost on a farm would qualify as a conservation practice. It also would create new USDA grant and loan guarantee programs for composting infrastructure projects, including both large-scale composting facilities as well as farm, home, or community-based projects.

Please cosponsor these bills, S. 2389 and S. 2388.

Thank you.

Thank you’s to cosponsors in Senate:

Thank you for cosponsoring S. 2389, the Zero Food Waste Act, and S. 2388, the Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion of Sustainable Techniques (COMPOST) Act.

As Representative Chellie Pingree states, “Food waste has a massive environmental footprint and squanders perfectly good food as millions are going hungry.” Nearly half of all food produced in this country is lost or wasted, so an estimated $408 billion is spent on growing, processing, transporting, storing, and disposing of food that is never consumed. Landfills are now the third-largest source of methane in the U.S., and food is the single largest input by weight in our landfills and incinerators.

Composting is one of the most environmentally friendly means of disposing of food waste and other organic waste. Not only does composting emit a smaller quantity of greenhouse gases compared to alternative disposal methods, it also yields a valuable soil additive that enhances soil health, which in turn makes the soil a better absorber of carbon, while also making the land more resilient to climate change-fueled disasters like wildfires and floods.

These two bills offer substantial remedies to these pressing problems.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, September 2, 2022) Revelations of toxic risks to pregnant people seem to emerge with alarming frequency. In late August a peer-reviewed study published in Chemosphere finds that the compound melamine, its primary byproduct (cyanuric acid), and four aromatic amines were detected in the urine of nearly all pregnant research participants. These chemicals are associated with increased risks of cancer, kidney toxicity, and/or developmental harm to the resultant child. Beyond Pesticides has covered a variety of pregnancy risks from pesticides and other toxic chemicals, including these in just the last three years: pesticides and children’s sleep disorders; prenatal exposures to a multitude of chemicals; insecticides and childhood leukemia; insecticides and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Those of a certain age may hear “Melamine” and think of the nearly indestructible plastic dinnerware from the mid-20^th century, but “melamine” is an organic chemical compound that, when combined with formaldehyde, forms a durable plastic. Others may remember the 2007–2008 incident in China of contamination of infant formula with melamine, which resulted in six deaths, and kidney and urinary tract harms (ranging from development of kidney stones to acute renal failure) in some 300,000 babies. [A small sidebar explainer: melamine was actually intentionally added to the formula under the notion that it would boost the protein content. And because melamine is a high-nitrogen compound, and the chief test for protein levels at the time assayed nitrogen content, the (false) assumption of more protein, as well as the fact that it is a cheap chemical, drove that tragic and toxic decision.]

After the infant formula incident and others involving melamine-contaminated pet food, the compound was recognized as a kidney toxicant. Yet melamine is found in many commercial products, including synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, dishware, plastics, flooring, cookware, kitchen counters, and others. Cyanuric acid is used as a swimming pool cleaning solvent, disinfectant, and plastic stabilizer; aromatic amines are found in hair coloring, mascara, tattoo ink, paint, tobacco smoke, and diesel exhaust. 

Many of these compounds are also used in industrial applications, such as in rubbers, adhesives, oil refining, synthetic polymers, dyes, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, and explosives. Exposures to melamine, cyanuric acid, and aromatic amines can happen via any of multiple vectors that can be contaminated with these compounds; people encounter them by consuming food, breathing air, ingesting household dust, drinking water, or using products that contain plastics or pigments.

The research team, hailing largely from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, measured 45 chemicals associated with cancer and other risks, using methods that can capture chemicals, or even traces of them, in urine samples. The sampling period extended from 2008 to 2020, though the bulk of collection happened from 2017 to 2020. Samples were collected across all three trimesters of pregnancy. The subjects comprised a group of 171 women — from New York, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, California, Illinois, and Georgia — who are part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program.

These participants were, on average, 29.5 years old, and represente a relatively diverse sample of the population: 20% were Black, 34% were White, 40% were Latina, 4% were Asian, and 3% were from other or multiple demographic groups. The study authors note that this is “the largest U.S. study to date of melamine, melamine derivatives, and aromatic amines in a geographically and demographically diverse population of pregnant women,” and that previous research on melamine has focused on pregnant women in Asian countries, or been limited to non-pregnant people in the U.S.

More than 60% of the samples show the presence of 12 of the 45 chemicals for which the study looked; five were detected in nearly every sample. Melamine, cyanuric acid, and nine aromatic amines show up in more than half of the study participants. Most chemicals found are associated with higher exposures among Black and Hispanic participants, as compared with non-Hispanic whites. The highest levels of melamine and cyanuric acid are found in women of color and those with greater exposure to tobacco. In another example, the levels of 3,4-dichloroaniline (used in the production of dyes and pesticides) are more than 100% higher among Black and Hispanic women than in white women. 

Not only are these inequities in exposures and body burdens of concern for the women, but also, the presence of these compounds in their bodies during pregnancy raises further alarm for the babies that come of those pregnancies. Because the mothers have been exposed prenatally, there may be a real risk of subsequent developmental impacts, both because there is the potential for maternal–fetal transfer of toxic chemicals via the placenta and/or breastmilk, and because children may have particular “windows” of developmental vulnerability to any one (or more) of these chemicals. Some animal studies have pointed, for example, to fetal growth restriction, incomplete bone development, and spatial cognitive impairments following exposures to melamine (or its analogs, ammeline, ammelide, and cyanuric acid). Further peril lies in the possibility, as the study authors say, that there could be “synergistic effects . . . when exposed to both melamine and melamine analogs.”

Study co-senior author Jessie Buckley, PhD, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, commented: “It’s disconcerting that we continue to find higher levels of many of these harmful chemicals in people of color.” Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow and study coauthor Giehae Choi said, “Our findings raise concerns for the health of pregnant women and fetuses, since some of these chemicals are known carcinogens and potential developmental toxicants. Regulatory action is clearly needed to limit exposure.” And study co-senior author and professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive medicine (and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment) Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, added, “These chemicals are of serious concern due to their links to cancer and developmental toxicity, yet they are not routinely monitored in the United States.”

The research paper explains, “Our data indicate important differences in exposures by race and ethnicity; evaluating potential sources of exposure that may contribute to these inequities is needed. Our larger follow up study will allow us to better characterize exposures across the U.S. during a critical period of development and further assess influential predictors and demographic differences that we characterized in this initial study. Finally, our study demonstrates the importance of continuous identification of environmental factors that can play an important role in maternal and child health.” It concludes that there is critical and broad need for expanded biomonitoring that can identify sources of exposure disparities by race and/or ethnicity, and evaluate potentially harmful health effects.

Beyond Pesticides spends a good deal of its human capacity sharing information on the very broad and harmful impacts of the use of synthetic pesticides (and other toxic chemical compounds). The research on these compounds is widely appreciated, and yet, Beyond Pesticides has asserted: the state of pesticide regulation, and of research into pesticide impacts, is inadequate and like nothing so much as a game of “whack-a-mole.” A single pesticide or class of pesticides is studied, a paper is written, and policy makers and regulators may or may not pay attention. Then another one happens, and another, and another, ad infinitum.

The pattern of “progress” is similar on the regulation side: individual pesticides registered (aka, approved) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are reviewed “on the regular” — but only every 15 years, barring an emergent and urgent concern. Given the cascade of discovery of harmful impacts over the past couple of decades, 15 years has become a very long window in which to allow continued use for lack of review.

When there is an urgent concern, EPA may undertake more timely review, but again, one compound at a time. Even more fundamentally, its approach to regulation, in the face of evidence of harm, is often characterized by tweaking the use of toxic pesticides “at the margins” — requiring a change to the text on a pesticide label, reducing the time frame in which a compound can be used, restricting application to trained applicators, or other piecemeal actions that are generally wholly inadequate to reducing the health and environmental harms of these compounds being unleashed into the environment.

EPA also continues to fall short on multiple research and regulatory fronts: looking carefully at synergistic impacts, multiple exposure vectors, and endocrine disruption effects, among others. In addition, the agency is far too dependent on industry-generated research, influenced by agrochemical industry lobbying, and sometimes, in downright cahoots with industry.

What Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2020 holds: “It is unconscionable to continue tweaking restrictions on pesticides with known hazards and broad uncertainties about the effect of mixtures, synergistic effects, and cumulative risk . . . given the availability of organic systems . . . [to] eliminate those hazards economically and solve the looming environmental threats.”

Likewise still relevant is a 2019 Daily News Blog article, in which Beyond Pesticides wrote, “Since Rachel Carson stunned the world and ignited the modern environmental movement with [her groundbreaking book,] Silent Spring [60 years ago this year], pesticide regulation has been stuck in a whack-a-mole approach that targets only the most publicly visible, toxic, and researched chemicals for restrictions. By transitioning to organic, not only in food production, but also in the management of pests in lawns and landscapes, and other pest control practices, we can eliminate the broad range of chemicals linked to diseases that are all too common in today’s world, and truly protect public health, wildlife, and the environment.”

Beyond Pesticides continues work on its mission — to transform the nation’s approach to pest management in all sectors (agricultural, residential/structural, and broad land management) by eliminating the current dependency on pesticides and advancing organic regenerative approaches that do not rely on toxic inputs. The subject research adds to the evidence supporting our call to eliminate use of synthetic, fossil-fuel-based pesticides within the next decade. With sufficient public engagement and advocacy, combined with the work of health, environment, and biodiversity organizations, we can put a stop to toxic pesticide exposures and embrace an organic systems approach that is precautionary and protective of all that we hold dear.

Sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653522020926?via%3Dihub and https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/963065

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 1, 2022) Low level exposure to synthetic pyrethroid insecticides at 6-8 months of age is associated with language development delays in two-year old toddlers, according to research published in Neurotoxicology this month. This is the latest study to link this class of chemicals to developmental delays in young children. Despite a steady drum of concerning research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2019 removed a crucial “safety factor” intended to protect children’s health from synthetic pyrethroids, allowing higher levels of the insecticides to be sprayed on food, in homes, and playing fields around the country.  

To investigate the impact of synthetic pyrethroids on language development, scientists enrolled 327 expectant mothers in their third trimester. The mothers, all from rural areas of China, were selected if they had no history of significant pesticide exposure or family history of serious disease. Urine samples were taken from the women during pregnancy, and from infants 6-8 months after birth. Scientists analyzed samples for concentrations of three different synthetic pyrethroid breakdown products (metabolites), including 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3PBA), 4-fluoro-3-phenoxybenzoic acid (4F3PBA), and cis-2,2dibromovinyl-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (DBCA). While 3PBA is a metabolite of many synthetic pyrethroids, 4F3PBA a more specific metabolite of cypermethrin, and DBCA is  a metabolite of deltamethrin. At two years of age, enrolled children were tested for expressive communication, receptive communication, and language composite scores.

Average urinary synthetic pyrethroid concentrations in children aged 6-8 months are found to be higher than those taken from their mothers during pregnancy for metabolites 3PBA and 4F3PBA. The cyfluthrin metabolite 4F3PBA correlates with lower receptive communication scores. Every 1 microgram increase in 4F3PBA exposure during infancy corresponds with a 9% increase chance of not passing the receptive communication test. Yet the strongest association is seen with the deltamethrin metabolite DBCA, which is found to increase risk of language development delay by 4.58 times. This metabolite also increases risk of not passing expressive communication tests by 21%. Young boys in particular experience a statistically significant impact compared to young girls, associated with overall exposure to pyrethroid metabolites. Higher amounts of pesticide metabolites in infant boy’s urine is associated with lower scores for receptive communication and language composite tests.

The study concludes that, “The probability of toddlers’ language development delay may be predicted by PYRs [pyrethroids] metabolites of infants aged 6–8 months.”

This conclusion supports long-known concepts regarding the hazards of pesticides for children’s health. Early life exposures during “critical windows of vulnerability” can in fact predict the likelihood, or otherwise increase the chances of an individual encountering a range of pernicious diseases. In addition to findings related to learning and development, early life exposures have been associated with increased risks of cancer, asthma, birth defects, and other diseases.

These exposures have real, tangible impacts not only on the individuals affected, but society as a whole. Environmental disease in children costs over an estimated $76.8 billion annually. Exposures that harm learning and development also impact future economic growth in the form of lost brain power, racking up a debt to society in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The chemical industry is not paying those costs. In fact, all signs indicate that pesticide companies are working overtime to increase the societal costs of pesticides while privatizing the monetary gains. The work of the Council for the Advancement of Pyrethroid Human Risk Assessment (CAPHRA) highlights this coordination. After EPA identified risks of concerns to children over six months and under six years old from exposure to synthetic pyrethroids, the major manufacturers of the insecticides coordinated under CAPHRA to come up with a new evaluation process for the impact of pyrethroids on children’s health. Unsurprisingly, the model developed by CAPHRA effectively exonerated synthetic pyrethroids from harmful effects, allowing the removal of the childhood safety factor and an explosion in pyrethroid usage. Notwithstanding the risks to children in this age range, EPA did not even entertain the potential for damaging impacts to occur earlier in life. In its reevaluation of the safety factor, the agency wrote, “Furthermore, fetal exposure and exposures to children below six months of age are expected to be negligible because pyrethroid levels in food and drinking water are generally low and there is no or low
potential for contact with treated surfaces.” This claim is, of course, not scientifically justified and easily countered. After looking at hundreds of peer-reviewed studies in the independent scientific literature, EPA incorporated only two into its determination.

Study after study has linked synthetic pyrethroids to developmental harm in children. A 2011 study found that children exposed to higher levels of synthetic pyrethroids are three times as likely to have mental delay compared to less exposed children. A 2014 study associated proximity to pesticide treated agricultural fields in pregnancy to increased risk of autism to children of exposed mothers. Two studies published in 2015 find that deltamethrin increases risk of ADHD in children, with one study finding impacts specifically to boys. Studies published in 2017 found that synthetic pyrethroid exposure increases risk of premature puberty in boys, and another associated the chemicals with externalizing and internalizing disorders. The impacts seen are not all developmental. A 2012 study associates pyrethroid exposure before, during, and after pregnancy with increased risk of infant leukemia. And a recent study published earlier this year finds that synthetic pyrethroid exposure during mosquito control operations increases risk of respiratory disease and certain allergies.

Adults who suffered through developmental problems as children can bare a stigma that lasts throughout their life, if they are able to receive the attention necessary to make gains and correct course. Other harmed by cancer or autism may never have the opportunity to contribute to society.

We must embrace a precautionary approach to pesticide regulation, placing the onus on pesticide manufacturers to prove safety rather than on regulators to prove harm. If peer-reviewed studies indicate the potential for harm to children’s health, the precautionary approach rejects this harm in favor of available alternatives. But EPA, instead of incorporating independent peer-reviewed research by scientists and academics, consistently decides to embrace industry models over independent scientists.

Continuing business as usual by placing trust in EPA’s regulatory system perpetuates a system that not only harms public health, and particularly the most vulnerable among us, for the sake of profit, it jeopardizes all of our futures. Join us today in urging your Senator to cosponsor the Protect America’s Children From Toxic Pesticides Act, which would make significant progress in reining in the influence of the pesticide industry at EPA. Learn how to use science in advocacy in community decision making to eliminate toxic pesticide use by attending the 2022 National Pesticide Forum Series, Health, Biodiversity, and Climate: A Path for a Livable Future, beginning on September 15 at 1:30pm(Eastern Time).  

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

Source:  Neurotoxicology

(Beyond Pesticides, August 31, 2022) No rainwater on Earth is safe for consumption and use as per-, and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) readily contaminate the hydrological ecosystem (properties, distribution, and circulation of water), according to a study published in Environmental Science and Technology. This finding is concerning as it adds to research demonstrating chemical pollutants (e.g., pesticides, pharmaceuticals, PFAS, heavy metals, radioactive material, etc.) exceed the “planetary boundary” contamination and needs addressing. The Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University study, “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” emphasizes that there are nine “planetary boundaries” related to climate change, biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorous cycle, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, changes/intensification of land use, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. When crossing these boundaries, the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes increases. In fact, anthropogenic (human) activities are increasing global contamination levels past safe thresholds.

Studies have already found that current human operations are quantifiable in almost all nine planetary boundaries and exceed the threshold for at least four out of the nine boundaries. Most recently, a 2022 report concludes that humanity exceeds planetary boundaries related to environmental pollutants and other “novel entities,” including plastics and pesticides. Considering chemical pollution continually “runs the risk of crossing Earth’s planetary boundary thresholds, government and health officials should have priority for precautionary action and further research.” Therefore, the study notes, “[B]ecause of the poor reversibility of environmental exposure to PFAS and their associated effects, it is vitally important that PFAS uses and emissions are rapidly restricted.”

Regarding chemical pollution, this study compares environmental four perfluoroalkyl acids [PFAAs] (i.e., perfluorooctanesulfonic acid [PFOS], perfluorooctanoic acid [PFOA], perfluorohexanesulfonic acid [PFHxS], and perfluorononanoic acid [PFNA]) in various agents, including rainwater, soils, and surface waters, to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed guideline levels. The results determine global levels of all four PFAAs exceed the planetary boundary for chemical pollution. Since PFAS are highly persistent in the ecosystem and consistently persistent in the water cycle, atmospheric deposition of these substances (accumulation of the substances in the atmosphere) is inevitable. 

The study highlights three key findings:

1. “Levels of PFOA and PFOS in rainwater often greatly exceed US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lifetime Drinking Water Health Advisory levels and the sum of the aforementioned four PFAAs (Σ4 PFAS) in rainwater is often above Danish drinking water limit values also based on Σ4 PFAS;
2. Levels of PFOS in rainwater are often above Environmental Quality Standard for Inland European Union Surface Water; and
3. Atmospheric deposition also leads to global soils being ubiquitously contaminated and to be often above proposed Dutch guideline values.”

PFAS are a group of nearly 10,000 human-made chemicals in various consumer products that people use daily. Not only is the public exposed to such chemicals; those who work in factories that create products that include PFAS, or workers who use such products regularly, have higher cumulative exposures. Across multiple states, firefighters have begun to bring lawsuits against manufacturers of the foams, charging that the companies knowingly made and sold products with these forever chemicals that put the workers’ health at risk. Others at greater-than-average exposure risk include pregnant or lactating people and young children. Although some PFAS compound manufacturing has ceased, these chemicals last forever in the environment as their chemical structure makes them resistant to breakdown. Thus, PFAS contamination is significantly underrepresented and much more perverse than previously thought, polluting storage and transportation containers, food and water resources, and other chemical products. For instance, many reports address the high levels of PFAS contamination in the insecticide Anvil 10+10.

Although EPA does not regulate PFAS in pesticide formulas, the agency lists these substances in the inert ingredient database, and thus product labels do not require disclosure of contaminants fundamental for pesticide products through the manufacturing or packaging process. Concerning the ecosystem, the ongoing detection of PFAS in various environments and soils also threatens the ability of growers, including organic growers, to produce food that does not harbor these compounds. PFAS chemical residues are persistent in food and drinking water, with over six million U.S. residents regularly encountering drinking water with PFAS levels above the EPA health advisory of 70 ng/L. Therefore, PFAS are detectable in almost all of the U.S. population—disproportionately afflicting people of color communities—and have implications for human health. 

This study adds to the growing number of reports indicating chemical pollution levels exceed safe limits for humanity. PFAS in rainwater, surface water, and soil exceed the planetary boundary for chemical pollution, contaminating above EPA’s proposed guideline levels. Despite reductions in the global emissions for the four PFAS compounds, the environmental persistence and hydrological cycling of these toxic chemicals make them ever-present. Moreover, PFAS are common in non-stick cookware, cleaning/personal care products, food packaging, pesticide products, human and animal tissues, and even remote environments like the Arctic, Antarctica, and Eastern European Tibetan Plateau. The study highlights PFAS accumulation in remote regions as a significant concern, implicating the chemicals’ presence in resources (e.g., food, water, etc.) and passive transfer to body blood/tissue. Moreover, permafrost and glacial melting as a result of global warming will only add to water source contamination as volatile chemicals can enter waterways at the same concentration levels as before ice entrapment, even after several decades. Environmental studies professor at Stockholm University, Ian Cousins, Ph.D., states, “I was surprised that even in the remotest areas on Earth, that the levels in rainwater, for example in Antarctica and on the Tibetan plateau, are above the recently set U.S. EPA health advisories for drinking water,”

PFAS compounds are not the only compounds that exhibit extreme persistence and accumulation in the ecosystem. Some regionally banned legacy pesticides like DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and its breakdown metabolite DDE (dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene) remain at concerning levels in the environment, despite a ban in 1972. Like PFAS, DDT/DDE compounds show up in produce grown in soil treated or contaminated with the chemical — even decades ago.

Contamination of the global water supply with combinations of harmful chemicals is glaringly problematic for public health and the environment. According to Beyond Pesticides, which covers pesticide (and other kinds of) chemical pollution, “These results underscore a grim twin reality to the human-caused climate emergency and should be a dire warning on the state of our shared environment and a time for a systemic movement to eliminate fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers.” This study highlights the impact rain being a vessel for global chemical contamination has on the exceeding levels of PFAS in the ecosystem. 

For humanity to continue to develop and thrive for generations to come, it is critical to avoid catastrophic consequences associated with exceeding planetary boundary thresholds. The study concludes, “In view of the impacts of humanity’s chemical footprint on planetary health, it is of great importance to avoid further escalation of the problem of large-scale and long-term environmental and human exposure to PFAS by rapidly restricting uses of PFAS wherever possible. Furthermore, as has been stated by ourselves and others before, society should not continually repeat the same mistakes with other persistent chemicals.”

Ubiquitous environmental contaminants like PFAS have severe consequences, especially on the health of vulnerable individuals. Various pesticide products act similarly to PFAS, and individuals can encounter these substances simultaneously, resulting in more severe health outcomes. Therefore, advocates urge that policies enforce stricter pesticide regulations and increase research on the long-term impacts of pesticide exposure. Many states are issuing regulatory limits on various PFAS in drinking water, groundwater, and soil. However, EPA must require complete product testing and disclosure of ingredients for proper PFAS regulation. Furthermore, the agency must eliminate the need for toxic pesticides by promoting organic and ecological pest management practices. Solutions like buying, growing, and supporting organic can help eliminate the extensive use of pesticides in the environment. Organic land management and regenerative organic agriculture eliminate the need for toxic agricultural pesticides. Given the wide availability of non-pesticidal alternative strategies, families and agricultural industry workers can apply these methods to promote a safe and healthy environment, especially among chemically vulnerable individuals. For more information on why organic is the healthy choice, see the Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. Additionally, learn more about how the lack of adequate pesticide regulations can adversely affect human and environmental health by visiting the Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticides and You article “Regulatory Failures Mount, Threatening Health and Safety.”

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

Source: Wood TV, Environmental Science and Technology

(Beyond Pesticides, August 30, 2022) Minuscule amounts of the weed killer Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate can result in damage to the nervous system, finds research led by scientists at Florida Atlantic University, published in Scientific Reports. As hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate continue to be sprayed on hundreds of millions of acres of land throughout the United States each year, recent data indicate that four out of five U.S. children and adults contain detectable levels of glyphosate in their bodies. The pesticide industry and its paid supporters tell Americans that although contamination is widespread, the levels found in humans are not cause for concern. This latest research significantly undermines that specious argument, finding impacts on critical nervous system processes at levels 300 times less than the lowest suggested amount on the Roundup label.

“It is concerning how little we understand about the impact of glyphosate on the nervous system,” said Akshay S. Naraine, MSc., coauthor and a PhD student at Florida Atlantic University. “More evidence is mounting for how prevalent exposure to glyphosate is, so this work hopefully pushes other researchers to expand on these findings and solidify where our concerns should be.” 

To investigate the nervous system effects of glyphosate, researchers employed a soil-dwelling nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, as a model test organism. C. elegans uses a neurotransmitter called Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) in coordination with its normal movement (e.g., the movement of a squirming worm). Any disruption of this normal movement results in convulsive activity. These properties make C. elegans an ideal model organism for studying seizures and epilepsy in humans. In addition to locomotion, human GABA receptors control sleep and are involved in managing mood.

Researchers exposed C. elegans to the active ingredient glyphosate, as well as other formulated glyphosate-based Roundup products, including the Roundup product sold in the U.S. and those before and after the United Kingdom banned the use of polyethoxylated tallowamine (POEAs), a known inert ingredient in Roundup shown to kill human cells.  C. elegans was exposed to electroshock therapy to induce convulsions. Under normal conditions, the nematodes reversed within an average of 34.1 seconds. After exposure to glyphosate, this increased by over 20 seconds, with the U.S. Roundup formulation increasing average convulsion duration to 65 seconds.

While some exposed nematodes take longer to recover, others never recover. In the saline solution this represented less than 5% of worms. For glyphosate alone, this number jumped to 12.9% and, for the Roundup formulations, between 19 to 33% did not recover, with the U.S. formulation representing the highest end of that range.

“The concentration listed for best results on the Roundup® Super Concentrate label is 0.98 percent glyphosate, which is about 5 tablespoons of Roundup® in 1 gallon of water,” co-author Akshay Naraine noted. “A significant finding from our study reveals that just 0.002 percent glyphosate, a difference of about 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use, had concerning effects on the nervous system.”

Using an anti-epileptic drug called sodium valproate, scientists were able to stop and reverse convulsing nematodes, reducing their recovery time to 20 seconds.

“Given how widespread the use of these products is, we must learn as much as we can about the potential negative impacts that may exist,” said study co-author Ken Dawson-Scully, PhD. “There have been studies done in the past that showed the potential dangers, and our study takes that one step further with some pretty dramatic results,” he said.

Despite decades of use, researchers are still uncovering shocking health information about a product that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is safe when used as directed. “As of now, there is no information for how exposure to glyphosate and Roundup® may affect humans diagnosed with epilepsy or other seizure disorders,” said Dr. Dawson-Scully. “Our study indicates that there is significant disruption in locomotion and should prompt further vertebrate studies.”

A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation shows that glyphosate has the ability to cross the blood brain barrier, increasing risk of neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. Research published in Neuroscience Letters links glyphosate exposure to the development of Parkinson’s disease. These effects, separate from the well-documented  connection to cancer, specifically non-Hodgkin lymphoma, expose the grave insufficiency of U.S. pesticide regulatory process. Not only does EPA continue to allow glyphosate, it is also allowing the most toxic version of formulated Roundup to continue to be sold to consumers. Bayer recently committed to removing current formulations of consumer-use glyphosate from store shelves by 2023, but this was not done as a result of regulatory pressure from EPA, but legal pressure from the scores of lawsuits that are reducing the company’s stock price and executive bonuses.  

EPA continues to refuse to get with the science on glyphosate, as evidenced by the need for a federal judge to void EPA’s interim decision on glyphosate for its failure to adequately consider cancer effects and impacts on endangered species. Balancing the corporate capture of EPA requires concerned people to raise their voice to EPA and call out its dangerous decisions. Join us in that effort by telling EPA to ban glyphosate, and Congress to ensure EPA performs its job as required by law.

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

Source:  Florida Atlantic University, Scientific Reports

Image Source: Florida Atlantic University

(Beyond Pesticides, August 29, 2022) Does your community have a pesticide-free park managed with organic practices? Do you wish it did? If you do have an organic parks policy, do you have updated information on current practices? It is time to take action to affirm or protect our authority to shift land management in our communities to organic practices—just as the pesticide industry is lobbying to take that right away from us. Become a Parks Advocate. And, take the action below.

Advance organic land management in your community and ask your Mayor/County Commissioner/Town Manager to affirm or protect your community’s right to restrict toxic pesticides.

If your community is one of a growing number across the country that has taken action to protect its citizens and environment by adopting organic policies and practices in its public spaces, please take this opportunity to request an update on how organic land management is going or ask that the community begin transitioning to organic land management.

At the same time, be aware that the pesticide industry is seeking take away the ability of local communities to restrict toxic pesticides. Ask your Mayor/County Commissioner/Town Manager to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators, on your behalf, and tell them to oppose H.R. 7266 and support the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PACTPA), which contains a provision affirming local authority to restrict pesticides.

Please share with us pictures of your parks. Tell us why your pesticide-free parks are important to you.

If your community has not yet taken action to protect its residents and environment by adopting organic policies and practices in its public spaces.

Advance organic land management in your community and ask your Mayor/County Commissioner/Town Manager to affirm or protect your community’s right to restrict toxic pesticides.

Letter to Mayor/County Commissioner/Town Manager:

This letter contains a two-part request—first to address organic management in our community and, second, contact our elected representatives in Congress to protect our community’s right to restrict toxic pesticides.

I would like to make sure that all land (parks, playgrounds, playing fields, etc.) in our area is managed with organic practices that eliminate fossil fuel-based toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Where these practices are in place, I would appreciate a report to the community. Where organic practices are not being utilized, I request that a plan be put in place to transition—as part of a community effort to protect health and biodiversity, and to fight the climate crisis. Now is the time that we must all join together to do our part to curtail petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil through effective organic practices.

I am also asking you to contact, on behalf of our community, our U.S. Representative and Senators to  tell them to oppose H.R. 7266 and support the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PACTPA), which contains a provision affirming local authority to restrict pesticides. We need your voice to be heard on behalf of all residents of our community to protect our health and biodiversity, and fight the climate crisis. Transitioning away from fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers through the restriction of toxic pesticides and the adoption of organic practices is critically important to our health now and future sustainability.

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.

(Beyond Pesticides, August 26, 2022) New research from a team in California finds one-third of pesticides it reviewed — including glyphosate, paraquat dichloride, and oxyfluorfen — to be associated with the development of thyroid cancer. Researchers investigated the links between exposure to pesticides — including 29 that cause DNA cell damage — and the risk of this cancer. The researchers also find that in all the single-pollutant models they employed, paraquat dichloride — a widely used herbicide — was linked to this cancer. In 2021, Beyond Pesticides covered research by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) that demonstrated that exposures to lindane and metalaxyl also cause heightened risk of thyroid cancer. These study findings add to the already considerable concern about pervasive pesticide exposure — not only among farmers and applicators, but also in the general population.

It is worth noting that, in addition to elevated thyroid cancer risks, multiple pesticides can cause other health damage. Paraquat is also acutely toxic, and can cause longer-term reproductive, renal, and hepatic damage to humans; it is toxic to birds, fish, and other aquatic organisms, and slightly so to honeybees. Glyphosate, as Beyond Pesticides has written frequently, is carcinogenic, and is associated with human, biotic, and ecosystem harm. Oxyfluorfen exposures deliver risk of reproductive, renal, hepatic, and developmental damage to humans, and toxicity to fish and other aquatic creatures.

The research team, from the University of California (UC) Los Angeles Health Sciences, published its study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The authors say it “provides the first evidence supporting the hypothesis that residential pesticide exposure from agricultural use is associated with an increased risk of thyroid cancer” [emphasis by Beyond Pesticides].

Thyroid cancer is one of the few cancers whose incidence has risen in recent decades — by 3% since 1992, according to Science Daily’s reporting on the California research. The American Thyroid Association also notes the dramatic increase in incidence, and says thyroid cancer is now the fastest-growing cancer in women, with most of that increase representing papillary thyroid cancer (the most common and slowest-growing of the subtypes).

Some of the increased incidence is likely attributable to better detection methods and increased use of imaging in healthcare. And genetics certainly play a role in vulnerability to thyroid disease generally, but widespread exposures to certain pesticides — whether through residues in the food supply, occupational exposures, or as in the subject study, residence in an agricultural production area — appear to pose a real risk for the development of thyroid cancers.

A Scientific American article notes that 20 years ago, a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that “Iowa and North Carolina women married to men using such pesticides as aldrin, DDT and lindane were at much higher risk of developing thyroid disease than women in non-agricultural areas” — at an incidence rate of 12.5%, compared to a 1–8% rate in the general population. [Note: the organochlorine pesticides aldrin and DDT were banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1974 and 1972, respectively.]

Beyond Pesticides was quoted in that study article: “It’s not just farm women who should worry. Trace amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers most certainly end up in some of the food we eat. The nonprofit group Beyond Pesticides warns that some 60 percent of pesticides used today have been shown to affect the thyroid gland’s production of T3 and T4 hormones. Commercially available insecticides and fungicides have also been implicated.”

The UC researchers did not need to stray far for their study; they focused on residents of California, which has a huge agricultural sector that uses roughly 25% of all pesticides deployed in the U.S. (The state has been experiencing an uptick in advanced thyroid cancer diagnoses.) The team used data from the California Cancer Registry (for 1999–2012) to examine residential exposure to 29 agricultural pesticides that cause DNA damage or endocrine disruption (ED), and used GIS (geographic information system) data to identify reasonable exposure estimates for each participant.

The study sample comprised 2,067 thyroid cancer cases and 1,003 control participants. All study participants were at least 35 years old, had a thyroid cancer diagnosis, and lived in the study’s target geographic area at the time of diagnosis. Control subjects were also at least 35, lived in that same geographic area, and had been living in California for at least five years before the research interview.

Principal investigator Avital Harari, M.D., pointed to the increased incidence of thyroid cancer and implications of the study’s findings. She said, “[T]he risk of advanced thyroid cancers, which can increase risk of mortality and cancer recurrence, has been found to be higher in the state of California as compared to other states. Therefore, it is essential to elucidate risk factors for getting thyroid cancer and understand potentially alterable causes of this disease in order to decrease risks for future generations. . . . Our research suggests several novel associations between pesticide exposure and increased risk of thyroid cancer. Specifically, exposure to the pesticide paraquat is positively associated with thyroid cancer risk.” She cited additional findings: that exposures to other pesticides, in combination with those to paraquat (in multi-pollutant models) also suggest increase thyroid cancer risk, and that exposures (over a 20-year period) to a larger number of unique pesticides proportionately increase the cancer risk.

Most previous research has focused on the role of endocrine-disrupting pesticides in the development of thyroid cancer, or disease development among those exposed occupationally (e.g., in this research, this, and this). The pesticides metalaxyl and lindane, both established endocrine disruptors, have been implicated in heightened thyroid cancer risk across multiple studies, including the NIH study mentioned above. See more, older research on Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database webpage, in the section on thyroid cancer.

The Science Daily coverage of the UC study explains further that “certain pesticides are established mutagens or have been shown to induce tumor growth and chromosomal abnormalities in vitro. These include glyphosate — the active ingredient in widely used herbicides — and pesticides that induce DNA cell damage in vitro. Pesticides also can alter thyroid hormone production, which has been associated with thyroid cancer risk.”

The relevant methods of action of pesticides re: thyroid cancer are the mutagenic or the (less direct) endocrine disrupting. The actions of endocrine disruptors were laid out by Beyond Pesticides in 2021: “‘The ingredients in many pesticides (and in many consumer products) act as endocrine disruptors in humans and other animals in several ways. They may: (1) mimic actions of hormones the body produces (e.g., estrogen or testosterone), causing reactions similar to those generated by the naturally produced hormones; (2) block hormone receptor cells, thereby preventing the actions of natural hormones; or (3) affect the synthesis, transport, metabolism, and/or excretion of hormones, thus altering the concentrations of natural hormones in tissues or at receptor sites.’ Pesticides acting as EDs can, through disruption of the activities in #3, distort hormone levels in the body.”

Threats to public health — in the subject study, from pesticides associated with development of thyroid cancer, but from toxic pesticides and chemicals far more broadly — are not being adequately mitigated by governments at federal, state, or local levels. And those threats are certainly not front and center in the business models of the agrochemical companies that manufacture pesticide products. Thus, the onus for changing our system of allowing toxic chemical use without adequate, precautionary, and protective review falls on the public and its organizational health, environment, climate (and other) advocates — such as Beyond Pesticides and many, many others. To that end, we invite everyone to participate in our 2022 National Forum Series, beginning September 15.

The event will focus on the existential problems associated with current public health and environmental crises — public health threats, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency — and chart a path for solving these urgent issues. Our involvement, whether as professionals, lay people, elected officials, or concerned advocates, is critical to enhancing public understanding of the science that underlies these crises, and to motivating action on the local, state, and national levels.

These crises arise from a confluence of issues, and are harming all life and every environment on the planet. The need for carefully defined sustainable land management, building and household practices, and consumer and industrial products is urgent. The 2022 National Forum Series launches Beyond Pesticides’ campaign to eliminate fossil fuel-based pesticide use within the next decade — putting a stop to toxic emissions, exposure, and residues, while embracing an organic systems approach that is holistic and respectful of life.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220818175207.htm

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

(Beyond Pesticides, August 25, 2022) A study published in World Journal of Pediatrics finds an association between antibiotic and neonicotinoid (neonic) exposure and onset of pediatric (childhood) type 1 diabetes (T1D) through effects on the gut microbiome. Individuals with type 1 diabetes are at higher risk of other autoimmune disorders, including thyroid and celiac disease. Ample evidence demonstrates environmental contaminants like pesticides and antibiotics negatively affect human mouth and gut microbes.

Through the gut biome, pesticide exposure can enhance or exacerbate the adverse effects of additional environmental toxicants on the body. Moreover, studies find low levels of pesticide exposure during pregnancy or childhood cause adverse health effects from metabolic/immune disorders to mental and physical disabilities. Children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of pesticide exposure as their developing bodies cannot adequately combat exposure effects. Although studies show how chemical exposures affect overall human health, more research is now questioning how these toxic chemicals influence gut health and subsequent occurrence of diseases. In children, gut microbiome disruption, or gut dysbiosis, has significant associations with type 1 diabetes development, and disruption of gut microbiota plays a role in type 2 diabetes development. Over 11 percent (>37 million) of individuals in the U.S. have diabetes, and cases are growing by millions annually. With increasing rates of type 1 and 2 diabetes cases among the global population, studies like these highlight the importance of evaluating how chemical contaminants deregulate normal bodily function through microbiome changes. 

There is a lack of understanding on the real-world effects of neonic and antibiotic exposure on gut microbiome changes akin to the onset of T1D. However, studies suggest the structure of gut microbiota in children can differ depending on the level of chemical exposure, leading to disparities in T1D risk. The study researchers highlight, “[M]ost existing studies on the health risks caused by antibiotics and pesticides tend to focus on the effect of high levels of exposure over short periods because relationships between long-term low-dose exposure and health risks are ambiguous and difficult to study. As a result, the mechanisms associated with their adverse effects on health remain unclear.”

The researchers evaluated antibiotic and neonic concentrations in the urine of 51 children newly diagnosed with T1D, comparing chemical exposure levels to those of healthy control children (without T1D). Mass spectrometry measured urine for concentrations of 28 antibiotics and 12 neonics, grouping children based on the type of chemical exposures. Furthermore, researchers compared gut microbiota in fecal matter to urine samples to determine a correlation between differences in gut microbiota and T1D onset.

The study detects antibiotics in 72.5 percent of children with T1D and 61.2 percent of healthy children, while neonics are present in 70.6 percent of children with T1D and 52.2 percent of healthy children. A child’s exposure to one type of antibiotic or two or more types of neonics increases the T1D risk 2.6 and 3.9-fold, respectively. Co-exposure to antibiotics and neonics has an association with T1D, increasing the risk 4.9-fold. Although antibiotic and neonic exposure has no impact on gut microbiota richness (number of species) and diversity (type of species), children unexposed to both antibiotics and neonics have a higher abundance of Lachnospiraceae (the core taxa of gut microbiota) than children exposed to antibiotics and neonicotinoids, alone or together.

The gut, also known as the “second brain,” shares similar structural and chemical parallels with the brain. Microbiota (i.e., groups of microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi) in the gut play a crucial role in lifelong digestion, detoxification, immune and central nervous system regulation, and other bodily functions. Through the gut biome, pesticide exposure can enhance or exacerbate the adverse effects of additional environmental toxicants on the body. Since the gut microbiome shapes metabolism, it can mediate some toxic effects of environmental chemicals. However, prolonged exposure to various environmental contaminants induces a change in gut microbes, influencing adverse health outcomes. Since the gut microbiome shapes metabolism, it can mediate some toxic effects of environmental chemicals. However, prolonged exposure to various environmental contaminants can induce critical chemical changes in the gut microbes, influencing adverse health outcomes.

The impacts of pesticides on the human gut microbiome represent another pesticide assault on human health as the biome harbors between 10 and 100 trillion symbiotic microbes. The human gastrointestinal tract and its digestive processes (the “gut”) mediate the function of several systems. Dysfunction of the gut microbiome is associated with a host of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, some cancers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, asthma, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, as well as allergies, autism, depression, obesity, and other disorders or syndromes.

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

Antibiotic exposure can allow more resilient bacteria to flourish in the gut microbiome and outcompete other beneficial bacteria. For instance, glyphosate, patented as an antibiotic by manufacturer Bayer/Monsanto, kills bacterial species beneficial to humans and incorporated in probiotics, yet allows harmful bacteria to persist, leading to resistance. Glyphosate’s mode of action targets and inactivates an enzyme in the “shikimate [metabolic] pathway” in plants. Although this pathway is not present in animal cells, it exists among bacterial species. However, antibiotic exposure can still impact other metabolic pathways in animals. Antibiotic resistance can trigger longer-lasting infections, higher medical expenses, the need for more expensive or hazardous medications, and the inability to treat life-threatening illnesses.

This study is the first to analyze a relationship between long-term, low-dose, daily exposure to antibiotic and neonic on gut microbiota. Children with T1D are more likely to encounter high levels of antibiotic and neonicotinoid exposure, altering bacteria in the gut. Although exposure to high levels of these compounds does not alter microbiota richness (number of species) and diversity (types of species) in the study, exposure to antibiotics and neonicotinoids is associated with small but critical changes to gut microbiota, specifically by disturbing specific taxa. Studies demonstrate gut dysbiosis-related diabetes has associations with decreased short-chain fatty acids and epithelial barrier disruption, allowing toxicants to induce systemic inflammation and insulin resistance. Therefore, children exposed to antibiotics, neonics, or both have an increased risk of T1D due to the lower abundance of Lachnospiraceae, a bacterium producing the short fatty acid chain (butyrate).

The study concludes, “[C]hildren with exposure to antibiotics and neonicotinoids had small but critical changes in gut microbiota, characterize[ed} by a lower abundance of butyrate-producing genera, especially Lachnospiraceae. Similar changes were also observed in T1D children, which were thought to be associated with the increase of autoimmune level. These findings suggest that exposure to high levels of antibiotics and pesticides in daily life might increase the risk of autoimmune diseases, such as T1D. Future work should focus on relationships between antibiotics and neonicotinoids exposure and the onset of autoimmune diseases in children, as well as the underlying mechanisms.”

Current risk assessment methods for pesticides are insufficient as assessment procedures fail to account fully for the sublethal effects of pesticides. With the globe currently going through the Holocene Extinction, Earth’s 6th mass extinction, with one million species of plants and animals at risk over the last four decades, action is needed to mitigate our anthropogenic impact on essential ecosystem organisms.

Pesticides themselves can possess the ability to disrupt metabolic function, especially for chronically exposed individuals (e.g., farmworkers) or during critical windows of vulnerability and development (e.g., childhood, pregnancy). Health officials identify Type 1 diabetes as one of the most common chronic childhood diseases, increasing among children younger than five years old. Therefore, it is essential to mitigate preventable exposure to disease-inducing pesticides. For more information on the effects of pesticide exposure on autoimmune and metabolic health, see Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database pages on diabetes, immune system disorders, endocrine disruption, and more.

Replacing dietary exposure to food grown in chemical-intensive agriculture with organic consistently reduces pesticide levels in one’s body. Preventive practices like organic can eliminate exposure to toxic autoimmune disrupting pesticides, like neonics. There is an indication that maintaining lower levels of conventional, synthetic pesticides is likely to reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes. In addition to positive impacts on the human microbiome, organically grown food (i.e., milk, meat, strawberries, tomatoes, and a range of other foods) contain a much more diverse bacterial community than their chemically grown counterparts. Organic agriculture represents a safer, healthier approach to crop production that does not necessitate toxic pesticide use. Beyond Pesticides encourages farmers to embrace and consumers to support regenerative, organic practices. A complement to buying organic is contacting various organic farming organizations to learn more about what you can do. Additionally, learn more about the hazards posed to children’s health through Beyond Pesticide’s Pesticide and You Journal article, “Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix.”

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

Source: World Journal of Pediatrics