(Beyond Pesticides, January 20, 2021) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed that PFAS (per and polyfluorinated alykyl substances) ‘forever chemicals’ are contaminating containers that store pesticide products, and subsequently the products themselves. The confirmation comes after preliminary testing from the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) found PFAS in the widely used mosquito pesticide Anvil 10+10. In response EPA announced further investigation and said, “EPA understands the need to provide guidance to states, tribes, and other users as they prepare to purchase mosquito control products for 2021 and will provide more information as it continues its investigation. EPA will update the following webpage with information as it becomes available: https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/pfas-packaging.”

“EPA’s discovery has opened a Pandora’s Box of health risks,” stated PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett, PhD, whose testing of the insecticide first raised the alarms, according to the EPA statement.  “Shipping containers may be a significant source of PFAS exposure through the entire U.S. agricultural sector.”

According to EPA, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers used to store and transport pesticides are commonly treated with fluoride in order to create a “chemical barrier” that will “prevent changes in chemical composition.” The fluorinated container is supposed to be more stable, and “less permeable, reactive, and dissolvable.”

Testing so far has been limited to one pesticide product supplier (likely the company Clarke, maker of Anvil 10+10), but resulted in detection of 9 different PFAS chemicals at levels the agency has not yet released. Earlier testing found PFAS chemicals well above safety limits established by states, as well as EPA’s health advisory.

Although the agency cautions that recent testing is not a direct measure of levels likely to be found in the environment, advocates note that repeated spraying of contaminated products are likely to result in significant non-point source pollution. Because of its nature as a ‘forever chemical,’ PFAS does not break down in the environment, and any pollution becomes cumulative.

There are also indications that fluorinated HDPE containers may have other storage uses, such as food packaging. EPA announced that it is subpoenaing the company that fluorinates HDPE containers under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but has done little else from a regulatory standpoint. States with stocks of Anvil 10+10 in HDPE barrels are being to encouraged to “red tag that inventory and hold for now.”  It is unclear what, if any further actions will be taken by the agency.

“This development only underlines how inadequate and haphazard EPA’s approach to this emerging contaminant has been,” added Dr. Bennett of PEER, pointing to the more substantive regulatory approach being pursued in Europe. “All unnecessary uses of PFAS need to be banned.”

Contamination of a toxic product with other harmful chemicals is glaringly problematic for public health and the environment. Mixtures of different chemicals can result in synergy that may increase or decrease the toxicity of a pesticide, or result in other changes to its characteristic, for example making it easier to penetrate through skin or plant material.

Past contamination scandals have plagued the pesticide manufacturing process. For example, DuPont was subject to a series of lawsuits two decades ago after its Benlate fungicide was contaminated with the toxic herbicide atrazine following quality control problems at its production plant. The Vietnam era chemical Agent Orange was contaminated with the dioxin TCDD (2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzodioxin), produced as a by-product of its manufacture.

Contamination of widely used storage and transportation containers with chemicals that have been linked to cancer, liver damage, birth and developmental problems, reduced fertility, and asthma is a scandal without compare. It is unclear how long such a practice has been commonplace without any regulatory oversight. What is certain is that the next administration will have a massive challenge ahead in getting an adequate handle on the depth and scope of PFAS contamination. President Biden’s pick for EPA Administrator, Michael Regan, has taken action against PFAS in his home state of North Carolina. Advocates are urging that this past experience will inform a stricter regulatory approach against PFAS and other toxic chemicals and pesticides under EPA’s purview.

Join Beyond Pesticides in urging the incoming administration to restore science to its rightful place. In light of serious weakening of the agency over the last four years, and years of corporate influence before that, help call on the agency to halt new pesticide registrations. This will provide time for EPA to review the science supporting existing registrations and confirm to the public it is not manipulated or corrupt. See Beyond Pesticides’ Action of the Week archive for more ways to engage with the incoming administration.

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

Source: EPA, PEER

(Beyond Pesticides, January 19, 2021) Inadequate funding proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (also known as the “Section 2501” program) fails to address historic discrimination and inadequate assistance for farmers of color and military veteran farmers. Funding for the Section 2501 program, which for three decades, has been the only farm bill program specifically addressing needs of these underserved populations in agriculture is smaller this year, placing undue stress on already stretched-thin community organizations working to respond to farmers during this unprecedented period of prolonged economic hardship.

Tell the Biden USDA to ensure that the full Section 2501 funding reaches farmers of color and military veteran farmers.

Since 1990, the goal of the Section 2501 program has been to increase historically underserved farmers’ awareness of and access to USDA resources—addressing the historic inequities that farmers of color, or socially disadvantaged farmers, faced in accessing USDA programs, including Farm Service Agency (FSA) loans. Congress added military veterans to the program in 2014 as an additional underserved audience. Section 2501 grants provide funding to community-based organizations and minority-serving academic institutions to conduct critical outreach and technical assistance to communities of color and veterans. 

Unfortunately, USDA has redirected $2 million of this funding, along with $2 million redirected from Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) conservation technical assistance funds to a separate, administratively created initiative. USDA’s a new Centers for Community Prosperity initiative seeks to address economic development in persistent poverty communities, with a focus on faith-based initiatives. This new program is less focused on socially disadvantaged farmers and much more prescriptive in project design than the Section 2501 program. In total, USDA diverted $4.2 million into this new initiative. 

Congress recently provided an additional $40 million for the Section 2501 grant program in its latest COVID relief bill passed in December 2020. Please urge USDA to ensure this funding goes directly to Section 2501 grantees and reaches socially disadvantaged farmers, and not be used for any other initiative—such as the Centers for Community Prosperity.

Tell the Biden USDA to ensure that the full Section 2501 funding reaches farmers of color and military veteran farmers.

Letter to Congress

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, farmers across the country are struggling to keep their farms afloat and plan for the uncertainty that the coming year holds. While farmers have suffered from several years of depressed prices, uncertainty in trade markets, and the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, the already tenuous livelihoods of our nation’s most chronically underserved farmers—particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color farmers–were made worse this year as a result of the pandemic. I am increasingly concerned about the sustainability of our nation’s most underserved farmers who often not only have the fewest resources to draw on but also are most in need of emergency relief and long-term support in these challenging times—as well as the nation’s food security that depends on them.

As you know, Congress recently passed its fourth round of emergency relief to help farmers, small businesses, health care professionals, households and communities across the country combat the worsening impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. As directed in the farm bill, the $80 million in additional  USDA funding is to be divided equally between USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and the Outreach and Technical Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program, also known as the Section 2501 Program.

I urge you to make sure that USDA moves expeditiously to grant these additional Section 2501 funds to eligible entities with the skills and experience to reach socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers and ranchers, including those most impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It is my expectation, as is shared by Congress, that the additional $40 million in funding to be directed to the Section 2501 grant program will support projects as authorized under the farm bill and will not be diverted to any other administrative initiative or purpose, such as the Centers for Community Prosperity.

In the fact of the future uncertainty of the ultimate impacts of the pandemic on our food system and communities of color, please pressure USDA to distribute the additional Section 2501 grants in a way that ensures organizations have resources over the coming years to respond to their community’s needs. USDA should also use the additional funding to increase the total grant award amount to its statutory level of $250,000 per year. Finally, I share the expectation of Congress that USDA will ensure that any project funded with these additional funds complies with the statutory requirements laid out in the farm bill—that it:

• Has demonstrated experience in providing agricultural education or other agriculturally related services to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and veteran farmers and ranchers;
• Provides documentary evidence of work with, and on behalf of, socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers and veteran farmers and ranchers during the 3-year period preceding the submission of their 2501 application;
• Will use any 2501 funding to provide outreach and technical assistance exclusively to socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers in order to improve their participation in USDA agricultural program; and
• Will represent a regional balance of projects that are geographically diverse and serve farmers in all states and regions

Thank you for supporting this critical program—especially during a time of such critical need for Black, Indigenous and people of color communities across the country.

Letter to Biden Transition Team on Agriculture

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, farmers across the country are struggling to keep their farms afloat and plan for the uncertainty that the coming year holds. While farmers have suffered from several years of depressed prices, uncertainty in trade markets, and the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, the already tenuous livelihoods of our nation’s most chronically underserved farmers—particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color farmers—were made worse this year as a result of the pandemic. I am increasingly concerned about the sustainability of our nation’s most underserved farmers who often not only have the fewest resources to draw on but also are most in need of emergency relief and long-term support in these challenging times—as well as the nation’s food security that depends on them.

Congress recently passed its fourth round of emergency relief to help farmers, small businesses, health care professionals, households and communities across the country combat the worsening impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. As directed in the farm bill, the $80 million in additional  USDA funding is to be divided equally between USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and the Outreach and Technical Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program, also known as the Section 2501 Program.

I urge the Department to move expeditiously to grant these additional Section 2501 funds to eligible entities with the skills and experience to reach socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers and ranchers, including those most impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It is my expectation, as is shared by Congress, that the additional $40 million in funding to be directed to the Section 2501 grant program will support projects as authorized under the farm bill and will not be diverted to any other administrative initiative or purpose, such as the Centers for Community Prosperity.

In the face of the future uncertainty of the ultimate impacts of the pandemic on our food system and communities of color, I ask USDA to distribute the additional Section 2501 grants in a way that ensures organizations have resources over the coming years to respond to their community’s needs. USDA should also use the additional funding to increase the total grant award amount to its statutory level of $250,000 per year. Finally, I share the expectation of Congress that USDA will ensure that any project funded with these additional funds complies with the statutory requirements laid out in the farm bill—that it:

• Has demonstrated experience in providing agricultural education or other agriculturally related services to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and veteran farmers and ranchers;
• Provides documentary evidence of work with, and on behalf of, socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers and veteran farmers and ranchers during the 3-year period preceding the submission of their 2501 application;
• Will use any 2501 funding to provide outreach and technical assistance exclusively to socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers in order to improve their participation in USDA agricultural program; and
• Will represent a regional balance of projects that are geographically diverse and serve farmers in all states and regions

Thank you for considering these recommendations and for supporting this critical program—especially during a time of such critical need for Black, Indigenous and people of color communities across the country.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 18, 2021) We honor Martin Luther King, Jr. today on Martin Luther King Day—a day of national service with volunteer opportunities across the nation. During this day of reflection, consider reading Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” or listening to it here.

At Beyond Pesticides, our vision and work aligns with the vision Dr. King expressed—“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” To that end, we seek to eliminate disproportionate risk, with elevated toxic hazards to people of color communities, with higher rates of pesticide-induced diseases among those who live in fenceline communities where chemicals are produced, among farmworkers who harvest the nation’s food, and among landscapers who manage our parks and children’s playing fields. We seek to transform national laws that allow risks under risk assessments that institutionalize environmental racism by allowing for this disproportionate risk. We seek to eliminate toxic pesticides production and use through the adoption of organic land management. To that end, we work with communities across the country to transition their land management to organic practices and we advance organic standards under the Organic Foods Production Act that have integrity and are fully enforced.

Eliminating Toxic Pesticides with Organic Transformation

Beyond Pesticides’ program reflects the thinking that this is not a time to tinker with reforms, thus the call for foundational change to policy and practice. The fact that racial disparities are integral to the way we regulate the production, transportation, use, and disposal of toxic pesticides and other chemicals means the toxic pesticide industry is unsustainable. The standards in the governing laws are fundamentally flawed, resulting in unnecessary use and unacceptable disease outcomes that are high generally, but even greater for people of color. Systemic change does not occur with improved “mitigation measures” that EPA manipulates unscientifically or the banning of some chemicals or some uses. Our strategy only calls out individual chemicals and their effects—like the herbicide dicamba causing crop damage and Roundup (glyphosate) causing non-Hodgkin lymphoma or neonicotinoid insecticides indiscriminately killing pollinators—as indicative of a failed statutory and regulatory system, not just bad actor chemicals.

Advancing Systemic Change

Our work to advance systemic change seeks to identify underlying policies that codify dispropor­tionate harm, such as federal pesticide law that is built on a foundation that allows elevated and disproportionate risk to workers. They are excluded from EPA’s cumulative risk assessment (under the Food Quality Protection Act amendments to the Fed­eral Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), which aggregates dietary and non-dietary, but explicitly not occupational, exposure to pesticides, while in­cluding a mandate to protect children. With this, the law effectively requires EPA to allow higher rates of harm for workers, particularly farmworkers, land­scapers (workers who are disproportionately people of color), and others occupationally exposed to pes­ticides. In response, Beyond Pesticides is reimagin­ing legislative proposals that effect a transformation to an organic society that eliminates toxic pesticides, respects the complexity of life and the ecosystems that sustain us, and put an end to institutional biases that codify environmental racism. The time for systemic change is now.

Call for Park Pesticide Ban Cites Environmental Racism

Beyond Pesticides is working with grassroots groups across the nation to ban toxic pesticides in city, town, and county parks, playgrounds, and playing fields, as part of an organic transition. We work with groups, like The Black Institute and other grassroots organi­zations, and elected officials to replace toxic pesticides with organic land management practices, recognizing that children and people of color face dispro­portionate harm from pesticide exposure. To make matters worse, the hazards associated with the toxic chemicals inflict multi-generational diseases like diabetes, asthma and respiratory illness, and learning disabilities.

We join New York City Council Members Ben Kallos and Carlina Rivera in supporting organic parks legislation, citing in our press conference and testimony the wide use of the weed killer Roundup by city agencies—“The use of this pesticide poses a health risk for anyone who frequents city parks and playgrounds, as well as city workers, including city parks employees who come into contact with glyphosate containing chemicals while spraying.”

Disproportionate Harm from Coronavirus

As the coronavirus hit, the nation quickly saw dis­parities in who is at highest risk of infection, not just in age groups, but along racial lines. In every state, we see that people of color suffer higher rates of infection, illness, and death than their percentage of the population. Reporting recognized that this is occurring because those with the highest disease and death rates are disproportionately “essential workers,” delivering essential services with daily exposure to the virus. They are among the lowest income workers in society and, as a result, have medi­cal comorbidities that elevate risk factors, and are most likely to have limited, if any, health insurance. For millions of people outside the black and brown community, this has raised a heightened awareness of societal inequities related to race—bringing Into focus the disproportionate effect that pesticide expo­sure has by elevating risk factors for Covid-19.

Beyond Pesticides Statement in Support of Black Lives Matter (June 2020)

In demanding a future that transforms society to ensure equality of opportunity and respect for life, we support the leadership of Black Lives Matter in advancing systemic and institutional change in how we value each other. As an environmental and public health organization, Beyond Pesticides seeks to ensure that we put a stop to disproportionate harm to people of color because of racism and inequality. We strive for a sustainable world that, in a true sense, can only be achieved with foundational change to our social, economic, and environmental norms. In this context, we stand with those demanding an end to systemic racism, white supremacy, and violence in society, and call for a social structure and law enforcement system that honors this goal.

As Martin Luther King said in his speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” to the Annual SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Autust, 16, 1967: “[W]e must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”

(Beyond Pesticides, January 15, 2021) A study of groundwater that feeds public drinking water supply finds pesticides in 41% of supply wells (and a handful of freshwater springs). Two-thirds of that 41% contain pesticide compounds per se, and one-third contain pesticide degradates — compounds resulting from biotic (or abiotic) transformation of pesticides into other compounds. There is considerable ink (digital and actual) covering the health and environmental impacts of pesticide exposures, and reporting on the issue of pesticide migration into groundwater and waterways. Beyond Pesticides maintains that organic practices in land management, and especially in agriculture, are the solution to the contamination of our waterways and groundwater. Such practices, widely adopted, would have enormous salutary effects on human health and the health of ecosystems and their inhabitants.

Published in Environmental Science & Technology, the study paper reports this research as the “first systematic assessment of raw [untreated] groundwater used for public drinking supply across the United States to include and provide human-health context for a large number of pesticide degradates.” Samples for the research were gathered across 1,204 sites — at or near the wellheads — in 23 principal aquifers whose groundwater is tapped for drinking water supply used by approximately 73 million people. The samples were analyzed for 109 pesticides and 116 degradates.

How do pesticide compounds get into groundwater and drinking supplies? Rain or snow melt can transport pesticides from farm fields, residential properties, and managed turf (e.g., golf courses, parks, athletic fields, etc.) through storm drains, or as runoff that is absorbed into surface soils — especially fairly permeable soils. The water than percolates down, in a process known as “recharge,” into deeper soils. Any aquifers, whether shallow or deep, acquire this water with the pollutants in it.

Wells that draw on such aquifers, whether public or private, can become contaminated with pesticides and their degradates. The paper notes that, “Pesticide degradates are often detected more frequently and at higher concentrations than their parents due to high transformation rates and because long travel times, common from source to the depth zone used for public supply, support environmental transformation.” In addition, aerial pesticide application can land on off-target areas or arrive via drift, contributing to the migration of these compounds through soils and into groundwater.

As context, the paper sets out the magnitude of pesticide use (excluding antimicrobials and biologics) in the U.S. — 400–450 million kg from 2005 through 2012 — and recognizes that “pesticide compounds vary widely with respect to types of human-health effects and potential degree of toxicity.” It identifies the five most common agricultural pesticides in use as of 2017: glyphosate, atrazine, metolachlor-(S), 2,4-D, and acetochlor, and notes results of a 2020 study showing that in the western U.S., atrazine is the most frequently detected pesticide in drinking water supplies (see bullet points, below).

The occurrence of particular pesticide compounds and degradates in groundwater shows variance across different regions of the country. These variances are due to a variety of local factors, including: particular regional agricultural pesticide uses and protocols; proximity to non-agricultural sources of pesticide use (e.g., golf courses or other managed turf); local hydrological dynamics; and the nature of the local/regional soils, among others.

Among the analysis data of the research were these outcomes:

• nearly 75% of sites with at least one pesticide detected also had degradates present
• 23% of sites showed the presence of degradates in the absence of any pesticide active ingredients
• the five compounds with the largest concentrations in samples were degradates of 4-hydroxychlorothalonil (a degradate of chlorothalonil), alachlor, atrazine, and metolachlor
• 60 pesticide and 68 pesticide degradate compounds were detected in groundwater from at least one aquifer wellhead in the study
• 10 pesticides (all herbicides) and 11 herbicide degradates were found in at least 2% of samples
• the four most commonly detected herbicides were atrazine, hexazinone, prometon, and tebuthiuron
• among the 20 most common mixtures of two or three pesticide compounds detected, 17 comprised only atrazine, atrazine degradates, and/or metolachlor

The research also finds that, though the presence of pesticides in its samples was common, concentrations that “approach [benchmark] levels of potential human-health concern” occurred for a small number of compounds, and none of the samples yielded levels higher than the benchmarks (BQs) used by the study (“of detected pesticide compounds with benchmarks, none had a BQ > 1”). There were, however, six pesticide compounds (and 1.6% of well samples) that showed concentrations “approaching levels of potential concern.” Those pesticides were alachlor, atrazine, and diuron; the degradates included didealkylatrazine/CAAT, 4-hydroxychlorothalonil, and deethylatrazine/DEA.

It is instructive, if disconcerting, to read Beyond Pesticides 2008 coverage of a USGS study that evaluated the presence of pesticides in groundwater samples taken in 1993–1995 and 2001–2003. Among the results, which reinforce the new findings: “The six pesticide compounds detected are the triazine herbicides atrazine, simazine, and prometon; the acetanilide herbicide metolachlor; the urea herbicide tebuthiuron; and an atrazine degradate, deethylatrazine (DEA).

The whole “benchmark” issue re: human health impacts, while complex, is important The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established some MCLs, or maximum contaminant levels (levels lower than threshold levels expected to confer significant health risk) for 18 pesticides, and so-called HHBPs (human-health benchmarks for pesticides) for another 394 that lack MCLs. Another federal agency, the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) uses an unenforceable system of screening levels (HBSLs, or Health-Based Screening Levels) for 30 pesticides and seven pesticide degradates that lack either MCLs or HHBPs.

These various thresholds point to a variety of problems with the systems that are supposed to evaluate what is and is not dangerous for public health. USGS has been critical of EPA for not setting adequate water quality benchmarks for pesticides. As of a few years ago, USGS’s National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) wrote, “Current standards and guidelines do not completely eliminate risks posed by pesticides in waterways because: (1) values are not established for many pesticides, (2) mixtures and breakdown products are not considered, (3) the effects of seasonal exposure to high concentrations have not been evaluated, and (4) some types of potential effects, such as endocrine disruption and unique responses of sensitive individuals, have not yet been assessed.”

In 2012, EPA set guidelines (HHBPs) for 350+ chemicals relative to their chronic and acute effects in sensitive populations. In 2017, the agency updated that guidance on pesticides in drinking water. Yet the HHBP benchmarks are non-regulatory and non-enforceable, and there continue to be no federal MCLs for all but 18 pesticide compounds.

In addition, EPA has made precious little progress on evaluation of health impacts of exposures to multiple, or mixtures of, pesticides. Nor has there been adequate attention to the “inert” or adjuvant ingredients in pesticide formulations. Further, as this research paper notes, the actions of pesticide degradates are both less studied and less predictable than those of pesticide active ingredients. Research (in note 14 of subject paper) from 2013 notes: “It remains difficult to anticipate the extent and pathways of pesticide degradation under specific field conditions.” Thus, the researchers acknowledge one limitation of the study’s conclusions.

Another is that, as the paper authors write: “The laboratory method could not quantify every type of pesticide. Compared with considering only compounds with benchmarks, adding degradates without benchmarks to the screening process for potential human-health concerns resulted in small increases in the final number of individual compounds” that may represent health risks. But the paper concludes with: “Degradates without benchmarks are unlikely to substantially increase the potential for human-health concerns associated with the occurrence of pesticide compounds in groundwater used for public supply.” Beyond Pesticides asserts that, given the inadequacies of EPA evaluation of health impacts of pesticides — as noted above — this narrow conclusion, relevant to this study, ought not be interpreted as particularly reassuring.

What Beyond Pesticides wrote in its Pesticides in My Drinking Water? factsheet endures: “This problem requires individual precautionary measures and preventive, community based action to protect [individual and public health] and ultimately, stop ongoing pesticide use that ends up in drinking water from numerous agricultural, public land, and home and garden uses. Beyond Pesticides urges a solution that keeps pesticides out of the water, rather than trying to clean them up after they enter our waterways and drinking water supply.”

That solution, a just and rapid transition to organic and regenerative agricultural practices, would address a huge proportion of this problem of pesticides contamination of groundwater — and ultimately, of drinking water supplies. To learn more on pesticide impacts on water quality generally, and on individual actions, see the Beyond Pesticides Water Quality factsheet, the website page Threatened Waters: Turning the Tide on Pesticide Contamination, and the Pesticides in My Drinking Water? factsheet.

Source: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c05793?utm_source=SendGrid_ealert&utm_medium=ealert&utm_campaign=TOC_esthag_v55_i1&ref=SendGrid_ealert_TOC_esthag_v55_i1_____&

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

(Beyond Pesticide, January 14, 2021) Long-term exposure to permethrin and legacy organochlorine pesticides (aldrin, dieldrin, and lindane) 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, according to research in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Globally, cancer is one of the leading causes of death, with over eight million people succumbing to the disease every year. Notably, the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) predicts new cancer cases to rise by 67.4% in 2030.

Although there is a vast amalgamation of research linking cancer risk to genetic and external factors (e.g., cigarette smoke), there is increasing evidence that pesticide exposure augments the risk of developing both common and rare cancers, including MM. This study highlights the importance of understanding how pesticide use can increase the risk of latent diseases, which do not readily develop upon initial exposure. Study researchers state, “Our findings provide important insights regarding exposures to specific pesticides that may contribute to the excess of MM among farmers… [T]he continued widespread residential and other use of permethrin and environmental exposure to organochlorine insecticides due to legacy contamination…could have important public health implications for exposed individuals in the general population.”

The National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, and other health agencies intended that research assess the occurrence of MGUS in farmers and gauge any relationships between disease development and various pesticides. Using data from the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), researchers evaluated MGUS incidences among 1,638 male farmers, aged 50 years or older, from a prospective cohort in Iowa and North Carolina. Researchers statically quantified the strength of association between MGUS incidents for recent (≤12 months) and cumulative lifetime use of differing specific pesticides, using an odds ratio (OR).

The study results demonstrate MGUS is significantly more common among AHS study participants than men of a similar demographic in the general population. Researchers find an association between recent permethrin use and MGUS incidence, especially among individuals with a history of past permethrin use. MGUS rates increase with long-term use of organochlorine insecticides aldrin and dieldrin compared to individuals without exposure to both pesticides. Similarly, data demonstrate a positive association between MGUS incidences and petroleum oil/distillates as herbicides.

The presence of abnormal proteins (monoclonal [M] protein) in the blood within bone marrow is a characterization of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. Although MGUS is benign (non-cancerous) and largely asymptomatic, it can be premalignant or a precursor for cancer development. Annually, one percent of individuals with MGUS will develop cancers like multiple myeloma, lymphoma, or amyloidosis. However, the cancer risk increases in people whose protein levels are abnormally high, which can occur upon repeated exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like pesticides. Moreover, multiple myeloma is a rare type of blood cancer of the plasma cells, killing nearly 40 percent of 32,270 people it afflicts in the U.S. annually. Although MM mainly impacts older individuals, the elderly population faces a distinct set of challenges such as age-related immune dysfunction. Since MM causes plasma cells to function abnormally, older people with weak immune function can experience more life-threatening symptoms like renal (kidney) failure.

This study adds to the growing body of research on MGUS and pesticide exposure, becoming the largest to investigate MGUS incidences in farmers and the first to show an association between MGUS and permethrin use (a pyrethroid insecticide). In combination with previous studies demonstrating that exposure to permethrin may elevate MM risk among farmers, these findings provide reliable evidence establishing a link between permethrin and MM development. Considering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies permethrin as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” and experimental studies demonstrate permethrin-induced bone marrow toxicity, further research should assess the mechanisms by which pesticides impact biological pathways to cause MGUS and MM. The researcher in the study note, “Given the continued widespread use of permethrin in various residential and commercial settings, our findings may have important implications for exposed individuals in the general population.”

Although this research finds an inverse association between MGUS and fonofos (organophosphate insecticide) use, EPA classifies the pesticides as an extremely hazardous substance, canceling registration in 1998. Moreover, previous AHS findings associate fonofos exposure with an increase in prostate cancer risk.

Cancer is becoming the leading cause of death worldwide; it is essential to know and understand the implications pesticide use and exposure has on human health. Studies related to pesticides and cancer can help scientists understand the underlying mechanisms that cause the disease. It is vital to understand how exposure to environmental pollutants like pesticides can increase the risk of developing chronic disease, especially if they are rare and disproportionately impact various populations. 

Beyond Pesticides tracks the most recent studies related to pesticide exposure through our Pesticide Induced Diseases Database (PIDD). This database supports the clear need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information on the multiple harms, pesticides can cause, see PIDD pages on sexual and reproductive dysfunction, endocrine disruption, cancer, and other diseases. 

Furthermore, protect human, animal, and environmental health by telling President-elect Biden and Congress to clean up the corruption of science at EPA and set a moratorium on future pesticide registrations. 

For more information on how organic is the right choice for both consumers and the farmworkers who grow our food, see Beyond Pesticides webpage, Health Benefits of Organic Agriculture. 

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

Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

(Beyond Pesticides, January 13, 2021) An ethanol processing plant located in the small village of Mead, Nebraska has been using seeds coated in bee-toxic chemicals as part of its production process, according to reporting published in The Guardian earlier this week. The plant, owned by a company called AltEn, may be the only plant in the U.S. producing biofuels with toxic seeds. There is a reason for that, and Mead residents are experiencing the adverse effects of EPA not regulating treated seeds.

The prevalence of the use of seed coatings in chemical agriculture has increased over the last several decades, as the pesticide industry works to increase product sales by exploiting a loophole in federal pesticide law. Under FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act), a clause known as the “treated article exemption” permits seeds to be coated with highly toxic pesticides without any requirement for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess environmental or public health effects of their use. This allows hazardous pesticides (primarily insecticides and fungicides) to be used indiscriminately with no effective oversight. Research finds that over 150 million acres of farmland are planted with toxic seeds, including nearly four tons of bee-killing neonicotinoids each year.

The AltEn plant is unique in that it is accepting unused treated seeds for farmers, advertising the site as a “recycling” facility, according to The Guardian. Apart from biofuel production, ethanol plants usually sell their spent, fermented grains to livestock farmers for feed. Processing toxic seeds has made that product too hazardous for cattle, so AltEn has been selling it to farmers as a soil amendment.

The concentration of hazardous pesticides in the production process has resulted in widespread contamination of spent grains. After numerous complaints, the state prohibited AltEn from selling the grains. In response, the company has piled it up around the plant, allowing it to leach into groundwater and spill out of storage ponds into nearby streams. The neonicotinoid clothianidin was found in a waste mound at an astounding 427,000 parts per billion (ppb). A wastewater storage pond found high levels of three neonicotinoids – imidacloprid, cloathianidin, and thimethoxam. Thiamethoxam was discovered at 24,000 ppb, over 300 times higher than its acceptable level in drinking water (70ppb), and roughly 1,300 times higher than the level considered safe for aquatic organisms by EPA (17.5ppb).

“It is a really significant contamination event that is impacting the local ecosystems and community there,” Sarah Hoyle of the invertebrate conservation group Xerces Society told The Guardian. Despite the obvious dangers posed by the plant, local residents in Mead have had difficulty getting their voices heard. “I’ve emailed the EPA, water, parks and conservation people, pretty much anybody I could think of,” said Jody Weible, chairwoman of the Mead planning commission to The Guardian. “They all say there is nothing they think they can do about it.” Reporting indicates that state regulators have yet to conduct testing of soil and water near the plant.  

Expectedly, pollinators near the plant are dying off. Judy Wu-Smart, PhD, bee researcher at University of Nebraska documented a sustained collapse of every beehive used by the university for a research project on a farm within a mile of the AltEn plant. “There is a red flag here. The bees are just a bio-indicator of something seriously going wrong,” Dr. Wu-Smart told the Guardian. She further indicated an “urgent need to examine potential impacts on local communities and wildlife.”

Advocates have challenged the “treated article exemption” used by EPA to forgo regulation of treated seeds, but were rebuffed by the courts in deference to the agency. In response, the Center for Food Safety initiated a formal legal petition requesting EPA regulate the use of toxic seed coatings. The Trump administration has yet to respond to the petition, leaving the determination up to the next administration.

Beyond frustrations over the lack of regulation and inherent hazard treated seeds pose, is the simple fact that they are unnecessary. Multiple studies have found toxic seeds offer “little to zero net benefit in most cases.” Despite the fact that many farmers don’t know exactly what’s on the seeds their planting, pressure on conventional producers to use these products is often intense, and can come from peers, neighboring farms, pesticide dealers, and insurance salesmen.

The actions taken by AltEn, and subsequent hazardous environment the residents of Mead must now endure, would not occur with a functioning regulatory system that refuses to cater to corporate interests. One state regulator with the Nebraska department of environment and energy (NDEE) told The Guardian AltEn officials were “hard-working people trying to make a living.” But making a living by destroying the life around you is ultimately self-defeating.

The Biden administration must take bold steps to correct the shortcomings in pesticide regulation not just of the last four years, but the last several decades. Beyond Pesticides is calling on President-elect Biden to clean up EPA and stop accepting safety data from corporations with a track record of corruption, and urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to embrace organic farming practices.  

For more information on the hazards posed by toxic seeds, see Beyond Pesticides video, Seeds that Poison.

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

Source: The Guardian

(Beyond Pesticides, January 12, 2021) New York State is set to prohibit on December 31, 2021 the use of glyphosate on all state property after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed bill S6502A/A732b late last year. The state legislature passed the legislation in July, 2020. The move is an important recognition by the nation’s fourth most populous state that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not adequately protecting people and the environment from hazardous pesticides (pesticide is an umbrella term that includes insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc). However, the law’s ability to improve these protections will depend significantly upon the management approach that replaces glyphosate use.

 “A transition away from Roundup and other glyphosate-based pesticides must reject the use of regrettable substitutes, and embrace sound organic principles and practices,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. In pest and weed management, regrettable substitutions occur when one toxic chemical is banned or restricted, and another hazardous pesticide is simply used in its place. The substitution may have a different chemical formulation, mode of action, and set of health and environmental impacts, but nonetheless fills the same role as Roundup/glyphosate when it comes to weed management.

When the answer to eliminating glyphosate is to switch to another herbicide like 2,4-D, glufosinate, triclopyr, or dicamba, the message is not getting across, and more education and advocacy is needed, advocates say. A chemical-intensive approach focuses on treating symptoms – pests and weeds, but ultimately undermines a land manager’s capacity to address these problems naturally. This is because synthetic pesticides (and fertilizers) harm soil life, while an organic approach to land management focuses on enhancing soil health by nurturing soil biology.

A natural, organic approach focuses on pest prevention, addressing the root causes of pest problems by promoting soil health. Healthier soil grows healthier plants, which will be more resilient in the face of pest and weed intrusions. In turfgrass, this includes an emphasis on cultural practices, such as mowing high, aeration, overseeding, and use of natural soil amendments like compost. To manage weeds and pests in natural areas, ecological assessments are conducted, and importance is placed on mechanical and biological management. Biological management approaches have the potential to adequately address a number of problematic pests and plant species. Goats have been used throughout the country to manage opportunistic weeds on natural lands and, with their hoof action, urine, and droppings, they can help restore and stabilize soil health.

As more and more states and communities consider restrictions on glyphosate use, they are  considering next steps, and how these laws are implemented. While it is possible for the elimination of one chemical to prompt a change toward natural, organic practices, a more comprehensive approach can remove the guess work. Beyond Pesticides strongly encourages a comprehensive policy approach that eliminates not only glyphosate, but all hazardous pesticides registered by EPA with restrictions that only allow the limited use of organic compatible products as a last resort.

EPA’s failure to act on the dangers posed by glyphosate is one example in a long string of breakdowns by the agency to safeguard public health and the wider environment. Despite strong evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity published by the World Health Organization, and multi-million dollar jury verdicts for those harmed by glyphosate use, the current administration not only defends glyphosate at home, but has acted on behalf of industry to flack the chemical abroad.  

Critics have pointed to the controversy surrounding glyphosate as merely the visible part of a massive iceberg of regulatory failure. Beyond Pesticides is calling on President-elect Biden and Congress to clean up the corruption of science at EPA and place a hard stop on all future pesticide registrations until the agency can ensure the science behind these registrations are sound. Readers can join Beyond Pesticides in sending a letter today.

If the failure to fully regulate glyphosate is symptomatic of the institutional government weaknesses in taking protective action on toxic chemicals, then organic practices and compatible inputs is the only solution. Learn more about the benefits of organic land management on Beyond Pesticides Lawns and Landscapes webpage.

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

Source: NY Bill S6502A/A732b

(Beyond Pesticides, January 11, 2021) Treatment of chemical companies as clients rather than regulated entities is not new at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but corruption reached new highs during the Trump administration. With a new administration, it is time to end the rule of corporate deception at EPA. This goes beyond the use of the Congressional Review Act to reverse individual rules (adopted in the last six months) that defy scientific findings and compliance with environmental and public health standards. We can no longer rely on bad science and unscrupulous chemical manufacturers that put profits above concerns for the health of people and the environment. EPA must audit pesticide registrants for integrity to scientific process and set a moratorium on future pesticide registration until the agency can assure the public that their science is not corrupt, as it has been in the past.

Tell President-elect Biden and Congress to clean up the corruption of science at EPA and set a moratorium on future pesticide registrations—until the agency can assure the public that the chemical manufacturers’ science supporting pesticide registrations is not corrupt.

The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting published a story in early December on yet another example of the corporate malfeasance that exalts profit far above concerns for safety, health, and ecosystems. The Midwest Center’s investigation finds that Monsanto and BASF, makers of the extremely problematic herbicide dicamba, engaged in a variety of deceitful, unethical, and possibly fraudulent practices to enable its use. The bottom line is that the companies knew, before they released dicamba, about the massive damage it would cause—and then put it on the market. Beyond Pesticides has reported on the corporate greed that fuels the downstream public health, environmental, and economic devastation these pesticides cause, and advocated for their removal from the market.

Such unscrupulous behavior is not confined to Monsanto and BASF. Bayer (which now owns Monsanto) and Syngenta are also implicated in similar actions related to other pesticides—glyphosate and atrazine, respectively. Over recent decades, large agrochemical corporations have pursued not only extreme market penetration for their toxic products, but also, vertical integration that, in the case of Bayer/Monsanto, “represents a near-monopoly on the agriculture supply chain.” Corporate ownership of the patent on genetically engineered (GE) seeds—which work only when paired with pesticides the company manufactures—not only suppresses competition, but also, with enough market share, essentially imposes near-complete reliance by farmers on one company’s products. Even those who do not want to use the herbicide buy the seeds in self-defense. Such practices pose a serious threat to global food supply, health, biodiversity, and the environment—which EPA is supposed to protect.

When EPA fails to enact its mission to protect health and the environment by allowing use of pesticides that result in harm, the agrochemical landscape gets even uglier. A bit of review of the dicamba saga will be helpful. Dicamba is a particularly problematic herbicide, given its propensity to drift, the widespread damage it causes to non-target flora, and industry’s intensive marketing of various product iterations. Added to that list are its impacts on human health: carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, hepatic and renal damage, and developmental effects, among others. Further, it is toxic to birds, fish, and other aquatic organisms, which is especially relevant where it shows up in groundwater, as it tends to in the Pacific Northwest.

The herbicide was used for decades on its own to control weeds on cropland. The “modern” dicamba debacle began in 2016 when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Monsanto’s dicamba “strategy” for cotton and soybeans: the dicamba formulation Xtendimax for use with seeds genetically engineered to be dicamba tolerant. Once deployed, because of the herbicide’s strong tendency to drift for significant distances, its use resulted in “millions of acres of crop damage across the Midwest and South; widespread tree death in many rural communities, state parks and nature preserves; and an unprecedented level of strife in the farming world.” As reports of this extreme damage began to roll in, states began to scramble to regulate dicamba’s use, absent federal efforts, to try to curb some of the devastation.

“Holdout” farmers, including organic growers, who have rejected the use of the GE-seed-plus-herbicide scheme, have been particularly vulnerable to the ravages of dicamba drift. Their complaints to neighboring farmers, whose dicamba use has compromised yield, destroyed crops, or rendered them no longer organic, are often met with indifference or anger. These farmers are faced, as the Midwest Center writes, with the choice to “get poisoned or get on board” the (GE-seed-plus-herbicide) train.

As Beyond Pesticides reported in early 2020, a Missouri peach farmer won $265 million in compensation for damage to his trees from Bayer and BASF because of “negligence in the design of their dicamba herbicides, and failure to warn farmers about the dangers of their products….The jury determined that the joint venture between the two companies amounted to a conspiracy to create an ‘ecological disaster’ in the name of profit.” An attorney for the plaintiff in that case, Billy Randles, commented, “This is the first product in American history that literally destroys the competition….You buy it or else.”

These realities demonstrate the perverse elegance of strategic corporate “verticality-plus-penetration.” Pesticide manufacturers control supply chains, functionally force farmers into intense reliance on their products, and then use other farmers as leverage on those who resist to get them to “get with the program.” Monsanto has been notorious for bankrupting small farmers who have dared to say “no” to its near-hegemony by, for example, saving seeds to plant in the following season, thus opting out of purchasing the company’s GE seeds.

This Midwest Center reporting shows that executives at Monsanto, knowing full well the potential damage of their dicamba/GE seed system, proceeded. The story reveals that Monsanto:

• Released and marketed its dicamba products “knowing that dicamba would cause widespread damage to soybean and cotton crops that weren’t resistant to dicamba. They used ‘protection from your neighbors’ [messaging] as a way to sell more of their products. In doing so, the companies ignored years of warnings from independent academics, specialty crop growers and their own employees.”
• Limited any testing that could have delayed or denied EPA approval of dicamba; “For years, Monsanto struggled to keep dicamba from drifting in its own tests. In regulatory tests submitted to the EPA, the company sprayed the product in locations and under weather conditions that did not mirror how farmers would actually spray it. Midway through the approval process, with the EPA paying close attention, the company decided to stop its researchers from conducting tests.”
• Knew of outstanding questions and concerns about dicamba’s use when it submitted data for approval to regulators: “The company’s own research showed dicamba mixed with other herbicides was more likely to cause damage. The company also prevented independent scientists from conducting their own tests and declined to pay for studies that would potentially give them more information about dicamba’s real-world impact.”
• Investigated drift incidents in ways designed to “limit their liability, find other reasons for the damage, and never end with payouts to farmers.”
• Collaborated for years with BASF on the dicamba-tolerant seed system.
• “Released seeds resistant to dicamba in 2015 and 2016 without an accompanying weed killer, knowing that off-label spraying of dicamba, which is illegal, would be ‘rampant.’ At the same time, BASF ramped up production of older versions of dicamba that were illegal to apply to the crops and made tens of millions of dollars selling the older versions, which were more likely to cause move off of where they were applied.”

Thus, EPA has become a partner in corporate marketing schemes. In 1989 Monsanto introduced its “Roundup Ready” package—GE (glyphosate-tolerant) seeds to be used with the company’s existing glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup. Glyphosate herbicides have been in heavy use in the U.S. for GE soybeans, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum for more than two decades. In the mid-2000s, this profitable ploy began to hit speed bumps, as widespread resistance to glyphosate began to develop. The Bayer/Monsanto response to this resistance and the subsequent development of so-called “super weeds” was to double down, developing soybean and cotton seeds that were tolerant of both dicamba and glyphosate, and encouraging tank mixing and use of both herbicides. This tactic also became problematic: (1) this mixing increases concentrations of dicamba in the air up to nine times compared to dicamba alone, and (2) dicamba, when mixed with glyphosate, and/or when used in hot weather, is even more drift prone than the compound by itself.

Monsanto is a notorious corporate “bad actor.” It has spent years and a fortune on efforts to convince the public that its glyphosate products are “safe,” primarily by hiding information about the herbicide’s impacts. On the heels of the 2015 finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, the company was hit with many lawsuits for glyphosate’s role in, particularly, development of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL). In 2017, a judge’s unsealing of two rounds of documents—dubbed the “Monsanto Papers”—made headlines because of what they revealed. Emails, both internal and between the company and federal regulators, revealed “questionable research practices by the company, inappropriate ties to a top EPA official, and possible ‘ghostwriting’ of purportedly ‘independent’ research studies” that it publicly attributed to academics.

Monsanto has also attacked and discredited researchers, journalists, and others who dare to challenge the safety of its products and/or the company’s “integrity.” In 2019, more document releases (via Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests) revealed Monsanto’s “’intelligence fusion center” that monitored potential threats to the industry and spread retaliatory responses through third-party sources. Its actions included a campaign against Carey Gillam, who wrote Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, in which she explains the company’s efforts “to cover up — through fraud, intimidation, [and] ghostwriting agency documents — the science showing that glyphosate kills humans as well as weeds.” Monsanto also spearheaded attacks on IARC Chair Aaron Blair, and pressured EPA to prevent the participation of epidemiologist Peter Infante, PhD on a science advisory panel on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate. For more, see the article “Monsanto: Decades of Deceit” by Ms. Gillam in the Summer 2018 issue of Beyond Pesticides’ journal, Pesticides and You.

The Monsanto Papers extended the evidence of behind-the-scenes collusion between agrochemical companies (and other industry sectors) and federal regulators, a problem that escalated wildly during the Trump administration. The Poison Papers (TPP), a trove of documents—obtained largely by author and activist Carol Van Strum published by The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy—made public a decades-long pattern of collusion between industry and regulators. TPP showed, in excruciating detail across more than 20,000 documents, that both entities were aware of the toxicity of many chemical products, and yet worked together to keep this information from the public and the press.

The introduction to TPP asserts: “Corporate concealment is not a new story. What is novel in [T]he Poison Papers is abundant evidence that EPA and other regulators were, often, knowing participants or even primary instigators of these cover-ups. These regulators failed to inform the public of the hazards of dioxins and other chemicals; of evidence of fraudulent independent testing; even of one instance of widespread human exposure. The papers thus reveal, in the often-incriminating words of the participants themselves, an elaborate universe of deception and deceit surrounding many pesticides and synthetic chemicals.”

Syngenta Crop Protection (Syngenta) is another among this crew of ethically challenged corporations; the company has gone to all kinds of lengths to protect its investment in and profits from its atrazine products. The herbicide is used primarily on corn, wheat, and sugar cane, on turf (especially golf courses and lawns), and on Christmas tree farms. It is very prone to runoff from fields (which can contaminate water supplies in the Midwest and South, primarily), and can drift through the air for hundreds of miles from target sites when applied as a spray. The compound is implicated in a variety of health problems, including cancer, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and reproductive anomalies, and is especially dangerous for embryos and young children.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) PR Watch reported in 2012 on documents it had obtained showing that Syngenta’s “PR team investigated the press and spent millions to spin news coverage and public perceptions in the face of growing concerns about potential health risks from the widely used weed-killer atrazine.” The company used a variety of tactics to buoy the perception and reputation of its atrazine products: it sought third parties to speak in support of the herbicide, floated glowing corporate op-ed pieces to appear under willing individuals’ bylines, and directed its chief scientist to ghostwrite a book chapter that would challenge the idea of regulating atrazine by applying the Precautionary Principle. After a New York Times investigation and report on atrazine, that public relations team at Syngenta held a meeting in which one agenda item was “’to obtain the services of a well know (sic) investigative reporter to probe around the EPA’ and, at a minimum get advice ‘on what buttons to push and cages to rattle.’”

In 2013, an investigative report by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative journalism group, showed that the agrochemical company “routinely paid ‘third-party allies’ to appear to be independent supporters, keeping a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company. The investigating reporters discovered documents that “reveal a corporate strategy to discredit critics and to strip plaintiffs from [a] class-action case.” (That case sought to have Syngenta pay for the removal of atrazine from drinking water in more than 1,000 water systems across six states.) See this Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog item for more.

The company took aim at Tyrone Hayes, PhD of the University of California, Berkeley, a leading researcher on atrazine and one of its most outspoken critics. (His research has shown that minute exposures to atrazine can cause cancer and feminize male frogs.) Syngenta commissioned a psychological profile of the scientist in hopes of boosting its campaign to delegitimize him and his work. Beyond Pesticides stepped up to support Dr. Hayes’s work by establishing its Fund for Independent Science.

Taken together, these reports—the Poison Papers, the Monsanto Papers, the Midwest Center’s new reporting, the 100Reporters report, (CMD’s) PR Watch investigation—show an inescapable pattern. Agrochemical companies (and their allies, which sometimes have included regulators in federal agencies, including EPA) have been engaged, and continue to be, in devious and dangerous efforts to hide the truth about the harms of pesticide (and other chemical) products from the public and the press. These few reports from many different reporters yield ample evidence of this pattern, and concerningly, likely cover only some of the corporate strategies and behaviors afoot.

On the ground, the reality is that these actions result in widespread pesticide contamination of human bodies, those of other organisms, and vulnerable ecosystems. Such companies place greater value on their ability to sell poisons than on the harms those products do. Such actions should be the target of federal and state efforts to expose them, hold them accountable, and create and enforce genuinely protective regulations. Instead, we have seen collusion.

The onus for holding corporations accountable for their malfeasance should not rest on harmed individuals, members of the public, and health and environment education and advocacy groups. Integrity at EPA—in short supply during the Trump administration—must be restored, with real, rather than “purchased” or biased science at the center, and with zealous protection of health and environment at the forefront.

Tell President-elect Biden and Congress to clean up the corruption of science at EPA and set a moratorium on future pesticide registrations—until the agency can assure the public that the chemical manufacturers’ science supporting pesticide registrations is not corrupt.

Letter to President-elect Biden:

As you address the legacy of bad government left you by the Trump administration, I ask you to look at the need to clean house at EPA. Treatment of chemical companies as clients rather than regulated entities is not new at EPA, but corruption reached new highs during the Trump administration. It is time to end the rule of corporate deception at EPA. Please launch an investigation into the conduct of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. We can no longer rely on bad science and unscrupulous chemical manufacturers that put profits above concerns for the health of people and the environment. EPA must audit pesticide registrants for integrity to scientific process and set a moratorium on future pesticide registrations until the agency can assure the public that the chemical manufacturers’ science supporting pesticide registrations is not corrupt, as it has been in the past.

Taken together, several investigative reports—the Poison Papers, the Monsanto Papers, the Midwest Center’s reporting, the 100Reporters report, (CMD’s) PR Watch investigation—show an inescapable pattern, identifying. Agrochemical companies (and their allies, which sometimes have included regulators in federal agencies, including EPA) have been engaged, and continue to be, in devious and dangerous efforts to hide the truth about the harms of pesticide (and other chemical) products from the public and the press. These few reports from many different reporters yield ample evidence of this pattern, and concerningly, likely cover only some of the corporate strategies and behaviors afoot.

On the ground, the reality is that these actions result in widespread pesticide contamination of human bodies, those of other organisms, and vulnerable ecosystems. Such companies place greater value on their ability to sell poisons than on the harms those products do. Such actions should be the target of federal and state efforts to expose them, hold them accountable, and create and enforce genuinely protective regulations. Instead, we have seen collusion.

The onus for holding corporations accountable for their malfeasance should not rest on harmed individuals, members of the public, and health and environment education and advocacy groups. Integrity at EPA—in short supply during the Trump administration—must be restored, with real, rather than “purchased” or biased science at the center, and with zealous protection of health and environment at the forefront. Please launch an investigation into the conduct of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs.

Thank you for your attention to this serious problem.

Letter to Congressional Representative and Senators:

I am writing to ask you to look at the need to clean house at EPA. Treatment of chemical companies as clients rather than regulated entities is not new at EPA, but corruption reached new highs during the Trump administration. It is time to end the rule of corporate deception at EPA. Congress has an important oversight responsibility, and I ask you to request an investigation into the conduct of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. We can no longer rely on bad science and unscrupulous chemical manufacturers that put profits above concerns for the health of people and the environment. EPA must audit pesticide registrants for integrity to scientific process and set a moratorium on future pesticide registrations until the agency can assure the public that the chemical manufacturers’ science supporting pesticide registrations is not corrupt, as it has been in the past.

Taken together, several investigative reports—the Poison Papers, the Monsanto Papers, the Midwest Center’s reporting, the 100Reporters report, (CMD’s) PR Watch investigation—show an inescapable pattern. Agrochemical companies (and their allies, which sometimes have included regulators in federal agencies, including EPA) have been engaged, and continue to be, in devious and dangerous efforts to hide the truth about the harms of pesticide (and other chemical) products from the public and the press. These few reports from many different reporters yield ample evidence of this pattern, and concerningly, likely cover only some of the corporate strategies and behaviors afoot.

On the ground, the reality is that these actions result in widespread pesticide contamination of human bodies, those of other organisms, and vulnerable ecosystems. Such companies place greater value on their ability to sell poisons than on the harms those products do. Such actions should be the target of federal and state efforts to expose them, hold them accountable, and create and enforce genuinely protective regulations. Instead, we have seen collusion.

The onus for holding corporations accountable for their malfeasance should not rest on harmed individuals, members of the public, and health and environment education and advocacy groups. Integrity at EPA—in short supply during the Trump administration—must be restored, with real, rather than “purchased” or biased science at the center, and with zealous protection of health and environment at the forefront.

Thank you for your attention to this serious problem.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 8, 2021) In an eleventh-hour move, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on January 5 the finalization of its controversial, so-called “transparency” rule. The agency claims that the rule— dubbed “Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information”—which mandates that researchers provide to EPA access to their raw data, will improve the credibility of its regulations because the public would be able to validate research that influences EPA regulations. In fact, as researchers and advocates recognize, this rule will significantly restrict the scientific research EPA uses in developing regulations to protect human health. This rule will mitigate against use of the best and broadest knowledge base in developing protections for the American people. In its article on the EPA announcement, The Washington Post explains that the rule would “actually restrict the EPA from using some of the most consequential research on human subjects because it often includes confidential medical records and other proprietary data that cannot be released because of privacy concerns.”

Trevor Nace of Forbes magazine writes of the proposed rule: ‘It literally throws out fundamental and hallmark environmental studies the EPA paid scientists to conduct and [which it used to] build the foundation of many of our air and water quality guidelines.’ It should be noted that such studies have been rigorously peer reviewed, and vetted scientists can already obtain access to such anonymized data from the EPA, so the conservative claim that EPA has used ‘secret science’ is misleading.”

The rule will require access to the raw data underlying research being reviewed for agency rulemaking before the agency relies on any of its conclusions. It will, essentially, create “tiers” for the consideration of research studies, with those providing access to public data getting priority over those that do not. But the EPA-touted “transparency” comes at a huge cost: the elimination of the use of many, many studies from consideration in EPA’s development of protective regulations on all kinds of potentially harmful contaminants, including pesticides.

Public health advocates, environmental groups, and many scientists say that the rule would largely prevent the agency from using landmark, long-standing studies on the harmful effects of air pollution and pesticide exposure. Beyond Pesticides explained back in 2018, “In studies over the past few decades, researchers frequently collected data — often about personal, health, and medical status and practices — with subjects’ permission, and signed confidentiality agreements with those subjects, agreeing to keep the information private. Such data were anonymized and reported to the EPA with the requirement that subjects’ personal information not be made public.”

EPA will use this new rule in review of dose-response studies that assess the relationship between the magnitude of exposure to a substance or chemical and the risks of harm. The rule will apply not only to the research bases of “significant regulatory action,” says EPA, but also, to “influential scientific information” EPA might share, via its website, the Federal Register, or other means, with the public. EPA reassures that the rule would not be applied retroactively to research informing regulations already in place, but only to studies underlying future rules. However, as The New York Times reports, “Public health experts . . . warned that studies that have been used for decades to show, for example, that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.”

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler addressed such concerns by saying that important research studies, which have “influenced key federal pollution standards that have saved thousands of lives and been economically beneficial, might still be able to inform future policies if the next administrator determines it is justified and publishes the reasoning behind that decision.” The Washington Post notes that “The EPA administrator is allowed to waive the requirement on a case-by-case basis, but it is possible that outside groups could challenge those waivers in court.”

For years, conservative Republicans have lobbied for this restriction on useable research because it gives chemical industry and broader industrial interests far more latitude to challenge regulations. Some critics call the rule “litigation bait” that provides increased opportunity for industrial interests to do just that. According to The Washington Post, a couple of studies that resulted in tighter regulations, especially, got stuck in conservatives’ craws: “a 1993 Harvard University ‘Six Cities’ project that linked air pollution to premature deaths, and a Columbia University analysis of a widely used pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that suggested the chemical causes neurological damage in babies.”

In October 2020, Beyond Pesticides noted that: “E&E wrote in 2018 about the influence of the pesticide industry on the Trump EPA, noting that the agency’s rationale on the emerging new ‘secret science’ rule echoed closely the arguments that officials from CropLife America, an industry trade group, had been making in their multiple closed-door meetings with then-Administrator Pruitt and current Administrator Wheeler.” A former director of the EPA Science Advisory Board (who retired in 2018 after nearly four decades at the agency), Chris Zarba, called the rule “a bold attempt to get science out of the way so special interests can do what they want.”

This rule was pursued early on in the Trump administration by then–EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. With several such conservatives installed in leadership at the current EPA, this restriction on useable research got significant traction. The New York Times writes that this move by EPA takes a page from the tobacco industry’s plan, 25 years ago, to create “explicit procedural hurdles” for EPA to navigate in order to address the health impacts of smoking. “President Trump’s EPA has now embedded parts of that strategy into federal environmental policy.”

The American Chemistry Council is pleased with this final rule; spokesperson Jon Corley issued a statement saying, “It will strengthen EPA’s regulatory process by helping ensure that it is relying on the best available science — science that is reliable and unbiased — and by making the underlying research and data publicly available in ways that protect personal privacy, confidential business information, proprietary interests and intellectual property rights.”

But Thomas Sinks, PhD, former leader of the EPA Office of the Science Advisor, and other scientists point to EPA’s existing and robust scientific integrity policy, as well as its long-standing peer-review process of any data on which the agency relies. He also notes that the impetus for this rule is “based on a conspiracy theory, which is that EPA practices secret science. But there’s no evidence EPA practices secret science. . . . I’m mostly concerned about the fact this rule and other actions like this rule are diminishing the efforts and the importance of science and scientists within the federal government. That is a dangerous precedent.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists Center for Science and Democracy Director Andrew Rosenberg, PhD, who commonly review scientific studies before they are published in academic journals, notes that EPA’s focus on access to raw data is misplaced. He counters EPA’s justification for the requirement: “As a well-experienced peer reviewer, I very rarely scrutinize raw data. Rather, I look at data collection and analysis methods, summary and other statistics and graphics[,] and results and conclusions to determine the validity of a study and the strength of its scientific evidence.”

Dr. Rosenberg’s critique continues: “Fundamentally what the tiering system does is substitute non-scientific criteria — availability of data — for weighing the study or deciding how important the study is. Whether the data is available or not has nothing to do with whether science is strong and whether it’s showing strong evidence of a health impact.” He added to this his doubt that members of the public will review millions of lines of raw data to evaluate EPA’s work.

Dr. Rosenberg adds that because researchers are reluctant to release individual medical records used in human studies, or are legally bound to keep such data private, this new rule “disproportionately affects ‘epidemiological studies, which is ironic in the midst of a pandemic. Because these data can’t be made public, EPA will ignore epidemiological evidence of population-level effects of contaminants, pollution and other environmental threats.’” According to The Hill, he also referenced the 2018 pushback on this rule from EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board in this comment: “Their own scientists said this is just a bad idea, and they said, ‘Well we’re doing it anyway.’ If it’s about better science, don’t you think the scientists might know something about that?”

The timing of such a rule is additionally disturbing. Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonary and critical care physician who is chair of the environmental health policy committee at the American Thoracic Society, has commented: “Right now we’re in the grips of a serious public health crisis due to a deadly respiratory virus, and there’s evidence showing that air pollution exposure increases the risk of worse outcomes. We would want EPA going forward to make decisions about air quality using all available evidence, not just putting arbitrary limits on what it will consider.” She added, “The concern is . . . [that] EPA could not consider some of the most compelling evidence on how air pollution affects the risks of adverse outcomes with the infection.”

Senator Tom Carper of Delaware has “called the rule ‘one last gasp of science denial’ before the Biden administration is sworn in. ‘While I continue to be amazed by this administration’s penchant for science denial, I am confident that this irresponsible rollback — finalized in the last few days of the Trump administration — will not impede the incoming administration’s efforts to restore the use of science in rulemaking.’”

Finalizing the rule two weeks before the inauguration of a new President underscores the administration’s determination to carry out its agenda to the Nth degree and, some critics argue, to make undoing its damage as difficult as possible for the incoming Biden-Harris administration. The new administration’s EPA is likely to overturn the rule, but that process could take at least a few months, given the number of critical Trump policy and executive order “reversals” that the incoming administration is expected to undertake.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/04/epa-scientific-transparency/;

Final Rule – Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information

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

(Beyond Pesticides, January 7, 2021) Insecticides and road salts adversely interact to alter aquatic ecosystems, reducing organism abundance and size, according to a study in the journal Environmental Pollution. Pesticide use is ubiquitous, and contamination in rivers and streams is historically commonplace, containing at least one or more different chemicals. Although road salts can prevent hazardous ice formation during the colder months, the study raises critical issues regarding the adverse interaction between road salts and pervasive environmental pollutants that threaten human, animal, and environmental health and safety. Authors of the study note, “Our results highlight the importance of multiple-stressor research under natural conditions. As human activities continue to imperil freshwater systems, it is vital to move beyond single-stressor experiments that exclude potentially interactive effects of chemical contaminants.”

To assess the impact of road salts and insecticides on aquatic communities, researchers created a mesocosm (controlled outdoor experimental area) to examines the natural environment under controlled conditions. These communities include zooplankton, phytoplankton, periphyton, and leopard frog (Rana pipiens) tadpoles. Researchers performed a toxicity evaluation of six insecticides from three chemical classes (neonicotinoids: thiamethoxam, imidacloprid; organophosphates: chlorpyrifos, malathion; pyrethroids: cypermethrin, permethrin). Additionally, researchers note the potentially interactive effects of these insecticides with three concentrations of road salt (NaCl).

Researchers find that differing pesticide classes directly impact aquatic communities, and exposure to insecticides indirectly alters the food web in freshwater communities. Exposure to organophosphate decreases zooplankton abundance, elevates phytoplankton biomass, and reduces tadpole size. Neonicotinoid and pyrethroid exposure reduce zooplankton abundance, with little to no significant impact on phytoplankton abundance or tadpole size. Although the study demonstrates organophosphates decrease zooplankton abundance at all salt concentration levels, the effect on phytoplankton abundance and tadpole size depends upon salt levels. Pyrethroids, on the other hand, reduce zooplankton and phytoplankton density as salt concentrations increase.

Aquatic ecosystems are highly sensitive and complex environments. Contaminants, like pesticides, have devastating effects on the ecosystem, including non-target organisms. Furthermore, aquatic ecosystems suffer more frequent, simultaneous exposure to multiple chemical stressors. Often, these various chemical stressors work together or synergize to produce a greater, combined effect. Synergism is a common issue among pesticide mixture and can underestimate the toxic impacts on human, animal, and environmental health. Moreover, some pesticides, like the weed killer 2,4-D, have common usages on roadsides to control aquatic weeds, and mixtures of road salt and chemicals can run off into nearby water sources. Considering that the use and production of synthetic chemicals like pesticides outpace others, it is essential to understand how exposure to multiple environmental contaminants simultaneously affects normal ecosystem function.

Although pesticides and road salts individually impact aquatic communities, this study is the first to demonstrate their interactive effects. Understanding whether these interactions cause an additive, antagonistic, or synergistic effect on natural communities is necessary, especially given insecticides and road salts are commonplace in northern temperate locations. Not only do pesticides interact with NaCl (sodium chloride) road salts, but potentially other chemical salt compounds that are highly corrosive and toxic to aquatic organisms. Moreover, some road salts contain additives like sodium hexacyanoferrate(II) and sugar, and their interactive effects with pesticides lack proper research. The authors of the study suggest, “It is important to know the concentrations and type of road salt (e.g., NaCl, CaCl₂, KCl, MgCl₂) and pesticides that matter, the underlying mechanisms that cause the interaction, and the short- and long-term impacts of prolonged exposure.”

As the use of road salts increases throughout the winter season, it is essential to understand the impacts of interactions with other environmental pollutants, especially in contaminated ecosystems like waterways. Beyond Pesticides has long advocated for federal regulation that considers potential synergistic and additive threats to ecosystems and organisms. Moreover, pesticide use should be phased out and ultimately eliminated to protect the nation’s and world’s waterways and reduce the number of pesticides that make their way into your drinking water. Replacing pesticides with organic, non-toxic alternatives is crucial for safeguarding public health, particularly communities vulnerable to pesticide toxicity.

Furthermore, using eco-friendly alternatives to traditional road salts (i.e., pickle juice brine; organic salt-free deicer; alfalfa meal; sugar beet juice; sand, ash from the fireplace or coffee grinds; white vinegar and water) can help mitigate the impact of synergism between salts and pesticides. For more information about pesticide contamination in water, see the Threatened Waters program page and Beyond Pesticides’ article Pesticides in My Drinking Water? Individual Precautionary Measures and Community Action. Tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it must do its job to protect health and the environment.

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

Source: Environmental Pollution

(Beyond Pesticides, January 6, 2021) Long-term exposure to formulated Roundup and glyphosate results in significant harm to wildlife species that form the bottom of aquatic food chains, according to a study published in Microbiome by researchers at University of Birmingham, UK. The water flea Daphnia spp. often functions as a keystone species in lakes and ponds, and because of its ecological importance is frequently used as an indicator species in toxicity tests performed by pesticide regulators. Lead author Luisa Orsini, PhD, notes that most of this testing is flawed by limitations in its scope.

“The problem is that much of the evidence is rooted in outdated toxicity tests which only look at the number of animals that die on exposure to extremely high concentrations of these chemicals,” Dr. Orsini said. “These tests also overlook the pathological effects arising from long-term exposure to low doses. What we’re proposing is that toxicity is measured by looking at what happens to the animal at a molecular and fitness level following long-term exposure, which encompasses the entire animal life cycle.”

Dr. Orsini and her research team exposed populations of Daphnia magna to the maximum contaminant level (1 mg/L) of both the formulated product Roundup, and technical grade glyphosate established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), over the course of the animal’s life. The team then investigated a range of impacts and adverse changes that occurred as a result, including fitness burden, genotoxicity (damage to DNA), and alterations within the water flea’s gut microflora. A control population received no chemical exposure.

Changes in fitness were seen for every trait except mortality. Roundup delayed average age of sexual/reproductive maturity, reduced size at maturity, decreased the total number of offspring produced, and increased developmental failure – as determined by the number of aborted eggs, and juveniles borne dead.  

Researchers also observed damage to DNA, with glyphosate and Roundup showing only slight differences in affected pathways. One of Daphnia’s benefits as a test species is that its genetic makeup overlaps with a number of other animal species. As such, the paper notes that their genotoxic findings have implications for other animals.  “Conserved gene domains, which may be of potential concern as targets for glyphosate in other species, include three main categories: liver metabolism (lipids and glucose), inflammation pathways (leukocytes), and collagen degradation, responsible for the repair of wounds and tissue remodeling,” the study reads.

Roundup and glyphosate were also found to indirectly alter both the makeup and total number of microbiota in the water flea’s gut. These changes were correlated with alterations to the way fat and carbon are metabolized, as well as the animal’s detoxification pathways.

Previous research has identified differences between formulated Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate, with indications that the formulated product is more toxic. With the present study, although the two materials displayed some slight differences in effects, chronic exposure to both compounds resulted in significant harm.  

Dr. Orsini notes the context in which her team’s research was conducted. “Research surrounding Roundup has been controversial since it first appeared on the market in the 1970s,” the lead author said. “Claims that it causes diseases and disorders ranging from cancer to autism stack up against industry-paid reports arguing that the product has no untoward effects.”

There has been a concerted effort by Bayer Monsanto and the agrichemical industry to spin and misrepresent the science on glyphosate and other pesticides to the public. Regulators like the EPA have been accused by advocates of running interference for the industry, as it recently reregistered the chemical for another 15 years, glossing over a range of adverse impacts.

Late last year, Beyond Pesticides joined with a coalition farmworkers, farmers, and conservationists to challenge the agency’s reapproval of glyphosate. “Glyphosate use and resulting exposures represent a serious threat to the safety of people and the environment, including many hundreds of endangered species—facts astonishingly ignored by regulators,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a plaintiff in the case. “It is unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit like this to force EPA to carry out its responsibility in the face of a mountain of scientific findings that document glyphosate’s harm,” Mr. Feldman added.

As the present study shows, the effects of glyphosate go far beyond its direct, acute impacts. Degradation of Daphnia populations at the bottom of the food chain due to chronic exposure increases risk of catastrophic trophic effects in aquatic communities. Join Beyond Pesticides in fighting for a future that eliminates glyphosate as well as all other highly toxic pesticides in favor of safer, sound, organic practices. It is not enough to simply ban glyphosate – through organic practices we can eliminate that conditions that may have required its use in the first place.

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

Source: University of Birmingham press release, Microbiome

(Beyond Pesticides, January 5, 2021) In the waning days of 2020, a federal court provided a hint of hope that farmworkers will retain basic buffer zone protections from toxic pesticides. The District Court for the Southern District of New York  issued in late December a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), prohibiting the agency from implementing industry-friendly rules that weaken application exclusion zones (AEZs) for farmworkers. The ruling, a result of a lawsuit brought by groups Farmworker Justice and Earthjustice, is likely to put the onus on the next administration to determine the fate of the rule.

Application Exclusion Zones (AEZs) are buffer zones where individuals are not permitted to enter during a pesticide application, as doing so would put one at risk of dangerous exposure. EPA’s proposal,  pushed forward by Administrator Andrew Wheeler and finalized in October 2020, included a number of changes to the way AEZs would be managed. Chemical intensive farms would no longer be required to keep bystanders out of off-site spray areas, and pesticide applications could be restarted when an individual leaves an AEZ. Current rules require farms to keep individuals out of areas where pesticides are applied, both on and off-site, and require set safety requirements about when spraying can start and stop.

The Trump Administration’s proposal would also change the way family members living on a farm are treated. While current rules incorporate protections for these family members, the changes would exempt immediate family members “from all aspects of the AEZ requirement,” according to EPA. As explained to the public, family members could remain inside while a pesticide spraying is occurring, “rather than compelling them to leave even when they feel safe remaining inside.” Health advocates indicate that such a proposal amounts to a dereliction of the agency’s duty to inform farmers and the general public about the inherent hazards of pesticide use, as feeling safe and being safe are critically important distinctions when it comes to chemical exposure.  

In an effort to stop implementation of the finalized rule, farmworker advocacy groups filed suit in mid-December. “The AEZ was enacted by EPA to protect farmworkers and frontline communities from being poisoned by the drift of sprayed pesticides at the time of application,” the complaint reads. “The final rule’s erosion of this protection poses an unreasonable risk of harm to human health, in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.”

Shortly after the filing by advocacy groups, a coalition of five states, led by New York Attorney General  (AG) Letitia James, filed a separate suit against Administrator Wheeler’s EPA. New York is joined by California, Illinois, Maryland, and Minnesota. “The Trump Administration’s decision to undercut existing public health protections for these workers is not only reprehensible — it’s illegal. We’re going to court to prove it,” California AG Xavier Becerra said in a press release.

Maryland AG Frosh had similarly stark words for EPA. “It is EPA’s job to protect farmworkers, their families and others who are exposed to pesticides,” Mr. Frosh said in a press release. “These regulations prioritize killing bugs over protecting people.”

A wave of revisions to the Worker Protection Standards governing federal farmworker safety were made during the Obama Administration, with the pesticide industry and affiliated corporate farm groups in general agreement at the time. However, many advocates believe the industry-friendly slant of the Trump Administration emboldened the agrichemical industry to push back on these long-negotiated changes. Some of these rollbacks were rebuffed by a deal cut between the Senate and EPA in 2019, but AEZs remained a focal point for both industry and farmworker health advocates.

The restraining order is likely to put the decision on whether to defend the industry-friendly AEZ rule to the Biden administration. While maintaining the changes agreed to under the Obama Administration would be an important start, it is evident that further safeguards are needed. A recent incident where over two dozen Texan farmworkers working in Illinois were repeatedly sprayed with toxic pesticides via aircraft, despite current rules, underscores the importance of strong enforcement to drive compliance.

Along with increased farmworker protections, Beyond Pesticides has identified a range of priorities for President-elect Biden. Help advance a new vision for the EPA by sending a letter to the President-elect today.

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

Source:  Progressive Farmer DTN, Courthouse News Service, Farmworker Justice press release

(Beyond Pesticides, January 4, 2021) As we begin the new year, one of the most pervasive problems that our country faces, which has been particularly painful especially during the holiday season, is food insecurity—now affecting 54 million people. Food insecurity in the U.S. is real. As we continue through the dark winter months with the threat of even greater surges in COVID-19, it is important to strengthen those connections that support food security and those who produce our food.

Ask your U.S. Senators and Representatives to make permanent support for small and medium sized local farmers, building on the Emergency Coronavirus Relief Package.

Worldwide, the threats of impending famine have been met by extraordinary responses from countries and private donors. These events are evidence that food shortages are caused by inequities in distribution rather than underproduction, consistent with continuing population growth and contrary to claims by the pesticide industry. Peasant activists Jeongyeol Kim and Pramesh Pokharel argue that the solution to food insecurity is food sovereignty—that a food system depending on big agribusiness and corporations does not support local food production. That food system contributes to food insecurity for both the countries depending on food imports that may not be present is a pandemic and for countries exporting food—whose food supplies may be exported and whose farmers are dependent on income from exports.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our nation’s food supply,” said Senator Corey Booker, who sponsored the Local FARM Act. “Food banks are grappling with greater demand while subsequently facing steep reductions in donations. Farmers have been forced to dump products due to supply-chain disruptions and a resulting lack of access to traditional markets. And corporate agribusiness is proving incapable of maintaining operations in a way that is safe for both workers and our food supply.”

“In response, this legislation strengthens local and regional food systems in order to avoid the harmful supply-chain disruptions stemming from a consolidated market and provides greater choice to those purchasing food to feed their families during this difficult time,” said Senator Booker. “Billions of dollars in farm aid have been made available in response to the current health crisis, but current programs fail to not only fairly compensate farmers from across the economic spectrum, they fail to invest in resilient food systems that could protect the nation’s food supply both now and in a future pandemic. It’s time for that to change.”

“The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has left many small, beginning, and historically underserved producers, including Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color; in a precarious financial situation – especially farmers who have traditionally relied on selling into local and regional markets such schools, institutions, restaurants and farmers markets,” said Wes King, Senior Policy Specialist of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC).

We need to make permanent support for small and medium sized local farmers, building on the Emergency Coronavirus Relief Package. Elements of Local Food Assistance and Resilient Markets Act (the Local FARM Act) must become permanent:

(i) Create specialty crop block grants; (ii) Expand online supplemental nutrition assistance program; (iii) Expand the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP); and (iv) Expand farm microloans.

According to Eric Deeble, NSAC policy director, “[The Emergency Coronavirus Relief Package] does not do enough to target aid to those producers and families who have been most impacted, and sunsets too soon: all but ensuring advocates will have to return to fight for families again in January.”  Mr. Deeble continued, “Even still, it is an important starting point as the new Administration and Congress begin to look beyond emergency response to the longer term work of rebuilding our food and farm system to be more sustainable, must, and equitable for every family.” 

In addition to the need for policy reform and in accordance with “Think globally and act locally,” we can help ourselves, our local farmers, and the resilience of the global food system by buying locally-grown organic food directly from the farmer—or with as few intervening steps as possible. Below are some resources that can help.

LocalHarvest provides a connection to community supported agriculture (subscription services), farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. Eatwild provides a clearinghouse for information about pasture-based farming, with a directory of local farmers in the U.S. and Canada who sell their pastured farm and ranch products directly to consumers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains a database of local farmers markets. Another step away, there is a listing of cooperative grocery stores at the Cooperative Grocers Network. Winter may not be a good time to grow vegetables in most states, but sprouts and microgreens can be grown anywhere. 

Ask your U.S. Senators and Representatives to make permanent support small and medium sized local farmers, building on the Emergency Coronavirus Relief Package.

Letter to Congress

As we begin the new year, one of the most pervasive problems that our country faces, which has been particularly painful especially during the holiday season, is food insecurity—now affecting 54 million people. Food insecurity in the U.S. is real. As we continue through the dark winter months with the threat of even greater surges in COVID-19, it is important to strengthen those connections that support food security and those who produce our food.

I am writing to ask you to make permanent support for small and medium sized local farmers, building on the Coronavirus Relief Package. Elements of Local Food Assistance and Resilient Markets Act (the Local FARM Act) must become permanent:

(i) Create specialty crop block grants;
(ii) Expand online supplemental nutrition assistance program;
(iii) Expand the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP); and
(iv) Expand farm microloans.

Worldwide, the threats of impending famine have been met by extraordinary responses from countries and private donors. These events are evidence that food shortages are caused by inequities in distribution rather than underproduction, consistent with continuing population growth and contrary to claims by the pesticide industry. Peasant activists Jeongyeol Kim and Pramesh Pokharel argue that the solution to food insecurity is food sovereignty—that a food system depending on big agribusiness and corporations does not support local food production. That food system contributes to food insecurity for both the countries depending on food imports that may not be present is a pandemic and for countries exporting food—whose food supplies may be exported and whose farmers are dependent on income from exports.

“The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has left many small, beginning, and historically underserved producers, including Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color; in a precarious financial situation – especially farmers who have traditionally relied on selling into local and regional markets such schools, institutions, restaurants and farmers markets,” said Wes King, Senior Policy Specialist of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Please help our local farmers to ensure the availability of food in our communities.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, December 24, 2020) We at Beyond Pesticides wish our members, supporters, and collaborators all the best for the holiday season and new year. We look forward to working with you in the new year to meet the serious environmental and public health challenges with truly organic solutions.

Our accomplishments are your victories. We are seeing the outcomes in communities across the country—the adoption of organic land management policies and practices that eliminate toxic pesticides, protect children, pets, and families, and protect the local ecology.

With your support of Beyond Pesticides, we strive to reverse the destructive environmental and public health path that we’re on and advance the adoption of organic practices and policies that respect life.

Meeting the Challenges Ahead

Beyond Pesticides is working toward the societal transition to practices and policies that eliminate toxic pesticide use. This work intersects with daily decisions made in households, school districts, and municipal and state governments, as well as at the federal level, on crucial issues relating to the health of children, families, and workers, the climate crisis, and biodiversity. Our work helps to inform practices and policies that go to the core of public health protection and the sustainability of ecosystems. Beyond Pesticides has a vibrant program of information services, policy advocacy, and hands-on support to communities, local organizations, and people, as we advocate and teach organic practices.

During these challenging times, as the pandemic emerged, we have keyed into timely practical issues of safe disinfectants (with a new webpage and factsheets) that protect without exacerbating the very conditions caused by Covid-19—respiratory, neurological, and immunological illness—at the same time that we participate in virtual community hearings and meetings to advance organic land management that protects people and communities. This work aligns with our work to assist with informed decision making, ensuring the accessibility of important scientific findings through our databases (Pesticide Gateway and Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database), and Daily News tracking of information that is a tool for effective action.

Our broader strategic work continues, as we went virtual with our community-based program across the country to transition land management to organic practices. Our information and community support continue to be an important source of independent scientific and practical information to inform the transition away from toxic pesticides in the face of dramatic declines in environmental quality, the climate crisis, and the insect apocalypse. We will continue to advocate for community policies and practices that embrace transparent decision making with public participation, and organic compatible materials for land and building management.

At this pivotal time in our country’s history, we are working to not only reverse bad decisions that have ignored science over the last four years, but to institute broader changes that affect a shift, in both policy and practice, away from pesticide use and to organic land management. We are committed to advancing this vision with the Biden administration. Outside of the opportunities for more protective decisions at the federal level, in the next year, we will continue to seek the adoption of model, local, organic land management policies and/or practices in at least a dozen new communities, adding to the 41 communities in 22 states where we are currently working across the country—as we strive to see these models expand to every community in the nation.

Our program bridges policy and practice—reframing strategies that simply go after the endless list of toxic chemicals—and advancing a holistic approach that recognizes complex biological communities, the importance of soil microbiota, trophic effects, and ecosystem services in the context of broader human health and environmental protection. This is the framework we adopt as we work at the local, state, and federal level in advancing policy reform. It is especially important as national attention is focused on meaningful systemic change that addresses disproportionate risk to people of color communities and workers, from landscapers to farmworkers.

Year in Review

Beyond Pesticides’ program supports a clear message: End toxic pesticide use and embrace organic practices and policies that respect the power of nature to heal— in the face of devastating and destructive toxic chemical-dependency. This past year has again elevated important public discourse on the threats that pesticides pose to health and the environment.

Challenging Fraudulent and Misleading Advertising in the Market

We filed lawsuits against two major corporations for misleading the public on the safety of their products and the adverse impact they have on the environment. TruGreen—a nationwide chemical-intensive lawn treatment company—and ExxonMobil, an oil and gas producer of petrochemicals that are the basis for pesticides. As a result of the litigation, TruGreen agreed to remove language from their advertising that misrepresented the safety of the products they use. We continue to challenge Exxon’s misrepresentation of its contribution to mitigating the climate crisis while petroleum is used to produce pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that contribute significantly to this impending existential threat.

Furthermore, we sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its registration of Dow Chemical’s herbicide Enlist Duo, comprised of two active ingredients, 2,4-D, and glyphosate. This case challenges the “new use” that allows direct spraying over-the-top of crops engineered to resist both pesticides.

Lastly, we approached the organic garden product manufacturer Dr. Earth to explore with them their misleading approach to product substitution absent a more robust explanation of and support for organic management practices. We sent a friendly letter (not an intent to sue) with background on Beyond Pesticides’ long commitment to organic and said that we have “become aware of certain labeling and marketing practices of Dr. Earth, Inc. which may create mistaken impressions about your products and lead to consumer confusion” about organic management being simply a product replacement strategy rather than a holistic strategy to support and nurture soil health and utilize cultural practices.

To learn more about our lawsuits and settlements, please read the Lawsuits & Settlements section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

The Science Behind the Impact of Disproportionate Risks

We embraced the teachable moment of national recognition that there are racial disparities in the distribution of harm, given exposure patterns associated with those on the frontlines, and connected the exposure of pesticides to the exacerbating of risk factors—respiratory illness, immune and neurological illness, as well as others. The concept of disproportionate harm has been elevated in the public mind as people nationwide have seen numerous news reports that show people of color, as essential workers with greater exposure to Covid-19 and elevated rates of comorbidities are experiencing rates of illness and death far greater than their percentage of the population. This awareness opens opportunities for advancing policies that address the underlying causes of environmental racism and another seemingly broader awareness of the need for systemic change to address the symptoms of the inequities that people of color experience.

`To learn more about disproportionate risks impacting vulnerable communities, please read the Disproportionate Risks section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

Growing Effective Organic Solutions and Strategies

Our efforts focus on shifting communities’ approach to land and building management to address critical health and environmental issues. To move this goal forward, we carry out activities that advance a holistic awareness of the complex adverse effects and unknowns associated with pesticide-dependent management practices and policies. On a daily basis, we bring attention to and broader understanding of the actual hands-on practices that are protective of health and in sync with nature.

In addition to our work to educate on the ecological and health benefits of organic practices, we have developed a fact sheet in response to those who argue that organic land management of parks and playing fields are too costly. The economic viability of organic agriculture has certainly been established with the growth of a $60 billion industry.

To learn more about the shift towards organic practices, including information about the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), our watchdog arm, OrganicEye, and our Stonyfield PlayFree and Organic Community Land Management Program training, please read the Solution and Strategies section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

Community Action: Local policies and practices

Local land management and ordinances across the country are just as much about preventing hazards and filling an increasing gap in protection from regulators, as it is about recognizing the viability of sound land management practices. These practices do not use toxic chemicals and result in a healthier and more resilient plant life that stands up to stress and is less reliant on limited water resources.

Beyond Pesticides is well-positioned to effect changes in communities that serve as a model for other communities. We continue to develop the informational tools that support change agents, whether they are advocates or elected officials. We are also able to provide the technical skills to land managers, which ensure effective implementation of policies and plans for sustainable and organic land management.

To learn more about Beyond Pesticides’ community action, including cities/states participating in organic land management and our Hawai’i food hub program, please read the Community Action section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

Action of the Week: Monitoring and Responding to Government Action

Action of the Week (AOTW) provides our network with one concrete action that can be taken each week to have our collective voice heard to stop governmental actions that adversely affect public, worker, and environmental health, increase overall pesticide use or undermine the advancement of organic, sustainable, and regenerative practices and policies. With almost 25,000 subscribers, the actions can generate between 2,000 and 4,000+ participants weekly.

The top five AOTWs with the most contributions include:

1. Tell Congress that EPA Needs to Listen to Science, not Pesticide Manufacturers and Biotech Companies (10/05/2020)
2. Tell USDA to Strengthen Organic Enforcement and Allow More Time for Public Comments (09/28/2020)
3. Tell the National Organic Standards Board to Support Core Organic Values (09/21/2020)
4. Ask Congress to Help Farmers of Color and Small and Medium-Sized Farms Selling in Local Food Markets (09/14/2020)
5. Ban the Wood Preservative Pentachlorophenol (09/08/2020)

To see all AOTW for 2020, please visit Beyond Pesticides’ Action of the Week webpage.

Framework for Policy Change: Bringing technical knowledge to local deliberations

Beyond Pesticides issues unique reports to support local activism to move changes in practices and policies that eliminate pesticide use. With this information and the model policy that we have created, local people nationwide have successfully moved change.

Beyond Pesticides issues unique reports to support local activism to move changes in practices and policies that eliminate pesticide use. With this information and the model policy that we have created, local people nationwide have successfully moved change. Furthermore,

To learn more about our framework for policy change, including our reports and the Biden transition plan, please visit read the Framework for Policy Change section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

Science & Advocacy Resources: Information for Action and Unique databases

Beyond Pesticides’ website serves as a hub for a range of regulatory and policy advocacy, information services to people nationwide and around the globe. The information we provide performs the unique function of providing hands-on information and strategy. We create a public record on scientific decisions that are being undermined by poor public policy that allows hazardous pesticide use, despite the availability of alternatives.

Some of our most recently added or updated webpages include:

1. Children and Schools
2. Golf Courses
3. Healthy Hospitals 
4. Pesticide-Free Holidays: Christmas; New Year
5. Pesticide-Induced Diseases Relational Database Search 
6. Pesticide Topic Submission Portal 
7. Pets 
8. Safer Disinfectants and Sanitizers

Furthermore, Beyond Pesticides has a high degree of involvement in pesticide policy and action, commenting on regulatory decisions—from GMO pesticide tolerances to endangered species pesticide encounters—and implementing or guiding pesticide policy regulations—from antimicrobial sock masks to mosquito control.

To learn more about Beyond Pesticide’s regulatory action/comments and information resources, including our Pesticide Gateway, Pesticide Induced Disease Database, ManageSafe, please visit read the Advocacy and Science section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review” webpage.

Campaigns and Fundraisers

Beyond Pesticides would like to thank all of our donors and supporters for their contributions over the year. Without your help, our mission would not be possible. 

Members and Donors. Our program relies on the generous contributions of our supporters and we are extremely grateful!

Natural Grocers Campaign. As a part of an important partnership, Natural Grocers kicked off a month-long fundraising campaign in September 2020, with the goal to raise $100,000 in September for Beyond Pesticides’ Organic Community Land Management Program. With a donation and organic pledge campaign, Natural Grocers’ partnership with Beyond Pesticides surpassed the goal and raised $125,000! These resources will be plowed back into our community work to grow the transition to organic land management!

To learn more about Beyond Pesticide’s campaigns and fundraisers, please visit read the Campaign and Fundraisers section on Beyond Pesticides’ “A Year in Review—2020” webpage.

Many Thanks to You!

We would like to give special thanks to you, our Daily News Blog readers. We are taking a break. Daily News and Action of the Week will be back on January 4, 2021. In the meantime, please consider a year-end gift to Beyond Pesticides—we can’t do our work without you! See you in 2021!

(Beyond Pesticides, December 23, 2020) The litany of parting shots by the waning Trump administration got longer on December 4, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposed interim decision on the very toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, functionally continuing its registration for many agricultural uses. The interim decision purports to put in place new limitations on use of this pesticide, but they are wholly inadequate to the threat this compound represents — to young children, most concerningly, as well as to farmworkers, critical species and ecosystems, and the public. Chlorpyrifos should not be re-registered for use — i.e., its sale and use should be banned altogether, as Beyond Pesticides has asserted for years.

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide used on scores of food crops, for mosquito (and other pest) control, and for some turf management (golf courses, especially). It has been demonstrated to be highly neurotoxic, especially to young children, leading to impaired cognitive function, developmental delays, lower IQs, attention deficit disorder, and a variety of other pervasive developmental and learning disorders. The essence of the compound’s toxicity to developing brains lies in its function as a cholinesterase inhibitor; chlorpyrifos binds to the receptor sites for acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that is critical to normal nerve impulse transmission. In so doing, chlorpyrifos inactivates AChE, damages the central and peripheral nervous systems, and disrupts neurological activity. In addition to its neurotoxic impacts, the compound is associated with harmful reproductive, renal, hepatic, and endocrine disrupting effects. 

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) writes: “The interim ‘decision’ leaves much undecided, including safety thresholds for chlorpyrifos exposure and possible mitigation measures, which EPA is currently negotiating with chlorpyrifos manufacturers.” CFS also excoriates this latest decision: “EPA has long been aware of the pesticide’s toxicity. While most residential uses of chlorpyrifos were banned nearly two decades ago, the agency permitted its continued use in agriculture, creating a double-standard in which rural kids and farmworkers are left unprotected. People are exposed to chlorpyrifos in food and water, but also through inhalation of spray drift and vapor.”

CFS legal director George Kimbrell commented on the interim decision: “True to form, the Trump Administration has placed corporate dollars over public health. If allowed to stand, its proposal to continue registering this neurotoxic insecticide would cause irreparable harm to farmworkers and future generations. Everything possible must be done to ensure the Biden Administration reverses this proposal and once and for all bans this pesticide.”

Having covered chlorpyrifos for many years, Beyond Pesticides concurs. It has reported on the tortuous path of EPA’s relationship, as well as legislative, legal, and state responses, to chlorpyrifos. In April 2019, Beyond Pesticides provided a timeline of relevant developments whose highlights are worth reviewing:

 2001: EPA negotiates “successful” cancellation of chlorpyrifos for residential use

2007: Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and Natural Resources Defense Council file petition requesting EPA revoke all tolerances for chlorpyrifos

2015: Obama administration proposes revocation of all tolerances for chlorpyrifos

2016: EPA’s revised human health risk assessment does not change the proposal to ban chlorpyrifos; Donald Trump is elected president

2017: Scott Pruitt reverses order; a coalition of environmental groups led by Earthjustice promptly sues EPA

2018:

    June: Hawaii becomes first state in U.S. to outright ban chlorpyrifos, effective 2022

    August: court orders chlorpyrifos ban, finding EPA violated the law; Trump administration appeals the ruling

    December: Sen. Brian Schatz (HI) introduces the Prohibit Chlorpyrifos Poisoning Students Act

2019:

    January: Rep. Nydia Velásquez (NY) reintroduces The Ban Toxic Pesticides Act, H.R.230, which would ban chlorpyrifos from commerce

    March:

• Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) reintroduces Protect Children, Farmers and Farmworkers from Nerve Agent Pesticides Act of 2019
• Oregon lawmakers consider House Bill 3058 and Senate Bill 853, nearly identical attempts to ban chlorpyrifos
• documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity reveal that the Trump administration knew and actively concealed the fact that chlorpyrifos jeopardizes the existence of 1,399 endangered species

    April:

• proposed chlorpyrifos ban in Maryland (HB275, SB270) fails to pass for the second year in a row
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) introduces Safe School Meals for Kids Act to restrict schools from purchasing or serving food with any detectable amount of chlorpyrifos

Since April 2019, there have been more developments:

2019:

    May: New York State legislature passes a bill to phase out and eventually ban the use of chlorpyrifos

    October: California announces an early 2020 ban on use of chlorpyrifos

    December: NYS Governor Cuomo vetoes the legislature’s bill, but orders the state Department of Environmental Conservation to ban aerial applications immediately and all uses by 2021, using rule-making rather than legislation; this makes it the third state to ban the toxic compound

2020:

    February: Corteva announces it will stop producing chlorpyrifos in 2020 because of declining sales

    March: the Maryland legislature passes a limited ban on chlorpyrifos

    August: a study reveals that research underpinning chlorpyrifos registration by EPA left critical data out of its analysis, resulting in decades of use of a faulty EPA “safe exposure limit”

    September: EPA — contravening scientific evidence and its own findings — announces its conclusion that “the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects [of the insecticide chlorpyrifos] remains unresolved”

Then came this interim decision, which proposes to limit uses of chlorpyrifos in some U.S. regions “to better protect human health and the environment,” according to EPA. The decision proposes: (1) “label amendments limiting application to address potential drinking water risks of concern,” (2) “additional personal protection equipment and application restrictions to address potential occupational handler risks of concern,” and (3) “spray drift mitigation, in combination with the use limitations and application restrictions identified to address drinking water and occupational risks, to reduce exposure to non-target organisms.”

The text of the draft interim decision, which sets out the details, can be accessed (as a .pdf) from EPA’s interim decision link. A gander at regional application limits (in the tables in section IV of the draft decision, “Proposed Interim Registration Review Decision”) shows that the proposed “limits” continue to allow “high-benefit agricultural uses,” in the aggregate, on nine crops across 40 states. This is unacceptable for such a dangerous pesticide, to which people can be exposed through diet, water, landscape uses, and/or “use on public health pests, such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fire ants.”

In truth, this decision continues the Trump EPA’s anti-science, anti-regulatory track record. One among many examples is that despite the endocrine-disrupting effects of chlorpyrifos (see evidence here, here, and here), this decision asserts: “there is no evidence demonstrating that chlorpyrifos potentially interacts with estrogen, androgen, or thyroid pathways.”

Further, Beyond Pesticides reported in 2019 on the administration’s concealment of a report showing that 1,399 endangered species are significantly threatened by chlorpyrifos (and two other organophosphate pesticides). This interim decision states, “The proposed mitigation described in this document is expected to reduce the extent of environmental exposure and may reduce risk to listed species whose range and/or critical habitat co-occur with the use of chlorpyrifos. . . . EPA is currently working with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under a reinitiated Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation, and NMFS plans to issue a revised biological opinion for chlorpyrifos in June 2022 [emphasis by Beyond Pesticides]. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has not yet completed a biological opinion for chlorpyrifos. EPA will complete any necessary consultation with NMFS and FWS for chlorpyrifos prior to completing the chlorpyrifos registration review.” Thus, vulnerable wildlife and habitat will continue to be at risk for at least another year and a half (barring any change by the coming Biden administration), pending a final EPA registration decision on chlorpyrifos.      

Beyond Pesticides wrote in 2019, and continues to maintain, that absent effective national protections, “States should ban chlorpyrifos compounds . . . should undertake organic management on state-owned lands, and should support producers in transitioning away from chemical agriculture and to organic, regenerative, and sustainable practices.

It can be hoped that this interim decision is the last one on pesticide registration to emerge from the exiting Trump EPA, given the regulatory wreckage it has wrought generally and on this compound, in particular. Chlorpyrifos is a dangerous, proven neurotoxicant that has dire impacts on children, making EPA’s continued permitting of its use an extreme failure of the agency’s protective mission. This pesticide should be banned. Public comment on the proposed interim decision is open for 60 days; please tell EPA not to advance uses of chlorpyrifos here.

Sources: https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/6214/center-for-food-safety-decries-epa-proposed-interim-decision-on-brain-damaging-pesticide-chlorpyrifos#:~:text=(December%207%2C%202020%3B%20Washington,the%20Obama%20Administration’s%20EPA%20in and https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/proposed-interim-decision-registration-review-chlorpyrifos

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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 22, 2020) Opening arguments and evidence were filed by a coalition of farmworkers, farmers, and conservationists last week in litigation challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) re-approval of glyphosate, best known as the active ingredient in Monsanto’s “Roundup” pesticides. The lawsuit charges that the Trump Administration unlawfully ignored cancer risks and ecological damage of glyphosate. 

Represented by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), plaintiffs, including the Rural Coalition, Farmworker Association of Florida, Organización en California de Lideres Campesinas, and Beyond Pesticides, filed the federal lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in March. The groups seek to have the pesticide prohibited from use or sale because of its unlawful approval.

“Farmworkers are on the frontlines of nearly every health and environmental crisis, from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change, and are particularly at risk of health impacts from pesticide spraying,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney at CFS. “EPA failed these essential workers. It rejected evidence that glyphosate causes cancer and entirely failed to assess the main way people are exposed at work, through their skin.”

The court filing includes volumes of evidence showing how EPA ignored glyphosate’s health risks, including cancer risks, to farmworkers and farmers exposed during spraying. The evidence filed also shows how EPA disregarded glyphosate’s ecological impacts and that EPA failed to account for the costs to farmers from glyphosate-resistant “superweeds” and off-field drift damage.

“Farmworkers and farmers are the backbone of our food system. As we demonstrate in this filing, they are the first—but not the last—to bear the huge costs of EPA’s deeply flawed and unlawful re-approval of glyphosate, while corporate shareholders of Monsanto-Bayer benefit,” said John Zippert, chairperson of the Rural Coalition, the lead petitioner in the case.

While EPA once recognized glyphosate might cause cancer, it now finds this possibility to be “not likely.” In contrast, the world’s foremost cancer authorities with the World Health Organization determined in 2015 that glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’ In June, Bayer agreed to pay up to $10.9 billion to roughly 125,000 people in thousands of lawsuits arguing Roundup was responsible for their non-Hodgkin lymphomas, a cancer that originates in lymph tissue. The plaintiffs have prevailed in all the trials so far, with victims awarded $25-80 million in each case.

“Farmworkers cannot wait any longer for EPA to ban glyphosate—a pesticide that risks their health and the health of their children,” said Jeannie Economos of the Farmworker Association of Florida, a plaintiff in the case. “The public now knows that farmworkers are ‘essential workers,’ but they have always been essential. Their work feeds the people of this country and they deserve to be protected from a pesticide known to cause chronic diseases.”  

EPA also issued the challenged re-approval without any consideration of the dire risks glyphosate poses to threatened and endangered species. A belated EPA assessment—which was required by law before the approval, not after—has now confirmed these risks, finding that glyphosate will likely have adverse effects on at least 1,676 different species protected by the Endangered Species Act (93% of those exposed) and on 96% of their critical habitats. Instead of ensuring this pesticide will not cause the extinction of these species, EPA’s decision allows it to be sprayed on 285 million acres of farmland a year, with 21 million pounds applied to forests, parks, lawns, schoolyards, and roadways. 

Additionally, the lawsuit alleges EPA failed to account for the risks glyphosate poses to honey bees, other pollinators, and the iconic Monarch butterfly. Monarch butterflies face possible extinction due in part to glyphosate’s near-eradication of their critical host plant, common milkweed, from Midwest farm fields. On December 15th, in response to a 2014 CFS petition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife confirmed the Monarchs’ precarious state, concluding that Monarchs warrant protected status under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), though formal listing was postponed to 2024 due to the Service’s backlog of other ESA cases.

“Glyphosate use and resulting exposures represent a serious threat to the safety of people and the environment, including many hundreds of endangered species—facts astonishingly ignored by regulators,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a plaintiff in the case. “It is unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit like this to force EPA to carry out its responsibility in the face of a mountain of scientific findings that document glyphosate’s harm,” Mr. Feldman added.

The lawsuit comes after EPA earlier this month released its draft biological evaluation (BE) of glyphosate. The assessment, covered in an earlier Daily News, indicates that use of this ubiquitous herbicide likely threatens nearly every animal and plant species on the U.S. list of threatened and endangered species — 93% of them.

The evidence filed in the lawsuit also reveals EPA’s failure to assess the substantial costs incurred by farmers due to the glyphosate-resistant weed epidemic unleashed by massive use of this herbicide on genetically-engineered crops, as well as plant and crop damage from glyphosate drift.

“The industry’s response to glyphosate-resistant weeds has been crops resistant to additional herbicides like dicamba, which has caused enormous drift damage and still more intractable weeds,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at CFS. “EPA has done nothing to halt or even slow this toxic spiral of increasing resistance and herbicide use.”

Glyphosate use has been steadily increasing with the introduction and growth of genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant crops. As public exposure to the chemical grows, there is a correlated increase with chronic diseases. Organic land management in agriculture and lawns, parks and playing fields has grown to an economically viable alternative to chemical-intensive, genetically engineered crop production and conventional turf management, despite efforts to weaken organic law. For action that can be taken to ban glyphosate and adopt organic practices and policies in states and communities, see Beyond Pesticides action Ban Glyphosate-Adopt Organic campaign.

Source: Center for Food Safety

(Beyond Pesticides, December 21, 2020) The toxic herbicide dicamba is once again at the center of a larger story about states’ authority to regulate pesticides more stringently federal dictates and a response to corporate corruption in the marketing of pesticide products. The Trump EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has just made it much harder for state regulations to be more protective than federal rules. It did so via a footnote embedded in dozens of pages of regulatory documents related to EPA’s registration of three new dicamba products. 

Tell the Biden transition team that EPA must respect states’ rights to protect people and property in their states.

Meanwhile, a report by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found Monsanto and BASF, a German chemical company that worked with Monsanto to launch the system coupling dicamba with resistant crops, knew their dicamba herbicides would cause large-scale damage to fields across the U.S., but decided to push them on unsuspecting farmers anyway, in a bid to corner the soybean and cotton markets with their dicamba-resistant seeds.

For nearly 30 years, state regulators have used Section 24 (“Special Local Needs” section) of FIFRA, the Federal, Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act—the law that gives EPA authority to regulate pesticides—to establish specific restrictions, on use of federally registered pesticide products, that go beyond the restrictions mandated by EPA. Like other federal laws, FIFRA allows states room for stronger regulation. EPA has long allowed states to add to the edicts of federal pesticide labels in order to protect workers, crops, and/or the environment under particular local circumstances. However, Section 24 had historically been used to expand allowed labeled uses of pesticides when existing products with their crop restrictions are no longer effective. 

Two subsections of Section 24 are at issue. Section 24(a) allows states to “regulate the sale or use of any federally registered pesticide or device in the State, but only if and to the extent the regulation does not permit any sale or use prohibited by this Act.” Section 24(c) allows states to “provide registration for additional uses of federally registered pesticides formulated for distribution and use within that State to meet special local needs in accord with the purposes of this Act and if registration for such use has not previously been denied, disapproved, or canceled by the Administrator.”

Although a straightforward reading of FIFRA leads to the conclusion—one that EPA is now supporting—that 24(a) should be used to limit a pesticide’s use, and 24(c) to expand uses, EPA has never issued regulations or guidance for the application of 24(a) and has historically directed states to 24(c) when they sought to restrict a pesticide’s use, as several states have done with dicamba. For several decades, EPA has construed 24(c) to mean that states can establish more-restrictive regulations than the federal. Indeed, in 1996, it published this as guidance for states. In the past few years, especially, as EPA has failed to enact constraints on the uses of dicamba, which has caused massive devastation to nontarget crops and trees (as well as to wildlife), many states have moved to establish additional controls on the pesticide’s use.

Since EPA has never published regulations or guidance concerning use of Section 24(a), it is clear that the current action is designed to limit the ability of states to restrict the use of pesticides when EPA has failed to ensure safety.

A number of states, including Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Illinois, and Arkansas, have instituted restrictions on dicamba use that surpass those accompanying the federal registration of the compound. Texas, Iowa, Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama, and North Carolina are all eyeing 24(c) requests for stricter-than-federal controls for tighter application windows, additional training requirements, better record keeping, new fine structures for violations, and other modifications of the federal label.

This new (and stealthily announced) EPA impediment to states’ ability to create additional constraints hinges on the agency’s decision to reinterpret what states can do under Section 24(c) of FIFRA. EPA confirmed that the subject footnote represents an official policy change, saying, “EPA has determined that moving forward, EPA may disapprove any state registrations under FIFRA section 24(c) that further restrict use of pesticides registered by EPA, regardless of the chemicals involved. If a state wishes to further restrict use of a pesticide, they must do so under section 24(a) of FIFRA.”

Although some have interpreted this change to mean that state regulators will now have to navigate state legislative or rulemaking processes to use Section 24(a) in order to enact such protections, EPA has not adopted regulations or guidance for implementation of 24(a), so it appears that it is up to states to decide how to use it, as with dicamba, to control the timing, nature, location, or quantity of applications of the pesticide in efforts to diminish the damage it causes to nontarget plants and organisms. In addition, this reversal by EPA overturns decades of precedent, and as Progressive Farmer reports, “breaks EPA’s past promises to the states and threatens to damage the longstanding cooperative relationship between federal and state regulators.”

Although EPA did foreshadow this change in March 2019, state regulators are feeling blindsided. Back then, EPA announced — during one wave of state additions to federal labels on dicamba — that it might alter its handling of states’ requests to enact stricter controls, claiming that the actual language of 24(c) allows states only to permit additional uses of a federally registered pesticide.

EPA said at the time, “Due to the fact that section 24(a) allows states to regulate the use of any federally registered pesticide, and the fact that some states have instead used 24(c) to implement cut-off dates (and/or impose other restrictions), EPA is now re-evaluating its approach to reviewing 24(c) requests and the circumstances under which it will exercise its authority to disapprove those requests.” State regulators reacted to this announcement with great concern: officials from 10 different states urged EPA not to adopt the policy change, as did the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the Association of American Pesticide Control Officials (AAPCO).

Here’s where the blindsiding arises: EPA Office of Pesticide Programs director Rick Keigwin said, alongside the 2019 announcement, that no changes would be made to the agency’s 24(c) interpretation without the input of state regulators. “Before adopting any changes in this regard, we will solicit public comment on our proposed new approaches,” he wrote in the spring and summer of 2019. “We look forward to a robust public dialogue with our stakeholders, partners and co-regulators on this matter.”

But that did not happen, state regulators report. “There was no public comment period, no consultation,” said Leo Reed, an Indiana pesticide regulator and president of AAPCO. The existing guidance on 24(c) remains on the EPA website, creating confusion and a “legal limbo” for state regulators. Brook Duer, a staff attorney at Penn State’s Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, opined that even if the literal text of 24(c) comports with EPA’s new interpretation, the decades-old, published interpretation and guidance represent a “binding norm” under federal administrative law. He commented: “So unilaterally reversing it through a footnote, without a more transparent and public process—like what EPA previously represented would be undertaken—is certainly unorthodox and may even create the basis for litigation to prevent the reversal.”

Despite controversy over the rights of local governments to set stricter limits on pesticide use, there is not controversy over the legal rights of states to do so. In fact, some states—most notably California—have extensive pesticide regulatory programs. Since EPA has allowed the blatant abuse by Monsanto/BASF—in purposely using drift damage to force farmers to buy its seeds—states must be allowed to protect their citizens and environment when EPA fails.

Tell the Biden transition team that EPA must respect states’ rights to protect people and property in their states.

Letter to EPA Transition Team

In view of the many steps backwards taken by the Trump EPA, it is important to preserve the rights of states to issue more stringent regulations. The Trump EPA has just made it much harder for states to be more protective than EPA—via a footnote embedded in dozens of pages of regulatory documents related to EPA’s registration of three new dicamba weed killer products. This change hurts farmers and consumers.

For nearly 30 years, state regulators have used Section 24 of FIFRA, the Federal, Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act to establish specific restrictions on use of federally registered pesticide products that go beyond those mandated by EPA. Like other federal laws, FIFRA allows states room for stronger regulation. EPA has long allowed states to add to the edicts of federal pesticide labels in order to protect workers, crops, and/or the environment under particular local circumstances.

Two subsections of Section 24 are at issue. Section 24(a) allows states to “regulate the sale or use of any federally registered pesticide or device in the State, but only if and to the extent the regulation does not permit any sale or use prohibited by this Act.” Section 24(c) allows states to “provide registration for additional uses of federally registered pesticides formulated for distribution and use within that State to meet special local needs in accord with the purposes of this Act and if registration for such use has not previously been denied, disapproved, or canceled by the Administrator.”

Although a straightforward reading of FIFRA leads to the conclusion—one that EPA is now supporting—that 24(a) should be used to limit a pesticide’s use, and 24(c) to expand uses, EPA has never issued regulations or guidance for the application of 24(a) and has historically directed states to 24(c) when they sought to restrict a pesticide’s use, as several states have done with dicamba due to widespread crop damage associated with the herbicide’s use. In the past few years, as EPA has failed to enact constraints on the uses of dicamba, which has caused massive devastation to nontarget crops, trees, and wildlife, many states have moved to establish additional controls on its use.

Since EPA has never published regulations or guidance concerning use of Section 24(a), it is clear that the current action is designed to limit the ability of states to restrict the use of pesticides when EPA has failed to ensure safety. Meanwhile, it has been disclosed that Monsanto and BASF, partners in developing the system coupling dicamba with herbicide-tolerant crops, knew their dicamba herbicides would cause large-scale damage to fields across the United States, but decided to push them on unsuspecting farmers anyway, in a bid to corner the soybean and cotton markets with their dicamba-resistant seeds.

Several states, including IN, MN, MO, SD, ND, IL, and AR, have instituted restrictions on dicamba use that surpass federal registration requirements. TX, IA, GA, KY, AL, and NC are all eyeing 24(c) requests for tighter application windows, additional training requirements, better record keeping, new fine structures for violations, and other modifications of the federal label.

This new (and stealthily announced) EPA impediment to states’ ability to create additional constraints hinges on the agency’s decision to reinterpret what states can do under Section 24(c) of FIFRA. EPA confirmed that the subject footnote represents an official policy change, saying, “EPA has determined that moving forward, EPA may disapprove any state registrations under FIFRA section 24(c) that further restrict use of pesticides registered by EPA, regardless of the chemicals involved. If a state wishes to further restrict use of a pesticide, they must do so under section 24(a) of FIFRA.”

I urge you, in making the move to a revitalized EPA, to ensure that states have the right to issue stronger protections for their farming communities.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, December 18, 2020) The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting published a story in early December on yet another example of the corporate malfeasance that exalts profit far above concerns for safety, health, and ecosystems. The Midwest Center’s investigation finds that Monsanto and BASF, makers of the extremely problematic herbicide dicamba, engaged in a variety of deceitful, unethical, and possibly fraudulent practices to enable its use. The bottom line is that the companies knew, before they released dicamba, about the massive damage it would cause — and then put it on the market. Beyond Pesticides has reported on the corporate greed that fuels the downstream public health, environmental, and economic devastation these pesticides cause, and advocated for their removal from the market.

Such unscrupulous behavior is not confined to these companies; Bayer (which now owns Monsanto) and Syngenta are also implicated in similar actions related to other pesticides: glyphosate and atrazine, respectively. Over the course of the past couple of decades, large agrochemical corporations have pursued not only extreme market penetration for their toxic products, but also, vertical integration that, in the case of Bayer/Monsanto, “represents a near-monopoly on the agriculture supply chain.” Corporate ownership of the patent on genetically engineered (GE) seeds — which work only when paired with pesticides the company manufactures — not only suppresses competition, but also, with enough market share, essentially imposes near-complete reliance by farmers on one company’s products. Many experts and advocates regard this as a serious threat to global food supply, health, biodiversity, and the environment.

When EPA fails to enact its mission to protect health and the environment by allowing use of pesticides that result in harms, the agrochemical landscape gets even uglier; a bit of review of the dicamba saga will be helpful. Dicamba is a particularly problematic herbicide, given its propensity to drift, the widespread damage it causes to non-target flora, and industry’s intensive marketing of various product iterations. Added to that list are its impacts on human health: carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, hepatic and renal damage, and developmental effects, among others. Further, it is toxic to birds, fish, and other aquatic organisms, which is especially relevant where it shows up in groundwater, as it tends to in the Pacific Northwest.

The herbicide was used for decades on its own to control weeds on cropland. The “modern” dicamba debacle began in 2016 when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Monsanto’s dicamba “strategy” for cotton and soybeans: the dicamba formulation Xtendimax for use with seeds genetically engineered to be dicamba tolerant. Once deployed, because of the herbicide’s strong tendency to drift for significant distances, its use resulted in “millions of acres of crop damage across the Midwest and South; widespread tree death in many rural communities, state parks and nature preserves; and an unprecedented level of strife in the farming world.” As reports of this extreme damage began to roll in, states began to scramble to regulate dicamba’s use, absent federal efforts, to try to curb some of the devastation.

“Holdout” farmers, including organic growers, who have rejected the use of the GE-seed-plus-herbicide scheme, have been particularly vulnerable to the ravages of dicamba drift. Their complaints to neighboring farmers, whose dicamba use has compromised yield, destroyed crops, or rendered them no longer organic, are often met with indifference or anger. (As mentioned above, dicamba use is a factor in increasing tensions in some rural communities.) These farmers are faced, as the Midwest Center writes, with the choice to “get poisoned or get on board” the (GE-seed-plus-herbicide) train.

Notably, as Beyond Pesticides reported in early 2020, a Missouri peach farmer that sued Bayer and BASF for damage to his trees won $265 million in compensation for the companies’ “negligence in the design of their dicamba herbicides, and failure to warn farmers about the dangers of their products. . . . The jury determined that the joint venture between the two companies amounted to a conspiracy to create an ‘ecological disaster’ in the name of profit.” An attorney for the plaintiff in that case, Billy Randles, commented, “This is the first product in American history that literally destroys the competition. . . . You buy it or else.”

These realities demonstrate the perverse elegance of strategic corporate “verticality-plus-penetration.” Pesticide manufacturers control supply chains, functionally force farmers into intense reliance on their products, and then use other farmers as leverage on those who resist to get them to “get with the program.” Monsanto has been notorious for bankrupting small farmers who have dared to say “no” to its near-hegemony by, for example, saving seeds to plant in the following season, thus opting out of purchasing the company’s GE seeds.

This Midwest Center reporting shows that executives at Monsanto, knowing full-well the potential damage of their dicamba/GE seed system, proceeded. The story reveals that Monsanto:
• released and marketed its dicamba products “knowing that dicamba would cause widespread damage to soybean and cotton crops that weren’t resistant to dicamba. They used ‘protection from your neighbors’ [messaging] as a way to sell more of their products. In doing so, the companies ignored years of warnings from independent academics, specialty crop growers and their own employees.”
• limited any testing that could have delayed or denied EPA approval of dicamba; “For years, Monsanto struggled to keep dicamba from drifting in its own tests. In regulatory tests submitted to the EPA, the company sprayed the product in locations and under weather conditions that did not mirror how farmers would actually spray it. Midway through the approval process, with the EPA paying close attention, the company decided to stop its researchers from conducting tests.”

• knew of outstanding questions and concerns about dicamba’s use when it submitted data for approval to regulators; “The company’s own research showed dicamba mixed with other herbicides was more likely to cause damage. The company also prevented independent scientists from conducting their own tests and declined to pay for studies that would potentially give them more information about dicamba’s real-world impact.”
• investigated drift incidents in ways designed to “limit their liability, find other reasons for the damage, and never end with payouts to farmers.”
• collaborated for years with BASF on the dicamba-tolerant seed system
• “released seeds resistant to dicamba in 2015 and 2016 without an accompanying weed killer, knowing that off-label spraying of dicamba, which is illegal, would be ‘rampant.’ At the same time, BASF ramped up production of older versions of dicamba that were illegal to apply to the crops and made tens of millions of dollars selling the older versions, which were more likely to cause move off of where they were applied.”

Adding to the tale, in 1989 Monsanto introduced its “Roundup Ready” scheme — GE (glyphosate-tolerant) seeds to be used with the company’s existing glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup. Glyphosate herbicides have been in heavy use in the U.S. for GE soybeans, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum for more than two decades. In the mid 2000s, this profitable ploy began to hit speed bumps, as widespread resistance to glyphosate began to develop. The Bayer/Monsanto response to this resistance and the subsequent development of so-called “super weeds” was to double down, developing soybean and cotton seeds that were tolerant of both dicamba and glyphosate, and encouraging tank mixing and use of both herbicides. This tactic also became problematic: (1) this mixing increases concentrations of dicamba in the air up to nine times compared to dicamba alone, and (2) dicamba, when mixed with glyphosate, and/or when used in hot weather, is even more drift prone than the compound by itself.

Monsanto, with its role re: dicamba and glyphosate, has been “all in” on the chemical treadmill, and is a notorious corporate “bad actor.” It has spent years and a fortune on efforts to convince the public that its glyphosate products are “safe,” primarily by hiding information about the herbicide’s impacts. On the heels of the 2015 finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, the company was hit with many lawsuits for glyphosate’s role in, particularly, development of non-Hodgin Lymphoma (NHL). In 2017, a judge’s unsealing of two rounds of documents — dubbed the “Monsanto Papers” — made headlines because of what they showed. Emails, both internal and between the company and federal regulators, revealed “questionable research practices by the company, inappropriate ties to a top EPA official, and possible ‘ghostwriting’ of purportedly ‘independent’ research studies” that it publicly attributed to academics.

Monsanto has also attacked and discredited researchers, journalists, and others who dare to challenge the safety of its products and/or the company’s “integrity.” In 2019, more document releases (via Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests) revealed Monsanto’s “‘intelligence fusion center” that monitored potential threats to the industry and spread retaliatory responses through third-party sources. Its actions included a campaign against Carey Gillam, who wrote Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, in which she explains the company’s efforts “to cover up — through fraud, intimidation, [and] ghostwriting agency documents — the science showing that glyphosate kills humans as well as weeds.”

Beyond Pesticides noted, in its review of Ms. Gillam’s book, that Monsanto also spearheaded attacks on IARC Chair Aaron Blair, and pressured EPA to prevent the participation of epidemiologist Peter Infante, PhD on a science advisory panel on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate. For more, see the article “Monsanto: Decades of Deceit” by Ms. Gillam in the Summer 2018 issue of Beyond Pesticides’ journal, Pesticides and You.

The Monsanto Papers extended the evidence for what a previous report, The Poison Papers, had demonstrated: behind-the-scenes collusion between agrochemical companies (and other industry sectors) and federal regulators, a problem that escalated wildly during the Trump administration. The Poison Papers (TPP) was a trove of documents — obtained largely by author and activist Carol Van Strum, and published by The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy — that made public a decades-long pattern of collusion between industry and regulators. TPP showed, in excruciating detail across more than 20,000 documents, that both entities were aware of the toxicity of many chemical products, and yet worked together to keep this information from the public and the press.

The introduction to TPP asserts: “Corporate concealment is not a new story. What is novel in [T]he Poison Papers is abundant evidence that EPA and other regulators were, often, knowing participants or even primary instigators of these cover-ups. These regulators failed to inform the public of the hazards of dioxins and other chemicals; of evidence of fraudulent independent testing; even of one instance of widespread human exposure. The papers thus reveal, in the often-incriminating words of the participants themselves, an elaborate universe of deception and deceit surrounding many pesticides and synthetic chemicals.”

Syngenta Crop Protection (Syngenta) is another among this crew of ethically challenged corporations; the company has gone to all kinds of lengths to protect its investment in and profits from its atrazine products. The herbicide is used primarily on corn, wheat, and sugar cane, on turf (especially golf courses and lawns), and on Christmas tree farms. It is very prone to runoff from fields (which can contaminate water supplies in the Midwest and South, primarily), and can drift through the air for hundreds of miles from target sites when applied as a spray. The compound is implicated in a variety of health problems, including cancer, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and reproductive anomalies, and is especially dangerous for embryos and young children.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) PR Watch reported in 2012 on documents it had obtained showing that Syngenta’s “PR team investigated the press and spent millions to spin news coverage and public perceptions in the face of growing concerns about potential health risks from the widely used weed-killer atrazine.” The company used a variety of tactics to buoy the perception and reputation of its atrazine products: it sought third parties to speak in support of the herbicide, floated glowing corporate op-ed pieces to appear under willing individuals’ bylines, and directed its chief scientist to ghostwrite a book chapter that would challenge the idea of regulating atrazine by applying the Precautionary Principle. After a New York Times investigation and report on atrazine, that public relations team at Syngenta held a meeting in which one agenda item was “‘to obtain the services of a well know (sic) investigative reporter to probe around the EPA’ and, at a minimum get advice ‘on what buttons to push and cages to rattle.’”

In 2013, an investigative report by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative journalism group, showed that the agrochemical company “routinely paid ‘third-party allies’ to appear to be independent supporters, keeping a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company. The investigating reporters discovered documents that “reveal a corporate strategy to discredit critics and to strip plaintiffs from [a] class-action case.” (That case sought to have Syngenta pay for the removal of atrazine from drinking water in more than 1,000 water systems across six states.) See this Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog item for more.

The company took especial aim at Tyrone Hayes, PhD of the University of California, Berkeley, a leading researchers on atrazine and one of its most outspoken critics. (His research has shown that minute exposures to atrazine can cause cancer and feminize male frogs.) Syngenta commissioned a psychological profile of the scientist in hopes of boosting its campaign to delegitimize him and his work. Beyond Pesticides stepped up to support Dr. Hayes’s work by establishing its Fund for Independent Science.

What does one make of this litany of reports on corporate (and regulatory) misbehavior? The Poison Papers, the Monsanto Papers, the Midwest Center’s new reporting, the 100Reporters report, (CMD’s) PR Watch investigation — taken together, the pattern and motive are inescapable. Agrochemical companies (and their allies, which sometimes have included regulators in federal agencies, including EPA) have been engaged, and continue to be, in devious and dangerous efforts to hide the truth about the harms of pesticide (and other chemical) products from the public and the press. These few reports from many different reporters yield ample evidence of this pattern, and concerningly, likely cover only some of the corporate strategies and behaviors afoot.

The on-the-ground reality is that these actions result in widespread pesticide contamination of human bodies, those of other organisms, and vulnerable ecosystems. Such companies place greater value on their ability to sell poisons than on the harms those products do. This not only is disgraceful, but also, such actions should be the target of federal and state efforts to expose them, hold them accountable, and create and enforce genuinely protective regulations.

The onus for holding corporations accountable for their malfeasance should not rest on members of the public, and on health and environment education and advocacy groups (such as Beyond Pesticides — which, for example, recently joined a lawsuit against EPA over its decision to reapprove atrazine). Integrity at EPA — in short supply during the Trump administration — must also be restored, with real, rather than “purchased” or biased science at the center, and with zealous protection of health and environment at the forefront. Beyond Pesticides will continue to expose bad actors and advocate for these reforms at every level.

Source: https://investigatemidwest.org/2020/12/04/buy-it-or-else-inside-monsanto-and-basfs-moves-to-force-dicamba-on-farmers/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, December 17, 2020) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is contemplating the reapproval of toxic, widely banned insecticide aldicarb for use on citrus fruits in Texas and Florida. A vast amount of scientific evidence reports a dramatic decline in insect population (i.e., the insect apocalypse), like pollinators and other beneficial biotas, from environmental pollution sources like pesticides. Therefore, it is important to assess regulatory decisions that can potentially jeopardize the protection of these species and, consequently, human health. Nathan Donley, PhD, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), states, “The fact that U.S. regulators would even consider expanding use of this dangerous, widely banned pesticide is a stunning indictment of our broken regulatory system. This application vividly reaffirms why the pesticide industry considers us the dumping ground for the world’s worst pollutants. We’ll be watching closely to see whether the Biden administration steps up and puts public health before pesticide company profits.”

Aldicarb is a highly toxic, systemic carbamate insecticide, with initial production beginning in 1965. The chemical is a fast-acting cholinesterase inhibitor that permanently binds to the active site of an essential enzyme for normal nerve impulse transmission, acetylcholinesterase (AChE), deactivating the enzyme. In doing this, the chemical causes damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems, interrupting neurological activity. Furthermore, exposure to high doses of aldicarb can cause vision problems, improper thermal regulation, headaches, nausea, and even death via polarization of the respiratory system. Thus, aldicarb is subject to regulation under the Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty established to reduce the trade of the most globally hazardous chemicals, with over 100 countries banning its use. Both EPA and the World Health Organization (WHO) classify the chemical in the highest toxicity category. However, the U.S. is one of only a few countries around the world that does not regulate aldicarb via the treaty, but merely strictly restricts its uses.

Although EPA restricts the use of aldicarb in households, the agency approves it for agricultural use on specific crops, including cotton, and beans by professional pesticide applicators. Hence, their use in agriculture poses a huge threat to environmental and human health via runoff. In fact, aldicarb was one of the first widely used pesticides to leach and contaminate groundwater in the Central Sand Plains of Wisconsin and Long Island, New York, during the early 1980s. Aldicarb may persist in groundwater for decades due to its long half-life between 200 to 2000 days and ingestion of aldicarb-contaminated groundwater by residents adversely affects immune system function (immune dysfunction). Furthermore, aldicarb is a systemic pesticide that plant roots and leaves readily uptake, leading to toxic chemical residues in pollen and sap-like droplets (guttation) easily accessible to vulnerable pollinators, like bees.

In 2010, BayerCrop Science agreed with EPA to voluntarily cancel the production of Temik 15G, the sole aldicarb pesticide on the market, ending distribution by 2017. The chemical poses an unnecessary dietary risk to infants and children, causing neurological harm at very low doses. However, less than a decade after its discontinuation, a new aldicarb product by AgLogic—AgLogic 15G—surfaced, with limited use on a small subset of U.S. crops.

Presently, AgLogic is the only manufacturer of aldicarb pesticide products, and approving it for use on citrus fruit highlights faults within the pesticide regulatory system. Evidence demonstrates that past use of Temik 15G on citrus fruit crops exclusively posed the highest risk to children and infants, ultimately leading to its 2010 cancellation. Furthermore, the Florida Department of Agriculture denied AgLogic’s request to gain “Special Local Needs” approval (also called a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act [FIFRA] Section 24(c) approval) for use on Florida citrus in 2017 and 2018. AgLogic was unable to demonstrate that aldicarb is safer at controlling pests than other alternatives. Thus, AgLogic is currently pursuing a FIFRA Section 3 approval that does not “require the submission of comparative efficacy studies,” indicating the company’s intent to request a waiver for necessary pollinator-toxicity studies to accelerate regular Section 3 approval on citrus.

The approval of AgLogic15G for use on citrus crops (e.g., grapefruit, lemon, orange, lime trees) would allow an additional 400,000 acres of crop treatments in areas where pesticides already pose a threat to human, animal, and environmental health. In Texas, aldicarb-treated corn poisoned feral hogs, deer, and other animals, promoting a hunting ban by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to protect human health. Florida’s karst (porous) topography, slightly acidic soil and frequent precipitation can allow aldicarb to mobilize in soil, contaminating groundwater and contributing to toxic chemical runoff into nearby aquatic systems. Furthermore, Karen McCormack, a retired employee of the EPA’s pesticide office, states her concern over aldicarb approval, “It’s deeply disappointing to watch the current EPA renege on its agreement to ban this highly toxic and persistent pesticide. After receiving numerous complaints of aldicarb leaching into groundwater and contaminating drinking water supplies in Florida and elsewhere, my colleagues worked tirelessly to reach a voluntary agreement with the aldicarb manufacturer to stop producing this hazardous pesticide. Now it appears all this work may have been in vain.”

It is essential that when EPA weighs the risks and benefits of extending pesticide uses, the agency acknowledges previous harms associated with those chemicals. Harms ultimately associated with contaminant exposure should end through policy reform and the adoption of practices that eliminate toxic pesticide use. With far too many diseases in the U.S. associated with pesticide exposure, prohibiting the use of pesticides with known toxic effects is crucial for safeguarding public health.

Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database is a great resource for additional scientific literature that documents elevated rates of acute and chronic diseases and illnesses among people exposed to pesticides. Additionally, Beyond Pesticides advocates for a precautionary approach to pest management in land management and agriculture, with a transition to organic methods. Tell President-elect Biden to adopt a new direction for pesticide regulation and Tell Vilsack to Move Forward, Meet Challenges, Correct the Past by supporting strong organic agricultural standards.

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

Source: Center for Biological Diversity

(Beyond Pesticides, December 16, 2020) Part of U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s (D-MT) Fair Care for Vietnam Veterans Act is set to be included in the federal defense spending bill, providing hope that service members continuing to suffer from diseases related to Agent Orange exposure will receive long needed health coverage. The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) received bipartisan support, and NDAA is expected to pass through both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority. Nonetheless, President Trump has threatened a veto.

“…I fought tirelessly for years alongside our friends over at [Veterans of Foreign Wars] and other veteran service organizations,” Senator Tester said during a recent press conference, per the Missoula Current. “And I’m proud to have waged this fight. Now, Vietnam veterans suffering from diseases associated with exposure to Agent Orange are on the cusp to receive critical care and benefits that they’ve earned.”

The issue at hand is whether four Agent Orange-related diseases – Parkinsonism, bladder cancer, hypertension, and hypothyroidism, should be considered eligible for benefits and disability compensation by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (the VA). According to the veteran advocacy group DAV, 83,000 former servicemembers suffer from these diseases. While the scientific literature linking Agent Orange to these health effects is sound, some veterans have nonetheless been waiting over a decade for the government to cover their medical bills, and thousands have died in the meantime.

A robust report published by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2016 recommended expanding coverage to include the aforementioned diseases. Then-VA Secretary David Shulkin promised service members that a decision would be made by November 1, 2017. The day came and the VA decided to take no action. A brief statement from Secretary Shulkin indicated the only decision made was to “further explore new presumptive conditions for service connection that may ultimately qualify for disability compensation.”

Subsequent reporting and internal documents obtained by a veteran through a FOIA request revealed that Secretary Shulkin had indeed planned to list the diseases. However, the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, intervened directly, pointing to the costs of expanding protections.

In early 2019, Richard Stone, MD, acting head of the Veterans Health Administration, told Senators he had “hoped” the VA would make a decision on coverage “within 90 days.” That time also came and went.

Later that year, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) tried to introduce a resolution requiring the VA to list the diseases as covered. However, that effort was shot down by then-Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Johnny Isakson (R-GA), who cited cost increases.

A provision included in the late 2019 omnibus federal spending bill required the VA to provide “a detailed explanation” for the multi-year delay in listing new covered diseases. A Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS) was likewise set to be published by the VA this year as a means to justify covering the additional conditions. However, citing staffing issues resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, the VA has not completed these tasks.

While Senator Tester’s legislation will negate the need for the VA study, it still falls short for many veterans. Although it will require listing of Parkinsonism, bladder cancer, and hypothyroidism, it will not cover hypertension, an ailment NAM cited as having “sufficient evidence” linking it to Agent Orange exposure. Both Senator Tester and his state colleague, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), indicated to Montana Public Radio that they’ll continue to fight to list hypertension.  

Beyond these immediate concerns is the expiration of the Agent Orange Act of 1991, which required NAM to evaluate scientific evidence linking the herbicide to disease every other year. The report recommending listing of the current diseases in question was the last, as Congress declined to renew the law.

The need for Congress to act on this issue is emblematic of a catastrophic failure of leadership in the Trump Administration, Office of Management and Budget, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (the VA), say health advocates.

As Rick Weidman, legislative director of Vietnam Veterans for America, told ProPublica after the initial 2017 delay: “If you can afford the goddamn war, you can afford to take care of the warriors.”

Agent Orange was one of the “rainbow herbicides” used in Vietnam, named so because of the orange striped drums in which the chemical was stored. The active ingredients were 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, but the formulation used in Vietnam was contaminated with the highly toxic 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), a likely progenitor of some of the most horrific effects of Agent Orange exposure. Vietnam is still dealing with the fallout from Agent Orange dioxin, and has sued Bayer’s Monsanto over its manufacture and supply of the pesticide to the U.S. during the war.

Although Agent Orange is now banned, 2,4-D remains one of the 30 most commonly used pesticides on lawns, school grounds, and parks today. It is considered a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and has been linked to liver damage and endocrine disruption in humans, in addition to being toxic to wildlife, pets and beneficial insects. Previous research from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detected dioxin contamination in a number of 2,4-D herbicide products produced for consumer sale.

Concerned residents can keep up the pressure on Congress by urging the inclusion of hypertension as covered disease in the final version of the NDAA amendment. “It is time for the Senate to vote on this legislation. And quite frankly, once that is done, then it is up to this administration and the next administration to make sure this bill is implemented, assuming that the Trump administration signs this bill, which I believe they will,” Senator Tester said at a press event.

For more information about the dangers Agent Orange continues to pose at home and abroad, see Beyond Pesticides’ Agent Orange archives.

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

Source: Missoula Current, Montana Public Radio

(Beyond Pesticides, December 15, 2020) Over two dozen Texan farmworkers working in Illinois fell ill after toxic pesticides were repeatedly sprayed over them via aircraft, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court this month. As the suit details, indiscriminate pesticide spray brought harm to several minors, elderly workers, and a pregnant mother. Plaintiffs are seeking numerous claims against Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of Corteva (formerly DowDupont), as well as the aerial spray company and applicator that contaminated workers. These include violations of federal law and other tort, wage, contract, and damage claims.

“No farmworker should be exposed to poisonous chemicals when doing their job, let alone multiple times in two weeks,” said Lisa Palumbo, Director of Legal Aid Chicago’s Immigrants and Workers’ Rights project, which filed the suit alongside several other legal advocacy groups. “Migrant farmworkers are some of our most vulnerable workers, who grow and harvest the food we eat. Their employer is obligated to ensure they are safe from pesticide exposure, and that they are properly cared for and provided truthful information if exposure occurs. This did not happen here.”  

Two incidents are detailed in the complaint. With the first, occurring in July 2019, all farmworkers were wearing clearly visible neon orange hats and backpacks, working in corn fields in late afternoon. A helicopter suddenly flew overhead and began spraying an unknown pesticide. One worker, tasked with driving the bus, honked the horn to try to warn others to get out of the field, but many were immediately doused and began to take sick.

Managers at Pioneer Hi-Bred, “provided no emergency medical assistance, decontamination measures, or instructions to the workers about rinsing or washing themselves, and offered no transportation to a medical facility,” the complaint reads. Instead, workers were told to immediately board the bus. As a result, they were forced to try to decontaminate themselves at the motel rooms they were staying in. Some workers became progressively sick, developing diarrhea, skin rashes, headaches, loss of appetite, vomiting, and eye irritation. Tragically, many young children did as well. Without proper decontamination on site, a cramped motel room is likely to result in residual harm to other occupants, particularly children who are more sensitive to pesticide exposure than adults.

Unfortunately, as the records in the complaint show, neither Pioneer Hi-Bred nor the applicator learned any lessons from the experience. Because the next month, a worse incident occurred.

Workers were in the field detasseling corn (removing immature pollen-producing material to permit  better seed production) when a plane flew overhead multiple times, spraying an unknown pesticide. It was a clear day, and the corn was shorter than most of the workers – and the fact that they were all wearing bright orange clothing is important to the case . Workers ran out of the field to try to get away from the spray. Most workers were unable to rinse off or take off contaminating clothing. There was one hose with weak water pressure that workers had to line up to use. No instructions were provided – instead, not 15 minutes after the incident, workers were ordered back to the field.

After another 10 minutes, the plane came back and again released a spray over the workers. Horns were honked and workers again fled the field. Some workers that took to the field perimeter were ordered to run back through the contaminated crops in order to get back to their bus ride from work. One particularly sick worker had to be helped onto the bus.

No manager called an ambulance. No transportation was provided to medical facilities. No decontamination facilities were designated. Some workers urged Pioneer Hi-Bred to take the particularly sick individual straight to the hospital. The company instead instructed the bus to return to the motel where there would be medical personnel. But when the workers arrived, there were no medical professionals present.   

Managers at Pioneer Hi-Bred did go the hospital – to interfere with the treatment of workers who elected to go on their own volition, according to the complaint. These managers made erroneous statements, the complaint continues, that workers had been decontaminated, and tried to get medical staff to approve letters allowing them to return to work.

“These farmworkers suffered painful injuries due to the errant spraying of pesticides without proper protections and in violation of applicable legal standards,” said Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “This lawsuit asks the Court to hold companies responsible for their failures to protect farmworkers from these harmful impacts of dangerous pesticides. In addition, this tragedy highlights the importance of strengthening the protective standards.”

Although workers were uncertain at the time, it appears that the fungicide Avaris and insecticide Sultrus were the products applied by aircraft. Avaris is a combination of two toxic fungicides – azoxystrobin and proicanazole, while Sultrus contains the synthetic pyrethroid cyfluthrin. In addition to the acute effects documented by the workers, these chemicals put chronically exposed individuals at risk of cancer, reproductive damage, neurotoxicity, and harm to the liver and kidneys.  

The incident detailed in the legal complaint is simply one particularly egregious, and now publicly available example of the sort of treatment farmworkers are consistently subject to in the U.S. Incidents like these underscore the urgent need to improve protections for the hardworking individuals who harvest our food.

Despite the risk of debilitating pesticide poisoning, most of the individuals involved in this incident earned only $9.25 an hour. And apart from chemical exposure, the complaint details other inhumane and degrading conditions these workers were subject to. Notably, Pioneer Hi-Bred would keep a manager outside of the (extremely dirty) port-a-potties, and each worker in line for the toilet would have to request from manager how much toilet paper they think they needed. The water they were provided by the company tasted strange and Pioneer Hi-Bred discouraged them from drinking too much of it (presumably, in order to keep them in the fields), according to the workers.

In the U.S. today, the average life expectancy for a farmworker is 49 years, compared to 78 for the general population. Their working conditions and safety are not properly covered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration, but by inadequate provisions in federal pesticide law – provisions that, despite incidents like these, have nonetheless been subject to constant attacks by the outgoing Trump administration.

“Es trabajo pesado. Pero bonito,” (it is difficult work, but beautiful work), one Latina farmworker recently said in a report detailing their working conditions  But it is not enough to romanticize farmworker’s love for their work while ignoring the heinous conditions many experience, according to advocates.

Some workers are beginning to take the fight to their employers. “All we’re asking for is for fair wages and fair (working conditions),” said Rene Isidoro, a farmworker who joined a walkout earlier this year in Sunnyside, Washington. The workers, employed by Evans Fruit, said the company provides insufficient protective gear and training before pesticides are sprayed during work days that can last up to 15 hours.

As part of it Eating with a Conscience webpage, Beyond Pesticides writes, “While taking hazardous pesticides out of food production reduces hazards on the farm, farmworkers often face a lot of hardships that are not addressed by Eating with a Conscience. Farmworkers have long fought for better working conditions, wages and labor practices. To complement the contribution you are making by purchasing organic food, consider contacting the following organizations to learn what more you can do; Campesinos sin Fronteras; Centro Campesino; Coalition of Immokalee Workers; Domestic Fair Trade Association; Farmworker Association of Florida; Farmworker Health and Safety Institute; Farmworker Justice; Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO; Farmworker Support Committee (CATA); Lideres Campesinas; Northwest Treeplanters and Farm Workers United; United Farm Workers.

Beyond Pesticides stands in solidarity with farmworkers fighting against hazardous pesticide exposure, and for better conditions and better wages. Join us in urging President-elect Biden to advance a new vision for the U.S, Environmental Protection Agency—one that eschews chemical agriculture, embraces organic practices, and better protects the nation’s essential farmworkers.

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

Source: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid press release, Legal Complaint – US District Court for the Central District of Illinois

(Beyond Pesticides, December 14, 2020) As the President-elect chooses the leadership in his administration, it is critical that we in the affected communities establish our expectations of what is needed from agencies to address critical issues of the day. While we may feel that different choices of personnel could have been made, ultimately we are looking forward to advancing programs across all agencies that represent meaningful and foundational changes to our social, economic, and environmental norms. As we focus on the appointment of a Secretary of Agriculture, issues of foundational change come into sharp focus, relating to sustainable land management, distribution of resources and access to land, food security, protection of human and ecosystem health, and climate. It is normal, therefore, to look at any individual appointee’s past performance and positions as a measure of future decisions or policies that may be advanced. Ultimately, though, it is the administration that sets the tone, establishes a framework, and forges the direction of the government’s programs and policies. President-elect Biden has talked about a framework for policy to which we can and must hold all officials in the administration accountable across all agencies. These key elements of the framework intersect with the protection of health and the environment (including agriculture): (i) science-based decision-making, (ii) systemic change to solve societal problems, (iii) phase out of fossil fuel, and (iv) fight against environmental racism with disproportionate risk imposed on people of color.

Judging from his past record, President-elect Biden’s announced pick for Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, will need to dramatically change many previous positions in order to implement the elements of President-elect Biden’s policy framework. Within this framework, the overall policy priorities of the President-elect include addressing the climate crisis, racial equity, COVID-19, and economic recovery. His “Plan for Rural America” includes helping family farms and other small and medium-sized farms, building a clean energy future, advancing racial equity in rural America, expanding protections for farmworkers, ensuring adequate health care in rural areas, and conserving public lands. These priorities cannot be achieved with chemical-intensive farming practices that rely on petroleum-based pesticides, fertilizers, and bioengineered crops, or continued support for corporate industrial agriculture that undermines the health of people and communities. Therefore, a systemic shift to organic agriculture will be required to meet these priorities.

Organic agriculture practices combat the climate crisis by:

• Reducing Emissions of Nitrogen Oxides. Excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers in chemical-intensive agriculture is driving global nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions higher, putting the world at greater risk of a climate catastrophe, and failure to adequately address nitrous oxide emissions has the potential to impede the ability for the world to keep warming below the 2°C target established under the Paris Climate Agreement, necessitating further cuts in other greenhouse gasses.
• Sequestering carbon. Regenerative organic systems, which eliminate toxic, petroleum-based pesticides that kill microbial life in the soil, sequester significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere into on-farm soil carbon and could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions.
• Preserving natural lands and biodiversity. Natural forests are more effective than tree plantations in sequestering carbon. Preserving natural land increases biodiversity, which also reduces dependence on petroleum-based pesticides.

There is no racial justice without environmental justice, and this is particularly true in agriculture. In chemical-intensive agriculture, farmworkers are exposed to toxic agricultural chemicals. Farmworkers are predominately people of color, and dangers to them are discounted in the risk assessments used in the registration of pesticides. Materials used in organic agriculture must not endanger humans or the environment, but non-organic foods—even those with low residues of pesticides on the product—endanger workers and the environment.

Organic food offers greater health benefits in certain key areas, such as total antioxidant capacity, total polyphenols, and two key flavonoids, quercetin and kaempferol, all of which are nutritionally significant. Organic dairy products contain significantly higher beneficial fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamins. Organic food production prohibits toxic pesticide use, as distinguished from chemical-intensive agriculture and reduces existing levels of pesticides detected in children and adults. Drinking organic milk can eliminate exposure to pesticide, antibiotic, and synthetic growth hormone residues in those dairy products.

Organic farming is good for the economy. It is more resilient and buffered from economic risk, compared to chemical-intensive agriculture. Greater crop diversity, as required by organic standards, contributes to greater agricultural employment.

Mr. Vilsack, who served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration, allowed the weakening of organic review procedures by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), ignored several NOSB recommendations, and advanced “coexistence” with the expansion of genetically engineered (GE) crops that are responsible for genetic drift, polluting non-GE and organic crops. The expansion of GE crops led to an explosion of glyphosate (Roundup) use, widespread food contamination, as well as the growth of dicamba and 2,4-D, which resulted in vast crop damage and contamination from drift throughout the Midwest. This growth in GE crops has led to insect and weed resistance to pesticides, increased reliance on toxic chemicals, destruction of wildlife habitat, and economic harm to farmers. As Branko Marcetic wrote in In These Times, “While his tenure wasn’t uni­form­ly bad—Vil­sack resist­ed Repub­li­can attacks on food stamps and upped fed­er­al sup­port for organ­ic food—he angered pro­gres­sive groups by let­ting poul­try fac­to­ries self-reg­u­late, speed­ing up the approval process for GMO crops, shelving new reg­u­la­tions on big agri­cul­ture at the industry’s behest, and step­ping in to craft an indus­try-friend­ly nation­al GMO-labeling bill intend­ed to replace a pio­neer­ing stricter stan­dard in Ver­mont.”

In addition, his record on racial justice has been criticized by the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), National Black Farmers Association, USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, and others. The NBFJA points to actions taken under Vilsack’s previous leadership:

• Routine denial of loans to Black farmers that were easily obtained by white farmers and decreased the overall dollars loaned to Black farmers;
• Failure to take discrimination complaints seriously;
• Foreclosure of Black farmers who had pending discrimination complaints;
• Failure to adequately compensate Black farmers with valid claims;
• Wrongfully forcing out Shirley Sherrod, the former head of USDA rural development in Georgia and a well-respected civil rights leader;
• Prioritizing the profits of the poultry industry over the health and safety of working people and families; and
• Collusion in the distortion of data regarding race, farming, and land.

Mr. Vilsack is currently president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, which promotes the sale of conventional, chemical-intensive dairy products—typically produced by factory farms. The Council’s literature gives a misleading description of sustainable and regenerative agriculture. Will Mr. Vilsack support strong organic dairy standards?

Dear Secretary Vilsack: [Send this message to Secretary Vilsack. Click here.]

With your appointment to Secretary of Agriculture in the Biden administration, we appreciate your commitment to government service and would like you to open a dialogue on critical issues to the future health of our agricultural system, the people who labor in it, and the environment in which it operates. President-elect Biden has set an important framework in which to make transformational changes in confronting existential crises that directly intersect with agriculture. Key elements of the framework that intersect with the protection of health and the environment (including agriculture) are: (i) science-based decision-making, (ii) systemic change to solve societal problems, (iii) phase out of fossil fuel, and (iv) fight against environmental racism with disproportionate risk imposed on people of color.

Within this framework, the overall policy priorities of the President-elect include addressing the climate crisis, racial equity, COVID-19, and economic recovery. His “Plan for Rural America” includes helping family farms and other small and medium-sized farms, building a clean energy future, advancing racial equity in rural America, expanding protections for farmworkers, ensuring adequate health care in rural areas, and conserving public lands. These priorities cannot be achieved with chemical-intensive farming practices that rely on petroleum-based pesticides, fertilizers, and bioengineered crops, or continued support for corporate industrial agriculture that undermines the health of people and communities. Therefore, a systemic shift to organic agriculture will be required to meet these priorities by:

*Reducing Emissions of Nitrogen Oxides. Failure to adequately address nitrous oxide emissions may impede the ability for the world to keep warming below the 2°C target established under the Paris Climate Agreement.

*Sequestering carbon. Regenerative organic systems sequester significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere into soil carbon.

*Preserving natural lands and biodiversity. Natural forests help sequester carbon and reduce dependence on petroleum-based pesticides.

You are certainly aware that there have been points of disagreements with policy positions, relating to action and inaction on critical issues. We are terribly  concerned about allowing the weakening of organic review procedures by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), ignoring NOSB recommendations to strengthen organic integrity, while promoting “coexistence” with the expansion of genetically engineered (GE) crops that are responsible for genetic drift, polluting non-GE and organic crops. As we hope you’re aware, the expansion of GE crops led to an explosion of glyphosate (Roundup) use, widespread food contamination, as well as the growth of dicamba and 2,4-D, which resulted in vast crop damage and contamination from drift throughout the Midwest. This growth in GE crops has led to insect and weed resistance to pesticides, increased reliance on toxic chemicals, destruction of wildlife habitat, and economic harm to farmers. As Branko Marcetic wrote in In These Times, “While his tenure wasn’t uni­form­ly bad—Vil­sack resist­ed Repub­li­can attacks on food stamps and upped fed­er­al sup­port for organ­ic food—he angered pro­gres­sive groups by let­ting poul­try fac­to­ries self-reg­u­late, speed­ing up the approval process for GMO crops, shelv­ing new reg­u­la­tions on big agri­cul­ture at the industry’s behest, and step­ping in to craft an indus­try-friend­ly nation­al GMO-labeling bill intend­ed to replace a pio­neer­ing stricter stan­dard in Ver­mont.”

We appreciate the mandate of the new administration to think big and take on structural problems with systemic changes. In this context, we look forward to working with you to urgently address the existential threats to health, environment, racial equity, and economic security associated with current agricultural policy and practices.

Thank you.
Beyond Pesticides

(Beyond Pesticides, December 11, 2020) The national environmental and public health group Beyond Pesticides announced today the updating of its Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (PIDD), including over 1,100 study entries, with a relational search feature to address the complex pervasiveness of adverse health effects of pesticides. This comprehensive database captures the range of diseases linked to pesticides and tracks the latest epidemiologic and real-world exposure using peer-reviewed studies. PIDD is comprised of epidemiologic and laboratory exposure studies and is continually updated to track the emerging findings and trends.

“We created this unique database to fill the gap between pesticides and multiple disease pathways. Pesticide exposure can promote the development of various diseases, many of which are co-occurring. This tool makes it easy for consumers and health officials alike to access scientific resources that bring to light both specific illnesses and a range of illnesses that affect public health from pesticide exposure,” Warren Porter, PhD, Beyond Pesticides board member and professor emeritus of zoology and environmental toxicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Why is this database so important? Connections to pesticide exposure are being found in a growing number of studies that evaluate the causes of preventable diseases—including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, endocrine disruption, immune system disorder, brain and nervous system disorders, and several types of cancer. “These links to diseases support an urgent need to shift to toxic‐free practices and policies,” says Dr. Porter.

Beyond Pesticides’ relational Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database further serves the purpose of demonstrating how pervasive pesticides exposure and how exposure can impact human health with numerous adverse health outcomes. Those exposed to pesticides do not only develop one symptom or disease, but can develop multiple, interconnected diseases. Studies find that pesticide exposure can cause oxidative stress leading to various illnesses, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, or oncological diseases. Many of the studies available in PIDD challenge the effectiveness of risk‐assessment‐based regulation which is intended to manage adverse disease outcomes.

Additionally, Beyond Pesticides just launched its new Pesticide Topic Submission Portal, where consumers and scientists can directly submit personal stories, anecdotes, news articles, and scientific findings.

View the database and new database search engine: https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/pesticide-induced-diseases-database/overview.

About Beyond Pesticides
Beyond Pesticides is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., which works with allies in protecting health and the environment with science, policy, and action to lead the transition to a world free of toxic pesticides.