(Beyond Pesticides, August 12, 2021) A recent study published in Chemosphere identifies the concentration, consequences, and potential sources of 22 organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) among corals in the South China Sea (SCS) for the first time. SCS corals exhibit a higher affinity toward bioaccumulation of OCPs, which are legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention—a global treaty to eliminate POPs. The study finds the distribution of OCPs in coral tissue matches that of the surrounding oceanic air samples. Hence, atmospheric concentrations of OCPs—influenced by continental air masses—migrate from the atmosphere to seawater through gas exchange.

Coral reefs are one of the largest ecosystems in the ocean, sustaining marine biodiversity and providing many goods and services. However, living coral populations are rapidly declining due to ocean acidification, oceanic warming, habitat destruction, and pollution from human activity across the globe. From rare corals off the coast of Florida to well-established hard corals in the Great Barrier Reef, these communal organisms are sensitive to various environmental stressors that threaten biodiversity. Although several studies demonstrate the volatile, toxic nature of POPs, much less research evaluates the impact POPs have on biodiversity over time. The globe is currently going through the Holocene Extinction, Earth’s 6th mass extinction, with one million species of plants and animals at risk. With the increasing rate of biodiversity loss, advocates say it is essential for government agencies to research how previous and ongoing use of POPs can impact present-day species. Likewise, collaborative, global monitoring of POPs can help leaders identify the effect on vulnerable species of the chemicals’ long-range transport and the most effective unified global strategy. The researchers note, “Understanding the dynamics of air-seawater exchange and the within-ocean processing of POPs in the SCS is critical to obtain better insight into their global fate and behavior.”

Researchers investigated the occurrence, taxonomic profiles, and geographical distribution of organochlorine pesticides in coral tissue. They compared results to ambient air and seawater OCP distribution/concentration from the South China Sea. Target chemicals included 22 OCPs: six DDT compounds, four hexachlorocyclohexane compounds (HCHs), five chlordane compounds (CHLs), heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide A and B, two endosulfans (ENDOs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), p,p′-methoxychlor (MXC), and three Drins (aldrin, endrin, and dieldrin). Using gas chromatography-tandem, researchers measured OCP concentration in SCS coral tissue, air, and water samples.

The study results indicate 17 of the 22 OCPs are detectable in seawater, and all 22 OCPs are detectable in ambient air samples from the SCS. The most prominent chemicals amid air and water samples are CHLs, HCBs, DDTs, and Drins. Although coastal corals have higher chemical concentrations than offshore species, the chemical composition is similar, with DDT and CHL  compounds dominant among tissue samples. Researchers attribute the difference in OCP concentration among coastal and offshore corals to oceanic currents and storms influencing pollution distribution.

Long-range atmospheric transport and condensation are significant contributors to the global contamination of environmental pollutants like OCPs. Most concerning are the persistent properties of OCPs that allow these substances to remain in the environment long after use. Some of these long-lived chemicals include regionally banned pesticides that are highly toxic to humans and animals: DDT, heptachlor, and lindane. These pesticides cause various adverse effects, from respiratory issues, nervous system disorders, and birth deformities to various common and uncommon cancers. Although some, but not all, manufacturing and use of specific OCPs have declined in the U.S., OCPs remain a global issue, as much of the developing world still report usage. Continued manufacturing and utilization of OCPs increase the probability of long-range transport of these chemicals and their deposition across the globe via precipitation. However, OCPs still mobilize and accumulate in regions void of industrial or agricultural activities, like glacier tops and remote territories. Arctic snowmelt threatens to re-release chemicals entrapped in ice, further contributing to toxic chemical transportation and passive pesticide exposure globally. The glacial melting caused by the climate crisis will only add to atmospheric and waterway contamination. The release of volatile OCPs will enter waterways at the same concentration levels as before ice entrapment, even after several decades.

Pesticide contamination is already a global issue. Clean air, water, and healthy soils are integral to ecosystem function to support life. However, toxic pesticide residues readily contaminate all ecosystems, frequently existing in soils, water (solid and liquid), and the surrounding air at levels exceeding U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set standards. Scientific literature demonstrates pesticides’ long history of adverse effects on the environment, including wildlife, biodiversity, and human health. Pesticides can present acute and long-term health impacts worldwide, especially to farmers, 44 percent of whom experience pesticide poisoning every year. Furthermore, a recent study discovered DDT metabolite (DDE’) residues are detectable in residents of Chicago who consume more glasses of tap water per day. Therefore, the ubiquitous nature of pesticides impacting all ecosystems and the health of their inhabitants is a cause of concern for future human, animal, and environmental well-being.

Although this study is the first to identify organochlorine pesticides in corals specific to the South China Sea, numerous studies identify risks to coral reef habitats from chemical pollution. In March 2020, coverage of a report by the Australian government showed that agricultural pesticides are severely damaging the Great Barrier Reef. A University of Queensland study finds pesticide mixtures discharging from rivers and streams contaminate the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon, with 99.8 percent of samples containing up to 20 different pesticide compounds. Moreover, the combined impact, or synergism, between pesticides and warmer oceanic temperatures puts coral reef fish at a greater risk of adverse health effects, including endocrine disruption. The discovery of such intensive penetration of pesticides among coral reefs adds to the growing record of damage on these marine ecosystems.

Overall, OCP concentrations are declining in the South China Sea as many nations ban organochlorine compounds, yet chemical concentrations remain highest in corals near continental areas. The study identifies various routes of OCP exposure among corals, including dietary uptake and partitioning behavior or absorption. Isomer ratios reveal that most OCP contamination stems from the current use of technical chlordane (termiticide) and historical uses of other OCPs. Previous records indicate air and sediments from China, Vietnam, and Pakistan contain inputs of chlordane and DDTs. However, researchers find higher levels of DDT among the coral population relative to chlordane, due to the extensive use of the chemical in counties around the South China Sea. India and Vietnam permit the use of DDT to control mosquitoes under the Stockholm Convention. Furthermore, high temperatures and chemical volatility play a role in organochlorine pesticide availability as primarily gas residues rather than particles in the SCS. Thus, researchers determine that atmospheric deposition of OCPs is a main route of contamination among corals in the SCS. The study concludes, “The present study provides baseline data for future studies of OCPs in CRRs. Nevertheless, studies linking pollution monitoring and ecotoxicology are needed to assess the potential environmental effect of OCPs on corals in future studies. Additionally, analyzing the level of OCPs on a larger temporal-spatial scale is needed.”

Chemical contamination is ubiquitous in marine environments. Consequently, it is essential to understand the impacts of interactions with other environmental pollutants, especially in contaminated ecosystems like waterways. Furthermore, climate crisis implications like melting glaciers present a new concern over the high levels of chemical concentrations in the oceans from DDT, its metabolites, and other persistent organic pollutants, trapped in ice. Therefore, to protect the nation’s and world’s waterways and reduce the number of pesticides that make their way into drinking water, toxic pesticide use must end.

Beyond Pesticides has long advocated for federal regulation that considers potential synergistic and additive threats to ecosystems and organisms. Replacing pesticides with organic, nontoxic alternatives is crucial for safeguarding public health, particularly communities vulnerable to pesticide toxicity. Learn more about pesticide hazards and their impact on wildlife through Beyond Pesticides’ wildlife program page. 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.

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

Source: Chemosphere

(Beyond Pesticides, August 11, 2021) Multiple stressors, including pesticides, parasites, and poor nutrition, act synergistically to increase the risk of bee mortality, according to a meta-analysis recently published in the journal Nature. The findings are yet another indictment of the U.S. pesticide regulatory system’s ability to protect pollinators, as the authors note that their results, “…demonstrate that the regulatory process in its current form does not protect bees from the unwanted consequences of complex agrochemical exposure.” As scientific community continues to confirm the dangers of pesticides and other anthropogenic stressors to pollinators, it remains up to advocates and other concerned residents to get regulators and policymakers to listen to and act on these critically important conclusions.  

Scientists aimed to evaluate how combinations of multiple pesticides, parasites, and lack of floral resulted in bee death or subchronic effects that impacted overall fitness (reproductive ability, colony health, etc), behavior, parasite load, or immune response. The effects of multiple stressors can be characterized as antagonistic when stressors cancel themselves out, additive when the impacts seen are what would be predicted when summing the individual effects, and synergistic when the effects are multiple times more harmful than what would be predicted additively. To conduct the analysis, researchers began with nearly 15,000 papers on bee health, and narrowed down their review to 90 studies that observed over 350 interactions between multiple stressors.  

At the most general level, multiple stressors were synergistic in the context of bee mortality, but additive for effects on overall fitness. Looking further into the data, it was determined that exposure to multiple pesticides had the most robust connection to synergistic impacts. Researchers suspected that studies exposing pollinators above field-realistic doses may have contributed to that result, but a reanalysis that focused solely on pesticide levels pollinators would encounter in the wild found the same results. “Interactions between multiple agrochemicals significantly increase bee mortality,” said lead author Harry Siviter, PhD.

Most other stressors exhibited additive impacts on bee mortality and health. Interactions between nutritional health, parasite load, and pesticide exposure were summed predictably for bee mortality. Differences, however, were seen for the overall combined effects of multiple stressors on parasite load. These effects are characterized as antagonistic. Scientists suspect that the cause is likely because two parasites will attempt to outcompete each other, but note that this could vary by parasite type and may be due to variability in the study dataset.

“Our results show that although many classes of anthropogenic stressors may have additive effects on bee mortality and fitness proxies, exposure to combined agrochemicals can have synergistic effects that are more detrimental than would be predicted by independent risk assessments,” the study reads.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has access to the same studies analyzed as part of this meta-analysis. Yet, the agency continues to register bee-toxic pesticides and permit them to be used in combination with other active and inert pesticide ingredients. Unfortunately, a large part of the problem is that the data EPA relies upon is not the data these scientists are analyzing in the open literature – instead, EPA primarily uses data supplied by the pesticide industry to determine risk. In just one example of EPA’s lack of adequate oversight and transparency, in 2019, the agency reregistered the bee-toxic insecticide sulfoxaflor (a pesticide beekeepers had, just a few years earlier, successfully banned in the courts). As part of its new registration, EPA relied on studies from pesticide manufacturers and decided to waive prior restrictions on ‘tank mixing’ the insecticide with other toxic pesticides. This was done “because data show that there is no additional risk when sulfoxaflor is tank mixed with other compounds,” EPA wrote.

Authors of the current meta-study indicate that their results should not be ignored by regulators. They suggest a range of prescriptions to enhance the ability for regulators to determine risk, such as requiring tests on common pesticide tank mixtures, or conducting post-licensing analysis – monitoring pesticide product applications in the field as a last step in the regulatory review process.

While these changes would improve understanding, there are other forces at play in regards to the pesticide review process. Most notably is the depth of corruption within EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. According to recent reporting in the Intercept, rank and file EPA employees have been bullied and brow beat into approving toxic chemicals that they know are unsafe. Many advocates wonder how effective new studies and protocols could be if the agency continues to act as a revolving door between the pesticide and agrichemical industry.

Structural changes are needed to shake up EPA and hold pesticide manufacturers accountable. The Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA), introduced in Congress this year as HR4079, would start that process. The bill that saves the bees would put pollinator experts in charge, not EPA’s pesticide industry flunkies. These experts would be empowered to review all data of concern for pollinators and require EPA to restrict them if the chemicals are found to be an unacceptable hazard to pollinators or the habitat they rely upon. This is a common sense proposal that cannot succeed without strong support from the public. Take action today to urge your member of Congress to cosponsor SAPA, and follow up with a phone call. If your member is already a cosponsor, make sure to send a note thanking them for their support.

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

Source: Phys.Org, Nature

(Beyond Pesticides, August 10, 2021) President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Michael Regan, is set to reapprove the highly hazardous herbicide paraquat with fewer protections than those proposed by the Trump administration. Despite strong links to Parkinson’s, and bans on the herbicide in the European Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries, EPA’s press release inexplicably states, “No direct one-to-one alternatives to paraquat are available.” The move is part of a string of actions that have pesticide reform advocates increasingly concerned that the Biden Administration is not living up to his initial promises to improve health and environmental protections.

Paraquat is the most toxic herbicide still on the market. As EPA readily admits, one small sip of paraquat can be fatal. Apart from its acute toxicity, chronic exposure to the herbicide is strongly linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease. But its association with Parkinson’s is merely the most well-known health concern – the chemical is a likely carcinogen, harms the reproductive system, and damages organs like the kidney and liver. It is hazardous to birds and bees, and prone to leaching into groundwater, where it disrupts the health of aquatic ecosystems.

The Trump administration’s decision to reapprove paraquat last year was characterized by Beyond Pesticides as “a broken EPA” with an “extremist pro pesticide agenda.” Reapproval of this chemical in the first place highlights an incredible lack of concern for the health and prosperity of many Americans who will continue to be at risk of being included in the future Parkinson’s pandemic. Yet the Biden Administration, which has consistently ‘talked the talk’ around the need to reverse dangerous decisions made by the previous administration, and pledged a new path toward improved public health and environmental protection, has not only endorsed the Trump EPA’s decision to reapprove the chemical, its new proposal weakens and rolls back critical protections.

While the Trump EPA proposed reapproving paraquat while prohibiting aerial applications, the Biden EPA determined that aerial applications of paraquat are acceptable.

According to reporting from EENews, the agency used information provided by the Agricultural Handler Exposure Task Force, a consortium of chemical companies that includes BASF, Bayer Monsanto, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta/ChemChina, the primary manufacturer of paraquat. The data produced by the chemical companies indicate that EPA had miscalculated the dangers posed to farmworkers, and that an all-out ban on aerial use was not warranted. Despite a long history of criticism directed at the agency for simply allowing pesticide companies to write the rules, the agency did exactly that.

“With this recent move, the Biden EPA has endorsed the continued crop dusting of American food and farmland with paraquat, a chemical that is strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease, and can kill an individual with a single sip,” said Drew Toher, community resource and policy director at Beyond Pesticides. He continued: “This is an economic decision – one that aims to maintain the profits of chemical companies at the expense of farmworker lives and livelihood. Americans should be ashamed of their taxpayer dollars being used to support this dangerous action.”

The move on paraquat is reminiscent of other decisions EPA made at the behest of industry.  In 2018, EPA stripped away protections that reduced children’s exposure to synthetic pyrethroids, a group of neurotoxic pesticides strongly linked to childhood cancer, autism, and other learning disorders. In that case, CropLife America, the main pesticide industry lobby group, urged EPA to rely on a health model developed by a group known as the Council for the Advancement of Pyrethroid Human Risk Assessment. Under the CAPHRA model, pyrethroids were estimated to be metabolized by children at the same rate as adults. As a result, EPA lowered the safety factor on synthetic pyrethroids from 3x to 1x for children under 6 years of age, permitting children’s exposure rates to these widely used chemicals to triple.

Most frustrating to pesticide reform advocates is that the Biden administration has acknowledged many of the mistakes of the past. In March 2021, Michal Freedhoff, PhD, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention wrote an open letter to EPA employees noting, “Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science.” And continuing, “This is a new day, about communication, trust, transparency and the importance of science in our regulatory decision-making process.” Dr. Freedhoff specifically cited the agency’s decision to approve volatile dicamba formulations on genetically engineered crops. As Beyond Pesticides noted at the time, despite the recriminations, EPA announced no plans for corrective action.

Opportunities for the agency to show off environmental bona fides have been numerous, but there is little for advocates to point to with the new administration. The lack have progress has brought Beyond Pesticides to question: “What is going on at the Environmental Protection Agency?”  On a range of chemicals decisions, including glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, the neonicotinoids, the synthetic pyrethroids, atrazine, and paraquat, EPA has raised expectations while failing to deliver.

There is still time for the agency to reverse its approach, and eschew chemical company influence in its decision-making. Despite affirming earlier decisions around the risks that glyphosate pose to human health, the agency has asked the court for a redo on its 2020 decision to reapprove glyphosate products like Roundup. The agency is also on an impending deadline to provide a response to a federal court on the status of chlorpyrifos’ registration. Based on recent decisions, some advocates question whether President Biden EPA’s will affect a significant shift from the Trump administration’s industry friendly positions.

The pressure is on. A detailed report in The Intercept shined a spotlight on the depths of corruption within EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (see Beyond Pesticides coverage here).  Whistleblowers are filing complaints with EPA’s Office of Inspector General for the pressure they felt to deliver results in line with industry wishes. Increasingly, experts are sounding the alarm about the need for updates to U.S. pesticide law, and bills like the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, and Protect American Children from Toxic Pesticides Act are gaining increased attention in Congress.

Like glyphosate, paraquat’s major manufacturer – Syngenta/ChemChina – is now in court over links between its herbicide and chronic disease. But it’s not acceptable for the courts to institute environmental protections when EPA – a taxpayer funded executive agency – was created specifically to provide that service for the American people. Urge the Biden EPA to stand up to pesticide manufacturers by holding them accountable for the dangers associated with their products.

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

Source: EPA’s press release, EENews

(Beyond Pesticides, August 9, 2021) What’s going on at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? Last month, Bayer/Monsanto announced it would voluntarily cancel “residential lawn and garden” uses of glyphosate products, “exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.” EPA has done virtually nothing to restrict glyphosate/Roundup since the World Health Organization/International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 classified the chemical as probably carcinogenic. It is now expected, as with other voluntary cancellations, that EPA will make no health or environmental findings that could affect other uses (e.g., agricultural) of glyphosate, but will accept the action by Bayer/Monsanto. The company refers to its action as “risk mitigation”—that’s risk to the company’s profitability, economic viability, and shareholder investment, not public health or environmental protection. Voluntary actions by the companies are highly compromised and do not include agency determinations or findings—allowing false claims of safety, offering a shield from liability, and unencumbered international marketing.

The Biden administration began with high hopes for the environment. Combating climate change is a priority. On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive memorandum, Modernizing Regulatory Review, that appears to establish a new framework supporting healthy people and ecosystems, as it directs the heads of all executive departments and agencies to produce recommendations for improving and modernizing regulatory review, with a goal of promoting public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.

But what’s happening at EPA? The announced voluntary cancellation of glyphosate products highlights EPA’s failure to correct dangerous decisions made under the Trump administration. EPA has not corrected actions on chlorpyrifos, atrazine, dicamba, or neonicotinoids that allow poisonings of humans, pollinators, and others to continue.

Tell EPA to stop allowing the pesticide industry free rein to regulate itself based on financial risks instead of the risks to health and environment that the law requires to drive decisions. 

A report by the Office of the Inspector General for EPA concludes that scientific analyses by the agency were altered so as to favor top Trump administration officials’ policy choices in the 2018 reapproval of the highly toxic and problematic pesticide, dicamba. The report, “EPA Deviated from its Typical Procedures in Its 2018 Dicamba Pesticide Registration Decision,” was publicly released on May 24. It confirms aspects of what Beyond Pesticides and many others in the science, advocacy, public health, and environmental communities have been saying and reporting since 2016: The Trump administration executed a wholesale assault on scientific integrity in federal decision-making. But where is the Biden EPA correction of the Trump policy?

An article in The Intercept reveals how far EPA’s credibility has slipped, in view of sloppy or corrupt science, a well-greased revolving door between EPA and the pesticide industry, responsiveness to political pressure from pesticide companies, and actions that lag behind other countries. If EPA is to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, it must reverse these realities, re-examine Trump-era decisions, and act on behalf of the public and the environment.

EPA must not continue to allow pesticide manufacturers to regulate themselves based on financial risk. While they may have been forced in courts to pay damages for certain uses—generally those where exposure to specific people can be proven—these same pesticides continue to harm others, from neighboring chemical-intensive and organic farmers, to those living near production plants and those with pre-existing conditions, to bees and frogs, to consumers. When a company seeks to voluntarily cancel uses of a pesticide, EPA should immediately suspend all registrations and begin cancellation proceedings for all uses.

Tell EPA to stop allowing the pesticide industry free rein to regulate itself based on financial risks instead of the risks to health and environment that the law requires to drive decisions.

Letter of EPA Administrator Michael Regan

I am writing to express profound disappointment with the Biden EPA’s record on pesticide regulation. Bayer/Monsanto just announced that it would voluntarily cancel “residential” uses of glyphosate products, “exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.” If the past is prologue, EPA will accept Bayer’s voluntary cancellation of residential uses and make no findings that could affect other uses (e.g., agricultural) of glyphosate. The company refers to its action as “risk mitigation”—that’s risk to the company’s profitability, economic viability, and shareholder investment, not public health or environmental protection. Voluntary actions by the companies are highly compromised and do not include agency determinations or findings—allowing false claims of safety, a shield from liability, and unencumbered international marketing.

The administration began with high hopes for the environment. Combating climate change is a priority. On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order, “Modernizing Regulatory Review,” that appears to establish a new framework promoting public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.

But what’s happening at EPA? EPA is allowing the pesticide industry free rein to regulate itself based on financial risks instead of the hazards to health and environment that the law requires to drive decisions. Accepting a voluntary cancellation without a rigorous review of the science and the threats will only serve to highlight EPA’s failure to correct dangerous decisions made under the Trump administration. EPA, to date, has not corrected actions on chlorpyrifos, atrazine, dicamba, or neonicotinoids that allow poisoning to continue.

A report by the Office of the Inspector General for EPA “EPA Deviated from its Typical Procedures in Its 2018 Dicamba Pesticide Registration Decision,” concludes that scientific analyses by the agency were altered to favor top Trump administration officials’ policy choices in the 2018 reapproval of the highly toxic and problematic pesticide dicamba, as the Trump administration executed a wholesale assault on scientific integrity in federal decision making. Where is the Biden EPA correction of Trump policy?

An article in The Intercept reveals how far EPA’s credibility has slipped, in view of sloppy or corrupt science, a well-greased revolving door between EPA and industry, responsiveness to political pressure from pesticide companies, and actions that lag behind other countries. If EPA is to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, it must reverse these trends, re-examine Trump-era decisions, and act on behalf of the public and the environment.

EPA must not continue to allow pesticide manufacturers to regulate themselves based on financial risk. While they may have been forced in the courts to pay damages for certain uses—generally those where exposure to specific humans can be proven—these same pesticides continue to harm others, from neighboring chemical-intensive and organic farmers, to those living near production plants and those with pre-existing conditions, to bees and frogs, to consumers. When a company seeks to voluntarily cancel uses of a pesticide, EPA should immediately suspend all registrations and begin cancellation proceedings for all uses.

Please take the following actions:

– Adopt conflict-of-interest policies that eliminate the revolving door between EPA and the pesticide industry.

– Re-examine Trump-era decisions to allow use of dangerous pesticides and act on behalf of the public and the environment.

– Stop the self-regulation of pesticide manufacturers based on financial risk. A proposal to voluntarily cancel uses of a pesticide should trigger immediate suspension and cancellation proceedings for all uses.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this critical public health and environmental issue.

(Beyond Pesticides, August 6, 2021) The organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has filed complaints with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on behalf of four EPA whistleblower scientists. The scientists maintain that during the Trump administration, risk assessments for both new and existing chemicals were improperly changed by agency managers to eliminate or reduce calculations of risks; further, they assert that some of this behavior at EPA is ongoing. Beyond Pesticides recently covered a report in The Intercept, written by Sharon Lerner, that examined the multiple aspects of undue industry influence on the regulation of pesticide chemicals. The PEER complaints address regulation of other kinds of toxic chemicals, but Beyond Pesticides maintains that some of the problems the whistleblowers identify hold true for EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, as well.

Appropriately enough, the nation again recognized National Whistleblower Appreciation Day on July 30. In 1989, Congress established the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA) to protect federal employees who report lawbreaking or other violations of rules or regulations; waste of funds; abuses of authority; gross mismanagement; or substantial and specific danger to public health or safety. In 2012, Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) to expand and strengthen such protections. Despite these protections, these four have been subjected to reprisals for their multiple expressions of concern about dysfunction at EPA, and in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, in particular.

Ms. Lerner’s coverage of the whistleblowers’ charges, in The Intercept’s July 2 piece, “Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office,” reports that the four “said that they told colleagues and supervisors within the agency about the interference with their work. Each of the scientists also filed complaints with either the EPA’s Inspector General or the Office of Science Integrity, which has pledged to investigate corruption within the agency. But because most of their concerns remained unaddressed months after they disclosed them — and because, in each case, the altering of the record presented a potential risk to human health — the scientists said they felt compelled to make their complaints public.”

EPA is tasked broadly with protection of human and environmental health; this mission flows to its subordinate divisions, as well. In 1976, Congress created the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to protect the public from “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment” by regulating the manufacture and commercial sale of chemicals. Several categories of chemicals were exempted from regulation through the law, such as those in tobacco products, pesticides (regulated by the 1947 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA), food, and cosmetics.

Because TSCA had proven relatively ineffective at protecting the public from chemicals in myriad consumer products, an update to it, the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, was adopted in 2016. It sought to strengthen protections by mandating safety reviews, including for chemicals new to the market; increase transparency about information on subject chemicals; enhance EPA authority to require testing; reduce companies’ ability to claim chemical information as propriety or confidential and thus, withhold it from regulators; and explicitly protect vulnerable parts of the population, such as pregnant people and children, among other features.

The law gave rise to a new division within EPA: the New Chemicals Division (NCD), which operates within the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT). OPPT functions under the aegis of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), as does the OPP (Office of Pesticide Programs), which is responsible for evaluating and registering all pesticides. (See the organizational chart here.)

The four whistleblowers worked under OCSPP (and NCD), which are supposed to evaluate risk assessment studies to gauge a new (or existing) chemical’s potential risk to humans. Such assessments can lead the agency to place limits on a chemical’s use or to ban it entirely. The four have reported that civil service managers at EPA, during the term of the Trump administration and continuing to today, have engaged in corrupt and unethical practices, such as regularly accessing risk assessments completed by staff scientists in order to, variously:

• remove language that identifies potential adverse effects, including developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, mutagenicity, and/or carcinogenicity
• revise conclusions in risk assessment reports significantly to indicate no toxicity concerns despite data to the contrary
• reassign risk assessment work to less-experienced employees so as to remove content whose inclusion would protect human health and/or to secure sign-offs on faulty or inadequate assessments

Such activities are not only unethical and corrupt; it is downright dangerous to distort or withhold information about the kinds and degrees of risk of chemicals that may enter the materials stream and environment. In its website reporting on the matter, PEER writes, “In every case where this type of interference has occurred, the revised assessment was no longer as protective of worker safety and the environment. Moreover, the resulting Material Safety Data Sheets lack information vital to prevent harmful exposures, such as proper handling procedures, personal protection needed, accidental release measures, first aid, and firefighting measures.”

According to Richard Denison, PhD, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and presenter in a webinar offered by PEER on July 28 (recorded and available soon via the PEER website and its YouTube channel), the NCD is a “black box” that courts excessive confidentiality claims from industry, withholds information from the public, and has an “insular, secretive culture” that works against the mission of EPA and the interests of the people. He asserted that often, the “only parties in room when decisions are made are EPA and chemical industry people,” adding how striking it is that decisions on chemicals cited in the whistleblowers’ complaints all fell in favor of industry.

PEER Director of Science Policy Kyla Bennett, PhD, a scientist and attorney formerly with EPA, adds, “These alterations of risk assessments are not just artifacts of the Trump administration; they are continuing on a weekly basis. All of these altered assessments need to be pulled back and corrected in order to protect both workers handling chemicals and the American public.” In the webinar, she mentioned that since these first four whistleblowers came forward, more are emerging. These four were very upset and having trouble sleeping; one “did not want to be the reason for the next PFOA to be out on the market, killing people.”

The updated TSCA requires that a company proposing to manufacture or import a new chemical provide to EPA a premanufacture notice at least 90 days before manufacture or importation commences. Both Dr. Denison and Dr. Bennett noted that evaluating a new chemical within that time frame is a nearly impossible task, not least because NCD scientists are often asked to evaluate new chemicals with insufficient, or sometimes entirely missing, data. Dr. Bennett explained: according to the whistleblowers, staff are sometimes given very little information to work with — sometimes as little as the name of a chemical and a summary paragraph from an industry study. Thus, staff members are sometimes forced to do what are called “desk audits” — assessments based on industry-produced studies to determine safety. In these cases, the scientists often end up looking at structurally similar chemicals to arrive at some conclusion about safety.

The whistleblowers report extreme pressure to sign off on inadequate evaluations, and say that staff are rewarded for doing so. When, as these four did, agency scientists have refused to do that, the assessments have been taken away from them and given to less-experienced employees who would. In addition, staff who have “blown the whistle” by reporting incidences of what the WPA specifically spells out — “violations of rules or regulations; abuses of authority; gross mismanagement; or substantial and specific danger to public health or safety” — have suffered reprisals, including functional reassignment or demotion.

National Public Radio’s “Science Friday” program spoke with two of the whistleblowers and with Sharon Lerner, author of The Intercept articles of June 30, “The Department of Yes,” and the July 2 Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EP Chemical Safety Office. Science Friday reported whistleblower allegations in its coverage, EPA Whistleblowers Allege “Atmosphere of Fear.” As the whistleblowers wrote in a submission to both The Intercept and the office of Representative Ro Khanna of California, “The Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is broken. . . . The entire New Chemicals program operates under an atmosphere of fear — scientists are afraid of retaliation for trying to implement TSCA the way Congress intended, and they fear that their actions (or inactions) at the direction of management are resulting in harm to human health and the environment.”

The net, as reported by Ms. Lerner, is that “EPA managers [have] removed information about the risks posed by dozens of chemicals.” She wrote, “On several occasions, information about hazards was deleted from agency assessments without informing or seeking the consent of the scientists who authored them. Some of these cases led the EPA to withhold critical information from the public about potentially dangerous chemical exposures. In other cases, the removal of the hazard information or the altering of the scientists’ conclusions in reports paved the way for the use of chemicals, which otherwise would not have been allowed on the market.”

During the July 28 webinar, Dr. Bennett commented that some career staff at EPA — and in particular, in NCD, have been “captured by industry.” She asserts that this is true not only of political appointees, but also, of career managerial staff, and not only during the Trump administration. She said it is a bipartisan problem that has occurred in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations.

PEER reports that over the past few months, EPA scientists in the NCD have raised objections to the kinds of actions alleged in the complaints, even filing complaints under EPA’s Scientific Integrity Policy — the only significant results of which have been harassment of the scientists by the managers named in the complaints. PEER’s filing with the EPA OIG requests that the office “identify all the alterations and restore the correct risk information.”

PEER adds that “many of the altered risk assessment documents have been overwritten and intermediate comments have been erased in violation of EPA’s Records Management Policy.” PEER is calling for the removal, by the Inspector General, of any civil service managers found responsible for these infractions and violations. In PEER’s website coverage, Dr. Bennett wrote, “EPA’s lack of accountability for scientific misconduct poses a direct danger to public health. Inside EPA, scientific integrity has become an oxymoron and a cure will require a complete overhaul.”

EPA issued a statement in response to The Intercept’s query on the PEER complaint: “EPA takes seriously all allegations of violations of scientific integrity. EPA’s scientific integrity official and scientific integrity team members will thoroughly investigate any allegation of violation of EPA’s scientific integrity policy that they receive and work to safeguard EPA science. Additionally, EPA is currently reviewing agency policies, processes, and practices to ensure that the best available science and data inform Agency decisions. EPA is committed to fostering a culture of evaluation and continuous learning that promotes an open exchange of differing scientific and policy positions. Additionally, retaliation against EPA employees for reporting violations alleged to have occurred will not be tolerated in this administration. EPA leadership are reviewing these complaints, and any appropriate action will be taken.”

Yet, Ms. Lerner reports that although complaints to the OIG are typically kept confidential, somehow, “many mangers in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention had somehow obtained a copy of the whistleblowers’ allegations. ‘The fact that EPA released our clients’ names is inappropriate and troubling,’ said [Dr.] Bennett. ‘They’ve been put in an incredibly uncomfortable situation. This gives the managers the chance to circle the wagons trying to go after them.’”

Executive Director of PEER Tim Whitehouse, JD, maintained (in the July 28 webinar) that politics has overtaken professionalism among managers at EPA, and that managerial interference in the evaluations of potentially toxic chemicals is having real-world impacts on communities, livelihoods, and the health of populations. The risks may be especially acute for workers, in industry and agriculture, who cannot know the real risks of chemicals with which they may be working because of this corrupt activity at EPA.

He further noted that, although more than 20 federal agencies have scientific integrity policies, they are not working because staff in some agencies still cannot raise issues without fear of retaliation. Mr. Whitehouse adds that the Biden administration is reviewing these policies to improve them, but that unless there are enforcement measures that hold managers accountable, even this will not help. It will, he maintains, take new EPA Administrator Michael Regan, new Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Ilana Freedhoff, and Congress to remedy the culture at NCD and to rebuild both the science staff at EPA (which was severely eroded during the Trump administration), and the agency’s morale and culture, which were also badly damaged. He noted that as one of his first acts, Administrator Regan issued a memorandum outlining concrete steps to reinforce EPA’s commitment to science.

Mr. White calls the whistleblowers “brave patriots,” and says it is the job of the advocacy community and the public to push the Biden administration to address this issue of problematic chemicals that are already in the materials stream and environment because “people are being harmed right now.” PEER maintains that, in response to the whistleblowers’ complaints, the OIG should do a comprehensive assessment of what chemicals have been approved to date and are “out there” so that they can be legitimately assessed and pulled from the market if necessary.

Beyond Pesticides has written on other EPA dysfunction, including lack of enforcement of regulation, the “revolving door” between government and industry, the assault on science, and industry influence on scientific integrity. Stay tuned to the Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog for more on the story of the whistleblowers and what they have revealed, including coverage of other articles expected from The Intercept in coming weeks.

Sources: https://www.peer.org/epa-risk-assessments-doctored-to-mask-hazards/ and https://theintercept.com/2021/07/02/epa-chemical-safety-corruption-whistleblowers/

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

(Beyond Pesticides, August 5, 2021) A recent report by Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons finds Long Island, New York turtles are experiencing higher rates of deadly aural abscesses or ear blisters from pesticide use. Previous research documents the role chemical exposure from environmental toxicants play in inner ear abscess formation among turtles. However, synergism (collaboration) between viral infection and toxic chemical exposure increases aural abscess instances. Considering these infections are taking a toll on the Long Island turtle population, government and wildlife officials must assess how chemical exposure promotes disease development to safeguard human, animal, and environmental health. Karen Testa, executive director of Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons, cautions, “I’m urging Long Islanders to think about how these pesticides are negatively impacting the natural world. Is your perfect green lawn worth the life of a turtle?”

Aural abscesses are painful ear blisters that can grow as big as a golf ball. Medical intervention is necessary to remove abscesses from turtles and treat them with an antibiotic regimen to prevent death. Turtle Rescue facility workers report a staggering 50 percent of turtles currently within their care to have aural abscesses. The percentage of turtles with this diagnosis is much higher than in past years.

Pesticide residues readily contaminate all ecosystems and are prevalent in soils, water (solid and liquid), and the surrounding air. The scientific literature demonstrates pesticides’ long history of adverse effects on the environment, including wildlife, biodiversity, and human health. The impacts of pesticides on wildlife are extensive and expose animals in urban, suburban, and rural areas to unnecessary risks. Pesticides can affect animals through direct or indirect applications like drift, secondary poisoning, and runoff. Some animals could encounter direct spraying, while others may consume plants or prey contaminated with pesticides. According to a 2016 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessment, two commonly used pesticides (chlorpyrifos and malathion) are “likely to adversely affect” 97% of species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Furthermore, a more recent EPA assessment finds the excessive use of the most popular herbicide (weedkiller) glyphosate threatens 93 percent of all endangered species. This EPA announcement occurred only a few days following the agency’s report on atrazine (another commonly used and toxic herbicide) causing harm to more than half of endangered species.

This report demonstrates that exposure to chemical contaminants has implications for turtle health, not only in Long Island but around the world. Chemical contamination promoting disease/viral infection is not a new phenomenon among wildlife. Insects, other terrestrial and aquatic organisms, and marine and terrestrial mammals can all experience weakened immune function from viral and bacteria upon pesticide exposure. For instance, studies find pesticide exposure can limit immune response in honey bees, causing early onset of infection or increased probability of mortality from infection. Reports demonstrate neonicotinoid insecticide exposure impairs honey bees’ ability to groom Varroa mites responsible for a disease known as deformed wing virus (DWV). Additionally, California sea lions are experiencing high rates of urogenital carcinoma (UGC) cancer incidences from the combined effect of toxic “legacy” pesticides like DDT and the viral infection Otarine herpesvirus-1 (OtHV1). According to multiple studies, exposure to the weed killer glyphosate (patented as an antibiotic) changes the bacterial composition of the gut microbiome in cattle, rodents, and honey bees. Like glyphosate, atrazine has an association with gut microbiome disruption, causing sex-specific shifts in microbiota. Atrazine is notoriously associated with endocrine disruption among amphibians and reptiles, resulting in reproductive and behavioral changes. Even among humans, exposure to endocrine-disrupting pesticides impacts hormone regulation promoting metabolic diseases like diabetes.

There are various possible explanations for pesticide exposure to cause adverse health effects among Long Island turtles. A 2004 study supports that organochlorine-induced vitamin A deficiency causes aural abscesses. Past studies find toxic organochlorine compounds like DDT can readily accumulate in turtles and block vitamin A receptors responsible for respiratory tract and inner ear health. The lack of vitamin A absorption causes aural abscesses to form from bacterial infections. Although the U.S. bans most organochlorines, they persist in the environment for many decades. Therefore, turtles can encounter pesticide exposure from contaminated soil and water. Furthermore, current-use pesticides may have the ability to re-release soil-bound organochlorines. This phenomenon is occurring in the French West Indies islands as glyphosate use is causing soil erosion, releasing soil-bound organochlorine chlordecone into the surrounding waters. Another possibility is that current-use pesticides are producing similar impacts on vitamin deficiency among turtles. However, officials must not dismiss other causes of vitamin A deficiency —such as direct dietary deficiency, interference in the gastrointestinal absorption of vitamin A, the presence of other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or other causes.

Turtles face multiple threats from environmental factors: from motor vehicle/appliance injuries to habitat destruction and overfishing. However, pesticides are ubiquitous and continuously expose these animals’ toxins in conjunction with environmental factors. Turtle Rescue facility workers note that aural abscess incidents are getting worse due to COVID-19. Advocates suggest that with more individuals remaining at home, chemical inputs are increasing, particularly for pesticides like disinfectants and lawn care chemicals. Testa notes, “We are seeing a staggering number of aural abscesses in the turtles that are being brought in to our center. These injuries are adversely affecting wildlife and it’s worse this year. Because of Covid and spending more time at home, homeowners are spraying toxins on their lawns. These chemicals are poisoning our turtles and at the same time, damaging our ecosystem.”

Furthermore, reports indicate that the excessive use of COVID disinfectants (registered as pesticides) harms wildlife. Therefore, the turtle may experience a weakened ability to overcome chemical exposure, thus leaving it vulnerable to disease development. Advocates advise homeowners and landscapers to significantly reduce the number of pesticides applied in and around the home and garden. Instead, homeowners and landscapers alike should rely on non-toxic, organic alternatives.

Chemical contamination is ubiquitous in terrestrial and marine environments. Thus, turtles and other animals can help identify risks to humans by exhibiting signs of environmental threat sooner than humans in the same area. Government and health officials must address chemical pollution before similar declines in human general health, fitness, and well-being. Furthermore, climate crisis implications like melting glaciers present a new concern over the levels of chemical concentrations in waterways from DDT, its metabolites, and other persistent organic pollutants trapped in ice. Toxic pesticide use must end to protect the nation’s and world’s waterways and reduce the number of pesticides that make their way into drinking water. Replacing pesticides with organic, non-toxic alternatives is crucial for safeguarding public health, particularly communities vulnerable to pesticide toxicity. Learn more about the hazards pesticides pose to wildlife and what you can do by visiting Beyond Pesticides’ wildlife program page.

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

Source: Patch

(Beyond Pesticides, August 4, 2021) Neonicotinoid insecticides applied to nursery plants sold at garden centers kill off wild, solitary pollinators regardless of the amount applied, according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The news is unlikely a surprise for those tracking the science around pollinator declines, but nonetheless a stark reminder of the lack of progress from federal regulators to stop practices that contribute to the ongoing crisis. With new science consistently showing unacceptable hazards to pollinator populations, advocates are urging Congress to take up and pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act.

Since 2006, scientists and beekeepers have singled out neonicotinoids, a class of systemic insecticides, for their role in pollinator die-off and decline. Once applied onto a seed or sprayed on a plant, neonicotinoids distribute themselves throughout the plant’s structure. This causes soft-bodied sucking insects like aphids to be killed when they eat any part of the plant. However, neonicotinoids also make their way into the pollen and nectar the plant produces, as well as the dew drops plants will secrete and pollinators will often use to grab a quick drink.

The use of these insecticides on native plants sold at nursery stores throughout the country poses significant hazards to solitary, wild pollinators that rely on native flowing plants. To better understand how this practice harms these beneficial insects, researchers designed an experiment using the alfalfa leafcutter bee, a species native to Europe, but naturalized in the U.S. and often used as a stand-in to determine dangers to solitary bees in general. Scientists aimed to observe whether increasing irrigation watering amounts could avert the risks caused by the systemic nature of these chemicals by reducing the amount of neonicotinoid expressed in a plant’s nectar.

Flowering plants native to California (where the experiment was conducted) were purchased and distributed throughout 16 field cages, which were also each used to house 30 male and 20 female leafcutter bees. A control group of field cages received no exposure to a granular neonicotinoid product containing the insecticide imidacloprid, while the rest were split between a high irrigation and low irrigation group, and had imidacloprid applied at only 30% of its recommended label rate. Although not recorded in the study, a press release published by University of California, Riverside indicates that the first time the experiment was tried, researchers used the EPA recommended label concentration of the product, and all bees died within a few short days.

At the significantly lower rate, scientists found that high irrigation watering reduced the amount of imidacloprid detected in plant nectar. Nonetheless, researchers observed the same harmful effects on leafcutter bes as the group exposed to lower amounts of irrigation. “Neonicotinoids are often used on food crops as a seed treatment,” says study author Jacob Cecala. “But they’re usually applied in higher amounts to ornamental plants for aesthetic reasons. The effects are deadly no matter how much the plants are watered.”

Although bees did not die outright like the high dose experiment, “It almost completely wiped them out,” Dr. Cecala notes. Changes were observed to bee’s overall fitness, including the ability to feed themselves. The number of brood cells created by the neonicotinoid-treated group was a mere 5% of the unexposed control group.

Scientists indicate that the leaf clipping behavior of alfalfa leafcutter bees may play a role in increasing exposure to the pesticide. However, previous research shows that other solitary, wild pollinators have ecological roles that would increase their chemical exposure. Close contact with soil, for instance, puts ground nesting bees at increased risk of chronic exposure. Wild bees have been found to be particularly vulnerable to neonicotinoids. A study published in March 2021 finds that another, the hoary squash bee, which digs its home underground, initiates 85% fewer nests, harvests 5 times less pollen, and produces 89% fewer offspring than squash bees not exposed to neonicotinoids.

Science has long shown that neonicotinoids present hazards to pollinators at incredibly low doses. In 2014, a study found that “near-infinitesimal doses” of neonicotinoids hindered the ability for bumblebees to gather food. Moreover, a 2019 study found that in general, the toxicity of insecticides used in agriculture in the U.S. increased by a factor of roughly 4 to 48 since 1992. Not only are these chemicals ineffective at controlling problem pests, as studies commissioned by EPA have found, the nontarget impacts to beneficial pollinators and other wildlife provide cause to immediately ban the entire neonicotinoid class of insecticides.

Channel your outrage about the plight of pollinators towards decisionmakers that permit hazardous pesticide use to continue. Urge your Congressional Representative to cosponsor the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, which would work to truly unwind the pollinator crisis by eliminating toxic pesticides and putting pollinator experts, without pesticide industry conflicts of interest, in charge of their long-term health. For more information, including advice on how to engage with this important issue, visit Beyond Pesticides Bee Protective program page.

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

Source: UC Riverside Press Release, Proceedings of the Royal Society B  

(Beyond Pesticides, August 3, 2021) Research published this summer in the journal iScience outlines a promising, pesticide-free approach to manage non-native fire ants that have invaded many coastal communities along the eastern United States. As unabated climate change rapidly warms the planet, shifting wildlife habitat, and increasing the rate of intense storms and other natural disasters, pest insects like the fire ant are finding favorable conditions for their expansion into new areas. With pressure growing on land managers to resort to highly toxic pesticides to manage stinging and biting pests, it is increasingly important to invest in and emphasize new biological-based approaches.

Scientists from the University of Maine focused in on a strain of fire ants known as Myrmica rubra, native to Europe and Asia and commonly known as the European fire ant. The ant is highly aggressive, attacking humans or other animals when disturbed, and boasts a powerful sting. In Europe, the ant plays an ecological role in conserving an endangered species of Maculinea sp. butterflies. The butterfly larvae send out chemical signals that mimic a queen ant, and the fire ants take the larvae into their nest. There, the larvae are protected from predators, and often are provisioned by or feed on ants in the colony. However, in the US, there is no similar ecological role for the ants to play, making them a troubling hazard for those wishing to enjoy the outdoors peacefully. M. rubra fire ants were first discovered in the US in the early 1900s, but have increased significantly over the last 100 years, and rapidly over the last two decades as climate change creates more favorable habitat conditions.

During surveys of ant populations along the Maine coast, researchers noticed that many of the dead ants dissected in the lab contained a nematode known as Pristionchus entomophagus. P. entomophagus is a necromenic nematode – it enters its host while the host is alive, and then remains in stasis until the host dies, at which time it begins its reproductive cycle. While scientists indicate P. entomophagus nematodes may be trending towards parasitism from an evolutionary standpoint, they currently feed on a range of bacteria and are not specifically selecting for bacteria that would kill off the ants. Thus, scientists set out to understand what bacteria the nematodes may be picking up before making a home in the fire ants’ body.

European fire ants were collected from colonies in coastal Maine where high ant mortality was observed. Scientists then cultured the bacteria found on nematodes that emerged from dead ants. They noticed that while adult nematodes concentrated most bacteria in their digestive tract, juvenile nematodes had more bacteria on their cuticle (skin) layer. It was hypothesized that the transfer of pathogenic bacteria is more likely with juveniles carrying the bacteria on the outside of their bodies.  

To test mortality, nematodes were fed fluorescent bacteria and used to infect wax moth larvae (Galleria mellonella). Two genus of bacterium – Serratia and Pseudomonas – were identified as causative candidates. While neither were able to be transferred and successfully kill off the wax moths, there may be other factors at play, including specific local environmental conditions. “The problem with using bacteria as a mode of biological control is that they don’t always act the way you want them to—sometimes they are uncooperative team members,” said study coauthor Sue Ishaq, PhD. “There is a lot of research left before nematode transmission of bacteria could be used as biological control against ants, but it remains an intriguing possibility.”

Scientists remain hopeful that their work could eventually result in a commercially relevant approach for managing fire ants. “The use of an engineered biological control against invasive ant species, such as nematodes carrying specifically seeded bacterial species, is highly desirable, especially if the pathogenic bacteria are normally found in soil ecosystems and represents a low risk for biosafety control,” the study reads.

While biocontrol research continues, there are non-toxic and less toxic approaches that can help address current fire ant problems in homes and communities. Beyond Pesticides ManageSafe entry for Fire Ants provides a brief identification and overview, preventative practices to avoid fire ant infestations, monitoring and record-keeping advice, non-chemical and mechanical control options, and least toxic chemical options that can be used as a last resort. No single approach – even one that includes toxic pesticides – will be a silver bullet for fire ant problems, necessitating the integration of multiple tactics in order to avert fire ant stings and bites that can affect your family, pets, and neighbors.  

For more information on least toxic management of common pests around the home and garden, see Beyond Pesticides’ ManageSafe tool.

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

Source: University of Maine, iScience,

(Beyond Pesticides, August 2, 2021) One reason to eat organic food is to join with a crucial national and global campaign to eliminate toxic, petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and protect ecosystems in the urgent fight to curtail the climate crisis and biodiversity decline—in addition to local and immediate health and environmental benefits. Despite an important and timely vote by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) in 2018 to protect native ecosystems as a critical tool in sequestering carbon and improving environmental resiliency, and despite the Biden Adminstration’s stated commitment to fighting the climate crisis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its National Organic Program (NOP) have not acted to put this recommendation in force.

As our understanding of the connection between protecting intact ecosystems and combating climate change has grown, the urgency to implement this recommendation cannot be overstated. We must act now!

Sign the petition to tell the National Organic Program (NOP) to take action to finalize the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) recommended rulemaking that will protect Native Ecosystems and thereby preserve the integrity of the organic seal, help reverse the biodiversity crisis, and reduce global climate change. Sign by September 20, 2021.

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) and implementing regulations and guidance issued by the NOP contain several provisions to increase biodiversity on organic farms.  Consistent with consumer expectations of organic, these provisions mandate protection of the natural resources present on an organic operation, including the physical, hydrological, and biological features of the farm. The soil, water, wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife must be maintained or improved by the organic operator. Three of the NOSB members must have expertise in areas of environmental protection and resource conservation. 

Biodiversity is essential to organic farming, but all farming inherently reduces biodiversity from natural ecosystems. These natural ecosystems contain ecological communities that are diverse and resilient because of their coevolution over millennia. In addition, they are more effective in sequestering carbon than any form of agriculture. Unfortunately, the requirement in OFPA that no prohibited substance be applied within three years of harvesting certified organic crops encourages prospective organic growers to plow up land containing native ecosystems. 

The NOSB voted nearly unanimously to recommend policy changes to remove the incentive to convert native ecosystems to organic farms. Wild Farm Alliance, Beyond Pesticides, and others supported these policy changes. So far, NOP has not acted to put this recommendation into the regulations. Again, the organic solution is within our grasp as a key part in taking on the existential environmental crises in front of us. It is a travesty that the Biden Administration is not acting on this now using its executive powers and responsibility to carry out this critical recommendation of the NOSB.

Sign the petition to tell the National Organic Program (NOP) to take action to finalize the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) recommended rulemaking that will protect Native Ecosystems and thereby preserve the integrity of the organic seal, help reverse the biodiversity crisis, and reduce global climate change. Sign by September 20, 2021.

PETITION TO USDA/NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM:

YES! I want the National Organic Program (NOP) to take action to finalize the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) recommended rulemaking that will protect Native Ecosystems and thereby preserve the integrity of the organic seal, help reverse the biodiversity crisis, and reduce global climate change. 

In 2018 the NOSB voted near unanimously to protect native ecosystems and, in so doing, leading the national effort to take on the existential threats of the climate crisis and biodiversity decline. The NOSB sought to change the current perverse regulation that incentivizes the immediate destruction of native ecosystems and conversion to organic production as a cheaper and faster option than transitioning existing conventional farmland over a three-year period.

Protecting native ecosystems slows climate change. Native ecosystems store carbon in woody plants, in the soil’s duff layer and its deeper horizons. Native grassland and forest soils contain 20 to 50 tons of organic carbon per acre in about the top three feet of soil, which is so much more than farmers can ever hope to store in converted cropland.

Native ecosystems can be used in organic production, including low-impact grazing, mushrooms, maple syrup production, and other kinds of wild crop harvesting.

Organic consumers are distressed to learn that the NOP rules incentivize native ecosystem destruction. Organic farmers don’t think it is fair that this loophole allows immediate certification, when many have waited three years to transition conventional land. 

Wendell Berry has said “Land destruction is easy. For it only requires ignorance and violence. But to restore the land, and to conserve it, requires humanity in its highest, completest sense.” 

Please immediately initiate rulemaking to remove the incentive to convert native ecosystems to organic farms.

(Beyond Pesticides, July 30, 2021) Bayer (Monsanto), the maker of the deadly herbicide glyphosate/Roundup, after hinting in May that it would end the weed killer’s residential uses in the U.S., made it official yesterday. With its announcement to shareholders, Bayer puts an end to residential uses beginning in 2023 and allocates $4.5 billion to cover “the company’s potential long-term exposure” from lawsuits by those harmed by the chemical. At the same time, the company announced it is seeking a U.S. Supreme Court hearing to reverse significant jury verdicts (from $289 million to $2 billion) for individuals who have suffered health damage they tie to glyphosate exposure. Bayer claims that it will argue that federal pesticide law preempts litigation against products that it has registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection (EPA). Similar arguments have been tried before, most notably in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences (2005), and the Supreme Court has found that federal pesticide law does not protect “manufacturers of poisonous substances.” (See more below.)

Despite the extensive scientific review (see Pesticide Gateway) of glyphosate/Roundup and a “probable” cancer causing ranking by the World Health Organization/International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015, Bayer says, “This move is being made exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.” And despite finding that glyphosate has contaminated the food supply (and more and more) and is found in waterways extensively, Bayer’s decision does not affect agricultural uses of glyphosate.

The residential market now shifts to other toxic weed killers for glyphosate uses unless the public initiates a shift in their purchasing practices and communities decide to transition to land management practices not dependent on toxic substances. (See Beyond Pesticides’ 30 Most Commonly Used Lawn Pesticides and the health and environmental effects.)

The decision to withdraw from the residential market for glyphosate is a rerun of Dow Chemical’s decision in 2000 to stop residential uses of the highly neurotoxic,  brain-damaging insecticide chlorpyrifos (see Pesticide Gateway). The chemical was removed from the residential market after extensive scientific study showed the adverse impact on children, but has remained in agricultural use for over 20 years until this day, due to EPA’s sustained inaction in the face of strong science. Typically, the agency sits in the background and watches the marketplace, then codifies voluntary decisions by manufacturers after years, even generations, of poisoning and contamination. To be fair, the agency does negotiate many of these cancellations with the manufacturers behind the scenes, but, as a result, the voluntary actions by the companies are highly compromised and do not include agency determinations or findings—allowing false claims of safety, offering a shield from liability, and unencumbered international marketing. That is exactly what is playing out with glyphosate, except that much of the international community is now highly skeptical of the quality of EPA’s decisions. Common compromises are contained in Bayer’s announcement—a long phase-out period for cancelled uses without any warning to the user community or those exposed (many companies, distributors, and retailers engage in fire sales to sell off the products) and a large volume of retained uses (in this case most of glyphosate use), such as all or most agricultural use and other hidden exceptions that are not understood or fully disclosed to the public.

The examples of this pattern are numerous, including the recent EPA decision to cancel the deadly chlorinated hydrocarbon wood preservative, pentachlorophenol, with dioxin contaminants among others (see Pesticide Gateway), after it watched countries around the world one-by-one ban its use under an international treaty—the Stockholm Convention, which was never ratified by the U.S. With a severely diminished market worldwide and difficultly setting up a manufacturing shop in the U.S. after a community and state uproar in South Carolina, the manufacturer withdrew—after 40-plus years of fighting and unthinkable cases of cancer. EPA then announced in March of this year that it was time to cancel the chemical.

With the glyphosate decision, which Bayer refers to as “risk mitigation”—that’s risk to the company’s profitability, economic viability, and shareholder investment—the harm inflicted by glyphosate will continue, first to those in the farm community who handle glyphosate—farmworkers and family farmers—or are exposed involuntarily to drift and contaminated waterways, and then to those who eat food that is grown in chemical-intensive agriculture. Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in the U.S. because it is used in the production of corn, soybeans, and cotton, over 90 percent of which is genetically engineered to resist glyphosate. With this Bayer decision, it remains to be seen whether Dow’s (now Corteva Agroscience) glyphosate product Rodeo, which also has aquatic uses, will continue to be marketed.

There are lessons to be learned for policy makers, land managers, farmers, and decision makers. The federal laws that we have in place, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (including the Food Quality Protection Act), have failed to regulate chemicals like glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, and pentachlorophenol and will continue to fail to adequately regulate 1,200 active and hundreds of inert (secret nondisclosed) ingredients in over 16,800 pesticide products in the interest of public health and environmental protection. The current system and reform proposals that tinker with the broken system allow the continued use of pesticides that are too dangerous and proven to be unnecessary to meet pest management, productivity, profitability, and quality life goals. So why are they being used? Because the laws protect chemical companies, not the public. The laws protect the vested economic interests that wrote the laws, amend the laws, and fight to protect the laws, not the public who are adversely affected and suffer cancer, neurological diseases, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, asthma, and autism—and certainly not those in the people of color community who suffer disproportionately from many of these illnesses. (See Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database.) Similarly, the laws do not protect the ecosystems and biodiversity, which are critical to human existence. As a result, the laws do not protect pollinators, keystone species in the aquatic food web, threatened and endangered species (see more). That has been documented with glyphosate, as it has with toxic pesticides generally. Instead of taking preventive or precautionary action, regulators sit and watch as we move closer and closer to crises that undermine the very existence of life.

Almost five decades of extensive glyphosate use has put animal, human, and environmental health at severe risk. The chemical’s ubiquity threatens 93 percent of all U.S. endangered species, with specific alterations on microbial gut composition and trophic cascades. Anthropomorphic (human) studies find a strong association between glyphosate exposure and the development of numerous health anomalies, including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and autism. Furthermore, EPA’s 2019 decision to classify glyphosate herbicides as “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans—despite stark evidence demonstrating carcinogenicity—perpetuates environmental injustice among farmers, especially in marginalized communities. According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a lawsuit—filed by the National Black Farmers Association against Bayer/Monsanto—argues that Black farmers are, essentially, forced to use Roundup (glyphosate) and incur the risks of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma or other cancers (or health impacts) because of pesticide demands and the industry’s “grip” on U.S. agriculture. The suit maintains that Bayer/Monsanto knowingly failed, and continues to fail, to warn farmers adequately about the dangers of the pesticide.

Bayer/Monsanto, as of June, had settled 125,000 claims for $9.6 billion with people who link their non-Hodgkin lymphoma to use of Roundup. There are still 30,000 cases that have not been resolved. 

We cannot regulate or litigate our way out of the current threat that petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers pose. This is a transformative moment when we must shift society, starting with our communities and local decision makers and individuals (because we know the pace at which Congress and the federal government move), to the elimination of toxic pesticides. Yes, we can keep the pressure up on EPA and keep the litigation going, but the outcome needed is clearer than it has ever been: We do not need, nor can life survive, the continued use of toxic pesticides. Even though the Supreme Court in Bates v. Dow ruled over 20 years ago to uphold the right to litigate for damages against pesticide manufacturers, the toxic pesticide market has grown, as have the existential threats to human and ecological survival. Still the Supreme Court found, “The long history of tort litigation against manufacturers of poisonous substances adds force to the presumption against pre-emption, for Congress surely would have expressed its intention more clearly if it had meant to deprive injured parties of a long available form of compensation.” The decision continues: “Moreover, this history emphasizes the importance of providing an incentive to manufacturers to use the utmost care in distributing inherently dangerous items. Private remedies that enforce federal misbranding requirements would seem to aid, rather than hinder, the function of FIFRA [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act].” See here and here.

Are we happy that the residential uses of glyphosate will be removed from the market. Yes, of course. But, more than anything it is Exhibit A for the failure of policy to protect what is sacred –life–and yesterday’s announcement should be a signal, an example, and a call to rise up against a system of poisoning and contamination that must stop. We can start by moving our communities to organic land management. Now!

Please join us in our work to transition community-by-community across the country and around the world to organic land management. Beyond Pesticides will work with you and local decision makers to say no to the dozens of pesticides that are being used on our playing fields, parks, and lawns, develop plans for the adoption of organic practices and products, and adopt policies that protect the health of people and the environment of your community. And, join with us to protect the organic standards, which are under threat from industrial agriculture and multinational (and some national) companies that want to weaken the strongest law we have to protect health and the environment, from cradle to grave—the Organic Foods Production Act. Follow and join in on our organic advocacy through our Keeping Organic Strong campaign and make your voice heard. This is not about banning chemicals one-by-one, but facilitating the transition to land and agricultural management systems that do not utilize toxic inputs and practices harmful to health and the environment—systems that respect nature with the organic practices necessary to sustain life. To get your community off the toxic treadmill, contact Beyond Pesticides at [email protected].

(Beyond Pesticides, July 29, 2021) Between 340,000 and 900,000 premature deaths each year can be linked to air pollution caused by the release of volatile organic compounds, such as pesticides, paints, and cleaning agents, from anthropogenic sources. The findings, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, included an international team of over 50 scientists, lead by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “The older idea was that to reduce premature mortality, you should target coal-fired power plants or the transportation sector,” lead author of the study Benjamin Nault, PhD, said. “Yes, these are important, but we’re showing that if you’re not getting at the cleaning and painting products and other everyday chemicals, then you’re not getting at a major source.”

While the connection between air pollution and direct sources of particulate matter in the atmosphere have a large body of supporting literature, there is little understanding of the impact caused by other chemical products that humans use. Those direct sources, such as exhaust fumes from cars and the smoke stacks from coal-fired power plants, are generally regulated by government agencies in the U.S. and in other countries. Even secondary sources of pollution – such as nitrous oxides caused when fumes and exhaust react with sunlight in the atmosphere – are subject to government oversight. These chemicals form a class of pollutants caused PM2.5, which is particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers (roughly 1/100^th of the size of a grain of sand). In sum, at least 3 to 4 million premature deaths can be attributed to PM2.5 pollution.

This new research finds that anthropogenic secondary organic aerosols (ASOAs), including intermediate and semi-volatile organic compounds like pesticides, paints, cleaners, and other personal care products, are a major, underrepresented source of PM2.5 mortality. To come to that conclusion, researchers analyzed data from nearly a dozen air quality studies carried out across the globe since the turn of the century, including particle pollution data and chemical usage derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Results showed that the ASOAs corresponded closely with the use and release of organic compounds from anthropogenic sources.

The data confirms previous research conducted by a subset of study coauthors in 2018, which found volatile chemicals to be the largest source of urban petrochemical air pollution. “What’s new here,” said co-author Brian McDonald, PhD, “is that we are showing this is an issue in cities on three continents, North America, Europe and east Asia.” 

A separate 2018 study published by researchers at University California, Davis found nitrogen fertilizer to be a major source of air pollution, caused by the release of nitrous oxides from fields farmed with synthetic chemicals.

There is growing recognition in the scientific literature that pollution sources once thought to be minor, are causing much larger problems than expected. “Because this effect has been thought to be small, it hasn’t been targeted for control,” study coauthor Jose-Luis Jimenez, PhD said. “But when you take the atmospheric chemistry into account and put it into a model, you find that this particular source is killing a lot of people.”

Premature death from air pollution is the end result after a life of symptoms that can be progressively debilitating. Asthma and other respiratory ailments, heart disease, cancer, nervous system damage, and other chronic diseases are all linked to exposure to air pollution.

“If you care about air pollution impacts on health and mortality, you have to take this problem seriously,” Dr. Jimenez said. The paper provides additional reason for states and local communities to pass policies that stop the unnecessary use of toxic pesticides in land management and farming practices. The use of pesticides in cosmetic weed control, wide area aerosol mosquito spray, and on farms by airplane and backpack sprayer all ultimately contribute to the levels of PM2.5 air pollution in the atmosphere.

Pesticides are in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. With an ever-growing body of scientific evidence showing these chemicals to be more harmful than ever previously thought, it is critically important that states and communities embrace cleaner, safer organic practices that protect our environment and the safety of our food supply. There are a range of ways to get active in your community to stop unnecessary pesticide pollution. For information on how to start a local Beyond Pesticides campaign, see the Tools for Change webpage and reach out to Beyond Pesticides at [email protected] or 202-543-5450.

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

Source: University of Colorado, Boulder press release, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

(Beyond Pesticides, July 29, 2021) New research published in Environmental Health Perspectives finds nearly 300 different chemicals in pesticides, consumer products, and contaminated resources (i.e., food, water) increase breast cancer risks. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, causing the second most cancer-related deaths in the United States. Past studies suggest genetic inheritance factors influence breast cancer occurrence. However, genetic factors only play a minor role in breast cancer incidences, while exposure to external environmental factors (i.e., chemical exposure) may play a more notable role. There are grave concerns over exposure to endocrine (hormone) disrupting chemicals and pollutants that produce adverse health effects.

Most types of breast cancers are hormonally responsive and thus dependent on the synthesis of either estrogen or progesterone. Hormones generated by the endocrine system greatly influence breast cancer incidents among humans. Several studies and reports, including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, identify hundreds of chemicals as influential factors associated with breast cancer risk. Therefore, advocates point to the need for national policies to reassess hazards associated with disease development and diagnosis upon exposure to chemical pollutants. The study’s researchers note, “This study shows that a number of chemicals currently in use have the ability to manipulate hormones known to adversely affect breast cancer risk. […] So, we should be extremely cautious about chemicals in products that increase levels of these hormones in the body.”

Using high throughput screening (HTP) data from in vitro ToxCast assay (test) developed by EPA, researchers identified chemicals that increase estradiol (a type of estrogen) or progesterone production in H295R cells responsible for hormone synthesis. An increase in estrogen or progesterone is often indicative of breast cancer and other endocrine-related risks. Researchers organized the identified chemicals by order of activity (i.e., efficacy and potency). Lastly, researchers compared the result to in vivo studies/assessments of carcinogenicity and reproductive/developmental toxicity, demonstrating comparable hormone-increasing mechanisms. 

The study results find 296 chemicals associated with an increase in estradiol or progesterone. 182 and 185 different chemicals cause an increase in estradiol and progesterone, respectively, while 71 chemicals are responsible for the increased synthesis of both hormones. Of the chemicals that increase hormone synthesis, only 30 percent are likely reproductive/developmental toxicants or carcinogens from in vivo assessments, while five to 13 percent are unlikely. However, most of the chemicals that increase hormone synthesis lack sufficient in vivo data to gauge health effects. The study finds 29 chemicals associated with an increase in estradiol or progesterone production also have links to mammary tumor development. The researchers find most sources of chemical exposure come from pesticides, consumer product ingredients, food additives, and drinking water contaminants. 

The connection between pesticides and associated cancer risks is nothing new. Several studies link pesticide use and residues to various cancers, from more prevalent forms like breast cancer to rare forms like kidney cancer nephroblastoma (Wilms’ tumor). Sixty-six percent of all cancers have links to environmental factors, especially in occupations of high chemical use. Although the link between agricultural practices and pesticide-related illnesses is stark, over 63 percent of commonly used lawn pesticides and 70 percent commonly used school pesticides have links to cancer. U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute also finds many cancer-causing substances are endocrine disruptors. The entire endocrine system directly affects traditional endocrine glands and their hormones and receptors (i.e., estrogens, anti-androgens, thyroid hormones). Hence, epidemiology studies find endocrine disruption has close ties to hormone-related cancers like breast cancer. For breast cancer, one and eight women will receive a diagnosis, and genetics can only account for five to ten percent of cases. Therefore, it is essential to understand how external stimuli—like environmental pollution from pesticides—can drive breast cancer development to avoid exposure and lessen potential cancer risks.

This study is one of the first to detect chemical activity using HTP assessments based on an increase in estrogen or progesterone production, rather than the ability to mimic estrogen. The results of the study may serve to encourage government and health officials to reevaluate chemical safety tests. Although researchers are unaware of how these chemicals increase estradiol and progesterone production, they caution that encountering multiple sources of daily exposure increases adverse health risks. The most potent, efficacious chemicals associated with increasing estradiol and progesterone levels displayed higher hormone concentrations and mammary gland effects (i.e., tumors, etc.), among other reproductive toxicities. In vitro assessments, like the one in this study, are vital additions to current toxicology assessments as they are not sensitive to mammary gland effects. 

For decades, Beyond Pesticides has been arguing that the risk assessment process used by EPA for its pesticide registration process is substantially inadequate to protect human health. The study shows some chemicals that increase hormone synthesis are classifiable as “unlikely to have reproductive/developmental toxicity or carcinogenicity.” However, the cohort of “unlikely” chemicals may be smaller than previously thought as EPA fails to adequately consider exposure effects on mammary gland development in its review of animal studies related to pesticide impacts. Therefore, mammary gland tumor development has been improperly dismissed from consideration in the registration process, including pesticides cyfluthrin and 2,4-D precursor, 2,4-DCP. The study also notes that 112 chemicals in consumer products, food, pesticides, or drugs lack adequate carcinogenicity evaluations and urgently require research and exposure reduction methods.

The researchers conclude, “Exposure to many of these chemicals is likely ubiquitous, based on exposure prediction models. We conclude that these [endocrine disrupting chemicals] EDCs are priorities for biomonitoring and exposure reduction as well as for additional study to better understand potential effects on breast cancer and other reproductive and developmental effects.”

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. Hence, studies concerning pesticides and cancer help future epidemiologic research understand the underlying mechanisms that cause cancer. Furthermore, it is essential to understand the effects endocrine-disrupting chemicals have on human health, especially for latent diseases like cancer. There is a serious deficiency in understanding the etiology of pesticide-induced diseases, including predictable lag time between chemical exposure, health impacts, and epidemiologic data. Therefore, advocates maintain that lawmakers and regulators should take a more precautionary approach before introducing these chemicals into the environment.

With far too many diseases in the U.S. associated with pesticide exposure, reducing pesticide use is a critically important aspect of safeguarding public health and addressing cost burdens for local communities. Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (PIDD) is a vital resource for additional scientific literature that documents elevated cancer rates and other chronic diseases and illnesses among people exposed to pesticides. This database supports the clear need for strategic action to shift away from pesticide dependency. For more information on the multiple harms of pesticide exposure, see PIDD pages on breast cancer, endocrine disruption, and other diseases.

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

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

Source: The Tennessee Tribune, Environmental Health Perspectives

(Beyond Pesticides, July 27, 2021) Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed pesticide-free clothing able to prevent 100% of mosquito bites for the wearer, and published proof of the garment’s effectiveness in a study in the journal Insects. If able to be scaled at a commercial level, the fabrics have the potential to transform personal protective measures for mosquitoes, which often includes in well-meaning consumers spraying toxic pesticides like DEET and permethrin on their body and clothing. “The fabric is proven to work – that’s the great thing we discovered,” said study co-author Andre West, associate professor of fashion and textile design at NC State and director of Zeis Textiles Extension for Economic Development in a press release. “To me, that’s revolutionary. We found we can prevent the mosquito from pushing through the fabric, while others were thick enough to prevent it from reaching the skin.”

To create the mosquito-proof fabric, scientists turned to physics and mathematical models, rather than looking for new killer chemistries. “Our premise here is: why do we need an insecticide-treated textile when you can do it, now that you know a mathematical formula, without chemistry?” said Michael Roe, PhD, an N.C. State professor of entomology to the News and Record.  Scientists analyzed the mosquito’s morphology, looking for weaknesses that could be addressed by various textiles. Measurements were taken on the mosquitoes’ head, antenna, proboscis and other mouth parts. Then, textile models were with differing pore sizes and thicknesses were developed to address different aspects of the mosquito’s morphology. One had pores small enough to stop the proboscis from entering the skin, another stopped the mosquito from getting its head close enough to the skin, and the third had larger pores but was thick enough to stop skin contact.

Scientists then developed three fabrics based on the models to test in the real world. One was a superfine knit, another was knit, double layered and bonded, and the last fabric was a knit three-dimensional fabric, and thus thicker than the other two. Lab testing found that the fabrics developed by researchers provided bite resistance of 95% or greater.

Scientists then compared the success of their model textiles to the use of permethrin-treated clothing, a common insecticide which, despite being classified as having suggestive evidence of carcinogenicity, is often impregnated in or sprayed onto clothing in attempts to ward away mosquitoes. Results showed that while the pesticide-free woven textiles maintained bite resistance to 95%, permethrin treated clothing’s bite resistance was as low as 80%. Although more mosquitoes landed on the woven clothing, fewer were able to penetrate and reach the skin. And while the permethrin-treated clothing had fewer mosquito landings, those that were able to get near the skin were also able to extract a blood meal.

To ensure their textiles worked outside of the lab, two pieces of bite-proof clothing were constructed – a thin underlayer shirt, and a thicker military style shirt. These garments were tested by having a individual wear the clothing and walk into a cage filled with mosquitoes. For the military-style shirt, bite resistance was 100%. For the underlayer, 96.5% bite resistance was achieved, showing 7 bites out of 200 mosquitoes. Researchers indicate that another layer of clothing would result in 100% effectiveness, and some tweaks to the original garment were also able to achieve this goal. In addition to successfully eliminating mosquito bites, the study indicates that the clothing was comfortable, and still provided good breathability.

“The final garments that were produced were 100 percent bite-resistant,” said Michael Roe, PhD, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Entomology at NC State. “Everyday clothing you wear in the summer is not bite-resistant to mosquitoes. Our work has shown that it doesn’t have to be that way. Clothes that you wear every day can be made bite-resistant. Ultimately, the idea is to have a model that will cover all possible garments that person would ever want – both for the military as well as for private use.”

Eliminating the military’s use of insecticide-treated clothing would be an important step forward in protecting US military members. Previous research has found that combinations of DEET and permethrin used in clothing worn by US service members may have played a role in the development of Gulf War syndrome, a disease characterized by chronic symptoms, including headache, loss of memory, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and ataxia, which causes an inability to coordinate muscular movements.

Reports indicate that the company Vector Textiles has licensed the patent rights for the garments, and has begun to prototype new clothing, including a pesticide-free mosquito-resistant infant onesie.

While waiting for this revolutionary mosquito-avoidance method to hit the market, continue to take protective measures that do not include the use of DEET, permethrin and other toxic insecticides. Long-sleeve light colored clothing, coupled with least-toxic repellants can adequately address outdoor nuisance mosquitoes. Yard, neighborhood, and community-based measures to remove standing water around properties and encourage neighbors to do the same can also have a dramatic effect at reducing numbers of nuisance biting mosquitoes.

For more information on how to stop the bite, see Beyond Pesticides program page on Safer Mosquito Management. If you’d like to begin educating your neighbors and community about safer ways to manage mosquitoes without the use of toxic insecticides, let the Mosquito Doorknob Hanger help you start the conversation.

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

Source: NC State University (press release), Insects (peer-reviewed journal)

(Beyond Pesticides, July 26, 2021) Despite federal law that directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to register pesticides only if they do not cause unreasonable adverse effects on humans or the environment, EPA allows pesticides known to cause many adverse effects on humans and the environment. These include health effects such as asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and several types of cancer—and environmental effects such as decimation of pollinator populations, direct and indirect killing of wildlife, reducing carbon sequestration in the soil, and poisoning air, water, and land. The risks are particularly high for farmworkers and fenceline communities. Why does EPA consider these effects “reasonable” when the pesticides are not necessary to achieve pest management or prevention goals?

Tell EPA not to allow unnecessary pesticide risks.

When evaluating pesticide registration applications, EPA does not require data demonstrating “benefits” against which these risks may be weighed. That kind of calculation only takes place years down the line, if EPA believes there is reason to consider canceling a pesticide’s registration. On the other hand, the existence of organic producers fueling $62 billion in organic sales in the U.S., with virtually all commodities being now grown and processed without toxic pesticides, indicates that a true cost accounting of pesticide use would find these risks unreasonable.

This month, the Rockefeller Foundation released a report estimating that the true cost of food is about three times the $1.1 trillion that consumers pay annually. The report says, “Of the impact areas we assessed in our study, the costs related to human health were by far the most significant driver of unaccounted-for costs, at roughly $1.1 trillion per year. That figure alone nearly doubles the cost of our food system—our national ‘bill’ for the diet-related disease is equal to all the money we currently pay for the food itself.” An additional $100 billion is attributed to the “unaccounted livelihood costs” to the “food workers and producers—who are overwhelmingly from marginalized communities, and in particular from communities of color.”

The report also calculates that the “unaccounted costs of the food system on the environment and biodiversity add up to almost $900 billion per year. These costs are mainly attributable to two areas: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biodiversity costs.”

Although not all of the unaccounted costs identified by the Rockefeller Foundation are directly attributable to pesticide use, many are and should factor into EPA’s pesticide registration process. That process should compare those costs, as well as those already identified by EPA, to the organic farming alternative. If the risks can be eliminated by organic farming, then they are unnecessary—and, therefore, unreasonable.

Tell EPA not to allow unnecessary pesticide risks.

Letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan

I am writing to ask EPA to bring its pesticide registration decision in line with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) “unreasonable adverse effects” standard. The federal pesticide law (FIFRA) directs EPA to register pesticides only if they do not cause unreasonable adverse effects to humans or the environment. Yet EPA registers pesticides known to cause many adverse effects on humans—including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and several types of cancer—and the environment—including decimation of pollinator populations, direct and indirect killing of wildlife, reducing carbon sequestration in the soil, and poisoning air, water, and land. The risks are particularly high for farmworkers and fenceline communities. What makes these effects “reasonable” when the pesticides are not necessary to achieve pest management or prevention goals?

When evaluating pesticide registration applications, EPA does not require data demonstrating “benefits” against which these risks may be weighed. That kind of calculation only takes place years down the line, if EPA believes there is reason to consider canceling a pesticide’s registration. On the other hand, the existence of organic producers fueling $62 billion in organic sales in the U.S., with virtually all commodities now being grown and processed without toxic pesticides, indicates that a true cost accounting of pesticide use would find these risks unreasonable.

This month, the Rockefeller Foundation released a report estimating that the true cost of food is about three times the $1.1 trillion that consumers pay annually. The report says, “Of the impact areas we assessed in our study, the costs related to human health were by far the most significant driver of unaccounted-for costs, at roughly $1.1 trillion per year. That figure alone nearly doubles the cost of our food system—our national ‘bill’ for the diet-related disease is equal to all the money we currently pay for the food itself.” An additional $100 billion is attributed to the “unaccounted livelihood costs” to the “food workers and producers—who are overwhelmingly from marginalized communities, and in particular from communities of color.”

The report also calculates that the “unaccounted costs of the food system on the environment and biodiversity add up to almost $900 billion per year. These costs are mainly attributable to two areas: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biodiversity costs.”

Although not all of the unaccounted costs identified by the Rockefeller Foundation are directly attributable to pesticide use, many are and should factor into EPA’s pesticide registration process. That process should compare those costs, as well as those already identified by EPA, to the organic farming alternative. If the risks can be eliminated by organic farming, then they are unnecessary—and, therefore, unreasonable.

Please ensure that the pesticide registration process accounts for the true costs of pesticide use so that EPA can health solve public health threats, the climate crisis, and biodiversity decline.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, July 23, 2021) The Rockefeller Foundation has just published a report, True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System, which identifies the real-but-under-recognized downsides of the U.S. food system. The report notes that, for all its reputed bounty, the food system “comes with hidden costs — to our health, to our climate,” and to the many people who make sure that food reaches the population. The report calls for a true accounting of the costs of food in the U.S.

Beyond Pesticides welcomes the broad framework of the report, but notes that a true accounting would necessarily include the costs of the externalities of conventional agriculture, including those related to pesticides: the costs of pollution and its cleanup (when that even happens), of lost pollination and biodiversity, of lost productivity from illness, and of health care costs related to pesticide use. Remarkably, for all its repetition of deleterious impacts on climate, biodiversity, and health, the report barely mentions either pesticides’ roles in causing such impacts, or the clear solution to so many of the negatives in the food system — organic, regenerative agriculture.

The report’s economic analysis applies a true cost accounting (TCA) framework to assessing the real costs and impacts of the current system. It asserts, “Our food system is failing us, and too few people understand the true cost of the food we consume, and lack clear incentives to change a system that is costing us dearly. That’s why accounting for the true cost of the food we eat is the first, necessary step towards remaking the incentive structure that drives our food system today.”

The report identifies primary areas impacted by food production and consumption: environment, human health, biodiversity, livelihoods, and the economy. By its own admission, the report’s analysis focused only on primary impacts of the food system; thus, it did not include downstream impacts, such as secondary impacts on the environment, national security, or educational outcomes (due to nutrition insecurity). It also sought to explore the impacts of both animal welfare and resilience, and to examine ways in which equity issues impact true costs.

The report says that communities of color bear disproportionately the costs of the food system, particularly in health outcomes related to pollution, nutrition insecurity, and environmental injustices. It notes that Black and Brown Americans, who work disproportionately in the food system, shoulder greater proportional burdens related to exposures to pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and bear greater economic impacts related to livelihoods (e.g., lower typical wages than for White Americans), as well as discriminatory impacts of agricultural subsidies.

The essential rationale of the report’s focus on the need for TCA is that it is impossible to transform a system until the real costs and benefits of it are known. The report asserts, “This lack of transparency and the absence of a codified, unified framework to quantify the ‘true cost’ of the food system means that there is neither a clear line of sight into such costs, nor incentives to reduce these true costs and optimize for the true benefits of food through public spending and private investments.”

Those “hidden costs” of food the report mentions are invisible to most people: they do not show up in the amounts on consumers’ grocery store receipts because they comprise the externalities the current system fails to account for in most analysis or discussion of food costs. Certain kinds of food costs are represented in the sticker price of food items: those for land, transportation, storage, distribution, and wages of food system workers.

But other significant costs — termed “externalized” because they are not borne by the companies that comprise much of the food system, but are directly or indirectly thrust on the public in multiple ways — do not show up in typical food cost accounting. Those include “downstream” costs of the current food system for: healthcare for diet-related illnesses and other health impacts; loss of ecosystem functioning and biodiversity because of pesticide use, habitat loss, and climate change; agricultural subsidies; pollution of water, soil, and air; inadequate wages for many food workers; and the myriad negative impacts climate change, among others.

Food expenditures — what consumers pay for food of every sort — for 2019 totaled $1.1 trillion. The sum of all the externalized costs that are not covered in the price of food was roughly $2.1 trillion. Together, this means that the real costs of how food was grown, raised, cleaned, processed, transported, distributed, and sold plus all the externalized costs totaled to at least $3.2 billion for that year. Those externalized costs, the report says, were related primarily to human health and environmental impacts, calculated at $1.1 trillion and nearly $900 billion, respectively.

This reports follows on one The Rockefeller Foundation did in 2020 — Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System — that focused on the hunger and nutrition crisis in the U.S. that was present but newly underscored and amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic. That 2020 report endorsed three transitions it called necessary “to transform the U.S. food system to make it more efficient, equitable, healthy, and resilient, both in good times and bad.” Those are: (1) a better integrated nutrition security system, (2) reinvigorated regional food systems, and (3) equitable prosperity throughout the supply chain.

The three top-level findings of this report, reflected in its organization, are: (1) there is urgent need to transform the U.S. food system; (2) the true cost of the U.S. food system is three times what is spent on food; and (3) a better understanding of these costs can provide a foundation for a successful transformation of the U.S. food system.

The 2020 report was oriented around the food/hunger crisis, particularly as it was amplified through the pandemic. This current report says, “The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how unfit our food system is for the 21st century. Knowing the true cost of our food system . . . is the right first step toward making it better, less costly, and less risky. With this kind of analysis, governments, advocates, corporations, and even individuals have the tools and the power to catalyze the systems-level change needed to develop a truly nourishing, equitable, and regenerative food system. . . . We need holistic and transformational change to build a food system that provides healthy and affordable food for all consumers; fair, livable wages, and safe working conditions for workers; viable farming options for rural communities; and efficient and sustainable use of our natural resources, to name a few. We need a system that protects the environment and human health.”

Beyond Pesticides is in agreement with most of the report’s aspirational framework and guidance. However, if the laudable goals are to be realized, the framework must recognize, specifically identify, and forward two realities: (1) the many damaging impacts from synthetic pesticide (and fertilizer) use in U.S. agriculture, and (2) that “regenerative” agriculture and practices cannot achieve the identified goals unless they are organic regenerative practices. Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides (and former member of the National Organic Standards Board) has said, “Pesticide reduction strategies that allow continued use of toxic substances undermine the soil biology and biodiversity that is critical to healthy plants and unnecessary to achieving pest management goals.”

When evaluating pesticide registration applications, EPA does not require data demonstrating “benefits” against which health and environmental risks may be weighed. That kind of calculation only takes place years down the line, if EPA believes there is reason to consider canceling a pesticide’s registration. On the other hand, the existence of organic producers fueling $62 billion in organic sales in the U.S., with virtually all commodities being now grown and processed without toxic pesticides, indicates that a true cost accounting of pesticide use would find pesticide risks unreasonable under the “unreasonable adverse effects” standard of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). According to Terry Shistar, PhD, Beyond Pesticides board member: “Although not all of the unaccounted costs identified by the Rockefeller Foundation are directly attributable to pesticide use, many are and should factor into EPA’s pesticide registration process. That process should compare those costs, as well as those already identified by EPA, to the organic farming alternative. If the risks can be eliminated by organic farming, then they are unnecessary—and, therefore, unreasonable.”

Beyond Pesticides has written extensively about pesticide impacts throughout the organization’s history and across many sectors (see, e.g., the Programs navigation on the website homepage). More recently, it has covered the emerging issue of “regenerative” agriculture, as that has enjoyed greater exposure in public policy discussions. Indeed, The Rockefeller Report repeatedly mentions “regenerative” approaches to agricultural production, in the contexts of animal welfare, soil status, climate mitigation.

The “regenerative” movement has focused largely on conservation tillage (i.e., “no till”) practices that help maintain soil structure, as well as on increasing carbon-based (organic) matter in soil, cover cropping, and crop rotations — all of which improve and support soil health. However, as a 2019 Friends of the Earth report noted, “Data indicate that the majority of no-till farmers rely on herbicides such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.” “Regenerative” practices in concert with continued use of toxic inputs — synthetic pesticides and fertilizers — are self-defeating. They may sequester more carbon in the soil, but at the same time, the use of these toxic compounds destroys soil biota and causes increased emissions of nitrous oxide (NOx), a greenhouse gas.

Promotion of regenerative agriculture shows up especially in discussions of mitigation of climate emissions and impacts, given that agriculture and forestry account for as much as 25% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Regenerative approaches are widely considered as an important one of the solutions for reducing (or even reversing) these impacts.

However, as Beyond Pesticides recently wrote, “A movement by promoters of chemical-intensive agriculture has fooled some environmentalists into supporting toxic ‘regenerative’ agriculture. The so-called ‘regenerative agriculture’ promoted by these groups ignores the direct climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizers, the damage to soil health caused by pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the fact that pesticide and fertilizer manufacturing is dependent on fossil fuels, both as key ingredients and for the heat and energy driving chemical reactions. It is important to see through this deception.”

Organic regenerative practices, however, do reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts: organically managed agricultural soils can sequester significant amounts of atmospheric carbon, and organic practices reduce emissions of NOx. Also, re: the very goals The Rockefeller Foundation report extolls, organic practices broadly deployed would virtually eliminate many of the negative human health, biodiversity, and equity impacts of the current food system. Systems that are organic and regenerative in approach represent the optimum for achieving the goals set out in The Rockefeller Report.

Support for such systems is growing. For example, the Rodale Institute has begun to promote a new certification developed through the Regenerative Organic Alliance: Regenerative Organic Certified^TM (ROC). This certification, which seeks to label food grown with organic, regenerative approaches, specifically disallows any synthetic inputs.

The Rodale website says, “Though the USDA Certified Organic seal continues to be a rigorous standard, it has some gaps when it comes to soil health and animal welfare requirements. Most importantly, it omits the treatment of farmers and farm workers. Many brands, farmers, ranchers, and nonprofits felt that a more holistic standard could go above and beyond the organic label. . . . [The ROC standard] uses the USDA Certified Organic standard as a baseline. From there, it adds important criteria and benchmarks that incorporate the three major pillars of regenerative organic agriculture [— soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness —] into one certification.”

The Rockefeller Report asserts, “If left unaddressed, the true cost of food will continue to rise and negatively contribute to climate change, the prevalence of diet-related diseases, and growing inequity. We need a formal integration of a true cost accounting framework into decision-making processes in public policy, private and public investments, and systems design.”

Some shifts are already under way in the U.S. food ecosystem, according to the report, such as efforts to improve nutrition safety nets and align government procurement with a TCA approach; increasing governmental support for (especially) Black, Indigenous, and small-scale producers; some federal regulatory effort to educate and incentivize the public re: better food choices; and efforts in the private sector to improve nutritional food access and integrate it into healthcare, among others. The report provides access to a searchable database of actions and innovations that could benefit from a TCA approach.

The authors conclude: “We must accurately calculate the full cost we pay for food today to successfully shape economic and regulatory incentives tomorrow. A better appreciation for food’s true cost can help those trying to provide healthy and affordable food for all consumers. It can lead to better long-term decision making about fair, livable wages, and safe conditions for all workers. It can promote innovation to deliver more viable farming methods for rural farmers. And it can help protect, not harm, our planet. By approaching food and the food system as an investment, and understanding its downstream returns, we have the potential to not only lower our true cost of food bill, but also transform the food system.”

Beyond Pesticides concurs, with the proviso that toxic inputs in agriculture need to be phased out as rapidly as possible. Executive Director Jay Feldman comments, “‘Regenerative’ without specific criteria, standards, and enforcement will not expedite the necessary changes to our food production system. ‘Organic’ is the only standard that embraces the values embraced by the report. But this report can and should serve, with that modification, as a springboard for real and meaningful transformation of our food system.”

Source: https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/True-Cost-of-Food-Full-Report-Final.pdf

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

(Beyond Pesticides, July 22, 2021) A new study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology finds black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapulari) in New York are developing potential resistance to widely used tick-control pyrethroid insecticide, permethrin. The study suggests continuous use of area-wide, 4-poster devices (devices that attract deer and then apply pesticide to their head, ears, and neck) to apply insecticide treatments on deer to control tick populations promotes resistance.

Resistance is an ever-present issue among chemical compounds (i.e., antibiotics, antimicrobials, pesticides) used in medicine and agriculture, and threatening the ability to prevent disease outbreaks, such as Lyme disease. Furthermore, increasing populations of rodent and mammalian hosts, in addition to warmer temperatures prompted by the climate crisis, allows for disease-carrying ticks to flourish. Lyme disease is the most common vector disease and a primary concern for the general population. Therefore, studies like this highlight the need to assess resistance among disease-vector pest populations regardless of pesticide application methods. The researchers note, “Permethrin susceptibility of tick populations should be monitored from other 4-poster control areas so that guidelines for managing pesticide resistance in the field can be developed.”

Four-poster devices impart selective pressure on tick populations influencing reproduction and natural extinction of species. However, like mosquitoes, a subpopulation of ticks encountering chemical exposure naturally  alter gene function, which results in resistance to the chemical rather than death. To assess resistance among tick populations, researchers evaluated the susceptibility of deer ticks to permethrin exposure. Deer ticks used in this study came from Shelter Island, NY, and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (CIES) in Millbrook, NY. Researchers collected Shelter Island ticks from deer at sites where 4-poster devices are in operation. CIES tick collection, also from deer, took place in areas void of 4-poster devices. Researchers used deer tick larvae colonies reared from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laboratory as the control.

The study results find ticks at the Shelter Island site are less susceptible to permethrin treatments than ticks from CDC colonies. Shelter Island ticks are less sensitive to permethrin treatments than CIES ticks, but resistance ratios are small. Although CIES sites did not contain 4-poster devices, these areas still harbor ticks that are less susceptible to permethrin. From these findings, the researchers conclude that field populations of deer tick may be more resistant to permethrin insecticides than lab colonies.

Insecticide resistance has been an issue since the introduction of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) in the 1940s. Although most countries currently ban DDT use, the compound is not the only chemical pesticide promoting pest resistance. Several current-use insecticides pose the same threat. Area-wide, indiscriminate spraying of insecticides is causing resistance to develop among many pests. Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to synthetic pyrethroids, in addition to other classes of insecticides, such as carbamates and organophosphates. In certain tropical regions, pesticide run-off from agricultural fields increases chemically resistant freshwater snails populations that are disease vectors for snail fever. However—unlike mosquito resistance—the occurrence of tick resistance lacks research regarding vector-disease implications and primarily focuses on domestic animal use. Tick resistance develops much slower than mosquito resistance due to a longer lifespan/life cycle and time between generations. However, studies show that cattle ticks are resistant to multiple pesticide chemical classes from direct applications to cattle. Furthermore, three-host species ticks in Florida and Texas demonstrate similar permethrin resistance. Therefore, existing disease control programs overlook possible disease outbreaks from inadequate tick resistance management and a heavy focus on domestic animal uses. 

Development of resistance is an entirely normal, adaptive phenomenon: organisms evolve, “exploiting” beneficial genetic mutations that give them a survival advantage. However, resistance is growing in all sectors of pest control, including critically needed agriculture and medicine. Whether it is antibiotics for bacterial infections, herbicides for weeds/pests, or insecticides to mitigate vector-borne diseases, organisms are becoming resistant to usually toxic compounds. Resistance developing in one of the “sectors” mentioned above can “crossover” to become problematic in another. Agricultural and veterinary uses of antibiotics significantly contribute to the resistance of certain bacteria or fungi to antibiotics that have historically knocked down such infections in humans. Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) notes, “The World Health Organization underscored the problem in their 2012 guidance on policymaking for Integrated Vector Management (IVM): ‘Resistance to insecticides is an increasing problem in vector control because of the reliance on chemical control and expanding operations…Furthermore, the chemical insecticides used can have adverse effects on health and the environment.’”

This study is the first to establish baseline susceptibility for deer ticks to permethrin and offer information on resistance emergence in tick populations under selective pressure from 4-poster devices. Unlike in mosquito control, area-wide pesticide applications for tick control are relatively unconventional. However, 4-poster devices act as an area-wide control method allowing deer to self-apply permethrin treatment via contact with devices while feeding. Although the study finds Shelter Island ticks are less susceptible to permethrin than CIES ticks, the difference in susceptibility is small enough to assert resistance can develop regardless of selective pressure. This assertion indicates permethrin resistance may occur among tick populations in real-world settings already seen among mosquito populations. Growing pesticide resistance often leads to an increase in chemical inputs to control pests.

Tick resistance can augment the use of chemical control methods, including the addition of toxic synergists like piperonyl butoxide (PBO), known to cause and exacerbate adverse health effects from exposure. Exposure to permethrin already has implications for human health, including cancer, endocrine (hormone) disruption, reproductive dysfunction, neurotoxicity, and kidney/liver damage. Furthermore, pets such as cats are extremely sensitive to synthetic pyrethroid insecticides, triggering seizures, tremors, muscle spasms that can lead to death. 

The study results demonstrate a need to address resistance among tick populations, regardless of selective pressure from 4-poster devices. The CDC previously reported that pesticides are ineffective at stopping the spread of Lyme disease, a principal health concern of increasing tick resistance. Therefore, public health advocates say that government and health officials must understand the mechanisms prompting pesticide resistance among tick populations to safeguard human health from widespread diseases lacking effective vaccines.

Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, has noted, “We should . . . join together to address the root causes of insect-borne disease because the chemical-dependent alternatives are ultimately deadly for everyone.”

Beyond Pesticides maintains that management strategies to combat insect-borne diseases cannot be successful if they are chemical-intensive. More recent studies focusing on highly toxic permethrin-treated clothing, as a means of tick management, have not been accurately reported in the media. . These strategies ignore the underlying conditions that exacerbate the spread of the disease. Advocates urge that consumers avoid chemicals like DEET and permethrin. Instead, simple repellents like the oil of lemon eucalyptus, picaridin, and insect repellent IR 3535 can effectively deter ticks from finding and attaching to humans. 

The best method to prevent tick bites and the diseases they carry is to wear appropriate clothing (light-colored that covers one’s whole body), a hat, and consider tucking one’s pants into socks. Most important is to conduct regular tick checks as it is critically important to detach a tick from one’s skin as soon as possible after the bite to reduce the chance of disease transfer. If you have an outdoor pet, do not forget to check them as well. Safely kill tick larvae with non-toxic solutions: vacuum daily during flea season (changing bag often); groom pet daily with a flea comb (cleaning comb with soap-water between brushes); frequently bathe pets with soap and water; and frequently wash pet bedding, restricting pet to only one bed. For more information on how to manage ticks safely, see Beyond Pesticides ManageSafe webpage. Additionally, learn more about how to protect your pet from pesticides and the least-toxic controls for tick infestations. 

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

Source: Lyme Disease Association, Journal of Medical Entomology

(Beyond Pesticides, July 21, 2021) Western states are in the midst of one of the largest spray campaigns in recent history, targeting native grasshopper species on more than two million acres of rangeland with highly toxic insecticides. Grasshopper populations have exploded this year due to the West’s ongoing drought, and government officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are hoping that hazardous pesticide use will stop the voracious winged insects from consuming forage used by cattle operations. Environmental groups are urging changes to the program, which has conducted insecticide campaigns against the native grasshoppers since the 1930s. “Aerial application of insecticides on this scale will eliminate millions of insects that pollinate, recycle plant nutrients and perform natural pest control,” said Sharon Selvaggio, Pesticide Program Specialist with the Xerces Society. “Insecticide sprays on this scale across native ecosystems are short-sighted and unsustainable.”

According to a June 2020 press release, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is spending $5.3 million dollars of taxpayer money in order to conduct what it calls “suppression treatments.” APHIS claims the $5.3 million will protect $8.7 million worth of agricultural resources, but advocates argue that the agency has failed to meet the “level of economic threshold” required under federal law to justify spraying. Calculations indicate that spraying costs between roughly $2-45 per acre, while the American taxpayer generates roughly $0.17 per acre from grazing leases that charge ranchers a mere $1.35/month to place cattle on public lands in the west.  

Moreover, APHIS’s justification of the expense does not include an evaluation of the ecological costs of the spray campaign. The agency assumes the spray campaign will adequately address the grasshopper infestation, but fails to account for the value of natural predators. Indiscriminate pesticide spray applied across large swaths of land are sure to kill off natural enemies of grasshopper species that may otherwise control the animals and could help prevent future infestations.

In addition to natural predators, there is significant value that can be ascribed to pollinators and other beneficial species that are likely to have their populations reduced by pesticide applications. Western monarch butterflies are on the precipice of extinction, and need improved conditions, not increased threats in order to stave off the worst.

Organic farmers in states like Montana are split on the campaign, according to reports in the Associated Press. Concerns over the loss of certification are butting up against the desire to be a good neighbor. As with other issues concerning drift and organic farming, the onus is on the organic farmer to protect their crops from chemical exposure, not on the applicator to prevent pesticide trespass. This creates an uneven playing field that tilts towards pesticide use as the status quo, despite organic practices being the least impactful, and most sustainable approach to farming and pest management.  

Over the last 15 years, APHIS has primarily relied on the hazardous insecticide diflubenzuron to manage the grasshoppers. But there is indication that, if conditions persist, the agency could employ malathion and carbaryl— some of the most toxic pesticides that remain on the market. Malathion is an acutely toxic organophosphate insecticide that is associated with neurotoxicity, kidney and liver damage, and cancer. A recently published investigative report in The Intercept found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed evidence linking malathion to cancer for decades. Malathion is also highly toxic to birds and pollinators, and its use jeopardizes over 1,000 endangered species throughout the country.

Carbaryl is a carbamate insecticide that has also been linked to a range of health impacts, from cancer to diabetes and other metabolic diseases, as well as birth defects at concerning low levels. It is acutely toxic to birds, pollinators, and aquatic organisms.

Attempts by APHIS to “suppress” natural fluxes in grasshopper populations are reminiscent of misguided and continued attempts to suppress other natural disturbances in the west, like fires. But, as time has shown, suppression only delays the inevitable. The result is hotter fires, and more intense swings within grasshopper populations. After nearly 100 years of Sisyphean action, advocates are urging APHIS to make this year the last time the federal government conducts this massive ecological poison campaign.

Instead of placing blame on natural processes in order to protect grazing practices that are not natural and in many ways damaging to local ecology, focus should be placed on the human element. Rather than spend millions of dollars on pesticide use, the federal government should make sure that farmers and ranchers who are affected by grasshoppers be adequately compensated for their loss. The widespread use of highly toxic insecticides that can devastate the local environment need not factor in.  Supporting and increasing natural biodiversity, utilizing local fire regimes, and incentivizing modified grazing practices like rotational grazing can all help lessen the effects of grasshoppers on US public lands.

For more information about the dangers pesticides pose to wildlife and biodiversity, see Beyond Pesticides program pages.   

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

Correction: This post was updated to specify the date of the USDA APHIS press release, and clarify the primary insecticide APHIS has been using to manage grasshoppers.

Source: Associated Press, Xerces Society

(Beyond Pesticides, July 20, 2021) Chlorpyrifos exposure results in the expression of genetic mutations associated with autism spectrum disorder in a laboratory model, finds research published in Environmental Health Perspectives by scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This is a step forward in showing an interplay between genetics and environment and its potential role for autism spectrum disorder,” says study lead Lena Smirnova, PhD, a research associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School. The findings support reams of research already conducted that show strong associations between autism and exposure to hazardous environmental stressors like toxic pesticides.

Scientists conducted their study using a ‘brain organoid’ model, which is essentially a cluster of cells artificially grown in the lab from stem cells in order to mimic a developing human brain. These tests provide certain benefits over animal testing, as they are more relevant to human disease, and can be performed faster with less cost. The organoid model also represents an improvement on typical 2d cell-based models, increasing cell survival, shelf-life, and thus providing opportunity to model for later stages of brain development.

Brain organoids in this study carried a gene called CHD8, which regulates gene activity critical to brain development. With changes in CHD8 representing one of the strongest links to the risk of developing autism, the study aimed to understand whether chlorpyrifos exposure resulted in any of these alterations. Organoids were exposed to chlorpyrifos at four and eight weeks of development, representing a short term, high exposure scenario. “High-dose, short-term experimental exposures do not reflect the real-life situation, but they give us a starting point to identify genetic variants that might make individuals more susceptible to toxicants,” says Dr. Smirnova.

Exposure to chlorpyrifos at these times did result in measurable effects on CHD8 gene expression. Although the lab created brain organoids only carried a single copy of the CDH8 gene and less than the normal amount of CHD8 protein, chlorpyrifos nonetheless was able to lower its expression further. Researchers describe how this finding shows that environmental exposures can make pre-existing genetic problems even worse.

In addition to altering CHD8 expression, a range of other biomarkers in the brain organoid were identified as those usually found in autistic patients. “In this sense, we showed that changes in these organoids reflect changes seen in autism patients,” Dr. Smirnova says. “Now we can explore how other genes and potentially toxic substances interact.”

The findings provide a new way to quickly determine the effect of environmental exposures on gene expression. “The use of three-dimensional, human-derived, brain-like models like the one in this study is a good way forward for studying the interplay of genetic and environmental factors in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders,” says study co-author Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD, professor and Doerenkamp-Zbinden Chair in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 54 children have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Rates of autism have skyrocketed over the last several decades. While some of the rise can be explained by increased testing, and an expansion of the diagnostic criteria for the disorder, it is unable to entirely account for the increased cases. In 1997, 0.1% of children had autism, while in 2010 that number rose to 1%.

“The increase in autism diagnoses in recent decades is hard to explain—there couldn’t have been a population-wide genetic change in such a short time, but we also haven’t been able to find an environmental exposure that sufficiently accounts for it,” notes Dr. Hartung. “To me, the best explanation involves a combination of genetic and environment factors.”

This determination, and the present study’s findings, are supported by previous scientific literature. A 2018 study published in Pediatric Research reviewed a range of studies linking pesticides to autism and found evidence for an association in both laboratory and epidemiological research. Scientific studies have consistently found elevated rates of autism in areas of high pesticide use. A 2014 study from the University of California, Davis, found that pregnant women living near crops sprayed with organophosphates like chlorpyrifos increased the chance of their child being diagnosed with autism by 60%. For women in their second trimester, chlorpyrifos in particular increased the odds by 3.3x. Another class of insecticides, synthetic pyrethroids, increased autism risk by 87%. Likewise, communities with mosquito adulticide programs were found to be 37% more likely to have higher rates of autism spectrum disorders, according to a 2017 study. Fungicides have also been linked to autism disorders, and a separate study from California researchers connected autism to the herbicide glyphosate, insecticides chlorpyrifos and permethrin, the banned pesticide diazinon, the fumigant methyl bromide, and fungicide myclobutanil.

While some well-meaning health advocates focus on controversial studies relating vaccines to autism, the connection to pesticide exposure is well-researched, and likely a contributing factor to the rise of the disorder over the last several decades. More research is needed to further elucidate the connection, but there is enough evidence available to warrant a precautionary approach, and restrictions on hazardous autism-linked pesticides.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon provide a response to a lawsuit urging it to ban all food uses of chlorpyrifos, but even if the agency announces agricultural use cancellations, the chemical will still remain available for golf courses and as mosquito adulticide. In the meantime, parents are taking their fight directly to product manufacturers, and are suing Corteva (DowDupont) for the brain damage and other developmental problems their children suffered while living near chlorpyrifos-treated fields.

Help stop the use of a chemical with strong links to autism by urging EPA to ban chlorpyrifos today. But don’t stop at chlorpyrifos – as banning its use is simply the first step in eliminating other autism-linked neurotoxic pesticides on the market. Tell EPA chlorpyrifos and all brain-damaging pesticides need to be banned immediately.

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

Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (press release)

(Beyond Pesticides, July 19, 2021) As yet another study, “Early life multiple exposures and child cognitive function: A multi-centric birth cohort study in six European countries,” draws attention to the benefits of organic food for the learning young mind, it is important that schools provide organic food to students. The study, conducted by Spanish researchers based at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, looks at a totality of all environmental hazards that children encounter, rather than individual lifestyle factors. As study co-author Jordi Júlvez, PhD, notes, “Healthy diets, including organic diets, are richer than fast food diets in nutrients necessary for the brain, such as fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants, which together may enhance cognitive function in childhood.”

Tell your governor and USDA/Food and Nutrition Service to provide organic school lunches and information for parents.

Researchers find that children who eat organic food display higher scores measuring fluid intelligence and working memory. Lower scores on fluid intelligence tests are associated with children’s fast food intake, house crowding, and exposure to tobacco smoke. Lower scores on working memory tests were associated with exposure to poor indoor air quality.

This study adds to prior research finding that eating a conventional, chemical-intensive diet increases the presence of pesticides and their metabolites in an individual’s urine, including higher pesticide body burden from eating foods grown in chemical-intensive systems. In fact, because of their smaller size, children carry higher levels of glyphosate and other toxic pesticides in their body. Coupled with this research are multiple studies showing that many common pesticides result in developmental problems in children. Most recently, a 2019 Danish study found that higher concentrations of pyrethroid insecticides corresponded to higher rates of ADHD in children. There is also strong evidence that organophosphate insecticides, still widely used on fruits and vegetables in the U.S., are dropping children’s IQs on a national and global scale, costing billions to the economy in the form of lost brain power.

Studies show children’s developing organs create “early windows of great vulnerability” during which exposure to pesticides can cause great damage. This is supported by the findings of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which concludes, “Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity.”

Switching from a conventional diet of food produced with chemical-intensive practices to organic diet drastically reduces the levels of pesticides in one’s body, with one week on organic food showing a 70% reduction in glyphosate in the body, according to one study. Socio-economic factors play a large role in access to heathy organic foods, and the ability to provide the sort of environment that allows a child’s brain to flourish, so it is important that school lunches, which provide nutrition across socioeconomic classes, help to equalize learning potential. Pitting access and cost against the long-term success of a child’s development puts many parents in an untenable position. The preponderance of evidence points to organic food providing the nutrition needed to give young minds the start they need in life. But eating organic should not be a choice to make – all food should be grown with high quality standards that reject the use of brain-damaging pesticides and protect the wider environment. 

Tell your governor and USDA/Food and Nutrition Service to provide organic school lunches and information for parents.

See the factsheet, Children Need Organic Food.

(Beyond Pesticides, July 16, 2021) Recently published research reviews the 2013 Wilsonville, Oregon mass bumblebee die-off from application of the neonicotinoid dinotefuran on 55 linden trees in a big-box-store parking lot. In that single event, the research paper (published in Environmental Entomology) estimates between 45,830 and 107,470 bumblebees from some 289–596 colonies were killed. Reporting on the new study, by Entomology Today, quotes primary conclusions of the co-authors: “Our study underscores the lethal impact of the neonicotinoid pesticide dinotefuran on pollinating insect populations,” and, “It is likely that the vast majority of mass pesticide kills of beneficial insects across other environments go unnoticed and unreported.” As Beyond Pesticides has chronicled, the U.S. and the world are undergoing a pollinator crisis, caused in significant part by agricultural pesticides.

Dinotefuran, the neonicotinoid (neonic) that killed those Oregon bumblebees, is used against fleas, thrips, tree-boring caterpillars, emerald ash borers, hemlock woolly adelgids, and in the Oregon case, aphids. Entomology Today (ET) notes that the timing of this particular application could not have been worse: it happened on a warm day when the linden trees were in full flower and the bees out in force. Ironically, it occurred during Nation Pollinator Week. ET pens a sour footnote on the event: “The aphids posed no threat to the trees but rather to vehicles parked under them, which were spattered with the aphids’ honeydew waste.”

The authors write: “In addition to the effects that were documented in this study, there were several other documented pesticide poisonings that took place in Oregon in 2013 and affected bumble bee populations. These poisonings include applications of either imidacloprid or dinotefuran that resulted in lethal and sublethal concentrations . . . of these chemicals in the flowers of treated Tilia trees, up to seven months after the initial application. All dead bumble bees that were sampled had significant levels of imidacloprid or dinotefuran. Thus, the effects of neonicotinoids from applications to ornamental trees on non-target insects like bumble bees are likely widespread in the United States.” 

Given what is known about the damaging impacts of neonics on bees and other pollinators, the study’s assertion of massive under-recognition of lethal neonic impacts is alarming. (See Beyond Pesticides reporting on neonics here, here, and here.) Although the agrochemical industry works hard to promote the idea that pathogens are responsible for the extensive bee and pollinator loss of the past two decades, ample evidence belies this whitewashing. Pointedly, the acute lethal impacts in the 2013 Wilsonville event and another a few days later in Hillsboro, Oregon contravene that contention in stark terms.

Emerging scientific consensus on central causes of bee loss focuses on pesticide impacts and how they make bees more vulnerable to pathogens. As Beyond Pesticides recently wrote, 2019 Canadian research “found that ‘real life’ exposures to neonicotinoid insecticides impair honey bees’ ability to groom harmful mites from their bodies, thus allowing mite populations to thrive.” In addition, Beyond Pesticides has discussed the coincidence, during the early 2000s, of the emergence of CCD [Colony Collapse Disorder] and severe colony losses with the spike in use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly delivered as seed coatings. In 2014, a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health showed that two neonics — imidacloprid and clothianidin — significantly harm honey bee colonies during winters.

Further, the damaging impacts of neonicotinoids are not confined to pollinators and their ecosystems. Declines in pollinator populations work their way up and down the food chain, from the plants that depend on pollination to the people that rely on the many foods that pollination provides. Beyond Pesticides wrote in June 2021, “Past research has found that the loss of pollination services would have a devastating impact on global nutritional health, with women and children most affected. . . . Many communities [already] lack access to healthy fruits and vegetables; allowing the pollinator crisis to continue unabated is likely to exacerbate these problems by increasing prices on important staples.”

At the time, the Wilsonville incident was the largest single mass bumblebee death event ever recorded. Mere weeks ago, Beyond Pesticides wrote about the second highest bee loss in 15 years, as documented in the Bee Informed Partnership’s 2020–2021 National Colony Loss and Management Survey. Populations of both wild and managed bees, as well as of other pollinators, have been devastated during the past two decades — much of that related to acute toxicity, as well as ongoing systemic but sublethal compromise of behaviors that sustain healthy hives and colonies.

The subject study, conducted by scientists from The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, The Ohio State University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA), asserts: “Insecticides, particularly systemic insecticides including neonicotinoids, are increasingly implicated in bee and other wildlife declines. The spectrum of effects on bees ranges from sublethal (i.e., not causing immediate mortality, rather behavioral and/or biological effects that reduce colony fecundity) to lethal depending on the dose and length of exposure.” (The Xerces Society originally reported the bumblebee deaths in Wilsonville to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.)

Dinotefuran is one of a large class of pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics). Long-lasting and systemic compounds, they are absorbed into plant tissue and then distributed throughout the plant, making the pollen and nectar toxic to visiting pollinators. The researchers determined that some of the linden trees in the 2013 event were treated via aerial spraying, and some with a soil drench; their data analysis suggests that the soil drench method may actually have more-significant long-term effects on the plant tissues than the foliar method, but the authors acknowledge that these impacts are difficult to quantify.

They do note in their paper that other research has shown that “application of neonicotinoid insecticides on woody landscape plants at any time of year result in nectar residues that exceed concentrations shown to have negative effects on bees, even when label directions to protect pollinators are followed.” They also write, “Recent research suggests that there may be no safe time of year to apply systemic neonicotinoid insecticides to trees and shrubs to avoid sublethal/lethal effects on bees, even if label directions and bee precaution language are followed.”

According to ET, the linden tree flowers to which dinotefuran was applied in 2013 harbored very high concentrations of the insecticide. In their paper, the researchers note, “While most of the bumble bees that died in this mass killing were of a single, locally common species . . . that likely had the representation, resiliency, and redundancy to recover, there is no way of telling if colonies of rare or at-risk species of bumble bees were affected (we sampled less than 1% of all bumble bees killed). Given the scale and scope of this event, it is likely that if any colonies were nearby, that they may have been severely affected, potentially disrupting conservation and recovery efforts.”

That Wilsonville application violated dinotefuran’s label instructions, which indicate that the compound is toxic to bees that are exposed to it for more than 38 hours, and that the product is not to be applied to plants’ flowering parts, as was done in 2013. Subsequent to the Wilsonville and Hillsboro bee kills, the state temporarily banned use of the insecticide on plants, even by professional applicators, for 180 days, and indicated that ODA would conduct an investigation into the incidents, and then reassess the ban. In 2015, ODA moved to prohibit the use of pesticide products containing certain neonic active ingredients — dinotefuran, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin — on linden (Tilia cordata), basswood (Tilia Americana), or other Tilia species trees in the state.

Many pesticides, including neonics, are infamous for their impacts on non-target species, as well as broad damage to ecosystems, habitats, and biodiversity. The study co-authors write, “The lethal effects of pesticide poisoning on non-target beneficial insects continue to occur today, as exemplified by the Wilsonville case, and is a contributor to pollinator decline. Furthermore, even sublethal effects of pesticides are likely interacting with other factors associated with bumble bee decline including habitat loss, climate change, and disease. Combined, these negative factors will likely continue to hinder efforts to recover and repopulate species identified to be at risk of population decline and extirpation.”

One might wonder, “Where is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this crisis of pesticide impacts on bees, other pollinators, and insects generally?” Historically, EPA has moved glacially on protections from this class of compounds. In January 2020, EPA did announce that it would review the registration of several neonics — acetamiprid, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran, and imidacloprid. At the same time, it announced interim decisions on some aspects of the uses of those five neonics. (See the agency’s web page titled “EPA Actions to Protect Pollinators.”)

The schedule for the registration review is introduced with this text: “The dockets for all the neonicotinoid pesticides have been opened. Our goal is to review the pesticides in this class in the same timeframe so we can ensure consistency across the class. As EPA completes risk assessments for the neonicotinoids, the Agency will pursue risk mitigation, as appropriate.” The public is encouraged to weigh in on the review of these pesticides, and is reminded of what Beyond Pesticides has repeatedly identified and called out: “the folly of the federal regulatory system’s attempts to ‘mitigate risks of pesticide exposure through small and piecemeal rules. ‘Mitigation’ of pesticide risks is a nibble around the edges of a pervasive poison problem.”

A recent Daily News Blog report said, “Despite [the agency’s] own acknowledgment of [the toxicity of neonics to bees and other pollinators], EPA has done little to curb their use. Indeed, in 2019, the EPA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported on the agency’s failure, saying that: “EPA has no means to evaluate the national impact of MP3s [state Managed Pollinator Protection Plans]; the agency has not developed a strategy to use data from a planned fall 2019 survey . . . to evaluate either the national impact of MP3s or the agency’s support of state MP3 implementation efforts; [and] EPA focuses primarily on acute risks (those that occur during a single exposure to a specific pesticide), and gives insufficient attention to chronic exposures to pesticides and to native pollinator protection activities.” Meanwhile, both Canada and the European Union have acted to rein in and ultimately, eliminate at least some neonicotinoids.

Neonicotinoids pose unacceptable threats to bees and other pollinators; their use should be eliminated not only because of those grave threats, but also, because they are not terribly good at their jobs. Ultimately, organic and sustainable farming practices can and should replace the chemical-intensive approaches that dominate agriculture in the U.S. because they eliminate pollinator (and all) toxicity issues, and foster greater resiliency to pests, to boot. That EPA continues to allow their use should be very concerning to everyone.

Learn more with Beyond Pesticides’ fact sheet, Managing Pests Safely Without Neonicotinoids, and its Bee Protective web pages. Beyond Pesticides offers guidance on avoiding use of neonicotinoid pesticides through its fact sheet, Managing Pests Safely Without Neonicotinoids, and its Bee Protective web pages.

Sources: https://entomologytoday.org/2021/07/08/new-study-revisits-2013-pesticide-bee-kill-wilsonville-oregon-dinotefuran/ and https://academic.oup.com/ee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ee/nvab059/6305931

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

(Beyond Pesticides, July 15, 2021) A study by ETH Zurich finds multi-crop (mixed culture) farmlands, which include a diverse array of crops, produce higher biomass and seed yields than single-crop (monocultures). Monocultures are most prevalent among arable farmland as commercial industrial farming uses this practice to increase sowing, managing, and harvesting efficiency for higher yields. However, less crop diversity leads to higher, more intensive pesticide use as pests favor the consistent food availability monocultures provide.

An increase in toxic chemical use threatens human, animal, and environmental health, as well as food security. Ecological research already finds a positive association between plant diversity and biomass productivity in grasslands and meadows. In addition, a University of California, Santa Barbara study demonstrates that crop diversity in commercial agriculture is just as essential to supporting a stable biological system as plant diversity on non-commercial landscapes (i.e., grasslands/meadows). Therefore, this research highlights the need to develop policies that help farmers and global leaders make more knowledgeable decisions regarding crop diversity to sustain yield without toxic pesticides. The researchers note, “While crop diversification provides a sustainable measure of agricultural intensification, the use of currently available cultivars [(plant varieties for selective breeding)] may compromise larger gains in seed yield. We, therefore, advocate regional breeding [programs] for crop varieties to be used in mixtures that should exploit complementarity [(harmonization)] among crop species.”

It is critical for plants to allocate resources for reproduction or seed-bearing. This allocation of resources for reproduction is a trait known as the harvest index in the agricultural context, which determines how plant biomass converts to seed yield. Hence, this study aimed to assess seed yield and biomass differences between monoculture and mixed culture farming. To do this, researchers replicated a general garden experiment in Switzerland and Spain at two soil fertility levels (unfertilized and fertilized) and four plant diversity levels. Researchers tested eight annual grain crop species: wheat, oat, quinoa, lentil, blue lupin, camelina, linseed, and coriander. The seeds of each crop were planted in alternating, parallel rows 12 centimeters apart and grown without pesticides. Researchers compared the results of 24 different two-species and 16 different four-species mixed cultures to monocultures and a singular, isolated plant.

Overall, the results demonstrate that mixed cultures produce higher yields than monoculture farming. In mixtures of two crops, seed yields increase by 3.4 percent in Spain and 21.4 percent in Switzerland. In four-species combinations, seed yield increases 12.7 percent and 44.3 percent in Spain and Switzerland, respectively. Although seed yield was lower than expected relative to vegetative biomass in Spain, seed production remains higher among mixed cultures.

Since the 1940s, the ecological theory maintains that greater diversity promotes the stability of an ecosystem. However, U.S. commercial agriculture has become more chemical-intensive in its management and less diverse. Commercial, chemical-intensive agriculture has implications on a much grander scale, as farmers more frequently apply pesticide treatments to larger, monoculture crop areas. A growing body of scientific research supports the finding that larger, monoculture croplands contain higher pest concentrations. These regions can foster specific pests that persist as they have ample quantity of the same food source, thus resulting in greater insecticide use. Perversely, monoculture crops induce biodiversity and pollinator loss as exposure causes harm to pollinators and other animals. Pesticides can drift from treated areas and contaminate non-commercial landscapes, limiting pollinator foraging habitat.

Regions like the Midwest, which boasts vast monoculture grain crops, experience high levels of pesticide contamination in nearby water sources. This circumstance is especially concerning as Midwestern waterways previously lacked requirements for the multinational company Syngenta to monitor for atrazine contamination, a ubiquitous pesticide that the company manufactures. Although farmers aim to combat pesticide overuse and drift by using genetically engineered (GE) crops incorporated with pesticides, pests still develop resistance. In turn, farmers continue to use pesticides to combat resistance, but at a much higher rate, prompting a positive feedback loop.

This researcher presents one of the premier studies to demonstrate how crop diversity impacts seed yield on farmland. Researchers attribute additional seed yield from mixed culture farming to the biodiversity effect. This effects states, “A greater variety of plants results in a better use of available resources and more effective, natural pest control.” Small, diverse crop areas can alleviate pest pressure, as food sources differ, barring specific pest persistence.

Although the study finds mixed cultures have a lower harvest index in the agricultural context than expected, the total seed yield remained above monoculture seed production. Researchers attribute the reduction in seed yield among mixed cultures to seeds used in the experiment. Like most commercially grown seeds, those in the experiment are cultivars specifically bred for monocultures, thus perform better in monocultures.

Monocultures are a fairly recent invention of industrial agriculture to mass produce resources for food security. However, this farming practice is a breeding ground for pest infestations, resistance, and thus chemical use to combat these issues. In 2019, Beyond Pesticides set out many of the downsides of monocropping — despite its perceived advantages in terms of ease and economy for growers. Therefore, the convenience of monoculture does not guarantee necessary food security, nor safeguard human, animal, or environmental health. Government officials need to reassess the necessity of monoculture farming and implement mixed culture farming practices to circumvent pest resistance subsequent pesticide use, and vice versa.

The proliferation of large-scale, mono-crop farming has directly increased pesticide use, and existing regulation enforcement are inadequate. Transitioning from chemical-intensive commercial monocultures to diverse, organic mixed cultures can reduce pest presence and pesticide use. Organic agriculture has many health and environmental benefits, which curtail the need for toxic pesticides. Regenerative organic agriculture revitalizes soil health through organic carbon sequestration, while reducing pests and generating higher profits than chemical-intensive agriculture. Learn more about the adverse health and environmental effects chemical-intensive farming poses for various crops and how eating organic produce reduces pesticide exposure. For additional information, see Beyond Pesticides webpage on organic agriculture.

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

Source: Science Daily, ETH Zurich/Nature Plants

(Beyond Pesticides, July 14, 2021) Corteva (formerly DowDupont) is facing a potential class-action lawsuit after several California families filed suit claiming that the use of the insecticide chlorpyrifos around their homes resulted in birth defects, brain damage, and developmental problems in their children. Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate insecticide that has been linked to a range of health ailments, posing significant hazards particularly for pregnant mothers and their children. The lawsuits come as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approaches a court-imposed 60-day deadline to decide the fate of the pesticide’s registration.

Attorneys for the court cases, filed on behalf of individuals located in four California communities (Fresno, Kings, Medera, and Tulare counties), indicate they intend to pursue class-action status, which would allow additional injured parties to join the lawsuit. The plaintiffs argue that the effects of chlorpyrifos exposure lingers in the agricultural communities where they reside. “We have found it in the houses, we have found it in carpet, in upholstered furniture, we found it in a teddy bear, and we found it on the walls and surfaces,” said Stuart Calwell, lead attorney for the plantiffs. “Then a little child picks up a teddy bear and holds on to it.” Ultimately, 100,000 people in California’s farming regions may need to remove items in their homes that were contaminated by chlorpyrifos, attorneys say.

Each of the four plaintiff families have children with developmental disabilities that they indicate were caused by chlorpyrifos exposure. This real-world occurrence is supported by the scientific literature. Studies find that children exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos experience mental development delays, attention problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder problems, and pervasive developmental disorders at three years of age. Concentrations of chlorpyrifos in umbilical cord blood were also found to correspond to a decrease in the psychomotor development and a decrease in the mental development in 3-year olds.  Additional research reinforces these findings, with evidence that children with high exposure levels of chlorpyrifos have changes to the brain, including enlargement of superior temporal, posterior middle temporal, and inferior postcentral gyri bilaterally, and enlarged superior frontal gyrus, gyrus rectus, cuneus, and precuneus along the mesial wall of the right hemisphere.

Although Corteva has dropped out of the chlorpyrifos market, it is not supporting the cancellation of the chemical, and other manufacturers continue to produce it. Three years ago, Hawaii became the first state to begin to phase out chlorpyrifos use. In New York, a law passed by the state legislature implementing a ban prior to Hawaii’s was vetoed by Governor Cuomo (D) and shunted to a slower state rulemaking process. California has likewise initiated rulemaking to ban the chemical, but minor uses are likely to remain.

Meanwhile, EPA, despite a change in administration, has taken no significant action to eliminate chlorpyrifos to date. In May 2021, a federal appeals court gave EPA a 60-day deadline to provide a “legally sufficient response” to a petition originally filed in 2007, urging the agency to ban food uses of the chemical.  Advocates say this is a low bar for the Biden administration to clear. With the Biden EPA, under the leadership of Administrator Michael Regan, defending a broad range of Trump-era pesticide decisions, advocates are concerned that EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs remains broken.

Like other recent lawsuits filed around toxic pesticide exposure, including Parkinson-linked paraquat and cancer-causing glyphosate, EPA inaction has made it so that the only remedy for affected individuals and communities is the court system.

Canada has begun to quietly phase out chlorpyrifos, and the European Union continues to lead the world in pesticide protections after it decided not to renew its registration for the chemical, permitting only a short grace period of 3 months for final storage, disposal, and use.

If EPA fails to ban chlorpyrifos, it will be a major blow for environmental justice, given that risks of exposure fall disproportionately on low-income African American and Latino families, including farmworker families, who are at the greatest risk of harm. Help stop the ongoing poisoning of these communities by urging EPA to ban chlorpyrifos today. But don’t stop at chlorpyrifos – as banning its use is simply the first step in eliminating other neurotoxic pesticides on the market. Tell EPA chlorpyrifos and all brain-damaging pesticides need to be banned immediately.

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

Source: Associated Press

(Beyond Pesticides, July 13, 2021) Bumblebees exposed to pesticides and pathogens display changes in gene expression that can be pinpointed and analyzed by cutting edge research tools, according to scientists at York university, who utilized the new technique in a study published in Molecular Ecology. This form of next-generation gene sequencing is part of a growing field of science known as conservation genomics, in which entire animal genomes are sequenced to determine conservation problems. “Next-generation sequencing is a totally new way to think about why bees are declining, which could revolutionize conservation biology,” says study coauthor Amro Zayed, PhD, associate professor in biology at York. “We’re looking directly at bee tissues  to try and get clues to the stressors that are affecting this bee. I think this is a gamechanger for sure. With a single study, we are able to implicate a couple of really obvious things we’ve talked about for years – pathogens and pesticides – in the case of Bombus terricola.”

Researchers focused on Bombus terricola – the yellow banded bumblebee, as its range has declined significantly over the last two decades. The bumblebee was once common throughout the eastern and midwestern part of the U.S. and Canada, but many states have not recorded a single sighting in years.

To determine what environmental stressors were affecting bumblebee gene expression, worker bees were found and collected in Southern Ontario. Eighteen bees were collected from agricultural sites while 12 were from nonagricultural areas; only 30 workers were collected in total in order to lessen the impact on the overall population. The gene analysis was conducted, and able to qualify nearly 9,500 gene expressions in bumblebee guts.

Researchers discovered 61 differentially expressed genes, including those involved in detoxification, as well as those associated with neurodegenerative disorders and immune response. Most of these effects were discovered in bees found in agricultural areas. Bumblebee gene expressions were then compared to how honey bee genes respond when exposed to stressors in the lab (most research available on bee stressors have focused on honey bees). Overlap between the differentially expressed genes analyzed by the next generation sequencing and previous honey bee research found statistically significant overlap in a number of concerning areas. Bumblebees display gene expressions that are associated with exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides, fipronil, and a range of pathogens, including deformed wing virus and sacbrood virus.

“Bumblebee diseases are a key threat and this technology can help us detect new diseases and stressors quickly so we don’t lose species the way we did the rusty-patched bumblebee, where the problem was only detected when it was too late to do anything about it in Canada,” says coauthor Sheila Colla, PhD, associate professor in conservation science at York. “The rusty-patched bumblebee hasn’t been spotted in Canada since 2009.” In the U.S., the rusty-patched bumblebee was listed as endangered in 2017, as populations have declined by an estimated 91% from its levels in the 1990s.

This new approach to conservation genomics allows for quick investigation of stressors occurring in the field. “It bypasses all these lengthy experiments we’d have to do to get ideas about what’s causing the bumblebees demise,” said Dr. Zayed. The present study provides confirmation that bumblebees are being exposed and affected by toxic pesticides. It provides evidence for the idea that pathogens from managed bumblebee and honey bee colonies are spilling over into wild pollinator populations.

Previous research has found that the combined effect of pesticides and pathogens result in greater harm to pollinators. A 2015 report by the European Academies Science Advisory Council found, “Several studies have demonstrated synergistic effects of neonicotinoid residues with bee parasites and viruses. Some effects are behavioral (e.g. blocking the ability of bees to sterilize the colony and their food). Others appear related to limiting the immune response leading either to earlier infection or to increased mortality from infection. Very recent work has shown that the limitation of the immune response after exposure to neonicotinoids can promote viral replication, allowing covert infections to become overt. Such effects reduce honey bee survival and increase developmental deformities. In view of the emphasis placed by some reviewers on assigning honey bee losses to diseases and parasites, this is a critical issue.”

While the European Union acted on this information to suspend and then eventually ban the outdoor use of neonicotinoid insecticides and fipronil due to pollinator risks, U.S. regulators have done little to address pollinator declines, and earlier this year Canadian regulators began to backtrack on their proposal to prohibit use.

With overwhelming evidence that pollinators are being harmed by these pesticides, the public continues to watch in real time as critically important species of wild pollinators slowly fade out of existence. In addition to the rusty patched and yellow banded, the iconic American Bumblebee has lost 89% of its population over the last 20 years. Eastern monarchs have declined by 80% since the 1990s. Western monarch numbers are in the low thousands, and without change, trending toward extinction.

Help pollinators by calling on your elected representative in Congress to cosponsor the Saving America’s Pollinators Act (SAPA).  If they are already a cosponsor, you’ll be able to send a letter thanking them for their leadership on this critical issue. Please consider following up with a phone call in order to elevate this message to potential cosponsors. For more information on the importance of protecting pollinators from pesticides and other environmental stressors, see Beyond Pesticides’ Bee Protective webpage.

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

Source: York University press release, Molecular Ecology