(Beyond Pesticides, September 16, 2019) The Fall 2019 National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting dates have been announced and public comments are due by October 3, 2019. Your comments and participation are critical to the integrity of the organic label. Written comments may be submitted through Regulations.gov until 11:59 pm ET October 3, 2010. Reservations for in-person and webinar comments close at the same time.

The proposals of the NOSB, as a part of its ongoing review of practices and materials, are published for public comment.  Beyond Pesticides/OrganicEye is providing the public with a listing and analysis of the issues under consideration by the Board when it meets in Pittsburgh, PA on October 23 – 25, 2019. You can view USDA’s announcement of the NOSB’s meeting and proposals here.

Issues before the NOSB include materials allowed in organic production as well as some policy issues. Materials are either being considered for initial use in organics or the subject of a five-year Sunset Review. To be allowed, materials must have evidence demonstrating that they meet Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) requirements of essentiality, no adverse effects on humans and the environment, and compatibility with organic practices.

Major issues before the NOSB at the Fall 2019 meeting include:

Take nitrates out of organic meat!
The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) prohibits the addition of nitrates to organic food because of the known health effects, but producers of organic processed meat products, along with producers of nonorganic “nitrate free” meats, have found a way around that prohibition –celery powder. The high levels of nitrate fertilizer allowed in nonorganic production concentrate in some vegetables, including celery, but organically grown celery does not contain high enough levels of nitrate to be used in curing meat. Celery powder has been listed as an allowed nonorganic agricultural ingredient since 2007.

Nitrates are prohibited in organic food because of their impacts on human health, which include methemoglobinemia, hypotension, risk of pregnancy complications, a number of reproductive effects, and cancer. In addition, the Beyond Pesticides Eating with a Conscience database identifies impacts of pesticides used in producing nonorganic celery, including farmworker poisonings, contamination of water, wildlife poisoning, and pollinator impacts. The NOSB must deny the relisting of celery powder.

Keep genetic engineering out of organic! 
The NOSB continually updates its assessment of which methods meet the criteria for “excluded methods” in organic production—that is, genetic engineering. At this meeting, the Materials Subcommittee proposes to add induced mutagenesis developed via use of in vitro nucleic acid techniques to the list of excluded methods and embryo transfer, or embryo rescue, in livestock, without use of hormones in recipient animals, is proposed to be listed as “not excluded.” We support these recommendations, except that there should be no use of hormones in either donor or recipient.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) appears to have forgotten the lesson learned 20 years ago when it was forced to ban genetic engineering (GE) in organic regulations. At a July 17 hearing called by the U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research on “Assessing the Effectiveness of the National Organic Program,” Greg Ibach, the USDA’s Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, stated, “There is the opportunity to open the discussion to consider whether it is appropriate for some of these new technologies, including gene editing, to be eligible to be used to enhance organic production.” In view of this statement, we believe it is important to stress that gene editing, like other forms of genetic engineering, is unacceptable in organic production.

Stop supporting organic CAFOs!
The addition of synthetic methionine to organic poultry rations has a long and controversial history –not because of direct health effects on organic consumers, but because it facilitates industrial-style production of poultry.

Poultry production in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) needs synthetic methionine because of the lack of outdoor access and the choice of fast-growing breeds.
The “need” for synthetic methionine is a result of choices regarding breeds, stocking rates (both density and group size), and outdoor access. Increasingly, consumers are turning to eggs and meat produced in pastured poultry systems, which require fewer synthetic inputs. There have also been advances in the use of insects –specifically black soldier fly larvae—as a source of natural methionine.

The European Union does not allow the use of synthetic methionine in organic poultry, but does require more space per bird, fewer birds per house, and more access to the outdoors. Significantly, the EU also requires that poultry be of slow-growing breeds or be slaughtered at an older age. All these factors contribute to the welfare of poultry.

Research shows that methionine acts as a growth promoter above and beyond its role as a protein building block. Manipulating methionine in the diet through additions of synthetic methionine is effectively using a synthetic growth promoter and is comparable to the use of rBGH to enhance milk production.

Sunset gives the NOSB the opportunity to reconsider past decisions and reinstitute a process of continuous improvement. The NOSB should delist synthetic methionine or add an expiration date to force serious reconsideration.

Written comments may be submitted through Regulations.gov until 11:59 pm ET October 3, 2019.

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Please go to Beyond Pesticides’ Keeping Organic Strong (KOS) webpage to learn more about these and other substantive issues, and to provide a unique public comment to the NOSB. We will continue to update the KOS page in advance of the public comment deadline on October 3.

Thank you for helping to protect and uphold organic integrity!

(Beyond Pesticides, September 13, 2019) A study on the use of the herbicide dicamba’s off-target effects finds broad impacts, in both geographic spread and the variety of affected species, with use of the weed killer on Arkansas cropland putting birds at risk in agricultural landscapes. Audubon of Arkansas is reporting results of its community science dicamba monitoring project, conducted under the direction of Bird Conservation Director Dan Scheiman, PhD, and launched in late spring 2019. The project monitored dicamba symptomology in species on municipal, state, and federal lands, where dicamba was not applied, but where its impacts were nonetheless detected. Arkansas Audubon “predicts that in a landscape full of GMO crops [genetically modified organisms] (on which dicamba is typically used), the atmospheric loading of volatile dicamba could be enough to cause landscape scale damage to our state natural areas, wildlife management areas, national wildlife refuges, family farms, and the wildlife they harbor.”

Dicamba herbicides are volatile compounds used to control broadleaf weeds — especially on fields of GMO soybean and cotton crops that have been genetically engineered for resistance to dicamba. These herbicides damage non-GMO crops and native plants well beyond intended application areas. (In 2017, more than 3 million acres of soybeans and other crops suffered damage from the chemical.) In addition, warm temperatures during and after application increase the odds of a state change of the liquid herbicide to a gas, which can then rise and drift for miles in any direction. Thus, dicamba herbicides can move significantly off the intended targets, affecting acreage far beyond the bounds of application sites — damaging as much as half again the amount of acreage on which it is applied.

Community scientists were trained by Audubon to detect such typical dicamba symptoms as leaf cupping (just as it sounds, the leaf takes on a concave shape), epinasty (a distorted leaf growth pattern), and chlorosis (yellowed leaves because of insufficient chlorophyll), and to look for multiple symptoms on one plant, uniform symptoms throughout a plant, and instances of numerous plants in an area exhibiting symptoms. Species found to be affected include oak, redbud, and sycamore trees, and muscadine and trumpet vine plants. From June through August, project staff and volunteers amassed nearly 250 observations of dicamba symptomology across 17 Arkansas counties.

Symptoms were observed in plant species growing on public lands, such as parks, cemeteries, university research farms, church properties, and wildlife management areas, as well as along many state and county roadways. In February 2019, the Arkansas state Plant Board moved the dicamba application cutoff date deeper into the growing season (to May 25) for this year, and changed some regulations to try to limit impacts of the chemical on non-target species. Yet the community science monitoring project found 13 occurrences of dicamba symptoms “within two miles of where [state] Plant Board inspectors collected pigweed tissue samples that tested positive for dicamba. This and the 198 dicamba misuse complaints received by the Plant Board . . . are evidence that dicamba use was widespread this summer despite the May 25 cutoff.”

Dr. Scheiman comments, on the Audubon of Arkansas website, “Spraying Dicamba on millions of acres of soybean and cotton is an uncontrolled experiment that puts sensitive habitats at unacceptable risk. In a landscape full of GMO crops, the atmospheric build-up of volatized dicamba may result in significant damage to our state natural areas, wildlife management areas, national wildlife refuges, family farms, and the wildlife they harbor.”

Complicating the picture of dicamba damage is the increasingly common practice of using both it and glyphosate on GE soy and cotton crops — as glyphosate has become more ineffective, given the development of some weeds’ resistance to the compound. In 2015, Monsanto began selling another iteration of its genetically engineered (GE) soybean seed, which is tolerant of both compounds.

But this seed-plus-double-herbicide protocol has exacerbated the drift problem and resultant plant damage, whether to crops, or to trees and landscapes on nearby private or public lands. Parcels affected have included university research test fields in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas, which have reported the same kinds of dicamba symptoms in their test plots from drift (which is a significant problem for their experimental work), and in parks and along public ways in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Recent research shows that the addition of glyphosate to dicamba herbicides increased concentrations of dicamba in the air by as much as nine times those of dicamba alone.

As Beyond Pesticides noted in its July coverage of that research, “exposure to either herbicide poses . . . health risk[s,] and both have been linked to diseases such as cancer. These herbicides also pose a threat to pollinators, especially when drift occurs. Increasing the volatility of dicamba with the addition of summer heat and glyphosate will only increase the spread of the herbicide, resulting in more crop damage, pollinator deaths, and human health concerns. While risks to public health and the environment increase, these new formulations are certain to fail as weeds will, as they have in the past, adapt.”

A number of lawsuits have been brought over this issue of dicamba drift and its resultant harms, including a class action suit. In 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced label changes (to “restricted use”) for dicamba products, which aimed to reduce the huge drift issue that causes such damage to contiguous land and crops. In January 2018, following on a huge grassroots effort by Beyond Pesticides and other advocates, the Arkansas state Plant Board instituted a temporary ban on agricultural use of dicamba in agriculture from mid-April through late October of that year. The Arkansas Legislative Council (which by statute acts as a state decision-making body when the legislature is not in session), went on to make that ban official. The moves were attempts to rein in the rampant level of drift, crop damage, and health impacts Arkansans had experienced from the herbicide. Monsanto sued in Arkansas State Circuit Court in 2018 to stop the ban, but lost in that effort.

Then in late 2018 — in apparent obeisance to the agrochemical industry — EPA approved continued use of dicamba. Beyond Pesticides reported at the time: “On October 31, EPA announced changes to dicamba’s registration. Rather than respond to the results of a study performed in coordination with Bayer’s Monsanto, and agreed upon by officials within the agency, Acting EPA Administrator Wheeler decided to ignore adverse impacts to farmers and nontarget species, in favor of the chemical industry. . . . This decision raises a litany of [concerns about] structural problems within the pesticide registration process. Mixtures and synergy are not adequately tested. Inert ingredients are not disclosed. As exemplified in this instance, pesticide producers submit their own studies to EPA in order to support the registration of a product [in] which they have a vested economic interest. Many pesticides, including GE dicamba products . . . are registered conditionally without required health and environmental safety information. . . . Advocates see this action by top-level officials in the Trump Administration as political meddling with a scientific process already structurally deficient, seriously jeopardizing the health and well-being of U.S. residents and the environment. This action is part of a pattern of the Trump administration’s EPA head ignoring the agency’s science.”

As Trump EPA officials continue to roll back and subvert regulations designed to protect the public and the environment, and to work with industry to subvert the agency’s own scientific findings, greater numbers of consumers are changing their purchasing decisions to buy organic foods and other organic products. Marketplace choices signal to producers what the public is willing to purchase, so these choices are an immediate way for the public to protect itself from the risks imposed by regulators’ failures and to give producers feedback. In addition, upset about the way the pesticide industry and EPA collude to manipulate or ignore science in the pesticide review process can be transformed into action. One place to begin is at the local level to eliminate toxic pesticides from your community.

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

Source: https://ar.audubon.org/sites/default/files/static_pages/attachments/audubon_arkansass_dicamba_symptomology_monitoring_report.pdf

(Beyond Pesticides, September 12, 2019) This September, adults will join in a global climate strike spurred by the Fridays for Future school climate strike movement.

Environmentalists around the world are galvanizing the public to participate in youth-led disruption in order to bring attention to the climate crisis. U.S. strike demands include a Green New Deal, respect for indigenous land and sovereignty, environmental justice, protecting biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. The strike will kick off on Friday, September 20 and actions will continue until the next Friday, September 27.

Fridays for Future started when then 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began striking in 2018 in front of the Riksdag – the Swedish parliament. She was inspired by U.S. teens who refused to go back to school and instead organized a massive national protest for gun control after the Parkland, Florida shooting. Ms. Thunberg gained publicity and captured a global audience with her clear voice and piercing castigation of adults in power who, “are sh–ting on my future.” Ms. Thunberg has, among other diagnoses, Asperger Syndrome. She attributes her ability to articulate the climate crisis to her capacity to think differently and see things in “black and white.” In an interview with TIME Magazine, she stated, “The climate crisis is, in some ways, black and white. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t, either we prevent setting off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t.” Fridays for Future has become a weekly, international phenomenon. Ms. Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

In May of 2019, Ms. Thunberg and other activists issued a request for adults to join on September 20. “We feel a lot of adults haven’t quite understood that we young people won’t hold off the climate crisis ourselves. Sorry if this is inconvenient for you. But this is not a single-generation job. It’s humanity’s job,” they stated, “So this is our invitation. Starting on Friday 20 September we will kick-start a week of climate action with a worldwide strike for the climate. We’re asking adults to step up alongside us.”

The U.S. Youth Climate Strike, a coalition of eight national youth-led climate groups, recently released their demands. In full, they are:

• A Green New Deal
  • Transform our economy to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030 and phase out all fossil fuel extraction through a just and equitable transition, creating millions of good jobs
  • A halt to all leasing and permitting for fossil fuel extraction, processing and infrastructure projects immediately
• Respect of Indigenous Land and Sovereignty
  • Honor the treaties protecting Indigenous lands, waters, and sovereignty by the immediate halt of all construction, leasing, and permitting for resource extraction, processing and infrastructure projects affecting or on Indigenous lands
  • Recognize the Rights of Nature into law to protect our sacred ecosystems and align human law with natural law to ban resource extraction in defense of our environment and people
• Environmental Justice
  • A transition that invests in prosperity for communities on the frontlines of poverty and pollution
  • Welcoming those displaced by the cumulative effects of the climate crisis, economic inequality, violence, and lack of opportunity
• Protection and Restoration of Biodiversity
  • Protection and restoration of 50% of the world’s lands and oceans including a halt to all deforestation by 2030
• Implementation of Sustainable Agriculture
  • Investment in farmers and regenerative agriculture and an end to subsidies for industrial agriculture

Beyond Pesticides is supporting the global climate strike because toxic pesticides contribute to the climate crisis and mass extinction, and organic agriculture is part of the solution. If the U.S. is to meet the demand of protecting and restoring biodiversity, that must include a paradigm shift regarding indiscriminate, poisonous chemicals that leach away from their intended purposes and destroy life. Sustainable agriculture is not compatible with the continued use of toxic chemicals. The demand for regenerative agriculture motivates Beyond Pesticides to note that organic agriculture is regenerative, and the use of toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers inhibits soil’s ability to capture carbon. The work of Beyond Pesticides stemmed from a commitment to farmworker justice, a frontline community to pesticide pollution and poisoning – the demand for environmental justice must include farmworkers.

If you are inspired to stand up and join young people in the global climate strike, you can find local events in your area. If there is not an event in your area, you can start your own. Want to join Beyond Pesticides in the strike in Washington, DC? Email [email protected].

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

(Beyond Pesticides, September 11, 2019) Germany is the latest entity to take action on getting glyphosate-based pesticides out of the marketplace. Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that, beginning in 2020, the country will phase out herbicides that contain glyphosate by the end of 2023. The phase-out will occur through a series of scheduled reductions in amounts allowed for use, with a goal of a 75% reduction over the next four years. The announcement comes after “nation-wide protests and demands from [Merkel’s] junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, for more decisive action on environmental issues.” This action stands in telling contrast to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) repeated failures to protect people, ecosystems, and our food supply, from this toxic compound.

The German government also plans to oppose any European Union (EU) request for renewal of licensing of these herbicides, according to the environment ministry. Bayer AG, maker of glyphosate-based herbicides and owner of original manufacturer Monsanto, has pushed back, saying that the government is “getting ahead of itself” by banning glyphosate-based herbicides prior to any decision by the relevant EU authority, and that EU laws disallow unilateral decisions by member states. (Pesticide licensing decisions lie with EU governance in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU, rather than with EU member countries.)

Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner emphasized that, although glyphosate products are currently legal under EU law (until December of 2022), German farming policies will continue to become “greener.” Germany’s Environment Minister, Svenja Schulze, said at a news conference in Berlin, “I don’t expect that there will be a majority anywhere in the EU for glyphosate after 2022.” The government’s move is particularly noteworthy because Monsanto, which developed glyphosate and marketed it as the ubiquitous and infamous Roundup herbicide, was bought in 2018 by Bayer — a German company. This development adds to the uphill slog the company faces in keeping its products viable, given the recent plethora of developments related to the toxic compound.

Monsanto’s patent on glyphosate expired in 2015, so dozens of other chemical companies, including BASF and Dow Agrosciences, now market herbicides based on this active ingredient; they are the most commonly applied herbicides worldwide. Concern about glyphosate-based pesticides swelled when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen. Beyond Pesticides has covered the relationship of glyphosate (and the adjuvant ingredients in formulations) to cancer, endocrine disruption, reproduction, and renal and hepatic damage, not to mention its toxicity to fish and other aquatic organisms.

Contrary to scientific consensus and to the IARC’s conclusions, EPA has decided that glyphosate formulations are “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” as it posited in a decision announced in May 2019. EPA took this step even in the face of an April 2019 report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) — an agency of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — which evidenced findings that support glyphosate’s carcinogenicity.

Among the cascade of developments since IARC’s designation have been the more than 13,000 lawsuits brought against Monsanto/Bayer. The premier one of those, which has helped catalyze a veritable tsunami of others, was the suit in which California groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson prevailed in his contention that his occupational exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup had caused him to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). The plaintiff was awarded $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages by a jury in California State Superior Court in San Francisco County; Judge Suzanne Bolanos later upheld the verdict but reduced the punitive amount to $39 million, for a total award of $78 million. The first glyphosate case in federal court was decided in March 2019 in favor of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman, who also developed NHL after decades of mixing and using Roundup on their extensive home property; the jury in that case awarded $5 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages. As noted, there is a very long queue of other plaintiffs bringing suit related to the harms of glyphosate exposure.

EPA’s intransigence on the glyphosate issue is underscored with every effort by other entities to recognize glyphosate’s health and environmental threats, and to rein in use of the toxic chemical. In addition to Germany’s announcement, some of those recent efforts include: a 2016 call by scientists to reconsider permitting of the compound; a 2019 University of California ban on use of glyphosate on its 10 campuses; a major pesticide supplier’s discontinuing sales of glyphosate products because its insurer, in the face of that tsunami of litigation, refused to insure the company if it continued sales; a bill passed in July 2019 by Austria’s lower house of parliament banning all glyphosate uses; bans instituted in August 2019 by 20 French mayors in their municipalities in defiance of federal regulations; and a French court’s January 2019 yanking of the license for a Roundup product. Just days ago, 16 stakeholders — health, environmental, farmer, and farmworker communities — called for EPA to remove glyphosate from the marketplace. These stakeholderss cite the critical mass of high-profile lawsuits, environmental impacts, increasing reports of weed resistance, and growing public concern over the health effects of glyphosate in their comments on EPA’s interim reregistration review decision for the chemical.

Advocates say that EPA has a dismal record on glyphosate-based formulations — and on many other pesticides. This record has been more extreme during the tenure of the Trump administration, which has since 2017 worked to loosen and/or revoke regulation it perceives as “unfriendly” to industry. But EPA has for many more years been inadequate to the task of protecting the public and the environment from the compound’s impacts. Beyond the current administration’s industry-friendly machinations, Beyond Pesticides has noted and explained EPA’s failures as, fundamentally, basic inadequacies of the risk assessment paradigm EPA uses for regulating toxic chemicals.

That paradigm arises from the overarching pesticide law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). One area of inadequacy lies in its distinctions between “active” ingredients (such as glyphosate) and “inert” ingredients, the latter of which get inadequate review compared to that for “active” ingredients. Inert ingredients are not required to be listed on product labels because they are considered “proprietary” manufacturer information, a concerning lack of transparency for the public. EPA’s assessment strategy is not “holistic,” but instead, employs a chemical-by-chemical approach.

Further, the agency depends in significant part on industry-generated research in its regulatory decisions. It also does not systematically address evidence of epigenetic/multi-generational impacts of, for example, glyphosate exposures. Another failure of the regulatory paradigm, as set out in Beyond Pesticides’ report, Thinking Holistically When Making Land Management Decisions, is the “failure of the current laws and regulatory review to consider complex ecological impacts of pesticides. These effects are not captured in current ecological risk assessments, even though interactions among pesticides and their cumulative impacts are devastating to ecological balance and health.”

The gaining momentum against use of glyphosate-based herbicides is good news. The ultimate solution is, of course, ceasing to use toxic chemicals for most pest issues in agriculture, land management, and building contexts. Organic, mechanical, and biologic approaches are available for most of the problems industry wants to fix chemically. Please stay engaged and informed on these issues with Beyond Pesticides’ many resources, including its Daily News Blog, its journal, Pesticides and You, its Programs and Resources web pages, and its newest initiative: Organic Eye — a Beyond Pesticides watchdog agency that will focus on defending the time-honored philosophy and legal definition of organic farming and food production.

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

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/germany-cabinet-aims-to-reduce-glyphosate-usage-in-coming-years

(Beyond Pesticides, September 10, 2019) Monarch populations on both coasts of North America are in serious decline, and new research indicates that same chemicals killing bees may be responsible for similar impacts to these charismatic butterflies.  Published in the journal Insects by Washington State University researcher David James, PhD, the study is the first to investigate how adult monarchs react to chronic, low dose exposure to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid. Many are calling the decline of pollinators and other insect species a form of apocalypse and mass extinction. What’s happening with insects must be considered a warning for species higher up in the food chain; it’s therefore critical that our observations of the natural world lead to corrective action before it’s too late.

Monarchs in the study were reared from untreated milkweed plants in Washington State in 2018, totaling 40 adult butterflies. Eleven males and the same number of females were assigned to be treated with the insecticide, while the remaining butterflies acted as a control. Both groups were provided a sugar solution, with the treated group’s solution containing 23.5 parts per billion imidacloprid, a dose similar to what a butterfly could encounter in a real world scenario.

Monarchs that fed on contaminated sugar solution experienced a significantly shortened lifespan. By day 22, 78.8% of monarchs in the treatment group were dead, compared to 20% mortality within the control group. The treatment group showed marked declines before death – at day 12 displaying uncoordinated flapping of their wings and uncontrolled body vibrations that prevented them from flying.

Monarchs migrate north to south across the North American continent. But not one individual butterfly makes the journey, it takes several generations of monarchs to complete a single migration south to breeding grounds in California, Texas and Mexico. A shortened lifespan therefore has significant consequences for how successful this journey will be. “The potential widespread impact of imidacloprid-contaminated crop and wild flower nectar, may be a significant driver of monarch population decline,” the research concludes.

In the 1990s, the eastern monarch population numbered nearly one billion butterflies, and the western population numbered more than 1.2 million. Last year’s winter counts recorded around 93 million eastern monarchs and fewer than 200,000 western monarchs. Imagine such a loss scaled to human proportions. It would be, “so staggering that in human-population terms it would be like losing every living person in the United States except those in Florida and Ohio,” said senior scientist at Center for Biological Diversity Tierra Curry.

Previous studies, one in 2015 and another in 2016, found monarch larvae to be affected by contamination of milkweed plants by neonicotinoid insecticides. Milkweed is the only plant monarchs will lay their eggs on, and the only plant caterpillars are able to feed upon when they’re born. Recent research finds that areas where milkweed often grows leads to contamination totaling 14 different agricultural pesticides. And for monarchs, even finding a contaminated plant is increasingly difficult, as genetically engineered agriculture has led to the near-eradication of its primary food source.

This is unconscionable. It is not that we lack the tools to understand the magnitude of this crisis. It is not that we lack solutions. It is that we have stood by for the last 30 years and permitted not only monarchs, but other pollinators, and an entire class of species, the insects, to reach catastrophic levels of decline. Saving monarchs, bees, pollinators, and the insect world will not be easy, but unless we undertake this charge human civilization may follow in their decline.

Organize your friends, neighbors and community; tell us you’re fighting for local pesticide reform.  The stakes are too high to continue sitting behind a computer, reading article after article and falling into doom and gloom. We understand the crisis – we know what the solutions are. Scientists, whether professional or citizen, must translate their anger and upset over the world today into change for the better. It is only through informed and active citizenry that we’ll save pollinators and stave of these apocalyptic scenarios.

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

Source: Insects

(Beyond Pesticides, September 9, 2019) New rules proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) will weaken protections for both foreign and domestic farmworkers who grow and harvest the nation’s food. The changes would affect the H-2A guestworker program, which permits U.S. farms to temporarily hire foreign workers. Despite rapid increases in foreign agricultural workers over the past several years, the new rules would expand the program and make it easier for agrichemical companies to exploit foreign labor, driving down working conditions and pay for all farmworkers.

Tell Congress to stop DOL from weakening farmworker protections.

DOL’s proposed rules would eliminate the obligation for growers to provide priority to U.S. farmworkers during the first half of a work contract, and extend the ability for growers to bring in foreign labor throughout the growing season. Growers would also be able to change job terms and work locations in the middle of a growing season. This would increase job insecurity for U.S. farmworkers, who are already facing tough economic conditions.

As described by Farmworker Justice, “The Trump Administration seeks to guarantee agribusiness unlimited access to a captive workforce that is deprived of economic bargaining power and the right to vote. The proposal epitomizes the Trump Administration’s hostility to immigrants. At the same time that the Administration seeks to transform the farm labor force of 2.4 million people into a workforce of 21st-century indentured servants, it is demonizing hard-working immigrants and ratcheting up cruel, heartless and counterproductive arrests and deportations, targeting many of our nation’s current experienced and valued farmworkers.”

Farmworkers deserve respect. DOL must drop this anti-worker proposal.

The rules as currently written would eliminate the already meager benefits guest workers receive when working in the U.S.

Changes would affect:

• The way foreign workers are reimbursed for travel, shifting more of the burden onto their shoulders.
• How wages are calculated, undermining the way the minimum wages are determined in a region by replacing a simple survey with complex calculations.
• The way housing is provided, permitting employers to “self-inspect” housing, despite widespread reports of substandard living conditions for guest workers.

Tell Congress it’s time to stop denying fairness and justice to farmworkers and their families!

The average life expectancy for a farmworker is 49 years, compared to 78 for the general population. This is similar to the life expectancy of individuals living in the 1850s. With this information, it’s clear that farmworkers are giving years of their lives to put food on the tables of countless Americans.

Letter to Congress       

New rules proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) would weaken protections for both foreign and domestic farmworkers who grow and harvest the nation’s food. Despite rapid increases in foreign agricultural workers over the past several years, the rules proposed by DOL would expand the guestworker program and make it easier for agrichemical companies to exploit foreign labor, therefore driving down working conditions and pay for all farmworkers.

DOL’s proposed rules would eliminate the obligation for growers to provide priority to U.S. farmworkers during the first half of a work contract, and extend the ability for growers to bring in foreign labor throughout the growing season. Growers would also be able to change job terms and work location in the middle of a growing season. This would increase job insecurity for U.S. farmworkers, who are already facing tough economic conditions. The changes would also affect the way foreign workers are reimbursed for travel, shifting more of the burden onto their shoulders. Determining “prevailing wage” would be changed from a simple survey to a complex calculation. And employers would be permitted to “self-inspect” housing, despite widespread reports of substandard living conditions.

The average life expectancy for a farmworker is 49 years, compared to 78 for the general population. This is similar to the life expectancy of individuals living in the 1850s. It is clear that farmworkers are giving years of their lives to put food on the tables of countless Americans.

In the face of administrative attempts to weaken farmworker protections, please put pressure on the Department of Labor to rescind these anti-worker rules. It’s time we improve the lives of farmworkers, rather than continuing to subject them to low pay and toxic work environment

(Beyond Pesticides, September 6, 2019) Heavy rains in urban areas bring together a toxic mixture of man-made chemicals which make their way to waterbodies at levels that can harm aquatic life, according to new research published by a team of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Although U.S. government agencies continue to accurately identify chemical hazards in the everyday environment, precaution and action on these emerging threats has not materialized. In the face of important federal data without subsequent federal action, it is up to states and local communities to regulate the discharge of toxic pesticides and other chemicals that ultimately flow into rivers, lakes, and streams communities rely on for fishing, swimming, and drinking water.

Researchers aimed to provide a national snapshot of the contents of urban stormwater discharge by sampling 21 sites in 17 states over the course of 50 rainfall events. Samples were taken at sites where stormwater is discharged from buildings, parking lots, roads, and other urban landscapes before making its way into ground or surface water. The team tested for 438 different compounds, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other industrial chemicals.

Nearly 50% (215) of the 438 chemicals tested for were found at least once during the course of the study. Most sites contained 73 or more chemicals per site, with pesticides being the most frequently detected chemical group, accounting for 35% of all detections.

The following chemicals were what the researches deemed “pervasive across all samples:” DEET, nicotine, cotinine (nicotine metabolite), caffeine, carbendazim (a metabolite of the pesticide benomyl), methyl-1H-benzotriazole (industrial corrosion inhibitor), creosol (wood preservative), fipronil, bisphenol A (BPA), pluoranthene (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, PAH), and pyrene (PAH). Each of these chemicals were found in over 90% of samples tested.

Although most closely associated with harm to pollinators, fipronil and the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid pose significant risks to aquatic organisms. Health Canada instituted a ban on imidacloprid in response to these concerns. Backing up past data, the present study found imidacloprid to be widespread at levels of significant concern to aquatic life. Nearly 75% of imidacloprid detections exceeded EPA’s benchmark for chronic impacts to aquatic life, while 44% of fipronil samples surpassed this limit.

Researchers also suspect that, due to the frequent detection of pharmaceuticals like metformin (prescribed for diabetes) and acetaminophen, human waste is a component of urban water runoff, resultant from leaking, aging infrastructure. Other notable frequent detections included several industrial PAHs known to cause cancer, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and highly hazardous pesticides such as the wood preservative pentachlorophenol and long-banned chlordane.

“Results indicate that urban stormwater is transporting an extensive mixture of organic contaminants with highly variable individual-component concentrations,” the authors write.  “The organic chemicals detected in stormwater cause concern for aquatic organisms because many of the chemicals persisting in the environment are known carcinogens (PAHs and PCBs), bioactive (pesticides and pharmaceuticals), or hormonally active (biogenic hormones).”

While some may dismiss the toxic soup flowing out of urban areas as de minimis in amount and thus not a cause for concern, the report specifically notes how the wide range of mixtures detected presents novel risks to health. “The effects from exposure to complex organic and inorganic contaminant mixtures at low concentrations are poorly understood, and a range of potential mixture effects are possible even when each individual chemical is present in a mixture at low concentrations determined not to have individual effects,” the study notes.

While government scientists continue to publish concerning research on the ubiquitous presence of numerous highly hazardous man-made chemicals in the environment, government regulators have yet to take actions that would rein in their use. In their absence, it is critical that local communities fill the gap. Pesticides are a low hanging fruit that can be restricted from use on publicly owned property by local governments. Education campaigns and a sustained fight against state preemption can work to expand these bans to private property. Any amount of source reduction will help in easing the multiple stressors the modern industrialized world is placing on aquatic habitats and drinking water supplies.

Take the pledge to get active in your community, and fight for pesticide reform today. After signing you’ll receive resources to help you make your case to your local leaders. For further assistance, contact Beyond Pesticides at [email protected] or 202-543-5450.  And for more information on the threats pesticides pose to US waterways, see Beyond Pesticides Threatened Waters webpage.

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

Source: Environmental Science and Technology (peer-reviewed journal)

(Beyond Pesticides, September 5, 2019)
USDA Failures Necessitate Independent Corporate and Governmental Oversight
WASHINGTON, DC, Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, DC-based public interest organization founded in 1981 to advocate for healthy air, water, land, and food by eliminating the use of toxic pesticides and advancing organic practices, has announced the formation of its new investigative arm, OrganicEye. The watchdog agency will focus on defending the time-honored philosophy and legal definition of organic farming and food production.

“Trusted certified organic production must continue to offer a healthier marketplace alternative and critical environmental protection,” stated Jay Feldman, Executive Director of Beyond Pesticides and former National Organic Standards Board member.

As organic agriculture and food marketing has grown into an over $50 billion industry, corporate agribusiness has influenced USDA to shift primary organic production from family-scale farms to large livestock factories, and allow massive hydroponic/soilless greenhouses and fraudulent imports – all devastating to ethical farmers, businesses, and consumers.

“We are happy to announce the hiring of Mark Kastel to serve as the Director of OrganicEye,” Mr. Feldman said. Mr. Kastel, one of the founders of The Cornucopia Institute, a venerable organic farm-policy research group, brings over 30 years of diverse involvement in the organic industry. He has worked as a certified agricultural producer, business development consultant, and registered lobbyist, and is one of the most experienced independent fraud investigators in the organic industry. He has advanced major enforcement actions leading to decertification, fines, modifications to ongoing operations, cessation of organic fraud by international crime syndicates, and millions of dollars in settlements of consumer fraud class action lawsuits.

With Mr. Kastel’s deep roots in the farming community and high degree of respect among key organic business leaders, we will amplify the voices of committed organic stakeholders who share our strong belief that continued growth of trusted organic

practices is essential to solving escalating environmental and health problems, from the climate crisis to the insect apocalypse,” said Mr. Feldman.

Mr. Kastel stated,” We launch this project with the backdrop of thousands of cases of fraud submitted to the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), a number of independent audits by the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) criticizing their weak oversight of certifiers and poor record of bringing fraudulent operations to justice.” A recent legally mandated peer review also sharply criticized USDA oversight of documented cases of illegal organic certificates, domestic fraud, and imports laundering conventional commodities as organic.

In their first official action, OrganicEye has sent formal letters urging the OIG and Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate NOP’s recent enforcement failures.

With 113 years of organic industry-related experience, the OrganicEye team is also joined by Terry Shistar, PhD, an ecologist and one of the nation’s top experts in analyzing synthetic substances used or proposed for use in organic production.

OrganicEye has established a toll-free hotline, 1-844-EYE-TIPS (844-393-8477), to gather confidential tips from the public on threats to organic integrity.

For more information, visit www.organiceye.org.

Contact:
Mark A. Kastel, 608-625-2042 / [email protected]
Jay Feldman, 202-255-4296 / [email protected]

[Long Version of Press Release (with more details)]

Veteran Policy Experts Form Organic Industry Watchdog Agency
USDA Failures Necessitate Independent Corporate and Governmental Oversight

WASHINGTON, DC — Beyond Pesticides, a public interest organization founded to advocate for healthy air, water, land, and food by eliminating the use of toxic pesticides, and advance healthy practices, has announced the formation of an investigative arm, OrganicEye. The new watchdog agency will focus on defending the “time-honored philosophy and legal definition of organic farming and food production” from USDA’s systemic failure to protect the interests of organic farmers, ethical businesses, and consumers.

As organic agriculture and food marketing has grown into an over $50 billion industry, corporate agribusiness has used its influence within USDA—and many independent certification agencies it oversees—to shift primary organic production from family-scale farms to large livestock factories, massive hydroponic/soilless greenhouses, and imports that have proven less than trustworthy.

“Certified organic production must continue to offer a viable alternative for shoppers, who want to protect the environment and provide healthier food for their family—with industry stakeholders stepping up to rein in the wholesale abuse that is an attack on the working definition and integrity of organics,” stated Jay Feldman, Executive Director of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington-based public interest group.

“We are happy to announce that Beyond Pesticides has hired Mark Kastel to direct the new project,” Mr. Feldman continued. Mr. Kastel, one of the founders of The Cornucopia Institute, a venerable organic farm-policy research group, brings over 30 years of diverse involvement in the industry. His background includes work as a certified agricultural producer, business development consultant, and registered lobbyist, making Mr. Kastel one of the most experienced independent fraud investigators in the organics industry.

Research and public pressure spearheaded by Mr. Kastel has compelled USDA to take a number of major enforcement actions resulting in decertification, fines, modifications to ongoing operations, and millions of dollars in settlements of class action lawsuits related to consumer fraud. His efforts have also been instrumental in helping bust large international crime syndicates laundering conventional commodities as “organic.”

“Mark is highly respected in the organic farming community, and by key business leaders who walk their talk, while at the same time feared and reviled by powerful interests profiting from the weakening of organic standards,” Mr. Feldman added. “With Mark on board, we will amplify the voices of committed organic stakeholders who share our sense of urgency to stop the degradation of the environment and health, with organic as a critical piece of the solution,” said Mr. Feldman.

Mr. Kastel, the new Director of OrganicEye, stated, ”You don’t have to take my word for the inadequacy of enforcement actions by the USDA’s National Organic Program. With the backdrop of thousands of cases of fraud submitted to the NOP, there is a legacy of independent audits by the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) criticizing their oversight of certifiers and poor record of bringing fraudulent operations to justice.”

In addition to the OIG audits, a recent legally mandated peer review sharply criticized the USDA organic program for grossly inadequate staffing and management overseeing the burgeoning number of documented cases of illegal organic certificates, domestic fraud, and imports laundering conventional commodities as organic.

In their first official action OrganicEye has sent formal letters to the OIG and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting an investigation of a recent incident where a large shipment of imported grain from Turkey was identified as fraudulent and the USDA National Organic Program failed, when they had the opportunity, to collaborate with other federal and state agencies in quarantining the shipment and testing the cargo prior to unloading.

The tip on the allegedly fraudulent shipment came from an authoritative industry source and was relayed by the Organic Farmers Association. Instead of collaborating with agricultural regulators in North Carolina, and federal Customs and Border Protection agents, NOP chose to rely exclusively on paperwork from the certifier.

“Turkey is a country with past documented, wholesale fraud in the organic arena, and the certifier was currently under investigation by USDA, and shortly thereafter lost its accreditation,” said Mr. Kastel, “It’s unconscionable that, at a time when the credibility of the organic seal is in jeopardy, NOP would not choose to take decisive action in this matter.”

Along with Mr. Kastel and Mr. Feldman, a 40-year veteran of organic policy work and former member of USDA’s National Organic Standards Board, the team is joined by Terry Shistar, PhD, one of the nation’s top experts in analyzing synthetic and non-organic materials proposed for use in organic production. The depth and breadth of the leadership at OrganicEye, with cumulatively over 110 years of organic industry-related experience, could very well be unparalleled in the public interest sector.

In addition to its organic gumshoe work, OrganicEye will continue the tradition that Beyond Pesticides has established in commonly being the only public interest group thoroughly analyzing every single synthetic and non-organic material petition for use in organic farming or food production before the National Organic Standards Board.

“Examining materials petitions will be a continuing, in-depth commitment. Our board members and staff have been deep in the organic weeds since the beginning—from helping to write the Organic Foods Production Act, to examining the USDA’s draft regulations, word-by-word, to supporting organic farmer Arthur Harvey in his successful court challenge of USDA’s misinterpretations of the law,” Dr. Shistar stated. “Investigative scrutiny by OrganicEye will give the organic community one more tool for ensuring that consumers and growers derive the benefit of the law.”

In addition to the scores of industry “intelligence agents” with whom Mr. Kastel has worked over the past fifteen years as the organic industry’s best-known watchdog, OrganicEye has established a new toll-free hotline, 1-844-EYE-TIPS (844-393-8477), to help facilitate tips from the public.

“We are not in the rumor business. Intel has to be verified with additional witnesses, documentation, photographs, or other evidence,” Mr. Kastel added. “We encourage stakeholders to come forward if they have firsthand knowledge concerning fraud, which damages the value of the organic label for all those producing food in an honest and ethical manner.”

The organization emphatically stated that the identity of all whistleblowers and tipsters will be held in strict confidence.
For more information, visit www.organiceye.org.

-30-

OrganicEye endeavors to leverage the extensive experience of our management and staff in farm policy, scientific research, and political and marketplace education/advocacy, acting as corporate and governmental watchdogs, educating the public and preventing the erosion of the foundational precepts of the organic movement.

Founded in 1981, Beyond Pesticides (formerly National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., which works with allies in protecting public health and the environment to lead the transition to a world free of toxic pesticides. Organic is Beyond Pesticides.

(Beyond Pesticides, September 4, 2019) Sixteen organizations representing health, environmental, farmer, and farmworker communities joined together yesterday to call on EPA to remove glyphosate from the marketplace. The groups cite a combination of high-profile lawsuits, environmental impacts, increasing reports of weed resistance, and growing public concern over the health effects of glyphosate in their comments on EPA’s interim reregistration review decision for the chemical.

The comments warn that EPA is at risk of damaging the public’s trust in the agency’s review process for toxic pesticides. “EPA’s myopic review and response to the dangers posed by glyphosate does a disservice to American farmers, farmworkers, and commercial landscapers wishing to use least-toxic products that do not put them at risk of health impacts, and consumers aiming to make the safest choice in regards to what to feed their family and how to manage their yards,” the comments read.

The document likewise replies to EPA’s attacks against the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which determined glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental organisms. EPA has indicated that its process for evaluating glyphosate, “…is more transparent than IARC’s process” and that IARC’s “…conclusions are not well described.” The comments cite IARC’s response to these criticisms, which discuss the need to avoid “…interference from vested interests” and the ability to “…scrutinize the basis of its decisions rather than relying on appeals to authority or trust.”

The comments take aim at EPA’s attempt to sow doubt in IARC’s process, writing, “It is also unacceptable for the agency to attack highly esteemed scientific institutions like the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which has been at the forefront of scientific determinations on carcinogenicity since its founding prior to EPA in 1965.”

EPA has refused to test end-use glyphosate products sold on store shelves, saying “…though the Agency evaluates the product components, long term testing of individual products is not required.” Under federal pesticide law, EPA is only required to test the active ingredient in pesticide formulations. Ingredients listed as “inert” on a pesticide label can be just as toxic as the active ingredient, but are not tested alongside the active ingredient and are considered confidential business information by pesticide companies. The groups “…urge the agency to employ due diligence and complete a full evaluation of all glyphosate-containing pesticide products registered by EPA.”

Groups say that in order to regain public trust EPA must conduct full-formulation testing on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity and other health effects, consider impacts to soil organisms, the human microbiome, and growing weed resistance to the chemical. “In the absence of this additional and necessary data, we urge the agency to revoke the registration of glyphosate and promote the wide range of non-toxic and least-toxic products and practices currently available, which can readily replace the use of this hazardous pesticide,” the comments read.

The following groups have signed on in support of these comments: Beyond Pesticides; Beyond Toxics; Central Maryland Beekeepers Association; Farmworker Association of Florida; Food and Water Watch; Friends of the Earth; Kansas Rural Center; Maryland Pesticide Education Network; National Family Farm Coalition; Northeast Organic Farming Association:Massachusetts Chapter;  Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides; Organic Consumers Association; People and Pollinators Action Network; Pesticide Action Network; Sierra Club; Toxic Free North Carolina.

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

Source: Beyond Pesticides’ Comments to EPA on Glyphosate

(Beyond Pesticides, September 3, 2019) Brazil’s environment is under siege, as President Jair Bolsonaro has approved hundreds of new toxic pesticides this year and gutted watchdog environment agencies. Among the many dreadful results, news reports indicate that between December 2018 and March 2019, Brazilian beekeepers found more than 500 million dead bees. As the Amazon burns, Indigenous activists are calling on the world to help, and Beyond Pesticides is responding by promoting a boycott started by a Swedish supermarket owner: #BoycottBrazilianFood.

Pledge to #BoycottBrazilianFood, and ask major U.S. supermarkets to do the same.

The Amazon rainforest is the world’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink, and home both to the planet’s richest biodiversity and approximately 400 indigenous tribes. The country has 2300 pesticides registered for use; a total of 290 new toxic pesticides have been approved as of late August 2019.

Swedish supermarket owner Johannes Cullberg started an international boycott in response to Brazil’s approval and use of hazardous pesticides in food production. #BoycottBrazilianFood began in June of 2019 when the total of newly registered pesticides stood at 197. Cullburg declared, “We need to stop (the president) Bolsonaro, he’s a maniac.” The boycott prompted a response from the Brazilian embassy, stating, “…the Embassy wishes to inform you that Brazil, despite being an agricultural powerhouse, is not the biggest user of pesticides. It is ranked 5th or 7th in the World, according to applicable parameters in pesticide studies,” and so on.

Cullberg responded, “I salute you for that fifth-runner up position in 2017, but it seems you might actually win in 2019.” The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility recorded 4,208 cases of pesticide poisoning and 355 deaths from agricultural chemicals in Brazil in 2016. Culberg contends, “These numbers are far from acceptable to me and should not be to anyone.”

Bolsonaro is insensitive to pleas regarding human or environmental rights. His campaign last year ran on a platform that touted protected lands as an obstacle to economic growth, and committed to removing barriers to commercial exploitation. This has led to more than 1,330 square miles of forest cover loss since Bolsonaro took office in January and the fires that we now see in the Amazon. Local mining groups are clashing with indigenous tribes for land, and there is a lack of enforcement because protective agencies have been crippled by budget cuts. Ewerton Marubo, an indigenous activist, stated bluntly, “Just imagine if all this is destroyed, if the government opens this area up. In two years it will all be gone. The wood will be gone. The fish will be gone. The rivers will all be polluted. All they want is to destroy.”

U.S. total imports of agricultural products from Brazil totaled $3.3 billion in 2018, our 10th largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories include: coffee, unroasted ($934 million), fruit & vegetable juices ($504 million), prepared meats ($281 million), tobacco ($211 million), and essential oils ($145 million).

A boycott of Brazilian food will weaken the industry that stands to gain from environmental exploitation and pesticide poisonings. Defund the destruction of the rainforest. Pledge to #BoycottBrazilianFood and share the message to friends and family today!

This message will be sent to:

• Whole Foods: CEO John Mackey: [email protected]
• Costco: CEO W. Craig Jelinek: [email protected]
• Kroger: CEO Rodney McMullen: [email protected]
• Albertsons (owns Safeway): CEO Vivek Sankaran [email protected]
• Ahold (owns Giant/Martins): CEO Nicholas Bertram [email protected]

Pledge to #BoycottBrazilianFood, and ask major U.S. supermarkets to do the same.

Pledge

Out of concern for pollinators, the Amazon rainforest, and the health and well-being of indigenous tribes and the people of Brazil, I will check the label of food products I purchase for country of origin and seek alternative products when I find the product was produced in Brazil. I will refuse to purchase Brazilian imported foods until the Bolsonaro government addresses the serious environmental concerns raised by beekeepers, indigenous tribes, and the international community. I pledge to encourage friends, family, and businesses where I shop to join me as I #BoycottBrazillianFood. I ask grocery chains to join in the boycott.

(Beyond Pesticides, August 30, 2019) The indictment of organophosphate pesticides gained more traction with the publication, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, of a new research study out of the University of California, Berkeley. The research, among the first to use advanced brain imaging to assess cortical activation, shows altered brain activity, during tasks that call on executive function, in teenagers from California’s Salinas Valley (the site of significant organophosphate use) whose mothers were exposed prenatally. The UC Berkeley study underscores the slow-motion calamity of the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) failure to ban the use of this class of pesticides, and of chlorpyrifos in particular, which compounds carry extreme risks for children. The effects of this prenatal exposure continue to unfold during children’s critical developmental periods.

Researchers used fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) imaging to monitor blood flow in the brains of the teens, 15–17, born and raised in the Salinas Valley. They used data from the California Pesticide Use Reporting program (which documents locations and times of pesticide spraying) to estimate the subjects’ mothers’ proximity to organophosphate (OP) applications during pregnancy. The subject adolescents — estimated to have relatively high levels of prenatal exposure to organophosphates — showed aberrant brain activity in executive function, attention, social cognition, and language comprehension, compared to their peers. The fNIRS found less blood flow to the frontal cortex during tasks using cognitive flexibility and visual working memory, and increased blood flow to the parietal and temporal lobes during tests of linguistic working memory.

The teens were part of the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a longitudinal study, begun two decades ago, that examines impacts of pesticides (and other environmental toxins) on children’s development. UC Berkeley’s Berkeley News reports, “Previous CHAMACOS work has linked prenatal organophosphate exposure with attention problems and lower IQ in children.”

Beyond Pesticides covered previous CHAMACOS work on health impacts of pesticides in the Salinas Valley: “Researchers looked at pregnant women living within one kilometer of agricultural fields where organophosphate pesticides were used. They found that at age 7, the children of those women had declines of approximately two IQ points and three verbal reasoning points per 522 pounds of pesticides applied nearby.”

Associate adjunct professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the new study, Sharon Sagiv, PhD, said, “These results are compelling, because they support what we have seen with our neuropsychological testing, which is that organophosphates impact the brain.” The seemingly odd results of both reduced and increased blood flow are apparently not entirely unusual; such patterns show up in conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and with Type 1 diabetes, according to Allan Reiss, co-author of the study, Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a professor of radiology at Stanford University.

He elaborates: “The brain has a remarkable ability to utilize compensatory mechanisms to counteract long-term insults. Higher activation may represent the recruitment and utilization of extra neural resources to address functional inefficiency related to a long-term insult, and lower activation, then, could be related to the eventual failure to recruit these resources after continued exposure or disease exhausts the brain’s ability to bring compensatory responses online.”

Organophosphates, which include chlorpyrifos, are the most commonly used class of insecticide in agriculture. They are endocrine disrupting compounds that can affect children’s neurodevelopment, possibly due to neurotoxicity induced by acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition, and may affect boys more than girls. Exposure to OPs is widespread and occurs primarily via ingesting food contaminated with OP residues, but those who work in or live proximate to agricultural sites are also exposed through residue on clothing and in households, and through drift from sprayed applications. In 2018, a group of leading toxics experts called for a ban on OPs, primarily because prenatal exposures, even at low levels, threaten children with cognitive and behavioral deficits, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Beyond Pesticides has called attention to the toxicity of organophosphates, and chlorpyrifos in particular, for many years. For example, in 2011, it noted links between organophosphate exposure and lowered IQ in children, and provided more evidence of risks of prenatal exposure and lower IQs in 2016. In 2018, it reported on the inadequacy of the evaluations used to justify EPA registration of chlorpyrifos — one in a series of examples of EPA’s poor oversight, corruption, and collaboration with industry to prioritize its concerns over the public’s safety and well-being.

The story of chlorpyrifos is illustrative. Pursuant to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, in 2015 EPA proposed a rule change revoking food residue tolerances of chlorpyrifos — a move that would effectively have banned use of the pesticide in agriculture (residential insecticide uses had been proscribed in 2000). Then, early in 2017, with a new administration in place, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed the agency’s own proposal to ban the pesticide — a decision that happened just weeks after Mr. Pruitt met with the head of Dow Chemical Company, maker of the compound. Mr. Pruitt then claimed, without scientific justification, that the science on chlorpyrifos was “unresolved” and said EPA would study the issue — with no planned action — until 2022.

Next, in the summer of 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued its decision in a suit, brought by a plethora of health, environmental, and labor groups represented by Earthjustice, asking that the 2017 Pruitt EPA order reversing the ban be vacated. (The attorneys general of New York, California, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, and Vermont also filed their own appeal calling for a ban.) The court ordered EPA to finalize its proposed ban on chlorpyrifos. In July 2019, EPA declined to do so and, rather than offer justification for why the pesticide should remain on the market, as the court had ordered it to do, EPA attacked the science the plaintiffs had urged EPA to review and consider as “not . . . valid, complete, and reliable.”

Scientists and many regulators understand that chlorpyrifos (and other organophosphate pesticides) need to come off the market altogether, for food and non-food uses. Most recently, Beyond Pesticides reported on an announcement, from the European Union and the European Food Safety Authority, that essentially said that chlorpyrifos should no longer be used. Given the current administration and its EPA actions, states have been pursuing bans and other constraining actions: Hawai’i banned chlorpyrifos more than a year ago, and New York and California followed suit in spring 2019.

Chlorpyrifos is one of many toxic pesticides that are central to conventional, chemical-intensive agricultural practices that threaten human health and the environment. Beyond Pesticides has long sought a broad transition to organic practices, which disallow the use of toxic pesticides and synthetic inputs, and enact a systems-based approach that is protective of health and the environment. A transition to organic advances a viable, scalable path forward for growing food.

Clearly, members of the public cannot rely on this EPA to act in the best interests of children, all people, and the environment. But they can work to ban chlorpyrifos and other neurotoxic insecticides in a number of ways:
• learn more about impacts of pesticides and related developments with the Beyond Pesticides factsheet, Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix, and through its Daily News Blog and journal, Pesticides and You
• help support an organic agricultural system that does not rely on toxic chemicals by buying organic whenever possible

• insist that purveyors provide organic foods
• advocate for organic with elected officials and advocacy organizations in local communities and at the state level

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

Sources: https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/08/27/prenatal-pesticide-exposure-linked-to-changes-in-teens-brain-activity/ and https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/08/20/1903940116

(Beyond Pesticides, August 29, 2019) The Peoples Garden, located on the grounds on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on the national mall, has been renamed and remodeled to highlight genetically engineered (GE) crops and farming techniques that directly counter the organic movement. The new exhibit, entitled “Voice of the Farmer,” is part of the “Trust in Food” initiative of Farm Journal magazine. This marks a continuation of trends in the Trump administration: pushing for GE/GMOs and pesticides.

Since 2009, the USDA Peoples Garden has highlighted organic agriculture. It was originally envisioned by the Obama administration as a place where visitors could learn about what differentiates organic from conventional chemical-intensive food production, and the practices used in organic land management. The garden had several different exhibits: the Three Sisters Garden, the People’s Garden Apiary, three green roofs, a certified organic vegetable garden, a tool shed with a rain barrel and green roof, wildlife and pollinator friendly landscaping, and a bat house. With an emphasis on sustainable gardening practices such as cover cropping, storm water collection, and composting, the garden served as a headquarters for numerous Peoples Gardens founded between 2009 and 2016. The People’s Garden and other projects of the Obama administration, such as their personal White House organic garden (not advertised as organic after push-back from the pesticide industry) and highlight the organic movement and the importance of organic practices to critical environmental and public health protection.

However, over the course of Trump’s years in office he has made strides to undo this work and instead highlight GMO crops. The new garden, “Voice of the Farmer,” takes the emphasis off of garden practices and instead focuses on industrial agriculture under the guise of connecting Americans with their food system. The new garden features screen based kiosks, a mobile app, and an interactive website to show videos of farmers extolling technology and pesticides.

The modules on the website provide very one- sided information combining images of clip-art cows and pigs with farmers discussing their practices. While one module discusses the importance of soil health and acknowledges that soil health can be destroyed in minutes, there is no mention of the role that glyphosate and other pesticides play in this process. While the module discusses in-depth the importance of cover crops, it fails to mention the importance of other sustainable and organic practices, such as soil testing, use of compost, and the importance of a healthy soil microbiome. Another module highlights seed and herbicide technology, claiming that these innovations have been central to “reducing the use of natural resources and creating an abundant, affordable food supply” with  no mention of the downsides of pesticide drift or the increasing toxicity of U.S. agriculture to insects. Additionally, these products are not in fact essential to creating a food supply, as seen in numerous organic farms.

This shift in garden emphasis from organics to conventional large-scale agriculture is especially worrisome considering that an estimated 25 million tourists visit the area annually. That means that in the two years the exhibit will be on display, up to 50 million people will visit and interact with this new “farm” that hails pesticides and GMO seeds as integral to agriculture.

Beyond Pesticides supports the transition away from these conventional practices and toxic pesticides toward organic practices that promote plant resilience and decrease the need for toxic chemical use. As U.S. agriculture becomes increasingly toxic with increasingly lax regulations and the continued use of pesticides and other chemical-intensive practices, it is important to consume with a conscious and go organic in your own garden.

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

Source: Food Politics

(Beyond Pesticides, August 28, 2019) Salt marshes, areas of coastal grassland regularly flooded by saltwater, provide a major global service by sequestering and storing carbon in the form of organic matter. However, research finds that nitrate from synthetic fertilizers found in agricultural runoff could change the microbial composition of the salt marshes to encourage organic matter decomposition and, therefore, carbon release versus capture. The study, “Nitrate addition stimulates microbial decomposition of organic matter in salt marsh sediments,” was published in Global Change Biology.

Researchers from Massachusetts conducted their study on salt marsh sediments located in Plum Island Sound, MA. They took three core samples from the site, sectioning each one into shallow, mid, and deep sediments. The researchers set out to determine “the role of nitrate as an electron acceptor, and its effect on organic matter decomposition and the associated microbial community in salt marsh sediments.” In sum, they tested soil samples to see how a large amount of available nitrate would impact microbes, and therefore the carbon-sequestering constitution of the soil, versus a plain saltwater control.

The results indicate that nitrates stimulate the production of dissolved inorganic carbon, leading to decomposition of organic matter that would otherwise remain stable in salt marsh sediments. By changing the available resources and altering the function of metabolic pathways, nitrates shift the composition of the microbial community to taxa that drive breakdown of organic matter via denitrification. Even samples from the “deep” section of the core, generally noted as resistant to microbial degradation, showed organic decomposition when exposed to nitrate.

First author Ashley Bulseco, PhD, wrote, “Traditionally, we have viewed salt marshes as resilient to nitrogen pollution, because the microbes there remove much of the nitrogen as gas through a process called denitrification. But this research suggests that when nitrate is abundant, a change occurs in the microbial community in salt marsh sediments that increases the microbes’ capacity to degrade organic matter. This potentially reduces the ability of the marsh to store carbon.”

According to Project Drawdown, a research organization that analyzes potential solutions to global warming, “While limited in area, coastal wetlands contain large carbon sinks; protecting them would secure an estimated 15 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to over 53 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) if released into the atmosphere.”

The global climate crisis requires that all mitigations to climate change garner attention and action. Nitrates from agriculture runoff are perpetrators of not only disrupting these carbon-capturing salt marshes, but also creating algal blooms and subsequent dead zones, destroying soil health, and threatening human safety. Further, the researchers of this study warn that by stimulating the nitrogen cycling process can lead to nitrous oxide (N₂O) production – a green house gas with 263 times the heat trapping potential of CO₂.

To reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers that threaten the environment, Beyond Pesticides recommends advocating for organic agriculture, purchasing organics to leverage demand in the marketplace, and encouraging organic land management at the local level (city, town, and/or county). For assistance with such advocacy in your community, contact Beyond Pesticides at [email protected] or 202-543-5450.

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

Source: Marine Biological Laboratory

(Beyond Pesticides, August 27, 2019) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the subject to a new legal challenge from environmental groups after approving the use an insecticide shown to be highly toxic to bees and other pollinators.  The lawsuit, filed in the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals by the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety, aims to stop the use of sulfoxaflor on more than 200 million acres of crops. As EPA under the Trump administration has become increasingly emboldened to fight for industry priorities, concerned organizations and people are responding by supporting legal challenges and working to pass policies that truly protect wildlife and the environment.

According to EPA’s ecological risk assessment for sulfoxaflor, the chemical is “very highly toxic” to bees. A study published last year in the journal Nature found significant concerns with the chemical’s ability to harm already declining pollinator populations. “There is an urgent need to pre-emptively evaluate the potential sub-lethal effects of sulfoximine-based pesticides on pollinators, because such effects are rarely detected by standard ecotoxicological assessments, but can have major impacts at larger ecological scales,” the authors wrote.

EPA had already run in to legal problems associated with its registration of sulfoxaflor. In 2013, the agency was sued by beekeepers who argued that EPA violated federal law and its own regulations by approving the chemical without reliable studies on the impact to pollinators. A federal court agreed with beekeeping groups, and revoked EPA’s full registration of the chemical. But the agency quickly turned around and registered sulfoxaflor for uses on crops that it says are not attractive to pollinators.

The agency regularly permits use on pollinator-attractive crops under the “emergency” exemption loophole in federal pesticide law. Most recently, the agency used this loophole during Pollinator Week 2019, despite a recent report from the Office of Inspector General chastising the agency for its abuse of this provision.

Despite the agency’s history with this concerning chemical, EPA nonetheless decided to again go to bat for industry and fully register the chemical for all uses, including on crops foraged by pollinators. “Proposing to register sulfoxaflor for use on bee-attractive crops, in the midst of an ongoing pollinator crisis, is the height of irresponsibility,” Drew Toher, community resource and policy director for Beyond Pesticides told Bloomberg Environment. “When all of the available data points to significant risks to pollinators from use of this chemical we must face the facts: EPA is working towards the protection of pesticide industry, not the environment,” he said.

The lawsuit by environmental groups challenges EPA’s rejection of the peer-reviewed Nature paper in favor of industry-funded studies that are not peer-reviewed, and not available for public scrutiny.  Not only is the agency working off of questionable data, it did not even require sufficiently investigate the impacts it already had knowledge of. At the request of industry, EPA waived the legal requirement for a full-field study of sulfoxaflor’s impacts on pollinators, saying it would “not add meaningful input to our conclusions,” and thus indicating that the approval was a foregone conclusion. Under EPA’s approval, the chemical can be aerially sprayed with no buffer zone, and applied before and during bloom periods when pollinators are most active.

With EPA failing to take even the most basic steps to protect declining pollinators, it is up to concerned residents to get active in their state and community and demand change. Work to pass policies that eliminate sulfoxaflor and a broad range of systemic pesticides by promoting organic land care.  For help in organizing your community, 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: Center for Food Safety Press Release, Circuit Court Filing

(Beyond Pesticides, August 26, 2019) U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) recently released draft legislation that will – among other initiatives – promote carbon-sequestering practices in agriculture. The draft Climate Stewardship Act includes farmers as a critical component in the response to the climate crisis by encouraging “carbon farming” through incentives, training, and research. U.S. Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) is championing companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill will likely be introduced in September when Congress reconvenes.

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to Co-sponsor the Climate Stewardship Act and Help Farmers Save the Planet.

July of 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high (over 415 ppm) was during the Pliocene period – between 5.3 and 2.6 million years ago. The best time to have addressed global warming was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. Organic, regenerative agricultural practices help mend the earth from the ground up.

In addition to incentivizing soil health practices that organic farmers already employ, the bill adds $75,000,000 to the organic research and extension initiative (OREI). The bill contains a requirement that no less than 50% of these funds apply to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing resilience in the agricultural sector by improving soil health and capturing increased carbon levels in the soil (carbon sequestration).

A new United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) report named agriculture and forestry as a significant net source of greenhouse gas emissions, “contributing to about 22% of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O) combined as CO₂ equivalents in 2007 to 2016.” At the same time, soil is a huge potential carbon sink. The potential for agricultural practices to reduce climate change has been an issue raised by several Presidential candidates.

Insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers disrupt microbial communities and prevent the kind of carbon-capturing root and symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi systems that are necessary to offset climate change. They harm non-target organisms, including earthworms that assist with nutrient cycling, thereby diminishing soil health.

A 2017 study finds that organic farming practices sequester more carbon than chemical-intensive practices. Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial has evidenced organic systems that, “use 45% less energy, release 40% fewer carbon emissions, and have the potential to produce yields up to 40% higher in times of drought over conventional [chemical-intensive] systems.”

This legislation will promote organic and regenerative farming practices, which are crucial to sustainably feeding the world while sequestering carbon.

“After another year of extreme weather, no one understands the impacts of climate change better than our family farmers and ranchers,” says Senator Booker. “While our farmers face unique impacts from climate change, our farmers are also uniquely positioned to capture and store carbon in the ground, produce clean energy, and to reduce emissions. The same farmland practices that store carbon and reduce emissions also improve the ability of our farms to withstand extreme weather, reduce water pollution and protect drinking water, and reduce flood damages by storing and slowly releasing flood waters.”

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to Co-sponsor the Climate Stewardship Act and Help Farmers Save the Planet.

Letter to Congress

I am writing to ask that you consider co-sponsoring the Climate Stewardship Act in advance of the bill’s introduction in September.

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) recently released draft legislation that will – among other initiatives – promote carbon-sequestering practices in agriculture. The Climate Stewardship Act includes farmers as a critical component in the response to the climate crisis by encouraging “carbon farming” through incentives, training, and research.

July of 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high (over 415 ppm) was during the Pliocene period – between 5.3 and 2.6 million years ago. The best time to have addressed global warming was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. Organic, regenerative agricultural practices help mend the Earth from the ground up.

A new IPPC report named agriculture and forestry as a significant net source of greenhouse gas emissions, “contributing to about 22% of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) combined as CO2 equivalents in 2007 to 2016.” At the same time, soil is a huge potential carbon sink. The potential for agricultural practices to reduce climate change has been an issue raised by several Presidential candidates.

Insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers disrupt microbial communities and prevent the kind of carbon-capturing root and symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi systems that are necessary to offset climate change. They harm non-target organisms, including earthworms that assist with nutrient cycling, thereby diminishing soil health.

A 2017 study finds that organic farming practices sequester more carbon than conventional. Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial has evidenced organic systems that, “use 45% less energy, release 40% fewer carbon emissions, and have the potential to produce yields up to 40% higher in times of drought over conventional [chemical-intensive] systems.”

This legislation will promote organic and regenerative farming practices, which are crucial to sustainably feeding the world while sequestering carbon. Please co-sponsor the Climate Stewardship Act and help farmers save the planet.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, August 23, 2019) The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a report criticizing EPA’s oversight of states’ Managed Pollinator Protection Plans (MP3s). OIG conducted an audit, on which the report is based, to evaluate agency performance in overseeing MP3s, voluntary plans adopted at the state level with the goal to “reduce pesticide exposure to pollinators (generally, honey bees managed and contracted out to growers for pollination services) through timely communication and coordination among key stakeholders.”

The report’s findings include the following:

• EPA has no means to evaluate the national impact of MP3s.
• The agency has not developed a strategy to use data from a planned fall 2019 survey (see more below on the AAPCO/SFIREG/EPA survey) to evaluate either the national impact of MP3s or the agency’s support of state MP3 implementation efforts.
• 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.

The history of the MP3 program starts in 2014, when President Obama issued a memo establishing a Pollinator Health Task Force (PHTF), directing federal agencies to take action to improve the health of honey bees and other pollinators. The memo required EPA to: assess the effects of pesticides on pollinator health; engage states and tribes in the development of pollinator protection plans; encourage the incorporation of pollinator protection and habitat planting activities into green infrastructure and Superfund projects; expedite review of registration applications for new products targeting pests harmful to pollinators; and increase habitat plantings around federal facilities. In response, EPA proposed the establishment of Managed Pollinator Protection Plans by each state as a primary vehicle to achieve improved health status of pollinators.

The MP3s were conceived as a means to enhance communication and mitigate exposure risks, with the expectation that expertise within the respective states could help design solutions for local and regional circumstances. In most states, development of the plans was relegated to the state agriculture department, which are often also responsible for pesticide regulation oversight and enforcement. Also in response to the Obama directive, EPA presented a widely criticized proposal on reducing acute exposure risks to pollinators — meant to address bees likely to be exposed from application of acutely toxic pesticides.

Beginning in 2015, EPA encouraged states to convene relevant stakeholders and develop MP3s, and worked with the Association of American Pesticide Control Officials (AAPCO), and an AAPCO committee called the State FIFRA Issues, Research and Evaluation Group (SFIREG), to offer guidance on plan development. The final step in the process set out by the PHTF was for EPA to measure the effectiveness of state MP3s, through state review of factors such as overall pollinator health, exposure risks, and behavior and communication as barometers of efficacy. By the start of 2018, 45 states had developed (or were in the process of developing) such plans; see coverage of states MP3s here. By May 2019, AAPCO and SFIREG and EPA created a survey to evaluate MP3s; the plan is to distribute the survey to state pesticide agencies in the fall of 2019.

As Beyond Pesticides noted back in 2015, the MP3s would likely vary widely from state to state in terms of their approaches and compliance requirements. As it turns out, states are “all over the map” in terms of what their MP3s set out.

Stakeholders — state, tribal, and local governments, farmers/growers, beekeepers, landowners, nongovernmental organizations, pesticide applicators, have been brought into the MP3 process at the state level. Some of those have noted that the efficacy of the plans in terms of genuine protection of pollinators could be compromised because of EPA foci on acute risks and on managed pollinators. MP3s are limited to managed pollinators not under contract pollination services at the site of application — meaning that the well-being of wild and native bees goes unaddressed by the plans.

The OIG report states, “According to the stakeholders we interviewed, impacts from pesticide exposures are complex and a threat to pollinator health,” and “The focus on acute, site-specific pesticide risks and contracted pollinators means that related areas — such as chronic contact with pesticides and native pollinator protection activities identified in the NPMG — may not be receiving an appropriate level of attention.” In addition, advocates such as Beyond Pesticides have identified shortcomings in EPA’s role. One is that the MP3s, including their development of Best Management Practices (BMPs) mandated by the Presidential memo, were allowed to be entirely voluntary. Allowing states such latitude was predicted to be, and has been, inadequate to the task of protecting pollinators.

For example, in 2016 Beyond Pesticides wrote to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) to say that its MP3 fell short of adequate protection of pollinator populations in the state, particularly by not taking a strong stance against the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Beyond Pesticides recommended that MDAR adopt the recommendations of the state beekeepers’ Pollinator Protection Plan Framework. (See public comments on the Massachusetts MP3 here.) Additionally, Beyond Pesticides encouraged MDAR to: protect and monitor native pollinators; create pollinator habitat that is free of pesticide contamination; and improve regulatory enforcement and compliance statewide. Discouragingly, in 2018 in Massachusetts — where beekeepers lost 65% of their honey bee hives, a rate 25% higher than the national average — the state Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have restricted the use of neonicotinoid pesticides in the state to protect sensitive pollinators.

Some of the concerns voiced by Beyond Pesticides and other stakeholders about EPA’s oversight of MP3s in the states appear to have surfaced in the OIG report, which concluded that “EPA needs to decide how it will measure, support and assist in the implementation of MP3s.” The report made five recommendations to be carried out by the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention:

• Develop and implement a strategy that will use Managed Pollinator Protection Plan survey data to measure the national impact of the Managed Pollinator Protection Plans.
• Using survey data, determine how the EPA will assist states with implementing their Managed Pollinator Protection Plans.
• Using survey data, fully communicate to states what Managed Pollinator Protection Plan implementation assistance is available from the EPA and how this assistance will be provided.
• Determine whether and how the EPA will help states address additional areas of concern — such as chronic pesticide risks and other limitations identified by stakeholders — through their Managed Pollinator Protection Plan implementation efforts.
• Determine how the EPA can use the Managed Pollinator Protection Plan survey results to advance its National Program Manager Guidance goals and its regulatory mission.

The dire state of our pollinators, and insect biodiversity generally, makes protective regulation and activity profoundly urgent. Follow developments in pollinator protection through Beyond Pesticides’ Daily News Blog, its BEE Protective webpage, which includes actions the public can take, and via its quarterly journal, Pesticides and You. The public can also contact federal elected officials to insist that they support the Saving America’s Pollinators Act, HR 1337, which would cancel specific bee-toxic pesticides, and establish a review and cancellation process for all pesticides that are potentially harmful to pollinators. More ideas for community-based pollinator protection can be found here.

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

Source: EPA OIG Report

(Beyond Pesticides, August 22, 2019) In early August, experts from European Union (EU) member states and staff members of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced their conclusion that chlorpyrifos fails to meet criteria for renewed approval for use, potentially moving the EU a step closer to an outright ban. This ends the green light that chlorpyrifos (and its structurally close cousin, chlorpyrifos-methyl) have enjoyed at the EU level since 2006.

That permitting is set to expire in January of 2020, although eight member states — Germany, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia — had already either banned or never authorized chlorpyrifos use in their countries. In the U.S., states are picking up the slack on efforts against chlorpyrifos use as, in the tenure of the current administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chosen to protect industry rather than human health and the environment.

The step EFSA took was unusual in that the agency does not typically publish findings before ongoing peer reviews are completed. EUObserver.com reports that EFSA’s public statement was triggered by a July 2019 EU request for information “on the available outcomes of the human health assessment in the context of the pesticides peer review for the renewal of approval of the active substance chlorpyrifos.” That request was catalyzed, reportedly, by public and NGO (nongovernmental organization) pressure that arose on the heels of an article, “Chlorpyrifos — the unknown pesticide,” published by Investigative Reporting Denmark and initiated by them and Danwatch. That research and reporting were done in collaboration with journalists from Knack in Belgium, Le Monde in France, Dagbladet in Norway, Newsweek in Poland, Ostro in Slovenia, El Confidential in Spain, and The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting in the U.S.

The EU and EFSA experts included in their findings:

• a genotoxic potential for chlorpyrifos cannot be ruled out
• chlorpyrifos meets the criteria for classification as toxic for reproduction (REPRO 1B, H360D, “May damage the unborn child”), as set out in EU regulation (EC) No 1272/2008)

Chlorpyrifos is a widely used organophosphate pesticide used on approximately 60 different crops, and most intensively on almonds, cotton, citrus fruits, grapes, corn, broccoli, sugar beets, peaches, and nectarines. It is also commonly used for mosquito-borne disease control, and on golf courses. Exposure to the pesticide has been identified repeatedly as problematic.

Chlorpyrifos is understood to be a developmental neurotoxin that is especially dangerous for children, on whom exposures can lead to a variety of impacts: attention deficit disorder, developmental delays, lower IQ, and impaired cognitive function, among others. Prenatal exposure to low levels of chlorpyrifos can impair children’s learning, change brain function, and alter thyroid levels — even into adulthood, and especially in females. The insecticide is linked to damaging and often irreversible health outcomes in workers (farm workers and applicators, especially) and pregnant women, as well as in children.

There is history on the U.S. “saga” of chlorpyrifos use: “In 2015 the EPA proposed to revoke food residue tolerances of chlorpyrifos, which would effectively have banned use of the pesticide in agriculture; all residential uses had previously been withdrawn from the market in 2000. Then, early in 2017, with a new administration in place, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed the agency’s own proposal to ban the pesticide — a decision that happened just weeks after Mr. Pruitt met with the head of Dow Chemical Company, maker of the compound. Mr. Pruitt then falsely claimed the science on chlorpyrifos was ‘unresolved’ and said EPA would study the issue — with no planned action — until 2022.”

Meanwhile, states have moved to do what federal agencies have been unwilling to do — as on so many other fronts — during the tenure of the current administration. Hawaii, California, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and Connecticut are all at various stages of considering or enacting limits or outright bans.

Beyond Pesticides has reported on chlorpyrifos repeatedly, including a November 2018 Daily News Blog in which it covered a review of research data that showed that the conclusions used, both in the U.S. and abroad, to support the registration (or allowance) of chlorpyrifos, were flawed and ignored pertinent data on health impacts. Most recently, the Daily News Blog reported on an EPA decision to continue permitting the use of chlorpyrifos on food. That decision was pursuant to a lawsuit brought by 12 plaintiff organizations advocating for cancellation of the registration of the compound for use in agriculture.

What lies ahead for the European Union is a decision to renew approval of chlorpyrifos use, or to ban the pesticide. The question will be taken up at a September meeting of a standing committee of representatives from EU member states and the EU commission. A proposed decision is expected to be announced in October, and final approval in December. Here in the U.S., advocates, healthcare professionals, scientists, and members of the public continue to demand that this toxic pesticide be removed from the market because of its terrible health impacts, especially on children.

The public can work to ban chlorpyrifos by contacting federal and state senators and representatives, as well as governors, to support legislation and regulation to prohibit use of this insecticide. Consumers can also oppose the use of the compound by purchasing organic whenever possible, thus supporting an agricultural system that does not rely on toxic chemicals. Learn more about chlorpyrifos impacts and developments by visiting the Beyond Pesticides Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database and its factsheet, Children and Pesticides Don’t Mix (a chronicle of peer-reviewed scientific literature on the health effects of pesticides).

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

Sources: https://euobserver.com/environment/145594 and https://euobserver.com/environment/145594

(Beyond Pesticides, August 21, 2019) A birth cohort study in Canada found elevated levels of fluoride exposure during pregnancy are associated with lower IQ scores in 3 to 4-year-old children. This new research, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, builds on previous analyses that suggest high fluoride exposure is related to adverse effects to children’s neurodevelopment. Researchers recommend that pregnant mothers should reduce fluoride intake during pregnancy. Noting the controversy of the study, JAMA Pediatrics editor Dr. Dimitri Christakis said it was subjected to “additional scrutiny for its methods and the presentation of its findings.”

The Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) program recruited pregnant mothers to participate in the study from 2008-2011. A total of 601 mother-child pairs from 6 major cities participated; 41% of them lived in cities with fluoridated municipal water. Exposure was measured through urine samples as well as self-reported maternal daily intake. Children were between ages 3 and 4 when tested for IQ.

A 1mg/L increase in maternal urinary fluoride is associated with a 3.7-point decrease in IQ. These findings echo a previous study in Mexico that found a 6-point lower IQ score in school-age children associated with a 1mg/L in maternal urinary fluoride. Women who live in communities with fluoridated drinking water have a significantly higher intake of fluoride (0.93mg/day) on average than women who did not (0.3mg/day). Christine Till, one of the study authors, told NPR, “Only boys were affected when we looked at urinary fluoride, but both boys and girls were affected when we looked at maternal fluoride intake or water fluoride concentration.”

Fluoride impacts the fetus as it crosses the placenta and accumulates in parts of the brain associated with learning and memory. Fluoride alters central nervous system proteins and neurotransmitters during the developmental phase.

Before fluoride dental products were widely available, the U.S. Public Health Service introduced water fluoridation in the 1950s to reduce dental problems. In 2015, the U.S. lowered the optimal fluoride concentration from 0.7-1.2mg/L to 0.7mg/L after overexposure to fluoride caused 68% of adolescents to have enamel fluorosis – a disorder characterized by hypomineralization of tooth enamel appearing as discoloration and sometimes causing physical damage to the tooth. The authors of this study note, “The beneficial effects of fluoride predominantly occur at the tooth surface after the teeth have erupted. Therefore, there is no benefit of systemic exposure to fluoride during pregnancy for the prevention of caries [tooth decay] in offspring. The evidence showing an association between fluoride exposure and lower IQ scores raises a possible new concern about cumulative exposures to fluoride during pregnancy, even among pregnant women exposed to optimally fluoridated water.”

David Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, noted that the effect size is comparable to what is seen with childhood lead exposure. Bellinger told NPR that various routes of exposure should be considered, like food, tea and toothpaste. Black tea has a particularly high fluoride content (2.6 mg/L).

Additionally, Beyond Pesticides has often written about the importance of considering sulfuryl fluoride, more commonly known as vikane gas, in the analysis of fluoride tolerances. Sulfuryl fluoride is an inorganic chemical often used for the fumigation of closed structures such as barns, storage buildings, commercial warehouses, ships in port, and railroad cars and thus also found on their stored contents like grains and other crops. It is intended to target termites, powder post beetles, bedbugs, and other pests. It has been linked to cancer as well as neurological, developmental, and reproductive damages.  Expectant mothers can lower their exposure to fluoride on food by buying organic produce that bars the use of sulfuryl fluoride.

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

Sources: JAMA Pediatrics, NPR

(Beyond Pesticides, August, 20, 2019) Last week U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams sentenced Missouri resident Randy Constant to 10 years in prison for selling conventional grains he and his co-conspirators fraudulently passed off as certified organic. In his ruling, Judge Williams noted the scheme resulted in “extreme and incalculable damage” to consumers and public trust in the organic label. According to court filings, Mr. Constant made over $120 million in the scheme, much of it spent on vacations and trips to Las Vegas. The case highlights the importance of funding enforcement measures that ensure compliance with the organic certification process and the resulting price premium it confers to organic farmers.

Mr. Constant was convicted last December of one count of wire fraud, admitting that from 2010 to 2017, he misled customers who purchased grain at a silo he owned in Iowa called Jericho Solutions. Mr. Constant told customers that the grain they were purchasing was grown on certified organic fields he owned in Iowa or Nebraska, when in fact the grain was either not organic or mixed with non-organic grain.

“Thousands upon thousands of consumers paid for products they did not get and paid for products they did not want,” Judge Williams told the Associated Press (AP). “This has caused incalculable damage to the confidence the American public has in organic products.”

In order to become certified organic, farmers must develop and adhere to an organic systems plan and not apply any prohibited materials, including toxic pesticides, for a period of three years. Organic farmers must create an organic system plan detailing all practices and substances that will be used on the farm, and are required to keep detailed records to ensure compliance. Farmers must maintain careful records and pay a fee for annual inspections by an inspectors working for organic certification agencies.

Mr. Constant’s scheme undermined the integrity of this process and public trust in the USDA organic label. He was able to sell his fraudulent grain at significantly lower prices than others in the region, undercutting organic farmers working hard to follow certification requirements. According to reports, Mr. Constant’s scheme encompassed upwards of 7% of organic corn and 8% of organic soybeans grown in the year 2016.

“He saw the weakness in the system and he exploited it over and over again,” said US Attorney Jacob Schunk to the AP.

Mr. Constant enlisted three co-conspirators in his crime, all of whom were also sentenced to months-long prison terms. Court filings indicate he spent considerable sums gambling in Las Vegas. He also admitted to spending $2 million on three women in the City with whom he developed relationships. His wife and other relatives attended the sentencing date last week.

“The organic industry in this country is built in trust and I violated that trust,” Mr. Constant told the court, according to the AP report.

Although possibly the largest individual scam, this is not the first time the organic industry has dealt with fraud. A major report in the Washington Post in 2017 found three large overseas grain shipments, totaling 7% of annual organic corn and 4% of soybeans, imported to the US were fraudulently labeled as organic. The report led the National Organic Standards Board to unanimously adopt proposals to fight fraud in the industry (see Beyond Pesticides’ comments here).

Mr. Constant’s prosecution should be a warning for others trying to game a system based upon trust and integrity. When produced according to certification requirements, organic production is a boon for local economies, and boosts farmers’ bottom lines. As enforcement improves, the government must also provide more incentives for farmers to transition to organic, as this method of food production is critical to addressing our cascading environmental crises, including the insect apocalypse.

Don’t let fraudulent schemes stop you from supporting organic agriculture. Organic agriculture is much more rigorously monitored than the chemical-intensive conventional agriculture. When possible, buy from local organic farmers who you know and trust. Many certifiers are also certifying products that go against the spirit and intent of the organic production process, such as hydroponic produce or factory dairy or egg farms. So look for certifiers listed as fair, excellent or exemplary by the Cornucopia Institute’s certifier guide to uphold organic integrity. Insist on transparency and full disclosure in all aspects of organic production, certification, and oversight.

Stay in touch on the latest in organic regulations through Beyond Pesticides Keeping Organic Strong webpage.

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

Source: Associated Press, Dept of Justice

(Beyond Pesticides, August 19, 2019) The Trump Administration has reignited the attack on the Endangered Species Act (ESA), one of the most effective environmental laws in restoring threatened and endangered species and their habitat. This time the attack is coming through regulations that undermine the letter, spirit, and intent of ESA.

Ask your elected U.S. Representative and Senators to tell the Secretary of Interior that the assault on the Endangered Species Act threatens all living organisms.

The new rules announced by the administration this week will: (i) weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal agency activities; (ii) curtail the designation of critical habitat and weakens the listing process for imperiled species; and (iii) eliminate all protections for wildlife newly designated as “threatened” under the Act.

With species declining across the globe, it is critical that we protect those already at heightened risk. An important provision of the ESA is the requirement that each federal agency that proposes to authorize, fund, or carry out an action that may affect a listed species or its critical habitat must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. Although many species –including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, and California condor— have been protected and brought back from the brink of extinction under the ESA, an estimated 500 species have disappeared in the past 200 years.

With these serious rollbacks, pesticide use will exacerbate the loss of species. The administration has now declined protection for more than 60 species and protected only 18 — the lowest of any president at this point in an administration.

“By shooting down protections for these imperiled plants and animals, Trump officials are displaying contempt for America’s natural heritage. This president is a threat to the future of endangered species and humans around the globe,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Ask your elected U.S. Representative and Senators to tell the Secretary of Interior that the assault on the Endangered Species Act threatens all living organisms.

Letter to Congress

The attack on the environment under the current administration threatens our very existence. The most recent attack on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) undermines a long-standing Congressional commitment across political parties to protect threatened and endangered species. The gutting of the letter, spirit, and intent of ESA, with the administration’s new rulemaking, threatens life as we know it.

Please let Interior Secretary David Bernhardt know that the changes adopted in the regulation of endangered species violate the law and must be reversed. It is critical that this concern be voiced in the face of this attack on the environment that sustains life.

The new rules announced by the administration this week will: (i) weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal agency activities; (ii) curtail the designation of critical habitat and weakens the listing process for imperiled species; and (iii) eliminate all protections for wildlife newly designated as “threatened” under the Act.

With species declining across the globe, it is critical that we protect those already at heightened risk. An important provision of the ESA is the requirement that each federal agency that proposes to authorize, fund, or carry out an action that may affect a listed species or its critical habitat must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. Although many species –including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, and California condor— have been protected and brought back from the brink of extinction under the ESA, an estimated 500 species have disappeared in the past 200 years.

With these serious rollbacks, pesticide use will exacerbate the loss of species. The administration has now declined protection for more than 60 species and protected only 18 — the lowest of any president at this point in an administration.

Thank you.

(Beyond Pesticides, August 16, 2019) Chemical industry giant Monsanto used military-style surveillance and response tactics to target critics, newly released documents reveal. Disclosed as a result of ongoing court battles regarding the health impacts of the weed killer Roundup, internal communications from 2014-2017 highlight Monsanto’s “intelligence fusion center” that monitored potential threats to the industry and spread retaliatory responses through third-party sources.

As reported by The Guardian, there were numerous, alarming findings in the documents released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For instance, a spreadsheet titled, “Project Spruce: Carey Gillam Book” detailed a range of strategic responses in the lead-up to the release of Carey Gillam’s Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. This included paying Google to promote an existing blog post when users searched, “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam.” Additionally, the group wrote up “talking points” for third parties to critique the book and post negative reviews. Ms. Gillam noted in an op-ed, “Shortly after the book’s publication, dozens of “reviewers” suddenly posted one-star reviews sharing suspiciously similar themes and language. The efforts were not very successful as Amazon removed many reviews it deemed fake or improper.”

Internal emails exposed that Monsanto representatives would call editors of Ms. Gillam’s then-employer, Reuters, to complain and mount pressure on the institution regarding her reporting on their products and the lawsuits against them. Monsanto media relations executive Sam Murphy wrote in an email, “We continue to push back on her editors very strongly every chance we get, and we all hope for the day she gets reassigned.”

Ms.Gillam was not the only personality in the Monsanto spotlight – “Fusion Center” employees carefully observed and reported on singer Neil Young who produced a rebellious, environmentally-focused album called “The Monsanto Years.” The group monitored his social media accounts and considered legal action in retaliation.

U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), a non-profit investigative research group focused on the food industry, was threatening enough to Monsanto that it merited weekly reports. Monsanto was particularly concerned about the release of information regarding financial relationships with scientists that could be used as evidence that the industry was “covering up unflattering research.”

USRTK detailed the use of third-party sources Monsanto used to counteract the agency, noting:

• Deliverables in a “Comprehensive USRTK FOIA Preparedness and Reactive Plan” dated May 15, 2016 included plans for a “Third Party Content Creation (Forbes post);” an agenda to discuss the plan refers to “Proactive Training for independent experts via GMOA [GMO Answers]” and “allergenicity materials” including an infographic and blog/op eds to be “organized by MON distributed by GMOA”.
• Action items for “industry alignment” in the 2019 plan included requesting “online positioning” from the Center for Food Integrity, International Food Information Council, CropLife America, CropLife International, Ketchum PR and the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (page 6).

The law group Baum Hedland published more new documents for the public to review on August 15, 2019. According to the attorneys, “These documents reveal Monsanto’s efforts to defund IARC, their involvement with Reuter’s reporter Kate Kelland, the creation of their ‘Intelligence Fusion Center’ targeting journalists and activists critical of Monsanto, and more about their manipulating science.”

Ms. Gillam, now research director for USRTK, wrote in response to the industry attacks, “Truth and transparency are precious commodities, the foundations for the knowledge we all need and deserve about the world we live in. Without truth we cannot know what risks we face, what protections we must make for our families and our futures. When corporate power is so intensely brought to silence messengers, to manipulate the public record and public opinion, truth becomes stifled. And we should all be afraid.”

Watch Ms. Gillam’s talk, “Decades of Deceit,” from the 36^th National Pesticide Forum for more on Monsanto’s practices to cover up—through fraud, intimidation, ghostwriting agency documents—the science showing that glyphosate kills humans as well as weeds.

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

Source: The Guardian

(Beyond Pesticides, August 15, 2019) An article in the journal Plos One, “An assessment of acute insecticide toxicity loading (AITL) of chemical pesticides used on agricultural land in the United States,” shows that recent shifts in insecticide use—from organophosphates and carbamates to synthetic pyrethroids and neonicotinoids—have made a large contribution to the ongoing insect apocalypse. This shift to insecticides that target insects based on both selective toxicity and delivery method occurs within a context of shrinking habitat and biodiversity.

The study, by Michael DiBartolomeis, PhD, Susan Kegley, PhD, Pierre Mineau, PhD, Rosemarie Radford, and Kendra Klein, PhD, presents a measure of acute insecticide toxicity loading that incorporates acute toxicity, quantity used, and the rate at which the insecticide degrades. Goulson et al. applied a similar measure in Great Britain that did not incorporate the rate of degradation. Both studies use the median lethal dose (LD₅₀) to honey bees as a measure of acute toxicity and calculate the potential number of bee deaths based on the number of lethal doses of various insecticides applied in the field. In both cases, researchers used toxicity estimates for honey bees because they are widely available. Other insects may be more or less sensitive.

The two studies show that acutely toxic doses of insecticides used in agriculture in Great Britain and the U.S. increased by a factor of 3.9 to 48 over the study period (1992-2013 for DiBartolomeis et al.; 1990-2015 for Goulson et al.), depending on whether oral or contact toxicity was measured and whether degradates were included. Both studies show that this increase is due to the expansion of the use of neonicotinoid and synthetic pyrethroid insecticides.

The shift away from organophosphates and carbamates resulted from a focus on acute toxicity to human workers. As a result, newer insecticides concentrate their killing power with greater precision on insects—pollinators, predators, and parasites, as well as pests. The insecticides are not only selectively more toxic to insects, but in the case of the systemic insecticides, they are delivered directly to the insect through plant tissues, nectar, and pollen.

Unfortunately, acute toxicity is only part of the problem. The same insecticides have chronic effects that have been well documented: harm to reproduction, mobility, and navigation, as well as impairments to feeding, foraging, memory, and learning. Multiple pesticides are found within bee-collected pollen, and the effects of the combinations are often greater than the individual exposure.

In addition, this pesticide exposure is occurring within an agricultural system that systematically eliminates habitat and biodiversity. The common use of glyphosate-based herbicides in crops engineered to be tolerant to them, as well as drift and runoff of potent insecticides, results in fields and field margins that lack the habitat for insects—and the birds and others who eat them.

Insect populations and biodiversity in general suffer from climate change. The response to the problems in industrial agriculture have taken into account the possibility for food production to result in these wide-ranging adverse impacts. In each area, organic agriculture provides an answer to the industrial model. When organic principles are put into practice, soil sequesters carbon, land use fosters insect biodiversity, and pesticides are rarely employed. Studies show that organic farms sequester 13% more CO₂ than chemical-intensive farms. A white paper published by the Rodale Institute in 2014, Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming, argues that it is possible to sequester more than 100% of current annual CO₂ emissions by switching to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which are referred to in the paper as “regenerative organic agriculture.”

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

Source: PLOS ONE

(Beyond Pesticides, August 14, 2019) Earlier this summer, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) released a free app to facilitate the reporting of pesticide incidents in the state. The app, CASPIR (California’s System for Pesticide Incident Reporting), is available for download on the Google Play or Apple iTunes app store and should work with most smart phone devices.  While improving pesticide incident reporting is a laudable accomplishment for CDPR, advocates argue that further action by elected and administrative officials is needed to reduce and eliminate toxic pesticide use so that these systems are not necessary.

CDPR has been increasingly criticized by environmental justice organizations for its response to pesticide incidents, particularly in at-risk and low-income communities, and this app appears to be a response by the agency to address these concerns. The app is bilingual, provides the ability for users to add photos and videos, and records the GPS location of the user. Nayamin Martinex, director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network, said in a press release, “We have seen that farmworkers, who are trying to report a pesticide incident at work, sometimes have difficulty describing the exact location of the fields. We are glad that CASPIR can help address this issue with its GPS system.”

Although continuous improvement is always needed, California is ahead of the vast majority of states in its establishment of publicly available pesticide use and incident reporting databases.

Beyond Pesticides receives dozens of calls each year from individuals who have been poisoned by pesticide use and are looking for resources to assist them. Many are unaware who to report these incidents to, or whether they can even report them at all (incidents should be reported to the state pesticide enforcement agency and EPA). It is critical to gather information about pesticide incidents in real-time or as soon as possible after spraying has occurred, but these are often times individuals are most distraught, and focused on seeking care rather than recording information. Apps like CASPIR can assist individuals in recording pertinent information quickly.

While reporting pesticide poisoning incidents is critical, resources for those affected are limited. Many doctors are unaware of the comprehensive manual, “Recognition and Management of Pesticide Poisonings,” and treatment of chronic conditions and other complications from pesticide poisoning, such as multiple chemical sensitivity or toxicicant induced loss of tolerance remain at the margins of medical research.

The most effective method of preventing pesticide poisoning remains the elimination of their use in the first place. Organic practices, whether in agriculture or around the home, promote a path that prevents the use of toxic pesticides by working with, rather than against nature. By moving more and more towards organic technologies, we can stop the rampant poisoning of farmworkers, their communities, and the public at large.

Whether in California or any other state in the country, if you’re involved in a pesticide incident, follow the steps on Beyond Pesticides webpage “What to do in a Pesticide Emergency.” If you’re having trouble, contact the organization at [email protected] or 202-543-5450.

Despite living in the modern-day United States, farmworkers have the same life expectancy as individuals living in the 1850s—just 49 years old. Learn more about the impact of pesticide-intensive farming practices on the individuals that grow our food, and make up the backbone of our country’s agricultural economy by watching the Farmworkers, Families and Health panel discussion from Beyond Pesticides’ National Pesticide Forum in Irvine, CA. Further information can also be found on the Agricultural Justice webpage.

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

Source: California Department of Pesticide Regulation