(Beyond Pesticides, November 14, 2018) Monarch butterflies are in the midst of a staggering decades-long population decline that has rapidly accelerated since 2005, research published by an international team of scientists and the University of Florida last month indicates. According to data meticulously collected by researchers, monarchs making their way to central Florida after emerging from their breeding grounds in Mexico have declined by 80% over the last decade and a half. This is roughly the same time frame at which beekeepers began to see precipitous declines in managed honey bee colonies. Researchers point to industrial development and increasing pesticide use as factors that have accelerated the decline of this iconic species.

“A broad pattern is that 95 percent of corn and soybean products grown in the U.S. are Roundup Ready crops that resist glyphosate,” said study coauthor Earnest Williams, PhD, of New York’s Hamilton College in a press release. “That has a national impact. What’s really needed are patches of native vegetation and nectar sources without pesticides. It’s not just for monarchs but all pollinators.”

Beginning in 1985, renowned monarch expert Lincoln Brower, PhD and his team monitored monarch populations at a pesticide-free cattle pasture south of Gainesville, FL. Caterpillars were observed on milkweed, the main source of food for monarchs before metamorphosis, and the numbers of adult monarchs were also recorded for 37 years, spanning what researchers indicate are over 140 monarch generations.

Based on these data, scientists found that monarchs leave Mexico just in time to reach milkweed at its optimal growth stage in central Florida. The timing is critical for monarchs, a deviation of just a couple weeks could result in monarchs missing the opportunity to provide the right conditions for their offspring to survive.

And as researchers indicate, it is critical for them to do so. “Florida is kind of a staging ground for the recolonization of much of the East Coast,” said co-author Jaret Daniels, PhD of the Florida Museum of Natural History. “If these populations are low, then the northern populations are going to be at a similar abundance level.”

Recent reports directly from the monarch overwintering grounds in Mexico paint a very grim picture for the species. Last year monarch populations were 15% lower than the year before. Western monarchs, which overwinter in coastal California forests, are subject to the same declines, with scientists indicating that there is an 86% chance of extinction within 50 years, and nearly 75% chance within 20.

The current research aligns closely with data presented by the World Wildlife Fund, which tracked the Mexican overwintering grounds and recorded a similar 80% decline since the 1990s. While in the past fluctuations in Monarch populations could be explained by factors such as a cold winter, the evidence is now clear that there are human factors putting downward pressure on monarch populations.

Researchers are pointing at a number of factors, with habitat elimination being the primary driving force behind the decline. Industrial development, whether in the form of strip malls and planned communities or intensive monoculture farm fields, contributes to a loss of milkweed that the species requires. Not only are farm fields often displacing monarch habitat, a majority of fields already in use are planting genetically engineered crops designed to tolerate repeated herbicide spraying. While crops are left untouched from the use of chemicals like glyphosate (Roundup), 2,4-D, and dicamba, milkweed is often eliminated from field margins and other near-farm areas due to drift and run-off after herbicide applications.

The class of systemic chemicals linked to the decline of bees has also been shown to harm monarchs. Two studies, one in 2015 and another in 2016, have linked neonicotinoid exposure to the death of monarch larvae. It’s not difficult for these chemicals to make their way into monarch habitat either. Once applied, either through spray, or more commonly, through coated seeds, these chemicals either drift or run off into areas where milkweed is growing. While the insecticides don’t kill milkweed, they can make their way into the milkweed plant, contaminating it. By poisoning the plant, it becomes deadly for monarch caterpillars to feed on its primary food source.

Scientists point last to the unfortunate proliferation of a non-native milkweed species, tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), which can spread parasites to unsuspecting monarchs. The variety is sold in stores and often planted for its color and long growing season, but researchers indicate these properties could lead to monarchs breeding at the wrong time, on the wrong species of milkweed.

While the authors suggest Florida residents plant swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), or butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa), they note limitations in that approach. “It’s not as simple as saying, ‘we plant milkweed and the monarch will be saved,'” said Dr. Daniels. “We should think of this as an ecological issue. There are a lot of complexities to any organism and any system.”

Lead author Dr. Brower, a world renown researcher who led the decades long-study Monarchs for decades, died shortly after the release of this research, his final published work. “The best thing we can do is to continue his mission and continue to study and work to conserve the monarch,” Dr. Daniels said of Dr. Brower’s legacy. “I think he would be proud of that mission.”

The monarch is up against complex modern forces – development, chemical pesticides, climate change, logging, and other sources of habitat destruction, disease, and contamination. In order to solve the crisis, advocates need to work on multiple fronts. Help limit the growth of genetic modification in agriculture by purchasing only organic. Also take action in your home and community. See Managing Landscapes with Pollinators in Mind and Hedgerows for Biodiversity. For additional steps you can take to protect monarchs and other pollinators, see Beyond Pesticides’ Bee Protective webpage.

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

Source: Eurekalert

(Beyond Pesticides, November 13, 2018) We are living in extraordinary times that call for bold action. We face serious public health and environmental challenges and know that we must work to advance local, state, and federal action. Our program relies on your support, which elevates independent science to call for action. While the November 6 election results offer some important opportunities in our communities, state, and nation, we continue to face the power of the pro-pesticide lobby and those seeking to weaken the integrity of organic standards in the Farm Bill.

Please consider a donation to Beyond Pesticides because your support is critical to the ongoing challenges, as we leverage the opportunities. Check out our 2017 annual report, which captures the importance of our program in supporting the adoption of policies and practices at a time when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is curtailing its program, reversing previous decisions to restrict pesticide use, and ignoring scientific findings.

Your support enables us to continue our critical work at a critical time. In our annual report, we share our strategy for effecting the changes necessary to protect health and the environment in 2018 and moving ahead. Your support enables us to:

* Protect the local right to restrict pesticides and advance organic land management policies.
We are fighting to preserve the right of local governments to restrict pesticides against a chemical industry lobby attack in the 2018 Farm Bill. This is an attack on the democratic process and the authority of states. At the same time, we are fighting to stop state governments from preempting local authority to restrict pesticides on all land in the community, stopping chemical drift and run-off, and the contamination of waterways and the local ecosystem. Collaborating closely with local groups in almost every state, we are challenging the use of pesticides like glyphosate (Roundup) –a probable carcinogen, killer of bees, and destroyer of soil organisms and our gut microbiome.

*  Protect the integrity of organic standards and the USDA organic label.
We are fighting to protect the integrity of the organic standard setting process against another attack in the Farm Bill. By changing the review process, a provision will open the floodgates to allowed synthetic chemicals in organic production, handling, and processing. We have built an important law in the Organic Foods Production Act, which incorporates values and principles that build and regenerate soil, protect pollinators and biodiversity, eliminate toxic pesticide use, and contains a default provision that strictly limits synthetic chemicals in certified organic products. This will all change with the Farm bill amendment.

Beyond Pesticides advances change.

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Our work is based on the belief that an active and informed citizenry and community-based organizations sharing information and strategies will drive decisions that protect health and the environment. Your support enables us to inspire action and provide people with the tools to carry out effective advocacy.

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We believe that we must institutionalize changes in practices through precautionary policies that are responsive to new information and scientific understanding. Your support enables us to advance policies that ensure the adoption of management practices in sync with nature will enable human survival as a part of healthy ecosystems.

We put in place practices that eliminate toxic pesticide use.
The adoption of practices that implement the solution to or prevent a problem is critical to our strategic vision. Your support enables us to bring the resources to communities that put organic programs in place.

Our focus is on solving problems.

Our focus is federal. When standards of health and environmental protection are under attack by the very institutions established to prevent harm, the public’s voice must be heard.

Our focus is state. When the federal government is out-of-step with actions necessary to protect health and the environment, state and local action is more critical than ever.

Our focus is community. When state governments ignore the local health threats to children, pets, pollinators, wildlife, and local waterways, local action is even more important.

Our focus is school. When schools use hazardous pesticides on their playing fields and in their buildings, action by administrators, teachers, and parents is the key to change.

Our focus is home. When the marketplace sells toxic products, services, and food that are harmful to families and the environment, individual action to source and demand safer products is required.

Our focus is organic and regenerative. The solution requires the use of production and management practices and products that are healthful and compatible with the ecosystem, where exposure to toxic chemicals does not poison workers and consumers and destroy life.

Our work identifies environmental and public health problems that threaten life. We see the solutions within our grasp, from the protection of land, air, and water, to a slowing of global climate change. With your support, we provide the hands-on support to make change happen.

Please consider supporting Beyond Pesticides today, by clicking on this link. We will get pesticides out of our communities and food production with your support!

Thank you!

(Beyond Pesticides, November 9, 2018) A Tunisian study (published in January 2018) on the effects in pre-pubertal mice of exposure to malathion — an organophosphate pesticide first registered for use in the U.S. in 1956 — demonstrates significant distortion of liver and kidney biochemistry and function in the animals. Deleterious effects include compromise of feeding ability, metabolism performance, neurologic deficits, reduction of overall body weight, and simultaneous increases in the weights of livers and kidneys, with structural anomalies and lesions in those organs.

Organophosphates (OPs) have raised alarm bells for years. Some, such as chlorpyrifos and diazinon, have had their registrations cancelled for household uses because of the extreme health risks to children, but agricultural, golf course, and “public health” (mosquito control) uses remain commercially available and in use. Recently, Beyond Pesticides reported on research whose investigators support — and called publicly for — a worldwide ban on the compounds because of the serious health and environmental risks they pose, particularly for children.

Beyond Pesticides has written extensively on OP pesticides, including malathion and chlorpyrifos. Both are used widely in agriculture. Chlorpyrifos has been the subject of quite a ping-pong match in recent years: a scheduled ban by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a rescinding of that directive, a court order to execute it, and now, a promise by the Trump administration to appeal that order. Malathion is used to control pests on a huge variety of food and commodity crops, by home gardeners, and in mosquito control efforts to limit mosquito-borne diseases. (Those programs typically involve aerial “adulticide” spraying to knock down adult mosquitoes in flight; it’s a strikingly ineffective approach to the problem.) Organophosphates are strongly linked to a number of human health risks, including neurological, reproductive, developmental, endocrine, and respiratory impacts, as well as liver and kidney damage.

Organophosphate pesticides were initially considered an improvement over organochlorine pesticides, such as DDT and dieldrin. Organochlorines (OCs) persist in the environment and can bioaccumulate, causing ongoing exposures and ecotoxicological impacts, whereas OPs degrade relatively quickly in the environment, thus reducing some of those organochlorine-associated risks. However, “though OPs are not as persistent as OCs, they are more acutely toxic and act to irreversibly inhibit . . . an enzyme critical to nerve function in both insects and humans.” That inhibitory impact inactivates acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme responsible for metabolism of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This is the “common mechanism of effect” for all OPs.

This inhibition causes the accumulation of acetylcholine, which can result in symptoms such as diarrhea, dizziness, headache, and muscle twitches, as well as potentially more-serious ones, including respiratory muscle paralysis, respiratory failure, coma, and death. The Turkish study cited below notes that, “Subjects exposed to organophosphates for [a] prolonged period might experience neuropsychiatric and mood changes, cognitive and memory deficits, polyneuropathy extrapyramidal symptoms,” or development of neurogenerative disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, dementias). The liver and kidneys are considered among the main targets of malathion toxicity, which is mediated through oxidative stress — an imbalance, in cells, between the production of free radicals and reactive metabolites (so-called reactive oxygen species, or ROS), and their elimination by antioxidants. The Tunisian study identified those impacts as primary (see below).

Other studies have pointed to similar impacts and the oxidative stress mechanism. One such investigation, published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety in October 2018, found hepatotoxic impacts of exposure to malathion in a fish species called rohu, a member of the carp family. Those included hepatic necrosis, fatty infiltration, congestion, and cellular swelling. The authors of that study concluded that their research “clearly revealed malathion as a potent hepatotoxic pesticide; therefore the injudicious, indiscriminate and extensive use of Malathion should be prohibited or at least reduced and strictly monitored.” An investigation by Turkish researchers, published in Toxicology Research in March 2018, also concludes that malathion increases oxidative stress, causes tissue damage, and decreases antioxidant status in rats. A third study, out of Egypt and published in April 2018 in the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine, concluded that “compared to controls, malathion resulted in increased oxidative stress in [the] brain and liver.”

EPA’s determination of acetylcholinesterase inhibition as the “common mechanism of effect” is important. The Food Quality Protection Act requires that EPA calculate the multiple effects of pesticides with similar toxic properties; thus, cumulative risk assessment must consider, for example, malathion exposure plus any chlorpyrifos exposure, etc. EPA, not known for quick action on pesticide registration reviews, in 2016 issued, on the basis of a draft risk assessment, risk management recommendations for mosquito control professionals on the use of aerial malathion spraying. EPA was driven, no doubt, by concern related to increased spraying activity because of the then-rapid spread of the Zika virus, as well as other mosquito-borne illnesses. Information from the risk assessment was disturbing enough that the EPA took the uncharacteristic step; that information included evidence of histopathological lesions of the nasal cavity and larynx from exposures below the “dose” that typically causes the inactivation of acetylcholinesterase, as well as clinical signs of neurotoxicity (such as, tremors, salivation, urogenital staining, and decreased motor activity) in those exposed at levels 10 times those that cause such inactivation.

Beyond Pesticides advocates for transitioning away from toxic organophosphates for pest control. There are less- and non-toxic approaches to most pest problems that can drastically reduce the health and environmental risks associated with pesticide use. Learn more about organophosphates, pesticides generally, and shifting to organic agriculture through Beyond Pesticides’ Daily News Blog, journal Pesticides and You, Safer Choice pages, and its website pages on the transition to organic agriculture. 

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

Primary source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxrep.2017.12.021 

(Beyond Pesticides, November 8, 2018) Two months after publishing its first series of tests, part two of an Environmental Working Group (EWG) study finds residues of Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, in all General Mills’ Cheerios and PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats products sampled. Health advocates are expressing concern about the consequences of chronic glyphosate exposure, and say U.S. federal agencies must limit the herbicide’s use on oat-based breakfast foods regularly marketed to children. In addition, organic itself is under threat, as chemical-intensive management practices undermine the future of the growing organic movement.

In this second round of testing, EWG scientists purchased products around San Francisco and Washington DC. 28 samples of conventional and 16 samples of organic oat products were collected. Approximately 300 grams of each General Mills and PepsiCo product were packaged and shipped to Anresco Laboratories, in San Francisco. Detected glyphosate residues were compared to EWG’s own health benchmark of 160 parts per billion (ppb). This benchmark is based on risks of lifetime exposure and what EWG scientists consider allowable and protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety. 

EWG’s results detected glyphosate residues in all 28 samples of conventionally grown oat products. The vast majority (all but two) of sampled products containing conventionally grown oats had residues well above 160 ppb. The highest level of glyphosate detected by the lab was 2,837 ppb in Quaker Oatmeal Squares breakfast cereal. Surprising to some, glyphosate was also detected in five of the 16 organic samples at concentrations of 10 ppb to 30 ppb. EWG notes that organic oats can be exposed by neighboring drift or at facilities where conventional oats are also processed. Any evidence indicating cross-contamination from conventional to organic underscores the urgency of protecting organic integrity.

“How many bowls of cereal and oatmeal have American kids eaten that came with a dose of weed killer?” asked EWG President Ken Cook in a press release. “That’s a question only General Mills, PepsiCo and other food companies can answer.”

In response, General Mills and Quaker Oats Company have gone on the defensive, insisting their products meet the legal standards. However, it is important to note that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) legal limit for glyphosate on oats, 30 parts per million, was set back in 2008. This was well before the International Agency for Research on Caner (IARC) cancer classification, or any of the recent Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto trials, in which glyphosate was shown to have caused a school groundkeeper to contract non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Advocates affirm outdated legal limits, not based on the best and most current science, fall short of adequately protecting public health.

Children and developing fetuses are particularly vulnerable to carcinogens and immune system suppressants. Repeated pesticide exposure increases susceptibility to disease later in life. Without strong protections in place, parents can be unknowingly feeding their children daily breakfasts tainted with toxic pesticide residues.

“Glyphosate and other cancer-causing chemicals,” says Mr. Cook, “simply don’t belong in children’s food, period.”

Many health and environmental advocates are calling for a glyphosate ban, in which products containing glyphosate are removed from the market. However, though glyphosate is troubling on its own, there are also other equally toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that perpetuates “the pesticide-treadmill.” For comprehensive results, champion an organic systems approach wherever pesticides are routinely used.  Calling glyphosate “the poster child for the bigger pesticide problem,” in “Decades of Deceit,” U.S. Right to Know investigative reporter Carey Gillam said, “I do think [glyphosate] is very representative of what is going on in terms of the way [pesticides have] been pushed, and the way [Monsanto] has manipulated public policy and the regulatory authority.”

Products manufacturers can expand markets for farmers through a commitment to source only organically grown ingredients. In the meantime, grassroots coalitions must continue holding companies accountable. The need for a global transition to regenerative, organic agriculture is urgent and ongoing. Instead of prolonging land management practices that lead to widespread weed resistance, consciously choose to avoid conventional products. Turn your lawn into an organic garden. Cook, share and enjoy organic foods for your friends and family whenevr possible.

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

Source: Environmental Working Group

(Beyond Pesticides, November 7, 2018) Brazil’s rapid industrialization of its agricultural sector may be coming at the cost of resident health, according to a new study published in Chemosphere by an international team of scientists. The researchers link the rise in the country’s pesticide use since the turn of the century to significant increases in colon cancer, particularly in the country’s most intensive agricultural southern regions. With the recent election of far right president Jair Bolsonaro, who has supported policies that would loosen Brazil’s pesticide regulations, advocates are concerned the county’s farming industry is moving in an unsustainable direction.

Researchers note that as Brazil’s agriculture industry has grown over the last two decades, it has become the world’s leading consumer of pesticides. In the year 2000, roughly 160 million tons of pesticides were used in the country. By 2012, that number reached nearly 500 million tons. Scientists compared pesticides sold to standard mortality rates (SMR) in each Brazilian state. SMR measures mortality by comparing observed mortality to expected mortality when adjusting for age and gender. A rate above one indicates that there is excessive mortality.

Despite improvements in detection and treatment, colon cancer deaths recorded in the country increased from roughly 950k in 2000 to over one million by 2012. Using a series of statistical models, researchers showed that as the amount of pesticide sold in the country increased, the SMR for colon cancer increased in close correlation. This trend held for both male and female populations.

“The results show a strong link [between pesticides and colon cancer mortality] and as such cannot be ignored,” said study co-author Francis Martin, PhD, of the University of Central Lancashire’s School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences in the United Kingdom to SciDevNet. “It is now critical to determine whether [exposure to pesticides] has the potential to turn normal cells into cancer cells by acting as endocrine disruptors or by damaging DNA.”

Beyond Pesticides’ Pesticide Induced Diseases Database lists a number studies linking agricultural pesticide use to colon cancer. Much of this research focuses on the risk to farmers and applicators, but residents can also be exposed to pesticides through drift, runoff into drinking water sources, and residues on food. Authors of the study are concerned with Brazilian government data showing that 20% of food sampled between 2013 and 2015 was considered unsafe due to high pesticide residue.

Researchers made the following findings using U.S. data in Pesticide use and colorectal cancer risk in the Agricultural Health Study:

“We investigated the relationship between agricultural pesticides and colorectal cancer incidence in the Agricultural Health Study. A total of 56,813 pesticide applicators with no prior history of colorectal cancer were included in this analysis. Detailed pesticide exposure and other information were obtained from self-administered questionnaires completed at the time of enrollment (1993-1997). Cancer incidence was determined through population-based cancer registries from enrollment through December 31, 2002. A total of 305 incident colorectal cancers (212 colon, 93 rectum) were diagnosed during the study period, 1993-2002. Although most of the 50 pesticides studied were not associated with colorectal cancer risk, chlorpyrifos use showed significant exposure response trend (p for trend = 0.008) for rectal cancer, rising to a 2.7-fold (95% confidence interval: 1.2-6.4) increased risk in the highest exposure category. Aldicarb was associated with a significantly increased risk of colon cancer (p for trend = 0.001), based on a small number of exposed cases, with the highest exposure category resulting in a 4.1-fold increased risk (95% confidence interval: 1.3-12.8).”

Researchers indicate that their data reveal pesticide exposure to be a potential risk factor for colon cancer, and indicate their correlational findings warrant further investigation. As a result of increasing attention to pesticide dangers, earlier this year a Brazilian judge ordered a suspension of glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world. Reports from other South American countries such as Argentina indicate that there is widespread poisoning arising from the increasing use of genetically engineered crops developed to tolerate repeated sprayings of glyphosate and other pesticides.

As evidence continues to accumulate on the dangers of increasing pesticide use, developing countries still have an opportunity to shift to safer, sustainable organic farming practices. For more information on why organic is the right choice for the future of farming, see Beyond Pesticides’ organic program page. And for more information on the dangers of pesticide exposure, see resources on the Safer Choice webpage.

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

Source: SciDevNet, Chemosphere

(Beyond Pesticides, November 6, 2018) Scientists working for USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Lincoln, Nebraska have discovered natural compounds derived from coconut oil that are more effective than DEET at repelling mosquitoes, ticks, biting flies, bed bugs and other insects. Given the long-lasting efficacy of the compounds researchers tested, commercialization could make the regular use of toxic insect repellents, like DEET, obsolete. Advocates are praising USDA researchers for the results, indicating that this is exactly the type of research government agencies should be funding and promoting.

It is important to note that USDA scientists did not find coconut oil itself to be an effective repellent. Lab equipment was used to analyze and isolate medium chain fatty acids within coconut oil for their repellent properties. Scientists zeroed in on a blend of C8 (caprylic acid), C10 (capric acid), and C12 (lauric acid) fatty acids as the most effective repellent mixture. Individually, only C12 exhibited anywhere near the same efficacy as the specific blend identified. The study indicates that more research is needed to understand why coconut oil itself was ineffective, and how the synergy between the fatty acid combinations resulted in such effective repellency.

To verify their hypothesis on the efficacy of the fatty acid blend, scientists tested the compounds on range of well-known pests that threaten public health and the agricultural economy. They began with a focus on biting flies (the stable fly and horn fly), which can reduce meat and milk production in cattle, and spread disease to humans. For the horn fly, researchers formulated the fatty acids in a starch blend and found it effective for up to four days, when used on cattle in the field.  While the prevailing treatment against stable flies, catnip oil, provided 24 hours of protection, the coconut fatty acid blend showed effectiveness in the lab up to two weeks. Compared to DEET, which provides 50% control against stable flies, the coconut oil compound is 95% effective.

Researchers then looked at the effect of this blend on bed bugs. Both DEET and the fatty acid blend displayed roughly the same effectiveness after 24 hours, but the coconut-derived blend retained efficacy for much longer. After seven days, the coconut fatty acids were still 80% effective against bed bugs, while DEET lost much of its repellent activity after three days.

The dog and lone star ticks tested by scientists exhibited a response similar to bed bugs. The coconut oil blend was found to be nearly 90% effective for both tick species up to seven days. According to EPA’s insect repellent search tool, the longest effective time for a tick repellent currently on the market is the 14 hour protection provided by the picaridin-based Sawyer Picaridin Insect Repellent Lotion. The closest DEET-based product only provides 10 hours of tick repellency.

Scientists last tested their coconut-derived fatty acid blend on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can spread yellow fever, dengue fever, chickungunya, and Zika, and are increasingly prevalent throughout the United States due to a warming climate. While the fatty acid blend was effective at repelling these mosquitoes, the concentrations needed to be much higher than DEET in order to be effective. However, at concentrations above 25%, both substances exhibited the same ability to provide 90% repellency against Aedes aegypti.

It is not an understatement to characterize this research as groundbreaking in its implications for the future development of insect repellents. DEET, which is widely recommended by government agencies and even some well-intentioned non-profit organizations, has been linked to a range of health impacts, with particular concern for children.  Symptoms of DEET exposure in humans can include headache, exhaustion, and mental confusion, together with blurred vision,  salivation, chest tightness, muscle twitching and abdominal cramps. It is often applied to clothing in combination with synthetic pyrethroids, causing potential synergy that has been linked to brain damage and Gulf War syndrome. A 2009 study found a mother’s use of insect repellents, like DEET, during the first trimester of pregnancy to be associated with the birth defect hypospadias in newborns.

Most natural alternatives provide nowhere near the same length of efficacy as that displayed by the fatty acid compounds. The blend that researchers tested are also very cheap to produce and can be isolated through other plant compounds. Researchers estimate that cattle ranchers switching to this formulation could see significant savings on cattle fly repellents, as the cost of the coconut-derived fatty acids would only be roughly 10 cents per cattle.

USDA indicated in a press release that it has filed a patent application for this new technology, and is working with companies to develop formulas that replicate their work. This underlines the critical importance of the U.S. government investing in pest research and technology. As the Agricultural Research Service notes, “each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.” This is not government waste, but a successful method to develop new, safer products for the consumer and commercial market. Beyond Pesticides will continue to monitor and update its readers should a coconut-oil fatty acid based natural product be approved for use.

In the meantime, continue to avoid DEET-based products. Currently, given that the efficacy time for natural and least-toxic insect repellents is similar to DEET, there should be no reason to opt for the compound that could put one’s individual health at risk. See Beyond Pesticides’ least toxic mosquito repellent fact sheet for more information on safer, alternative repellents. See, also, Beyond Pesticides mosquito management webpage and Public Health Mosquito Management Strategy for Decision.

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

Source: Agricultural Research Service PR, Scientific Reports

(Beyond Pesticides, November 5, 2018) As you know, the stakes in this midterm election are high. Many races are too close to call and will be decided by voter turnout. As we have read, our vote  will make a difference!

 The stakes are high. People and the environment are being poisoned. Pollinators are disappearing. Waterways are being contaminated. Biodiversity is threatened. Children –especially farmworker children—are suffering brain damage, and pesticide exposure is linked to the increase in ADHD and autism. Pesticide exposure is implicated in cancer, Parkinson’s disease, reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, learning disabilities, and more.

We need people in elected positions — from local officials to national offices — who will listen to constituents who know the need for protection from pesticides and understand the urgent need to adopt of organic practices. Learn about your candidates and vote!

What more we can do. Take someone with you to the polls. Offer assistance to your neighbors who need help getting to the polls. Offer to watch children of those who need childcare. If you want to do even more, contact candidates to see how you can help with canvassing or phone banking.

Make a difference with your vote!
VOTE LIKE YOUR HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT DEPEND ON IT!

(Beyond Pesticides, November 2, 2018) A group of leading toxics experts, who published a paper in the journal PLOS Medicine on their research on organophosphate exposure during pregnancy and impacts on child development, are calling for a ban on organophosphate pesticides. The study evaluates current science on the risks of this class of compounds, produced by Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences); its conclusions warn of the multitude of dangers of organophosphates for children, and makes recommendations for addressing these risks. The experts conclude that: (1) widespread use of organophosphate (OP) pesticides to control insects has resulted in ubiquitous human exposures; (2) acute exposures to OPs is responsible for poisonings and deaths, particularly in developing countries; and (3) evidence demonstrates that prenatal exposures, even at low levels, put children at risk for cognitive and behavioral deficits, and for neurodevelopmental disorders.

Among the authors’ recommendations are these:

• Governments and subsidiary agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), should phase out chlorpyrifos and other organophosphate pesticides; ban non-agricultural uses of OP pesticides (including in household products); monitor watersheds and drinking water sources of human exposure; promote the use of integrated pest management (IPM) through incentives and training; and establish pesticide use and illness reporting programs.
• Healthcare professions and training institutions should implement training and curricula on the health impacts from OP exposures, how to treat acute exposures, and how to educate patients and the public about these hazards and the best means for avoiding them.
• Schools of nursing and medicine should incorporate curricula on environmental hazards (including pesticides), and medical boards ought to include environmental health in their examinations.
• Agricultural entities should provide training on the handling and application of pesticides, and on worker protection standards; accelerate the development of nontoxic approaches to pest control through IPM; and ensure worker safety through appropriate protective equipment and training.

Developed approximately eight decades ago, initially as nerve gas agents for military use, and later amended for use (at reduced concentrations) as pesticides, organophosphates are widely used for agricultural pest control, but also, in hospitals and other healthcare institutions, schools, and public spaces (e.g., parks, golf courses, playing fields), and for mosquito control. The best-known among the organophosphate pesticides (OPs) — some of which have been proscribed or limited in the past decade or so — are probably chlorpyrifos, malathion, and diazinon. The study authors note that the extensive use of OPs has “led to ubiquitous human exposure.” A recent example of that ubiquity — in which every single home in rural New York State counties showed the presence of pesticides, often including the organophosphates malathion and/or chlorpyrifos — was covered by Beyond Pesticides.

High-dose exposure to OPs causes “acute poisoning from the irreversible inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), resulting in cholinergic syndrome (including narrowed pupils, excessive salivation, bronchoconstriction, mental confusion, convulsions or tremors, and in some cases, death). Additionally, delayed polyneuropathy has been described in association with high exposures.” Farmworkers and pesticide applicators are generally most at risk for these kinds of exposures, but they are not the only victims. In 2013, for example, at least 25 children in India died after an acute dietary exposure to high levels of organophosphates. In addition, children, who are most vulnerable to the harmful effects of OPs, may be exposed if they live near, and/or their parents work in, agricultural fields treated with the compounds.

Lower-level exposures, even those previously considered safe, and to which many members of the public are subject, can lead to myriad neurodevelopmental, reproductive, and respiratory health problems. A plethora of studies, including the subject investigation, has linked exposures during fetal development with neurodevelopmental issues, i.e., poorer cognitive, behavioral, and social development in children. Cognitive problems may include reduced IQ, developmental delays, and greater risk for learning disabilities; numerous investigations, cited in the subject research paper, have implicated OPs in the development of autism spectrum disorders.

The EPA stated in 2016 that there was sufficient epidemiologic evidence of “neurodevelopmental effects occurring at chlorpyrifos exposure levels below that required to cause acetylcholinesterase inhibition.” Chronic, low-level exposure is a huge concern, particularly prenatally and for young children, given their rapid development and the potential deleterious effect during multiple developmental windows. Such exposures get insufficient research and clinical attention, and are often dismissed because pregnant women and fetuses may not show obvious clinical symptoms or signs, and developmental deficits may not manifest until months or years later.

Frighteningly, the study notes that outcomes related to fetal exposures to OPs seem to persist, with associations observed into middle and late childhood. It further pointed out that neuroanatomic alterations (such as differences in brain volume in regions responsible for attention, receptive language processing, social cognition, and regulation of inhibition) were seen in children with high levels of OPs in their umbilical cord blood. These observed associations may “potentially constitute a pathway from pesticide exposure to the associated behavioral and cognitive deficits [and] may be permanent.”

More than 40 organophosphate pesticides are considered, by the EPA and World Health Organization (WHO) Food and Agriculture Organization, to be moderately or highly hazardous to human health. These toxic compounds are used on a huge array of agricultural crops, as well as for the uses noted above. The EPA moved in 2016 to ban chlorpyrifos for agricultural uses; the Trump administration reversed that decision in 2017. In August 2018, the NInth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ban must executed, based on “scientific evidence that its residue on food causes neurodevelopmental damage to children” — a decision the Trump administration has said it will appeal. Some countries have instituted bans on a few OPs, the European Union has denied approval of 30+ OP compounds, and early in 2018, Hawaii became the first state to ban chlorpyrifos.

Beyond Pesticides has written extensively on organophosphates and their implications in human health problems and diseases, including those related to reproductive, cognitive, and respiratory function. These compounds are implicated, as well, in the dysregulation and dysfunction of bodily systems because of their impacts on endocrine function. Through its Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database, Beyond Pesticides keeps track of emerging research on pesticide exposure and human health.

Several study co-authors have been quite direct in their commentary on the research results. Past president the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and president-elect of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics Jeanne Conry, M.D said, “Health care professionals are on the front line of responding to organophosphate pesticide exposure, but the only way to make sure families aren’t exposed in the first place is to ban them completely.”

Bruce Lanphear, M.D., physician-scientist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC noted, “We found no evidence of a safe level of organophosphate pesticide exposure for children. Well before birth, organophosphate pesticides are disrupting the brain in its earliest stages, putting them on track for difficulties in learning, memory and attention, effects which may not appear until they reach school-age. . . . Government officials around the world need to listen to science, not chemical lobbyists, and protect our children from chlorpyrifos and all organophosphate pesticides.”

“Alternatives to these toxic pesticides exist, and many farmers have successfully eliminated use of organophosphate pesticides. The agricultural community has a responsibility to use these alternatives. We need federal support for research on less toxic pest management and support to our farmers so they can farm sustainably and profitably, as well as alternatives to organophosphate use to control mosquitos and other public health threats,” said Asa Bradman, Ph.D., environmental health scientist at UC Berkeley.

Lead author, director of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center, and co-director of Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Development Risks) Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Ph.D. opined, “Children deserve to be healthy and safe from exposure to toxic chemicals. We have compelling evidence from dozens of human studies that exposures of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides put children and fetuses at risk for developmental problems that may last a lifetime. . . . Current U.S. EPA policy is failing to protect children and fetuses here in the U.S. from these dangerous chemicals. By law, the EPA cannot ignore such clear findings: It’s time for a ban not just on chlorpyrifos, but all organophosphate pesticides.”

EPA’s decision in 2000 and subsequent action removed chlorpyrifos’ residential uses and retains all agricultural uses except tomatoes (allowable residues on apples and grapes were adjusted), golf course and public health mosquito spraying. The agency argued at the time of its decision that it had adequately mitigated risks through the removal of high exposure uses to children in the residential setting, but ignored the special risks to farmworker children’s exposure as well as the availability of alternative agricultural practices and products that made chlorpyrifos unnecessary and therefore its risks unreasonable. The decision at the time was hailed as a victory for the public because it eliminated high hazard exposures and showed that EPA could remove uses of a widely used chemical. Except, it did not do the job. The risk assessment process does not force a consideration of those who suffer disproportionate risk or groups of people (such as those with neurological diseases in this case who are disproportionately affected).

Beyond Pesticides welcomes the recommendations of this paper, and in particular, the enthusiasm of several of its authors for banning these compounds and transforming agricultural practices to less toxic, sustainable methods. Keep abreast of developments on the organophosphate issue, and pesticides generally, via Beyond Pesticides’ Daily News Blog, its journal Pesticides and You, its Safer Choice pages, and its coverage of the need for a transition to organic approaches for the sake of human and environmental health.

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

Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002671

(Beyond Pesticides, November 1, 2018) A new study offers fresh evidence that wild bumblebee pollinators are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticides, finding that exposure to these compounds interferes with mating success and population stability. Researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, measuring real-world harms of neonicotinoids, indicate that the impacts they found to bumblebee “reproducers,” namely queen and drone (male) bees, does not bode well for the array of plant species that relies on them. Though advocates warn that destabilizing managed pollinators could threaten U.S. food production and exports, with food prices increasing as cost of bringing pollinators to farms increases, the study’s authors and advocates insist that the impacts of such widespread poisoning of wild bees could be felt well beyond agriculture.

Researchers in the lab compare behavioral and psychological responses of virgin queens, workers, and male Bombus impatiens from multiple colonies to field-realistic doses of the neonicotinoid clothianidin. While every bee was given a replenishing supply of pollen based on body weight and energy demands, four distinct concentrations of diluted analytical-grade (pure) clothianidin (including a control with no pesticide added) were mixed into a nectar-like solution and fed to the bumblebees orally for 5 days. Bees were housed in well-ventilated environmental chambers, with suitable temperature and humidity, and all tests were conducted in red light to minimize additional stress on bees. To ensure tests were field-realistic, researchers sent clothianidin solutions to USDA Agricultural Marketing Service’s National Science Laboratories Testing Division for verification.

After administering the toxicant and recording the bees’ behavior, researchers used gene-specific RNA analysis to test how clothianidin sensitivity and ability to detoxify differed based on sex and “caste” (colony role).

The amount of pesticide-laced sugar solution administered varied by body weight/size, with the queens’ unique role demanding they consume over twice as much solution per day as both workers and males. While field-realistic consumption of clothianidin reduced survival rates in all test bumblebee populations, worker bees showed higher tolerance to chronic oral clothianidin exposure than queens. However, though queens are known to show reduced fertility following neonic exposure, bumblebee males, revealing surprising vulnerability, showed reduced sperm production and 50% mortality at the lowest administered doses.

RNA testing results also revealed even low doses of clothianidin damaged 332 genes associated with major biological functions, including immune system response, learning and memory, locomotion, and reproduction.

Noting the significance of neonic toxicity to the life cycle of wild bees, the consequences of exposure are greatest during bumblebees’ mating and nesting phases. Neonics like clothianidin could be dramatically impacting bumblebee populations by lowering the number of reproducers in late summer and, consequently, the number of queens establishing new colonies the following spring. 

“[Neonicotinoids] pose a potential hazard to wild bumblebees at every stage of their annual life cycle” says Robert Gegear, PhD, coauthor of the study, in an interview with Mass Live. “All of these vulnerable points get missed when you focus on bees in an agricultural context.”

With the true trans-generational cost of chemically-dependent land management rarely brought into consideration, many decision makers attempting to regulate pesticides may remain unaware of the unintended consequences stemming from application of systemic toxins.

Federal regulation of neonics is far from effective and at odds with latest independent science. Even in 2018, scientists remain unable to test the total list of ingredients in formulated neonic products, the majority of ingredients remaining undisclosed by chemical manufacturers. Without regulators devoting equal attention to the additional harms of bee-toxic inert ingredients, even this study, using analytical-grade clothianidin, cannot offer a complete measure of neonic toxicity. For many city officials, protecting soil, surrounding ecology, and people will only be considered given persistent grassroots intervention. All the while, people continue applying pesticides in urban and rural areas understanding only a fraction of their full ecological cost.

“As [the] bumblebees and other native pollinators disappear,” says Dr. Gegear, “so too [would] our native flowering plants and the animals that use them for food, shelter, and nesting sites.” Dr. Gegear warns that for toxicity research on wild pollinators to be complete, scientists must note the potential for a destabilization of ecosystem services resulting from reproductive losses among critical wild pollinating species across the globe.

Native plants offer uniqueness to land regions and local watersheds. Without regionally-adapted bumblebees, biodiversity becomes limited, foodchains become destabilized, and ecological niches become vacant, allowing opportunistic “invasive” plant species to flourish. Protecting pollinators is about more than protecting agriculture. Any neighboring native plant or animal species surviving past our front doors is intrinsically reliant on the unsung service provided by pollinators like bumblebees. Their pollination habits enliven the ecosystems interspersed among modern cities and human civilizations throughout history. The areas at risk from a loss of biodiversity are the views we visit on vacations; the stream we sit beside to self-reflect, or catch fish.

Endangered species need protection to support biodiversity and life. Given research showing neonics kill-off bumblebee queens during the critical nest-building period, policy makers must be made aware and take action, or more interconnected species could be lost. With the EPA under the Trump administration heavily influenced by industry, help oppose legislation weakening the endangered species act from sneak attacks. Act locally to insist that your governor ban neonicotinoid insecticides.

Uncover what Dr. Gegear calls the “cascading negative effects that ripple throughout the ecosystem” by learning about trophic cascades and the countless ecological interconnections historically overlooked as part of our industrial growth economy.

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

Source: PLOS One

(Beyond Pesticides, October 31, 2018) Residents in the town of Great Barrington, MA are concerned about the health effects that could result from creosote-coated railroad ties stored in their neighborhood. According to a report in the Berkshire Eagle, soon after the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MDOT) parked a load of railroad ties along tracks that cut through a neighborhood, community members began to complain about the smell. Creosote is a mixture of thousands of different chemical compounds. Derived mainly from coal tar and regulated as a pesticide by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), the material represents a significant hazard that puts people and the environment in danger, and can be readily replaced by safer, alternative materials.

“I would want to roll up my windows immediately,” Beth Rose told the Berkshire Eagle. Another Great Barrington resident, Jeanne Bachetti, told the paper, “I started to smell them right after they moved [them] in there. Sometimes we get a propane smell from [nearby] AmeriGas, so I couldn’t tell. Then it dawned on me — that’s not gas.”

MDOT is currently in the process of a project to upgrade roughly 40 miles of freight line, and is using 60,000 railroad ties as part of the construction. Many of these ties were parked in the Great Barrington neighborhood over the summer, across from Ms. Bachetti’s house. She indicated to the Berkshire Eagle that her mother, sick with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), now requires a second liter of oxygen after the rail load began wafting creosote vapors into the town.

The Berkshire Eagle interviewed Beyond Pesticides’ Community Resource and Policy Director Drew Toher, who indicated that the use creosote-coated ties was “unnecessary” given the availability of alternatives. In 2002, Beyond Pesticides joined with other health advocacy groups to petition EPA to suspend and cancel the use of creosote. As part of that petition (Table 1), groups created a lifecycle cost-comparison between wood ties and the use of recycled plastic composite ties, finding significant savings in favor of composite ties. With the economics on the side of alternatives, there is simply no reason to continue using these toxic ties and subjecting communities to hazardous chemicals off-gassing from creosote.

Creosote is considered a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization, and EPA, and is listed as a carcinogen by the European Union and under California’s prop 65.  The material has also been linked to organ damage, reproductive toxicity, and certain chemical compounds, such as benzopyrenes and phenols in creosote are considered endocrine (hormone) disruptors. Its use as railroad ties means there is an outsized risk of run-off from contaminated waterways, and fish in creosote-polluted water have displayed lesions and neoplasms after exposure.

The material was once used for a range of pesticidical properties. Up until the mid-1980s it was used as a right-of-way herbicide along roadways, sold to consumers as a garden weedkiller, employed as a fungicide on ropes, and its oil was used an insecticide to fog for mosquitoes. As a result of studies showing cancer and genetic mutations in lab animals, and higher rates of skin cancer for workers that handled the substance, EPA restricted use to only certified pesticide applicators. In its decision to allow the material to remain in production, the agency cited the economic benefits of its use as a wood preservative. However, that was before the improvements in alternative railroad ties, principally a composite material, made over the several decades since the material was first restricted. Composite ties, or if conditions warrant, steel or concrete ties, can effectively eliminate the need to both use and produce hazardous creosote.

The horrible smell described by Great Barrington residents represents a risk of health effects, as well as the failure of EPA regulators to adequately weigh the public health impact of this material. Similar to another wood preservative, pentachlorophenol, banned as a persistent organic pollutant by the Stockholm Conventions, EPA and U.S. regulators have failed to take appropriate action.

For more information about the hazards of wood preservative pesticides, see past Daily News articles, as well as Beyond Poison Poles, a recent update to Beyond Pesticides’ original 2000-era reports Poison Poles and Pole Pollution.

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

Source: Berkshire Eagle

(Beyond Pesticides, October 30, 2018) The conclusion of a recent population-based cohort study of 68,946 French adults brings promising, though perhaps predictable, news. Greater consumption of organic food — as opposed to food produced conventionally, with use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers — is associated with a reduction in overall cancer risk, and reduced risk of specific cancers, namely, postmenopausal breast cancer and lymphomas. The NutriNet-Santé Prospective Cohort Study was published on October 22 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. It is important to remember that correlation is not causation; but the findings were strong enough that researchers concluded that more research is not only warranted, but also, could “identify which specific factors are responsible for potential protective effects of organic food consumption on cancer risk.”

The project tracked subjects — who were 78% female and 44.2 years old, on average — for 4.5 years. Those subjects reported the frequency of their consumption of 16 organic food products as “never, occasionally, or most of the time.” Those included: fruits, vegetables, soy-based products, dairy products, meat and fish, eggs, grains, legumes, breads, cereals, flour, vegetable oils, condiments, ready-to-eat meals, cookies, chocolate, sugar, marmalade, dietary supplements, and some beverages (coffee, teas, and wine). An organic food score was then computed and assigned to each subject.

Annual follow-ups screened for first-incident cancer diagnoses in the study’s subjects. Results showed that a higher “organic” score was positively correlated with overall decreased cancer risk, and lower risk of developing those specific cancers previously mentioned; no association was detected for other types of cancer. The study controlled for multiple confounding factors, including sociodemographics, lifestyle, and dietary patterns.

The researchers note that environmental risks for cancer include pesticide exposure, whether direct (for pesticide applicators and handlers, e.g.) or through the other primary vector, which is diet. They go on to say, “Epidemiological research investigating the link between organic food consumption and cancer risk is scarce, and, to the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to evaluate frequency of organic food consumption associated with cancer risk using detailed information on exposure. . . . Among the environmental risk factors for cancer, there are concerns about exposure to different classes of pesticides. . . . The role of pesticides for the risk of cancer could not be doubted given the growing body of evidence linking cancer development to pesticide exposure. While dose responses of such molecules or possible cocktail effects are not well known, an increase in toxic effects has been suggested even at low concentrations of pesticide mixtures.”

The Los Angeles Times reports, “At least three [pesticides] — glyphosate, malathion and diazinon — probably cause cancer, and others may be carcinogenic as well, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.” Foods grown or produced organically are far less likely to harbor such pesticide residues (than is conventionally grown produce) because the National Organic Standards forbid use of virtually all synthetic pesticides, except the few that meet the standards of the Organic Foods Production Act. Unsurprisingly, people who consume a relatively “organic” diet have lower levels of pesticide residues in their urine. One of the key points made by the study authors is this: “If the findings are confirmed [by future research], promoting organic food consumption in the general population could be a promising preventive strategy against cancer.”

The health advantages of organic agricultural production for workers and consumers — compared with conventional agriculture, which uses toxic pesticides and synthetic, petrochemical inputs — are legion. There is a strong case that a switch to a generally organic diet confers not only some protection from development of any number of pesticide-induced diseases and other harmful impacts via, e.g., endocrine disruption and subsequent dysregulation and dysfunction, but also, other significant health benefits because it reduces the body burden of toxic chemicals.

One ready example is the evidence for pesticides’ impacts on sperm quality. The ongoing global drop in fertility is strongly associated with pesticide exposures. A 2015 study demonstrated that eating produce containing pesticide residues adversely affects men’s fertility, leading to fewer and poorer quality sperm — adding to a growing body of research showing impaired reproductive function. The results of that study also underscore the importance of an organic diet in reducing pesticide exposures. Interestingly, a fairly old Danish study (1994), published in The Lancet, showed “unexpectedly high sperm density in members of an association of organic farmers, who manufacture their products without use of pesticides or chemical fertilisers. This is of interest in the light of evidence that indicates a world-wide decrease trend of sperm density in the general population.”

The benefits of organic are perhaps most dramatic for children, whose pesticide exposures come largely through diet (unless they live on or near conventionally managed farms), although they may also be exposed via school or recreational properties. Children are particularly vulnerable to pesticide impacts because their brains, organs, and reproductive systems are still developing. One study showed near-immediate benefit when kids’ diets were switched to organic — their urine showed lowered-to-undetectable pesticide levels within hours of the switch. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report that said, “In terms of health advantages, organic diets have been convincingly demonstrated to expose consumers to fewer pesticides associated with human disease. Organic farming has been demonstrated to have less environmental impact than conventional approaches.”

Beyond Pesticides advocates choosing organic because of the health and environmental benefits to consumers, workers, and rural families. The Eating with a Conscience database, based on legal tolerances (or allowable residues on food commodities), provides a look at the toxic chemicals allowed in the production of the food we eat and the environmental and public health effects resulting from their use. See more on the benefits of organic agriculture, and an overview of organics.

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

Sources: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2707948 and http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-organic-food-cancer-20181022-story.html

(Beyond Pesticides, October 29, 2018) Protect the integrity of the organic standard setting process that determines whether a synthetic substance will be allowed in food labeled organic. Help stop an attack on the meaning of the organic label in the Farm Bill, which may be voted out of conference committee by the end of November. By changing the substance review process, a provision will open the floodgates to allowed synthetic chemicals in organic production, handling, and processing under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA). OFPA incorporates values and principles that build and regenerate soil, protect pollinators and biodiversity, eliminate toxic pesticide use, and contains a default provision that strictly limits synthetic chemicals in certified organic products. This will all change with the Farm bill amendment.

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to tell Farm Bill conferees to reject Section 10104(e) National Organic Standards Board in the Senate Farm Bill (S.3042), a provision that will increase the use of synthetic substances in organic food production.

OFPA incorporates language that ensures that the process for allowing synthetic chemicals in organic production, handling, and processing is very rigorous. This meets a public expectation that food labeled organic is subject to a higher degree of scrutiny than food produced by chemical-intensive agriculture. This distinguishes food labeled under OFPA from food produced with pesticides registered under the pesticide law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

If synthetic materials are allowed in organic production, they, by law, are subject to a no adverse effects standard, a cradle-to-grave analysis, a determination of essentiality (necessity) of the material, and a sunset clause that subjects allowed synthetics to a rigorous reevaluation every five years. This time-limited sunset contains a default assumption that continued allowance of the synthetic substance will not be permitted unless the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) votes decisively to recommend its continued allowance to the Secretary of Agriculture.

OFPA implements a belief that organic growers will continue to adopt methods not dependent on outside inputs –that there would be continuous improvement. At the same time, the NOSB’s deliberations on the allowance of a synthetic substance is informed by new science as it emerges and is reviewed in Technical Review documents prepared for the NOSB. By design, this process contrasts dramatically with the allowance of pesticides under FIFRA, where once a decision is made to allow a chemical, it is extremely difficult or virtually impossible to reverse that decision without serious political or public pressure –typically as a result of a crisis or litigation. The continued allowance of a synthetic chemical under organic law is subject to the same rigorous review that was conducted when the substance was first permitted on the National List, which requires that two-thirds of the board must vote to list. As intended by Congress, this review process repeats at the end of a five-year cycle, when the board again must vote by two-thirds to relist the synthetic chemical, under current statutory language.

A Change in NOSB Process will Weaken Oversight of Synthetic Chemicals in Organic Production. This Senate Farm Bill provision brings uncertainty to the five-year sunset process and undermines a basic tenet of the law. Without this sunset provision, synthetic materials may remain on the National List and attempts to introduce alternative materials and find new creative management practices will be disincentivized.

The Senate provision [Section 10104(e) National Organic Standards Board] may seem like it does not do anything (changes in law always do something, whether intended or not): “Any vote on a motion proposing to amend the national list shall be considered to be a decisive vote that requires 2/3 of the votes cast at a meeting of the Board at which a quorum is present to prevail.” A likely interpretation of this provision is that any change to the National List is an amendment to the list (or amends the national list) requiring a 2/3 vote to make a change – whether taking the synthetic off or putting it on the National List. However, OFPA as written has been historically implemented with the default assumption that synthetic materials come off the list after five years unless the board votes decisively (2/3) to keep it on the list.

This NOSB process has worked for two decades to help grow the organic sector to a $53 billion industry with public trust in a rigorous review process. With the erosion of this basic tenet of the law under the Senate Bill provision, consumer trust in the USDA organic label is seriously threatened by an inability to remove synthetic materials shown to be hazardous or unnecessary.

Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to tell Farm Bill conferees to reject Section 10104(e) National Organic Standards Board in the Senate Farm Bill (S.3042), a provision that will increase the use of synthetic substances in organic food production.

(Beyond Pesticides, October 26, 2018) California Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos is upholding a jury’s verdict that exposure to the herbicide glyphosate caused school groundkeeper Dewayne Johnson to develop cancer. The ruling comes after concern that Judge Bolanos would intervene and overturn the entire monetary award to Mr. Johnson. However, in her final ruling, the Judge decided only to reduce the punitive damages to the same amount the jury awarded in compensatory damages, $39 million. This ruling reduced the total amount awarded to Mr. Johnson from $289 million to $78 million.

While attorneys for Mr. Johnson are disappointed in the reduction, they are pleased that the judge did not take further action. “Although we believe a reduction in punitive damages was unwarranted and we are weighing the options, we are pleased the court did not disturb the verdict,” Diana McKinley, Mr. Johnson’s spokeswoman, told the Associated Press (AP). Bayer, which finalized its merger with Monsanto earlier this year, is vowing to continue its nationwide defense against the over 8,000 cases the company inherited from its former rival currently working their way through the courts.

A tentative ruling from Judge Bolanos earlier this month indicated that she thought the jury had gone too far in awarding such a high amount in punitive damages, which were based on the jury’s viewpoint that Monsanto ignored research showing cancer risks from glyphosate products. This resulted in a rare public rebuttal from jurors, which urged Judge Bolanos to maintain their decision. In a letter to the judge obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, juror Robert Howard indicated that the prospect that “our unanimous verdict could be summarily overturned demeans our system of justice and shakes my confidence in that system.”

However, when issuing her final ruling, Judge Bolanos indicated that jurors had the right to reject Monsanto’s witnesses in favor of those presented by plaintiffs. “Thus, the jury could conclude that Monsanto acted with malice by consciously disregarding a probable safety risk,” the judge wrote.

In late September, Bayer asked the court to either reverse the verdict, reduce, the award, or grant a new trial for the company. Based on the recent ruling, rather than ask for a new trial, the company plans to appeal the verdict.  Legal experts don’t expect the company to settle any of the trials until there are a large number of unfavorable verdicts across the country, according to AP.

Mr. Johnson worked for the Benicia Unified School District where he applied Roundup and Ranger Pro 20 to 30 times a year. He developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 42 in 2014.

Roundup and Ranger Pro contain the active ingredient glyphosate, which was determined by the World Health Organization in 2015 to be a ‘probable human carcinogen’ with sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity based on laboratory studies. Glyphosate has been linked to a host of problems in addition to cancer, including endocrine disruption, reproductive impacts, and kidney and liver damage. Even more concerning is the fact that regulators throughout the world equate glyphosate and its formulated products like Roundup as one in the same. Regulators, including the European Food Safety Authority and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, made determinations counter to the WHO cancer classification based on a review of glyphosate alone. However, WHO and independent scientific research have shown that formulated glyphosate products like Roundup and Ranger Pro contain highly toxic ‘inert’ ingredients like polyethoxylated tallowamine (POEA), which has been shown to kill human cells.
Because regulatory agencies only test active ingredients, and don’t test formulated products and combinations of active and inert ingredients, WHO’s determination is based on a much more robust body of scientific literature than any determination made by a government agency.

For more information about the health effects of glyphosate and its formulated products, see Beyond Pesticides’ glyphosate fact sheet. And for a comprehensive, centralized source of information about Bayer’s Monsanto trial, see our initial coverage of the ruling, which includes transcripts, expert presentations, exhibits, court documents, and further resources.

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

Source: Associated Press

(Beyond Pesticides, October 25, 2018) A study published last month in Scientific Reports finds that eating sunflower pollen significantly reduces protozoan infection in bumblebees. Studying ecosystem services and what she calls “floral rewards,” evolutionary ecologist Lynn Adler, Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst says sunflowers may provide a long sought after solution for improving bees’ immune system response to both disease and parasites.

The researchers studied the protozoan Crithidia bombi, a common parasitic infection of bumble bees, known to impair learning and foraging, shorten lifespan and destabilize colony hierarchies by impacting queen bee behavior. From the outset of the study, Dr. Adler says, “the more sunflowers were grown at the farm, the lower the Crithidia load for the bees at that farm.” Knowing pollinators eat pollen as a source of protein and healthy fats, Dr. Adler hypothesized that both pollen and nectar might have medicinal effects against disease and parasites. However, her experiment did not show consistent results with nectar.

After bees in the lab were starved for 4-6 hours, researchers fed individual worker bees from small colonies a drop of fructose fluid containing 6,000 Crithidia cells, being the approximate concentration bees may encounter in the wild while foraging. After administering the infection, researchers randomly assigned bees to one of four pollen diets: sunflower, buckwheat, or rapeseed, as well as a fourth mix of all three, thus comparing monofloral diets to more natural integration of pollen sources found in the wild. Ensuring samples were free from contaminants, pollen samples were analyzed for 213 pesticides and other agrichemicals. One week after bees were first infected, researchers measured the change to Crithidia infection intensity in the insects.

Though mortality was not different for bees receiving the different treatments, researchers found all bees exhibited improved reproduction success when fed sunflower pollen. In addition, the bees’ Crithidia infection was significantly reduced, suggesting sunflower pollen, as opposed to nectar, has far more concentrated defensive chemicals, and, therefore, can have broad anti-parasitic effects.

However, noting sunflower pollen is not a silver bullet, Dr. Alder indicates that, “Bees do not do well eating just sunflower, but it may be part of a solution. They are going to need other and varied food for their health. . .[Nevertheless,] incorporating [sunflowers] into pollinator gardens is a simple thing we can do to help bees.”

The causes of pollinator decline are multiple and complex: pests and diseases, diet and nutrition, genetics, and habitat loss are all contributors to pollinator decline, according to the 2012 Congressional Research Service report. However the science is clear that systemic pesticides, like the neonicotinoid class of insecticides, are having the greatest effect in depressing pollinator populations. As long as there has been pesticide-intensive agriculture, bees and other pollinators have encountered substantial health risks during and after crop pollination, highlighting a persistent flaw in the U.S. approach to pesticide regulation.

Even interspersing clover into managed landscapes and urban green spaces is shown to add high quality nutritional diversity to the pollen diets of foraging bees in hopes a varied pollen diet reduces susceptibility to pesticide stress and improves resistance to pesticides that affect multiple generations. A 2014 study from Pennsylvania State University, uncovering further evidence that pesticides impair pollinator immune system function, found that bees with a diet of natural, high quality pollen exhibit greater resistance to pesticides’ damaging effects than bees on an artificial diet.

“Given consistent effects of sunflower in reducing pathogens, planting sunflower in agroecosystems and native habitat,” says Adler, “may provide a simple solution to reduce disease and improve the health of economically and ecologically important pollinators.”

Protecting pollinators is vital to American agriculture. Such widespread use of systemic pesticides and the resulting decline of pollinators threatens the stability of the global economy and food supply, along with ecosystems and human health. Before winter sets in, begin to manage landscapes with pollinators in mind. Prepare a space in your yard where you can plant organic sunflower seeds or plant starts, not poisoned with neonicotinoids or other pesticides.  Sunflowers are not a cure to all bee diseases. Nevertheless, apathy; an unwillingness to act when necessity dictates action, can be a toxin as potent as any pesticide. See www.BEEProtective.org to find out how you, as part of a grassroots coalition, can get your community, schools, and local government to take action to protect pollinators.

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

Source: EurekaAlert, Scientific Reports

(Beyond Pesticides, October 24, 2018) Bottlenose dolphins found along Florida’s west coast contain detectable levels of phthalates, chemicals used in plastics, cosmetics and as inert ingredients in pesticide products, research published in the journal GeoHealth last month indicates. The study, published by scientists from the College of Charleston, South Carolina, is the first to find detectable levels of these toxic industrial byproducts in dolphins. Given the transient nature of urinary detection, the findings indicate that dolphins and other marine mammals are at increased risk of health effects related to phthalate exposure.

Scientists sampled a total of 17 dolphins found in Sarasota Bay, FL over the course of two years. Of the 17, phthalates were detected in 12 individuals, or 71% of dolphins. The type of phthalates discovered was indicative of the source of the contaminant. With researchers detecting mono‐(2‐ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP) and monoethyl phthalate (MEP) most frequently. While MEHP is associated with plastic pollution, MEP is a breakdown product of diethyl phthalate (DEP), a compound that has been used in pesticide products as an inert ingredient.

“These chemicals can enter marine waters from urban runoff and agriculture or industrial emissions, but we also know that there is a lot of plastic pollution in the environment,” said Leslie Hart, PhD, lead author of the study to NOLA.com.

The detection results point to the need for increased concern considering the recent impacts on the dolphin population in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed between 30 and 70% of dolphins in the area, indicating it would take between 30 to 50 years for the population to recover. And as a result of the significant red tide events in Florida this summer, nearly 50 dolphins in southwest Florida died.

Studies of phthalate exposure in humans links the chemicals to endocrine disruption, reproductive effects, and liver and kidney toxicity. A study published in 2016 attributes phthalate exposure to 145,000 cases of endometriosis each year in the European Union, costing up to $1.4 million annually. A 2015 study also linked phthalate exposure to early menopause in U.S. women. While certain phthalates were removed from uses as an inert ingredient in pesticide formulations in 2016, there is no telling whether the inerts tested remain in agricultural chemicals used in the region. A similar biomonitoring study conducted in 2016 found the former undisclosed inert ingredients known as perfluroalkyl phosphinic acids (PFPIAs) in fish birds as well as dolphins tested in the exact same location.

Dr. Hart wrote in the study, “Although the sample sample size was small, this study provides some evidence that urinary levels of (phthalates) are relatively high in Sarasota Bay bottlenose dolphins based on comparisons to human urine … warranting more detailed study of exposure routes in the coastal marine environment.”

The researchers told NOLA.com that dolphins act as “great sentinels” for detecting broader issues with ocean habitats. “Any animals in the near-shore environment with similar prey are probably being exposed as well,” said Dr. Hart.

Ultimately, it is up to humans to reduce and eliminate the introduction of novel toxicants into marine waters. In addition to reducing plastic pollution, phthalates should be eliminated from pesticide formulations. Better yet are strategies, such as a shift to organic farming, which would eliminate the need for toxic pesticide use in the first place.

“We’ve introduced these chemicals – they are not natural toxins – and we have the ability to reverse it, to clean this up,” said Dr. Hart.

See past coverage for additional information inert ingredients in pesticide formulations. And visit Beyond Pesticides’ wildlife program page to learn more about the threats pesticides pose to ecosystems and what can be done to help.

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

Source: NOLA.com, GeoHealth

(Beyond Pesticides, October 23, 2018)  The Chief Minister of the Sikkim state in northeast India, Pawan Chamling, addressed a news conference in the Italian Parliament on October 15 to issue a call for a complete, global transition to organic agriculture by 2050. Citing the increasing dangers of climate disruption and its impacts, Mr. Chamling said that such conversion to pesticide- and petrochemical-free practices would reduce carbon emissions by 50%. The call for banning pesticides in communities and countries nationwide is gaining increasing traction, as the shift to organic land management is increasing exponentially. The town of Mals, Italy (93 square miles in area, encompassing ten villages and hamlets, as well as farmland, home to 5,092 people) passed a ban on a ballot initiative with 75% in favor and 69% of the electorate voting. In 2013, the country of Bhutan adopted completely organic practices  throughout its nation. Although not affecting agricultural pesticide use, towns across the U.S. are adopting measures that stop pesticide use community-wide. Ordinances in the cities of Ogunquit, South Portland, and Portland, Maine and the City of Takoma Park, Maryland are examples of city-wide pesticide bans. A petition in Switzerland calls for the banning of pesticides country-wide.

States in northeast India — including Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, HImachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura — had already, over the past few decades, used far lower quantities of pesticides than have other areas of the country. Khorlo Bhutia, principal director and secretary of Sikkim’s Horticulture and Cash Crops Development Department, has said that Sikkim was already “close to being organic by default.” In 2004, Mizoram was the first Indian state to legislate a conversion of its agriculture to 100% organic (though that legislation lacks any deadlines for achievement of the goal), and Kerala and several others are now on the path to fully organic production. A number of other states — Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Gujarat — all have some sort of organic farming law or policy on their books. Their pursuit of organic agriculture will no doubt benefit from Sikkim’s experiences.

Sikkim, the least populous and smallest of the Indian states, whose terrain is quite mountainous, began its own transition to organic in 2003, and achieved it statewide in 2015 — despite the inevitable opposition from the chemical industry and other political parties. From 2003, the state started reducing subsidies of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers by 10% annually. It then banned them completely in 2014, making their sale or use subject to imprisonment or fines.

The transition in Sikkim has not been without its challenges, including too little access to organic compost for farmers, some farmers’ claims of insufficient information and tools with which to deal with pest infestations, some reports of lowered productivity, and poor marketing of the “Sikkim Organic” label (and so, unrealized premiums for agricultural products). The bulk of Sikkim’s organic food was not, as of April 2017, marketed and sold as organic produce. “Since there is no regulation on food that comes from outside the state, organic food grown in Sikkim competes with the cheaper conventional food that comes from West Bengal. Therefore, farmers in Sikkim suffer a major disadvantage,” said GV Ramanjaneyulu, executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Secunderabad, Telangana, who works with 2,000+ farmers in Sikkim. State government acknowledges that successful marketing has lagged, citing lack of funds.

The state government has reported that the productivity of every crop, but for one native orange, has either remained stable or improved slightly from 2010/2011 to 2015/2016. MK Pradhan, another director of the Sikkim Organic Mission, the nodal agency established in 2010 to shepherd Sikkim’s transition, noted that, “Initially, there was apprehension among farmers and, in some villages, they refused to take up organic farming. But with continuous training and education, there was a shift in their mindset.”

Despite those challenges, Sikkim is taking a bit of a victory lap to encourage others to step up to make the transition to organic. Among Minister Chamling’s comments during the press conference was this: “Based on my long experience and association with the organic initiative, I can tell you in all good faith and confidence that a 100 per cent organic world is possible. If we could do it in Sikkim, there is no reason why policymakers, farmers and community leaders cannot do the same elsewhere in the world.” He added, “‘Sikkim is the most peaceful state in India. . . . It is the best in many ways’”; Minister Chamling went on to note the state’s gender equality, and the absence of extreme poverty and religious and caste tensions. Vandana Shiva, renowned environmental and agricultural activist, underscored the correlation, saying that “organic zones” are “zones of democracy,” and “Sikkim shows the world it is possible to be 100 per cent free of the chemicals that destroy and [to] defeat the forces that promote them.”

By contrast, here in the U.S., organic agriculture has seen significant growth and consumer interest during the past couple of decades, especially; it is now a $53 billion sector. Yet progress on a full transition to organic agriculture has been erratic. The development of organic standards for agriculture were required by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990; the National Organic Program and National Organic Standards Board (which advises the Secretary of Agriculture on organic food matters) were created a decade later. Organic agriculture has been proven to be beneficial for both producers and consumers, and its advantages are legion, providing significant health and environmental advantages, as compared with conventional industrial agriculture. (Read more on the case for organic agriculture here and here.)

Nevertheless, the forces arrayed to oppose such a transition are formidable; they include the chemical, petroleum, and conventional agriculture industries, trade associations, and some farmer membership organizations. All presumably fear lowered profits, if not outright obsolescence.

Existing standards and protections for the organic sector must also be protected. There are, for example, efforts by federal agencies in the Trump administration, and members of Congress, to gnaw away at the National Organic Standards, which protect the integrity of organic production and certification. The current Farm Bill (S. 3042) is a case in point: as proposed, it seeks to change a sunsetting provision on synthetic chemicals permitted in organic production so that such chemicals would remain on the official list of those allowed, rather than fall off the list absent an expected, every-five-years review process for such chemicals.

Beyond Pesticides has long advocated for a transition of our agricultural economy to organic, and, like Minister Chamling, renews the urgency of the need for this transition in the face of advancing climate disruption. It writes frequently about assaults on organic, and about the importance of protecting and advocating for its integrity, often through resisting harmful changes that may arise in the development of each Farm Bill. Its webpage on this fall’s National Organic Standards Board meeting provides an overview of the issues at stake and ways to become active on them. See the Keep Organic Strong webpage to learn more about organic and how to support and advocate for it.

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

Source: https://www.devdiscourse.com/Article/science-environment/218898-sikkim-cm-urges-world-to-adopt-farming-without-chemical-fertilisers-and-pesticides

(Beyond Pesticides, October 22, 2018) The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is accepting comments on its proposal to classify chlorpyrifos as a toxic air pollutant. The classification would require DPR to develop control measures that adequately protect public health. What happens in California affects all of us because products of California agriculture are available all over the country –and the world. In addition, policies set by the state of California are often examples for other states and the federal government.

Tell California Department of Pesticide Regulation to ban chlorpyrifos.

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) states:

Under the Toxic Air Contaminant Identification and Control Act (AB 1807, Chapter 1047, Statutes of 1983) and its implementing regulations (Title 3, California Code of Regulations, Section 6864), one of the criteria for identifying a pesticide as a TAC is if its concentration in the air exceeds one-tenth of the level that has been determined to be adequately protective of human health. The draft TAC document shows that bystanders can be exposed to modeled air concentrations of chlorpyrifos that exceed one-tenth the protective level, and thus meet the criteria for TAC identification. OEHHA’s findings below serve to reinforce this overall conclusion, and further support the identification of chlorpyrifos as a TAC.

In addition to modeled results, OEHHA found that those exposed to chlorpyrifos during 2004-2014 most often reported systemic symptoms including (including headache, nausea and dizziness), eye irritation, and respiratory complaints (breathing difficulties, cough, and throat irritation). Almost 90% of those reporting such symptoms were bystanders.

OEHHA points out that many studies link exposure to chlorpyrifos to developmental neurotoxicity at very low rates of exposure, and this has been confirmed by the state’s Proposition 65 Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee. In addition, children may be bystanders exposed to chlorpyrifos who may suffer greater respiratory effects because of their developing lungs.

The details of the assessment support OEHHA’s conclusion that chlorpyrifos is a toxic air contaminant requiring control measures that adequately protect human health. Given the range of toxic impacts at low levels of exposure, DPR must cancel the registration of chlorpyrifos.

Tell California Department of Pesticide Regulation to ban chlorpyrifos.

 Letter to DPR:

The review by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) demonstrates that chlorpyrifos is a toxic air contaminant requiring the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) to develop control measures that adequately protect public health.

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) states:

Under the Toxic Air Contaminant Identification and Control Act (AB 1807, Chapter 1047, Statutes of 1983) and its implementing regulations (Title 3, California Code of Regulations, Section 6864), one of the criteria for identifying a pesticide as a TAC is if its concentration in the air exceeds one-tenth of the level that has been determined to be adequately protective of human health. The draft TAC document shows that bystanders can be exposed to modeled air concentrations of chlorpyrifos that exceed one-tenth the protective level, and thus meet the criteria for TAC identification. OEHHA’s findings below serve to reinforce this overall conclusion, and further support the identification of chlorpyrifos as a TAC.

In addition to modeled results, OEHHA found that those exposed to chlorpyrifos during 2004-2014 most often reported systemic symptoms including (including headache, nausea and dizziness), eye irritation, and respiratory complaints (breathing difficulties, cough, and throat irritation). Almost 90% of those reporting such symptoms were bystanders.

OEHHA points out that many studies link exposure to chlorpyrifos to developmental neurotoxicity at very low rates of exposure, and this has been confirmed by the state’s Proposition 65 Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee. In addition, children may be bystanders exposed to chlorpyrifos who may suffer greater respiratory effects because of their developing lungs.

The details of the assessment support OEHHA’s conclusion that chlorpyrifos is a toxic air contaminant requiring control measures that adequately protect human health. Given the range of toxic impacts at low levels of exposure, DPR must cancel the registration of chlorpyrifos.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

(Beyond Pesticides, October 19, 2018) Pollinator advocates and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are imploring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deny Bayer CropScience’s application for use of “Sivanto,”a pesticide product with the active ingredient flupyradifurone, a chemical the company claims is safer for bees, but poses the same risks at the notorious bee-toxic neonicotinoid insecticides. If approved, Sivanto would be sprayed in tobacco-growing states along 300,000 acres in the southeast U.S., areas home to more than three dozen species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Bayer’s proposal for expanded uses comes after EPA’s own assessment indicated risks to endangered species, and despite the fact that the agency has not undergone an ESA mandated consultation with federal wildlife agencies.

For the countless flying insects, birds, and bats already under significant threat from neonicotinoids, adding another systemic insecticide to the mix will only make the situation worse. Bayer AG is characterizing flupyradifurone as being harmless to honeybees. However, flupyradifurone, being a systemic pesticide, can negatively impact many non-target species.  In fact, flupyradifurone impacts honey bee brains in a similar way to neonicotinoids, as it impairs learning, memory and the honey bees’ affinity for nectar rewards. Advocates worry that growing use of flupyradifurone would tragically add to the existing negative effects still being caused by widespread use of other neonicotinoids on corn and soy in states where tobacco is also grown. Therefore, CBD has insisted that the EPA also seek consultation on any synergistic and cumulative effects of flupyradifurone with other pesticides in use nearby. CBD is currently suing over EPA’s failure to engage in ESA consultation before it first registered this controversial pesticide.

Flupyradifurone, being highly water soluble, is not just harmful to honey bees, but also poses significant threat to aquatic ecosystems sheltering invertebrates such as aquatic mayfly larvae and rare freshwater mussels. In fact, among the 38 threatened and endangered species inhabiting areas where tobacco is grown, 17 are species of freshwater mussels that play essential water-purifying roles in aquatic ecosystems.

“Approval of this harmful neurotoxin would create a dangerous double-whammy for bees and freshwater mussels already suffering from exposure to neonics,” said CBD senior scientist, Tara Cornelisse, Ph.D. “Expanded use of this harmful pesticide is a risk we can’t afford to take.”

The Center and allies sued the EPA over its initial approval of flupyradifurone, challenging the agency’s refusal to take common sense measures to protect endangered species from this new and controversial pesticide. This litigation is in its initial stages at the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals.

Take Action! Protect Pollinators and fragile aquatic ecosystems!  Least-toxic products exist. Learn how to aerate, feed soil organisms, and watch the desired plants’ health improve. Instead of enabling the chemical industry’s whack-a-mole, or a mere product-for-product swap, read Eating with a Conscience to learn how buying local, organic, regenerativally-grown food is the better choice for your family and the planet as a whole. Organize a local coalition and collaborate with others to keep pressure on grocery store owners, nurseries, hardware stores, and elected city officials to eliminate neonicotinoids and related compounds, while offering certified organic and organic compatible products in their supply chain.

Eliminating the sale of neonicotinoids, related compounds, and other harmful pesticides does not mean that retailers will have nothing left to sell their customers. Beyond Pesticides released The Well-Stocked Hardware Store, an online toolkit that identifies organic compatible products for hardware stores seeking to find replacement products that can be used with an organic system approach to land management. See Beyond Pesticides database of Products Compatible with Organic Land Management. Beyond Pesticides highlights the actions of Eldredge Lumber, a hardware store in Maine, through the video Making the Switch. “You’re protecting the environment, your family, your children and grandchildren, and your neighbors. Nobody wants to have pesticides drifting into their front or rear yard, and people are just loving it, they’re feeding into it. I couldn’t be happier,” says owner Scott Eldredge in the video. Buy certified organic food, which, by law cannot be grown with neonicotinoids or related compounds like flupyradifurone.

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

Source: Center for Biological Diversity press release

(Beyond Pesticides, October 18, 2018) Pesticide residue doesn’t announce itself –it isn’t colored, it doesn’t glow or reflect light, and after an initial application doesn’t put out a discernible odor – but it is likely ubiquitous in rural U.S. homes, according to a study published by Cornell University researchers late last month. The study is a warning specifically to households with young children, who are at increased risk of health effects from even minute levels of pesticide exposure. “Numerous health problems occur from exposure to pesticides, such as cancer, birth defects, leukemia and ocular [vision-related] toxicity, among a number of other health issues,” said Joseph Laquatra, PhD, coauthor of the research. “Households with crawling toddlers should be concerned, as toddlers will accumulate pesticide residues on their hands and then ingest them due to hand-to-mouth behaviors.”

Researchers focused in on 132 households in rural counties of New York State that agreed to test for pesticide residue inside their home. Wipe samples were collected from both carpeted and non-carpeted areas, and tested for pesticides used commonly as part of agricultural production in the region. The pesticides analyzed included 15 compounds ranging from organophosphates like chlorpyrifos and malathion, to synthetic pyrethroids like resmethrin, the triazine herbicide atrazine, and the widely used herbicide 2,4-D.

Every single compound tested for was discovered in every home examined. This discovery has important implications for rural residents. Pesticides can make their way into homes through a variety of ways. The obvious route is a home application, but many of the pesticides tested were restricted use, allowed only to be used outside or in agriculture by certified pesticide applicators. Previous studies have shown that herbicides like 2,4-D can be tracked into the home on shoes or by pets, but pesticides can also enter houses through airborne entry or off-gassing from soil.

Once making it into a home, pesticides will take much longer to degrade than in the outdoor environment in water or soil. A study published last year found that synthetic pyrethroids, the active ingredient in most bug sprays like RAID, leave significant residues that can persist in homes for over a year.  And studies have found that the presence of a pesticide in one’s home correlates with the concentration of a pesticide subsequently found in an individual’s urine. And children, being more prone to crawling on the floor and hand and mouth activities, are at greater risk of pesticide-induced diseases than adults.

While pesticide residue may invisible to the naked eye, there are sources of exposure that households can address in attempts to reduce residue inside the home: dirt and dust. In their research, the Cornell team referenced a 2006 study which found that cleaning practices could significantly reduce pesticide residues.

“When building new homes or remodeling existing homes, install hard surface, easy-to-clean floors, such as hardwood, tile or resilient flooring. Keep floors clean,” he said. “Have a home entry system that captures soil and pollutants at the door. This entry system should consist of a hard-surfaced walkway, such as a paved sidewalk, a grate-like scraper mat outside the entry door, and a highly absorbent doormat that will trap pollutants.”

With pesticides found in our air, water, and soil, it is no wonder that these chemicals are also making their way into our homes. While household protective measures focused on removing dirt and dust that pesticides have clung to can make an impact today, only sustained efforts towards a pesticide-free society will end the risks pesticides pose to our health.

Help support this movement by purchasing organic whenever possible, switching to pesticide-free management of home lawns, forgoing the use of pesticides inside the home, and encouraging your community to follow suit by implementing pesticide reform policies. Tell us you’re ready to fight for a pesticide-free community by signing the petition today, and receive a packet of information you can use to advocate in your community.

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

Source: Cornell University PR

(Beyond Pesticides, October 17, 2018) The unsustainable life cycle management of pesticides during the past seven decades has created huge stockpiles of these (and other toxic) chemicals across much of the globe, including Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research has published a special series of articles and reports from the International HCH & Pesticides Association (IHPA), titled “The legacy of pesticides and POPs stockpiles — a threat to health and the environment.” Stockpiles have accumulated because some products have been banned for health or environmental reasons, leaving stocks (aka waste) that are often stored inadequately, and which deteriorate and migrate to contaminate the environment and put people at risk. Those affected are very often in poor, rural communities that may be unaware of the threat in their midst. Beyond Pesticides covered this “chemical time bomb” problem in 2004 and again nearly a decade ago.

The special issue of Environmental Science and Pollution Research responds to multiple fronts on this problem of accumulation and storage of toxic compounds, identifying the two largest issues as: (1) the stockpile of some 4–7 million tons of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) waste from lindane production; and the 240,000 tons of pesticides, no longer used, that are accumulating in the EECCA countries (in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus region) — without safety regulations to control their storage and release into the environment. [Note: a tonne is 1,000 kg; a North American ton is 907.1847 kg.] These “legacy” stockpiles of toxic chemicals represent enormous risks to human and environmental health and safety.

POPs — persistent organic pollutants — were the subject of a 2001 international treaty, The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The treaty was the culmination of negotiations conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which launched the treaty process in 1998. It aimed to eliminate or restrict the production and use of POPs, chemical substances that persist in the environment, bio-accumulate through the food web and particularly in fatty tissues, and pose risks to human health and the environment. Pesticides represent a significant portion of compounds designated as POPs.

The treaty identified and banned 12 especially noxious POPs: aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), mirex, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and polychlorinated dibenzofurans. In the years since 2001, others have been added to the list, including several pesticides: lindane, endosulfans, α-hexachlorocyclohexane and β-hexachlorocyclohexane (β-HCH), and pentachlorobenzene (PeCB). The Stockholm treaty requires that developed countries fund measures to eliminate the production and use of intentionally produced POPs, eliminate unintentionally produced POPs when possible, and manage and dispose of POPs wastes in an environmentally sound manner. POPs produced unintentionally are generally byproducts of combustion or industrial processes; incineration is a very common source, and dioxins are a common, “unintentional” POP byproduct.

The IHPA organizes its biannual International HCH and Pesticides Forum, which convenes policy makers, researchers, government entities, project donors, and representatives from civil society and industry for discussion on issues related to POP pollution and potential solutions to the variety of problems they present. Its Zaragoza Declaration, eponymously named for the site of its most-recent convention in 2015, called on all national governments “to take leadership in the elimination of POP pesticides, POPs and associated waste; understand and discuss the increasing negative socioeconomic, environment and human health impacts of non-action and the associated damages and losses slowing down economic development; strengthen environmental institutions on all levels, build capacity through training programs and ensure that existing capacities are maintained; strengthen the custom regulations and monitoring in order to avoid substandard and counterfeit products entering the countries; and allocate funding for awareness raising through media and education as well as to advance sustainable technologies for elimination of obsolete pesticides and associated wastes, contaminated soils and water in an environmentally sound manner.” The gathering also generated “to do” lists for individual governments, the European Parliament and European Commission, international organizations and financial institutions, and other potential partners in such efforts.

In addition, the declaration identified three areas for further understanding and development: identifying and implementing an established framework for sound management of hazardous waste in the EECCA countries, and for building leadership and capacity for the task; the need for multinational funding of remediation problems at identified mega-sites, such as that in the Aragon region of Spain; and recognition that the total clean-up costs for the known legacy sites is less than 0.1% of the 2014 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the EECCA countries. Hence, elimination of the legacy of POP pesticides, POPs, and associated waste should be affordable, the IHPA concludes. One of the IHPA papers, tellingly, indicates the ultimate folly of loosing these compounds into the environment: “The cases of the POPs pesticide dumpsites in Kyrgyzstan demonstrate the current challenges to manage such sites in developing countries and that often only small budgets and minimum mitigation measures are available to address the largest exposure risks.”

POPs are associated with a variety of health problems, including early menopause, and Type 2 and gestational diabetes. Also underscored in various of the IHPA papers and reports are: links between exposure to POPs and risks of obesity and metabolic syndrome, and the particular sensitivity of the developing fetus, especially the brain and immune system, to environmental chemical insults. The IHPA helps identify the enormity of the persistent organic pollutant (POP) problem globally, and in the Kyrgyz Republic, in particular, where levels of these chemicals in blood, breastmilk, and human placentas are very high. Increasing levels of organochlorine pesticides found in placental tissue were correlated with increased health risks of low birth weights, pre-eclampsia, infection, and congenital anomalies in newborns, among other impacts.

Dealing effectively with this poorly controlled aggregation of pollution, its relevance to human exposure risk, and possible improvements in management and/or destruction of the stockpiles is a big challenge for developing and transitioning economies, says the IHPA. Funds with which to change or institute more-protective approaches are insufficient, and appropriate technology is often unavailable. One region in northeast Spain, for example, attempted to relocate an HCH landfill because of extreme risk to two nearby rivers. Because of lack of funding to dismantle and relocate the waste and the many tons of contaminated soil to an “appropriate” site, it was simply moved to another landfill farther from the rivers.

China has managed to destroy more than 10,000 tons of POP pesticide stockpiles, and 400,000 tons of pesticide-contaminated soils, although it did so via incineration in cement kilns — which comes with its own pollution issues. Researchers are exploring alternative and less dangerous methods, for example: the utility of certain bacteria for degrading aldrin; the role that a bacterium, combined with ryegrass, might play in the remediation of soils contaminated with DDT and DDE; and the potential of a selective catalytic oxidative system, using a self-developed honeycomb catalyst in a municipal waste incinerator, to destroy some POPs.

Endemic to storage of toxic pesticide waste is the issue of these compounds migrating out of storage and into the environment. Some have likened the storage issue to that of nuclear waste storage: there simply is no great solution. Approaches to the storage of such toxic waste — often landfilling — are fraught with significant risk of the waste compounds leaking into proximate soils, water bodies, and/or groundwater, or in the worst circumstances, being volatilized into the air. Beyond storage, there is the problem of actually destroying the wastes. Incineration, whether via cement kiln co-incineration, hazardous waste incineration, or so-called advanced solid waste incineration (ASWI), are primary methods and come with their own baggage. There is no “pollution free” way to burn anything, including toxic waste. Chief among the products of the incineration of POPs and other wastes are highly toxic dioxins — compounds that can cause serious health impacts on reproduction, development, and endocrine and immune function, as well as cause cancers. As the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives stated in its report, Incinerators Trash Human Health, “All incinerators contaminate people and the environment with toxic and cancer-causing emissions.”

Once humans created pesticides, they automatically created storage and life cycle problems, as is common in the materials stream. Those developing materials, whether chemicals, or industrial or consumer products, too infrequently attend to the issue of “what happens at the other end of the life cycle?” Nor do they, for a variety of reasons that include inadequate governmental regulation, tend to consider the environmental and health issues to which the presence of such items may contribute or even cause.

Yet here we all are, with huge amounts of these compounds in our environment because human societies have not yet adopted principles of precaution in materials development. This toxic waste from pesticides that may have been manufactured and distributed into the environment for decades, and are then, at some point, deemed too dangerous for use, is but one of the challenges we face. Beyond Pesticides monitors this and all issues related to the development, use, and regulation of pesticides.

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

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-018-3188-3

(Beyond Pesticides, October 16, 2018) Bacteria exposed to widely used herbicides like Roundup develop antibiotic resistance 100,000 times faster than average, according to new research published by New Zealand scientists in PeerJ. The results have ominous implications for the modern world’s ability to avert a post-antibiotic era. Even if new antibiotics are discovered, or existing compounds used more judiciously, scientists say that will not be enough to prevent the ongoing crisis – the world is also confronting bacterial exposure to herbicides and other non-antibiotic agents that have the ability to rapidly induce resistance.

“Herbicides are among the most widely used and dispersed manufactured products on Earth. Some form of exposure for people, pets and livestock can be routinely expected,” study author Jack Heinemann, PhD, told Newsweek. “Meanwhile, antibiotics are used at high rates particularly on people, pets and livestock. Therefore, the combination of exposures for bacteria that live on us is all but guaranteed.”

This current round of research by Dr. Heinemann and his team is the outgrowth of previous studies (1, 2) that established the ability of common herbicides to induce antibiotic resistance in strains of pathogenic bacteria Salmonella eterica and Escherichia coli. Now, the scientists are drilling into the real-world implications of these phenomena, investigating whether realistic levels of exposure to Roundup (glyphosate) and Kamba (dicamba) herbicides can precipitate the evolution of resistant populations.

Scientists conducted a number of tests, which fell into two broad categories. Where herbicides were shown to increase the minimum amount of an antibiotic required to control bacterial growth, scientists investigated whether the bacteria that survived would pass those traits on. Where herbicides were found to lower the minimum amount an antibiotic required to control bacterial growth, scientists investigated whether the herbicide changed the sub-lethal amount known to induce resistance in subsequent microbial populations.

Results showed that bacteria continually exposed to herbicides and the antibiotic ciprofloxacin (cipro) rapidly developed offspring that required higher amounts of antibiotics to control. Researchers calculated that the combination of Kamba with cipro and S. typhimurium resulted in resistance developing at rates 100 times faster than usual, while a Roundup, cipro, and E. coli combination led to rates 100,000 faster than average.

When herbicides had the effect of lowering the minimum amount required to control bacteria, scientists found that a combination of herbicide and antibiotic exposure resulted in the development of offspring that required higher amounts of antibiotics to control. E. coli exposed to Roundup and Kamba, in combination with either tetracycline or streptomycin, ultimately led to microbial populations that required higher amounts of antibiotics to control. “We are inclined to think that when a drug or other chemical makes antibiotics more potent, that should be a good thing,” says Dr. Heinemann. “But it also makes the antibiotic more effective at promoting resistance when the antibiotic is at lower concentrations, as we more often find in the environment. Such combinations can be like trying to put out the raging fire of antibiotic resistance with gasoline.”

Bacteria exposed to herbicides alone did not create antibiotic resistance. However, scientists also found that bacteria exposed to both herbicides and antibiotics with mutagenic properties could develop resistance as a result of higher rates of random mutations.

Antibiotic resistance represents and existential threat to modern civilization. As the study authors’ note, “antibiotic resistance in our pathogens is medicine’s climate change: caused by human activity, and resulting in more extreme outcomes.” Like climate change, we successfully address growing antibiotic resistance, but there must be the cultural and political will to make the shift. Advocates already working towards pesticide reform can add another reason for policymakers to shift away from toxic herbicides and other pesticides: stopping antibiotic resistance.

For more information on the connection between the herbicide Roundup and bacteria in our environment, see the article Monsanto’s Roundup (Glyphosate) Exposed. Help support organic agriculture, which eliminated the allowed use of antibiotics for fruit production due to concerns over resistance.

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

Source: University of Canterbury,PeerJ, Newsweek

(Beyond Pesticides, October 15, 2018) As a leader in organic sales, it is critical that Kroger take additional expedited steps to increase the market share of organic food and eliminate the use of toxic pesticides harmful to public health and the environment. Kroger is among the major food retailers that sells food that has been grown with toxic pesticides, such as the extremely hazardous insecticide chlorpyrifos which causes neurological and brain damage in children. Kroger should immediately end its misleading and fraudulent advertising and labeling of food products as “natural” and replace these with certified organic products. In fact, by misleading consumers with “natural” labeling and advertising of food, Kroger supports chemical-intensive agriculture that poisons children, causes cancer, and threatens biodiversity through the use of toxic chemicals like chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, and neonicotinoids. This is unnecessary and unacceptable.

Tell Kroger to stop selling food grown with toxic pesticides.

Chlorpyrifos  is a highly neurotoxic organophosphate pesticide that is linked to neurologic developmental disorders in children. Exposure to even low levels of organophosphates like chlorpyrifos during pregnancy impairs learning, changes brain function, and alters thyroid levels of offspring into adulthood. EPA’s own assessment finds that children exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos have developmental delays, attention problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder problems, and pervasive developmental disorders, and concluded that there is “sufficient evidence” that there are neurodevelopmental effects at low levels, and that current approaches for evaluating chlorpyrifos’ neurological impact are “not sufficiently health protective.” Yet, EPA reversed the ban based on the judgment of its own scientists and when ordered by the courts to reinstate the ban, appealed.

As documented by International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015, glyphosate causes cancer. IARC classifies glyphosate as a Group 2A “probable” carcinogen, which means that the chemical is probably carcinogenic to humans based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. It has been specifically linked to non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma. Glyphosate disrupts a crucial pathway for manufacturing aromatic amino acids in plants and bacteria, and has been patented as an antibiotic. The destruction of bacteria in the human gut is a major contributor to disease, and the destruction of soil microbiota leads to unhealthy agricultural systems with an increasing dependence on agricultural chemicals.

Kroger has already announced that it will phase out the sale of live garden plants grown with neonicotinoid insecticides. In a press release in June 2018, Kroger said, “Kroger also offers one of the largest organic produce departments in America, which is desirable for customers seeking to minimize potential exposure to synthetic pesticides. Representing nearly 20 percent of America’s annual organic produce business, Kroger sales in this sector reached $1 billion in 2017.”

Given Kroger’s existing commitment to offering organic food, it is reasonable to ask the company to commit to substituting organic products for those that deceptively portrayed as “natural” and “free from 101+ artificial ingredients and preservatives,” but are grown with and have residues of hazardous pesticides.

Tell Kroger to stop selling food grown with toxic pesticides.

Letter to Kroger:

Thank you for your leadership in the sales of organic produce. I appreciate stores that stock organic food, which is healthier for me, the farmers who grow it, and the environment. It is important that stores where I shop not only offer organic food, but clearly distinguish it from food produced by chemical-intensive agriculture

Although Kroger’s stores offer many organic products, they also sell many products –especially those with the “Simple Truth” label—that mislead the consumer through their representation as “natural” and “free from 101+ artificial ingredients and preservatives.” Unfortunately, those “natural” and “free from” products are produced by a chemical-intensive agriculture that uses toxic pesticides and fertilizers. The chemical used on such nonorganic farms poison children, cause cancer, and threaten biodiversity. Chemical-intensive agriculture uses toxic chemicals like chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, and neonicotinoids.

Chlorpyrifos  is a highly neurotoxic organophosphate pesticide that is linked to neurologic developmental disorders in children. Exposure to even low levels of organophosphates like chlorpyrifos during pregnancy impairs learning, changes brain function, and alters thyroid levels of offspring into adulthood. EPA’s own assessment finds that children exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos have developmental delays, attention problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder problems, and pervasive developmental disorders, and concluded that there is “sufficient evidence” that there are neurodevelopmental effects at low levels, and that current approaches for evaluating chlorpyrifos’ neurological impact are “not sufficiently health protective.” Yet, EPA reversed the ban based on the judgment of its own scientists and when ordered by the courts to reinstate the ban, appealed.

As documented by International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015, glyphosate causes cancer. IARC classifies glyphosate as a Group 2A “probable” carcinogen, which means that the chemical is probably carcinogenic to humans based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.  It has been specifically linked to non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma. Glyphosate disrupts a crucial pathway for manufacturing aromatic amino acids in plants and bacteria, and glyphosate has been patented as an antibiotic. The destruction of bacteria in the human gut is a major contributor to disease, and the destruction of soil microbiota leads to unhealthy agricultural systems with an increasing dependence on agricultural chemicals.

Kroger has already announced that it will phase out the sale of live garden plants grown with neonicotinoid insecticides. In a press release in June 2018, Kroger said, “Kroger also offers one of the largest organic produce departments in America, which is desirable for customers seeking to minimize potential exposure to synthetic pesticides. Representing nearly 20 percent of America’s annual organic produce business, Kroger sales in this sector reached $1 billion in 2017.”

Given Kroger’s existing commitment to offering organic food, I ask you to commit to substituting organic products for those with the misleading portrayal as “natural” and “free from 101+ artificial ingredients and preservatives,” but are grown with and have residues of hazardous pesticides.

Thank you. I look forward to your response.

(Beyond Pesticides, October 12, 2018) For the first time in its history, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) denied a permit to apply toxic pesticides to a local waterbody, according to reports from the regional nonprofit organization Toxics Action Center. The DEC decision responded to an application from the Town of Williston, VT to use the herbicide SePRO Sonar AS® on Lake Iroquois, a 237 acre spring-fed body of water used for public recreation, in order to control Eurasian watermilfoil. DEC ruled that use of the herbicide posed risks to the holistic integrity of the lake waters, the Champlain watershed, and surrounding ecology.

Sonar contains the active ingredient fluridone, which studies have linked to endocrine disruption, kidney/liver damage and toxicity to fish/aquatic organisms. It has also been identified as a potent groundwater contaminant. With this background, fluridone use has been the subject of public opposition.

The permit application submitted by Williston city officials identified $350,000 in costs to apply the pesticide over the next five years, with 3-4 applications scheduled each summer. Milfoil typically takes over shallow coastal waters, out competes native aquatic plants for space and sunlight, reduces oxygen levels and harms fish habitat. Milfoil, like other invasive plants, proliferates so quickly due to a lack of natural competition or a balanced ecosystem.

However, review of the application by advocates uncovered that research into non-toxic methods had received relatively little funding.  Though many safety retirements had not been adequately addressed, in order for the spray permit to pass, DEC required the City of Williston to determine the following:

1. there is no reasonable nonchemical alternative available;
2. there is acceptable risk to the nontarget environment;
3. there is negligible risk to public health;
4. a long‐range management plan has been developed which incorporates a schedule of pesticide minimization; and
5. there is a public benefit to be achieved from the application of a pesticide or, in the case of a pond located entirely on a landowner’s property, no undue adverse effect upon the public good.

Residents expressed concern that fluridone would pose hazards to water, used for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and irrigation, and an integral part of many popular recreational areas as well.  In addition, as a result of poor enforcement, the effects of Sonar would have been severe. For at least 24 hours after using the pesticide, the minimum safety precautions require that residents avoid drinking water from the wells near the lake, which could contain unsafe levels of the toxic chemical. Residents would not be able to water their gardens with water that draws from the lake for 30 days after the pesticide application—and with 3-4 treatments each summer, lawns and gardens could not be safely watered for the entire season.

“We can solve the invasive species problem without introducing a chemical problem,” said Meg Handler of Concerned Citizens of Lake Iroquois. “We need to make choices that are healthy for the whole lake and the whole community. A chemical like Sonar is not a safe choice.”

While the invasive species problem may not be fully defined or understood, the short-term pesticide solution too often creates greater ecological imbalances. More often than not, invasive species, after introduction to a land region, become a larger issue where ecosystems are already compromised and lacking biodiversity’s checks and balances. Consequently, an “eradication of the invasive” mindset can lead to increased and unregulated pesticide use.

In reality, defining and managing invasives in an ecological context ensures better protection for human health and the environment.

Before the DEC’s decision, members of Concerned Citizens of Lake Iroquois, recognizing that protection from pesticides would take collaboration from the citizens of the four neighboring towns around the lake, argued that towns must take every opportunity to discuss and research alternatives before beginning any herbicide application. They contacted their elected officials with concern that safety precautions would lack enforcement, fearing 1) that sprayed pesticides would linger, 2) that drinking water would be tainted, 3) that wells near the lake could contain unsafe levels of chemical toxins, and 4) that swimming and fishing would be prohibited.

In addition to determining that the pesticide application represented an “unacceptable risk,” DEC found that “non-chemical alternatives” had not been effectively tested.

The concern about harm extended beyond human health to the range of species that call Lake Iroquois home, including the fish species Bullhead, Bass, and Perch, five species of frogs and other amphibians, as well as larger animals inhabiting neighboring grasslands, such as Beavers, river Otters, Deer, Coyote, and Fox.

“This decision is a groundbreaking, long-term victory for the lake, surrounding towns and a toxic-free future in Vermont,” said Shaina Kasper of Toxics Action Center, a public health and environmental nonprofit. “Across Vermont, residents are standing up for safe, pesticide-free ways to take care of our environment. This decision is the first of its kind, but it won’t be the last.”

In 2012, after discovering pigweed resistance to Roundup in genetically engineered ooton, EPA allowed the unregistered “emergency” use of fluridone in Arkansas, contributing to the pesticide treadmill and increased chemical effects that are not fully evaluated.

Have concerns about waterbodies near you?  Follow the example of Concerned Citizens of Lake Iroquois.  Talk with your neighbors.  Get organized. Create a coalition of likeminded individuals and experts.  Contact city officials and hold them accountable until your voices are heard and pesticide policy changes are made. Stay determined and stay grounded with support. Contact Beyond Pesticides for help and links to resources.

The pesticide-free movement is growing is New England in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, among other states. These successes are the product of grassroots organizing. Check out the many local policies throughout New England and across the country in our U.S. Map of Pesticide Reform Policies. Learn more about how local governments are placed under increasing pressure of Meeting the invasive species challenge.

Source: Shaina Kasper, Toxics Action Center, and Elizabeth Deutsch, Concerned Citizens of Lake Iroquois.