16
Jan
(Beyond Pesticides, January 16, 2024) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has long been criticized for its failure to evaluate the effectiveness (or efficacy) of all the pesticides it registers. A petition, for which there is now an open public comment period (submit comments by January 22, 2024), challenges what advocates call a basic failure of the agency to evaluate the claimed benefits of pesticides. Because of this long-standing situation, those who purchase pesticides do not know that the pesticides they buy will meet expectations for control. For farmers, that means that EPA has not evaluated whether the pesticide’s use actually increases productivity of the treated crops and/or whether over time the target pest (weed, insect, fungus) will become resistant. For consumers, it also means that there is not an independent analysis of whether the pesticide products work. As EPA implements the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), not only is there no agency assessment of whether the pesticide’s use will achieve its intended purpose, there is not a determination as to whether there is a less toxic way of achieving the pest management goal. As Beyond Pesticides cited last year, a piece published in the Proceedings of the […]
Posted in Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), neonicotinoids, Resistance, Take Action, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
19
Oct
(Beyond Pesticides, October 19, 2023) The second session of the 40th National Forum, Forging a Future with Nature, will focus on environmental justice and offer a unique conversation with the United Nations Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights and an environmental justice history professional. Both celebrated speakers have studied and written about the long-standing social, economic, and health problems related to pesticides and disproportionate harm to people of color. The Forum will take place at 2:00 pm EDT on Tuesday, October 24, 2023. (See free registration information HERE.)  Beyond Pesticides brings together this Forum session with the inspiration of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote in Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963), “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Sixty years later, people of color—in the U.S. and around the world—still struggle with those same inequities that impose disproportionate risks interwoven in the fabric of economic and social systems in the United States and worldwide. The Forum takes place in the context of widespread toxic chemical exposure throughout communities and all strata […]
Posted in Announcements, Environmental Justice, International, United Nations | No Comments »
22
Sep
(Beyond Pesticides, September 22, 2023) Beyond Pesticides today announced the second session of the National Forum, Forging a Future with Nature: The existential challenge to end petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use, scheduled for October 24, 2:00pm EDT. The hard-hitting talks of Dave Goulson, PhD, and AndrĂ© Leu, DSc. are now available as recordings on the Beyond Pesticides website. Beyond Pesticides introduces the Forum: A future supported by the natural environment depends on our effective involvement in decisions in our homes, communities, states, and at the federal level to ensure that we are taking the steps necessary to protect against existential threats to health, biodiversity, and climate. The Forum is an important opportunity to hear from those working as scientists, advocates, land managers (from gardens, parks, play fields to farms), and public decisionmakers about steps being taken and action needed to prevent catastrophic collapse of the natural systems that sustain life. A key part of this conversation, according to Beyond Pesticides, is addressing inequities associated with elevated rates of poisoning, contamination, and diseases in people of color communities. In introducing the importance of environmental justice and addressing the disproportionate risk from toxic pollution to people of color communities as a key […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
06
Sep
(Beyond Pesticides, September 6, 2023) In late August, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report concluding that EPA “took a siloed approach” to the cumulative impacts of chemical exposures and the disproportionate nature of those exposures. This approach keeps different parts of the EPA from coordinating their efforts and hinders understanding of the breadth and depth of chemical exposures. OIG reached this disturbing finding despite the issuance of several executive orders by President Biden requiring EPA to develop policies and actions to assess cumulative impacts of chemical exposures across departments, laws, and environmental media (air, water, bodies, food etc.) and to pay more attention to environmental justice. Beyond Pesticides has stressed that the whole constellation of chemical exposures and effects should be considered when governments set public policies and regulations. Just last March, Daily News covered another OIG report castigating EPA for betraying its mission by failing to address the fact that very high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds known as “forever chemicals” have been found in some common pesticides. OIG also berated EPA for succumbing to Donald Trump’s interference with setting toxicity values for the “forever chemical” perfluorobutane […]
Posted in Chemicals, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Agencies, Pesticide Regulation, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
