GroundTruth: PAN's blog on pesticides, food & health

With national climate policy stalled in the Senate, hopes for policy progress rest on local, state and regional initiatives, like California's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32). AB 32 is important because the state is looked to as a leading indicator of how progressive policy battles will play out, and because California's renewable energy economy is among the biggest.Adopted in 2006, AB 32 requires the state to come up with a plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That plan is due to come into effect in 2011 and the oil and gas industry is on trying to stop it with Proposition 23, spending millions of dollars to a campaign to indefinitely delay climate policy passed by California voters.

On October 13,  PAN joined 13,000 individuals and organizations from across the U.S. to send a letter to Lisa Jackson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calling for a complete ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos and a phase out of other organophosphate (OP) pesticides. 

It’s been a decade since the pesticide chlorpyrifos was banned for home use because of the many hazards it poses to children, including a host of pervasive developmental and behavioral disorders, asthma, lung cancer, low birth weights, and more. Despite these and other known risks, hundreds of thousands of children in agricultural communities around the country still face regular exposure to this potent neurotoxin because it remains widely used in agricultural fields.

Plenty of calcium, fruits, vegetables & exercise. No drinking, no smoking, cut down on caffeine. Oh, and avoid DDT breakdown products — they may put your soon-to-be-born baby on the road to obesity.

Researchers in Spain say they were surprised to find this link between DDT and overweight infants. Turns out when women of normal weight have higher levels of DDE (DDT’s breakdown product) in their blood during pregnancy, their babies are twice as likely to grow quickly during the first 6 months of life, and 4 times as likely to be overweight when they reach the 14-month mark.

Last week’s New York Times article, “Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery,” has set CCD observers abuzz, and prompted at least one counter from a journalist for CNN Money. Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, is the name given to the mysterious decline of honeybee populations around the world beginning around 2006. Each winter since, one-third of the U.S. honeybee population has died off or disappeared (more than twice what is normal). Scientists have been investigating the decline, and while CCD appears to have multiple interacting causes, a range of evidence points to sub-lethal pesticide exposures. Neonicotinoids are a particularly suspect class of insecticides; so much so that Italy and France have banned or restricted their use to protect their honeybee populations. This class of insecticides is highly neurotoxic to bees, and works by disabling insects’ immune and nervous systems. Also notable is the fact that these systemic pesticides, which are applied at the root or seed and then taken up by the plant’s vascular system, have seen a manifold increase in use since around 2005.