Pesticide Action Network's blog

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.

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.  

Strawberries garnered special attention this year as Arysta LifeScience, a global pesticide corporation, aggressively promoted the chemical methyl iodide for use in California’s strawberry industry. It was dubbed “one of the most toxic chemicals on earth” by Dr. Join Froines, chair of the state's Scientific Review Committee for the pesticide. Pesticide Action Network, partners and tens of thousands of Californians rallied to keep methyl iodide out of agriculture.

A September 17th announcement that $180,000 in federal funds have been granted to back a PR campaign to "correct misconceptions about pesticide residues on food" caught the attention of farmers and organic food advocates across the country, according to the Associated Press. The federal Specialty Crop Block Grants from which the grant will come are one of the only sources of funding to support the production and marketing of crops such as fruits, nuts and vegetables in California. Critics charge that awarding taxpayer dollars from this fund to a project that effectively advocates against the value of organic produce is therefore an inappropriate use of public funds.

A study of links between Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and human birth defects is stirring scientific debate. While it has been well established that very low concentrations of the herbicide are lethal to frogs, evidence of impacts on humans is still preliminary. The new research published by a team from Argentina, Brazil, the UK and US, headed by Andrés Carrasco of the University of Buenos Aires Medical School, suggests that Roundup may be linked to birth defects even at concentrations lower than those used in farm fields. “The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy,” Carrasco reported.