From: Raw Story
Thousands of pesticides are allowed onto the US market
without rigorous safety testing, putting people, animals and
crop pollinators like bees at risk, a US environmental group
said Wednesday.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the culprit is a congressional loophole dating back to 1978, which has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to approve more than 10,000 pesticides with minimal testing.
This “conditional registration” was meant for rare cases — such as a disease outbreak or a public health crisis — but instead has been used for 65 percent of the 16,000 pesticides on the market, the NRDC said.
“One of the problems we also realized was that the EPA’s database is a mess,” said Mae Wu, an attorney at NRDC who has spent two years on the group’s latest investigation.
“They weren’t tracking the conditional registrations properly at all,” she told reporters, noting that the public was never involved in the vetting process and supposed temporary pesticides were falling into a “black hole.”
The NRDC highlighted two products that have made it to market without rigorous toxicity testing — a germ-killer, known as nanosilver, used in textiles and clothing and clothianidin, a pesticide that endangers bees.
The group urged the EPA to review all its conditionally registered pesticides, cancel the registrations for nanosilver and clothianidin, and start a publicly searchable database of approved pesticides.
When asked for comment, the EPA sent AFP a statement saying it “is working aggressively to protect bees and other pollinators from pesticide risks through regulatory, voluntary and research programs.”
The EPA is also “accelerating the schedule for registration review of the neonicotinoid pesticides because of uncertainties about these pesticides and their potential effects on bees,” it said.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/
Pesticides used by farmers to protect crops or bee hives can
scramble the brain circuits of honeybees, affecting memory and
navigation skills needed to find food, scientists said
Wednesday.
This in turn threatened entire colonies of bees whose pollinating functions are vital for human food production, they wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
The team observed honeybee brains in the lab after exposing them to neonicotinoid pesticides used on crops, and organophosphates, the most widely used group of insecticides in the world — in this case coumaphos — sometimes used to control mite infestations in beehives.
Exposed to similar concentrations of the two pesticides as they would encounter in the environment, the learning circuits of the bee brains soon stopped working, said the researchers.
“Together, the two classes of pesticide showed a greater negative effect on the bee brain and are predicted to inhibit honeybee learning,” co-author Christopher Connolly of the University of Dundee’s Medical Research Institute told AFP.
“Pollinators perform sophisticated behaviours while foraging that require them to learn and remember floral traits associated with food,” added colleague Geraldine Wright of Newcastle University’s Centre for Behaviour and Evolution.
“Disruption in this important function has profound implications for honeybee colony survival because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food.”
The finding comes amid a fierce debate on the continuing use of neonicotinoids.
Two weeks ago, European nations rejected a proposed two-year ban on the brain-targeting group of insecticides following opposition by the agrochemical industry.
Beekeepers in Europe, North America and elsewhere are worried by so-called colony collapse disorder — a phenomenon in which adult bees abruptly disappear from beehives — which has been blamed on mites, a virus or fungus, pesticides or a combination thereof.
Bees account for 80 percent of plant pollination by insects. Without them, many crops would be unable to bear fruit or would have to be pollinated by hand.
The researchers said their findings should prompt a rethink of pesticide use.
“Our data suggests that the widespread use of coumaphos as a miticide is an unnecessary risk to the health of honeybees,” said Connolly, and proposed organic acids may be more appropriate for hive mite control.
“In terms of crop protection pesticides, it is claimed by the agrochemical industry that alternatives to the neonicotinoids would be more toxic to bees.
“A direct comparison of the alternatives appears to be the only way forward” to find the least harmful alternative, he said.
Commenting on the study, apiculture (beekeeping) professor Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex said the concentrations used in the study appeared to be high.
“It is no surprise that insecticides at high concentrations are harmful, but we don’t know whether the low levels of neonicotinoid insecticides in the nectar and pollen of treated plants… are harmful in the real world.”
Furthermore, coumaphos was not legal for use in much of Europe and not widely used in the United States, said Ratnieks, quoted by the Science Media Centre in London.
By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 14:25 EDT
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 14:25 EDT
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the culprit is a congressional loophole dating back to 1978, which has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to approve more than 10,000 pesticides with minimal testing.
This “conditional registration” was meant for rare cases — such as a disease outbreak or a public health crisis — but instead has been used for 65 percent of the 16,000 pesticides on the market, the NRDC said.
“One of the problems we also realized was that the EPA’s database is a mess,” said Mae Wu, an attorney at NRDC who has spent two years on the group’s latest investigation.
“They weren’t tracking the conditional registrations properly at all,” she told reporters, noting that the public was never involved in the vetting process and supposed temporary pesticides were falling into a “black hole.”
The NRDC highlighted two products that have made it to market without rigorous toxicity testing — a germ-killer, known as nanosilver, used in textiles and clothing and clothianidin, a pesticide that endangers bees.
The group urged the EPA to review all its conditionally registered pesticides, cancel the registrations for nanosilver and clothianidin, and start a publicly searchable database of approved pesticides.
When asked for comment, the EPA sent AFP a statement saying it “is working aggressively to protect bees and other pollinators from pesticide risks through regulatory, voluntary and research programs.”
The EPA is also “accelerating the schedule for registration review of the neonicotinoid pesticides because of uncertainties about these pesticides and their potential effects on bees,” it said.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/
Study: Pesticides scramble bees’ brain circuits
By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 14:47 EDT
This in turn threatened entire colonies of bees whose pollinating functions are vital for human food production, they wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
The team observed honeybee brains in the lab after exposing them to neonicotinoid pesticides used on crops, and organophosphates, the most widely used group of insecticides in the world — in this case coumaphos — sometimes used to control mite infestations in beehives.
Exposed to similar concentrations of the two pesticides as they would encounter in the environment, the learning circuits of the bee brains soon stopped working, said the researchers.
“Together, the two classes of pesticide showed a greater negative effect on the bee brain and are predicted to inhibit honeybee learning,” co-author Christopher Connolly of the University of Dundee’s Medical Research Institute told AFP.
“Pollinators perform sophisticated behaviours while foraging that require them to learn and remember floral traits associated with food,” added colleague Geraldine Wright of Newcastle University’s Centre for Behaviour and Evolution.
“Disruption in this important function has profound implications for honeybee colony survival because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food.”
The finding comes amid a fierce debate on the continuing use of neonicotinoids.
Two weeks ago, European nations rejected a proposed two-year ban on the brain-targeting group of insecticides following opposition by the agrochemical industry.
Beekeepers in Europe, North America and elsewhere are worried by so-called colony collapse disorder — a phenomenon in which adult bees abruptly disappear from beehives — which has been blamed on mites, a virus or fungus, pesticides or a combination thereof.
Bees account for 80 percent of plant pollination by insects. Without them, many crops would be unable to bear fruit or would have to be pollinated by hand.
The researchers said their findings should prompt a rethink of pesticide use.
“Our data suggests that the widespread use of coumaphos as a miticide is an unnecessary risk to the health of honeybees,” said Connolly, and proposed organic acids may be more appropriate for hive mite control.
“In terms of crop protection pesticides, it is claimed by the agrochemical industry that alternatives to the neonicotinoids would be more toxic to bees.
“A direct comparison of the alternatives appears to be the only way forward” to find the least harmful alternative, he said.
Commenting on the study, apiculture (beekeeping) professor Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex said the concentrations used in the study appeared to be high.
“It is no surprise that insecticides at high concentrations are harmful, but we don’t know whether the low levels of neonicotinoid insecticides in the nectar and pollen of treated plants… are harmful in the real world.”
Furthermore, coumaphos was not legal for use in much of Europe and not widely used in the United States, said Ratnieks, quoted by the Science Media Centre in London.
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