Today’s world is a tough place for bees, and it’s getting worse as bee populations plummet as a result of the increasing use of lingering toxic pesticides. Why should you care about bees? Scientists estimate that every third bite of food you eat is the result of pollination by a bee. No bees? No food. That should even get the attention of my “Tea Party” friends.
Now Earthjustice reports the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering expanding the number of crops that can be treated with a highly toxic pesticide called sulfoxaflor. The expansion would allow the chemical, manufactured by Dow AgroSciences and initially approved in 2014, to be used on food crops including corn, alfalfa, oats and others.
Nearly one third of our crops, including vegetables, nuts, fruits and seeds, depend on bees for pollination. The most commonly used pesticides today are known as neonicotinoids, or neonics. They replaced oranophosphates and carbamates about a decade ago. Although the older pesticides were highly toxic, they dissipated much more quickly than neonics, narrowing their killing power to more targeted pests. For example, if used on rose bushes to get rid of aphids, they were less likely to stick around long enough to hurt a bee that came along later to pollinate the plant.
The new neonics don’t just sit on the surface of plants. Neonicotinoids penetrate a plant’s leaves and are taken up by the plant internally, making its leaves toxic to insects eating the leaves, and also turn the pollen and nectar deadly. It’s bad news for bees and other pollinating insects.
These new toxic insecticides are damaging both wild and domesticated bees. It’s reported that domesticated bees make up about two thirds of the world’s bee population, playing an important role in agriculture. Around 2006-2007, beekeepers noted an alarming trend, as colony losses – bees that die off in the winter – skyrocketed from about 10 percent to more than 30 percent. Some beekeepers reported a staggering loss of 80 percent of bees. This became known as Colony Collapse Disorder.
In 2014, a Harvard School of Public Health study suggested that even a small amount of neonic pesticide could “significantly harm honeybee colonies and cause mass wintertime die-offs.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned that it is no longer confident in our ability to “meet the pollination demands of U.S. agricultural crops.”
The Federal Insectiside, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) is supposed to protect people, bees and other wildlife from dangerous chemicals. However, the trend in the U.S. veers toward the “try it first, fix it later” school of thought, rather than the “better safe than sorry” wait-and-see approach adopted by the European Union and other nations. U.S. Pesticides and other chemicals are usually given the benefit of the doubt in the United States as being safe until proven otherwise.
Earthjustice is asking the public to join its petition that demands the EPA deny Dow AgroScience’s application to expand the registration of the bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor. Earthjustice has been involved in efforts to protect the public and the environment from dangerous chemicals for 40 years. It’s critically important to act now, and save the bees before it’s too late. For more information, and to sign the petition, visit www.earthjustice.org and click on the “Take Action” button.
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