News — Pesticides

Thanks to Bee Safe Boulder for organizing great volunteers to pull weeds and prevent pesticides! We at Jim Morris T-Shirts are happy to donate some wildlife t-shirts.

The co-chairs of the FAO/WHO/UN committee just claimed glyphophate was safe, but their institute received over $ 1 million dollars from Monsanto and other pesticide companies. Also, researchers found that the"inert" and " secret" ingredients appear to increase the toxicity of Roundup over just glyphosphate. Pesticide companies try to keep their additives condiential as "trade secrets". Some go-getter biochemical toxicologists used mass spectrometry to figure out what the additives were! Then they tested them, and found all 6 of them were way more toxic than glyphosphate alone. " Not only did these chemicals, which aren’t named on herbicide labels, affect biological functions, they did so at levels far below the concentrations used in commercially available products. In fact, POEA — officially an “inert” ingredient — was between 1,200 and 2,000 times more toxic to cells than glyphosate, officially the “active” ingredient." POEA kills trout and frogs. POEA is banned in Germany, but the FDA will not monitor residues o food in the US. The EPA knows it is toxic. Link to Common Dreams article Link to Intercept article.

Beyond Pesticides says that it feminizes male frogs, and is linked to childhood cancers and birth defects. It is applied to corn, sugarcane, forests, and sorghum. Syngenta, the pesticide company, criticized its former researcher after he found that it caused reproductive problems in frogs. Link to article on his research and their attacks on him. Article by Center for Biological Diversity explains that it is banned in Europe. It is the 2nd most widely used pesticide in the US. The EPA preliminary report says that it harms most plants and animals. It is up for review. where lobbyists try to allow it to still be used. It kills frogs.

Tell EPA to ban current neonicotinaoid pesticides, not just limit some future ones! Neonicotinoids kill bees butterflies, and ladybugs. This recent article shows the public relations tactic of the EPA pretending to regulate in the future while allowing more neonicotinoid pesticide use now. Write letters to your newspapers, please.