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</div><div><p class="print-title"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></span></p><p class="print-title"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ew 220</font></span></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">https://www.ecowatch.com/highly-hazardous-pesticides-investigation-2645202101.html</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Poor people in developing countries are far more likely to suffer from exposure to pesticides classified as having high hazard to human health or the environment, according to new data that Unearthed analyzed.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The analysis shows that the world's top five pesticide makers are making billions, accounting for more than 36 percent of their income, from chemicals that are proven to hazards to humans and the environment and are contributing to the precipitous demise of bee populations, as Unearthed reported.</b></font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The researchers found that the sale of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), disproportionately occurred in poorer nations, which often have fewer regulations than industrialized nations,</span> according to The Guardian. In India, for example, sales of HHPs were nearly 60 percent, while in the UK it was just 11 percent.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The report from the investigative team at Unearthed focused on the practices of Bayer, BASF, Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), FMC and Syngenta, which are continuing to sell HHPs like neonicotinoids and glufosinate that have been banned in other parts of the world</b>, according to the produce industry publication Fresh Produce Journal.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Unearthed dove into data collected by Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, from buyer surveys that concentrated on the best sellers in the top 43 pesticide buying countries, as The Guardian reported.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>While regulations have stopped the sale of certain pesticides in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, it has hardly slowed down chemical companies, which sold $4.8 billion worth of products containing HHPs in 2018, </b>as The Guardian reported. guk] Bayer called the analysis "misleading" but did not offer proof of that assessment.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Since the investigation focused on just 43 countries, it covered less than half of the companies' global sales. That suggests that the companies actually made billions more from pesticides that regulatory agencies have said pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife, according to Unearthed.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The investigation found that pesticide manufacturers sold the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest</b>, according to Unearthed. The biggest market for HHPs were for corn and soya crops.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">About a quarter of sales were from products known to be human carcinogens or dangerous to reproductive health. </b>Another 10 percent were toxic to bees. An additional 4 percent of chemicals sold are acutely toxic to humans. Every year, nearly 200,000 suicides are linked to pesticide poisoning, almost entirely in developing countries, according to The Guardian.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing," Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to the Pesticide Action Network, said to Unearthed.</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations' special rapporteur</b> on toxic substances and human rights, told Unearthed, "There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture."</font></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p class="print-title"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></span></p><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother's breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago," Tuncak said....</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-chlorpyrifos"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-chlorpyrifos</font></a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">220 yay</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">m<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://secure.earthjustice.org/site/R?i=4K1jmRi7Jy1snj0F009udQ" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>ajor chemical company discontinues brain-damaging pesticide</strong></a></font></font></div><p class="print-title"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://secure.earthjustice.org/site/R?i=fJnxeWPWgRzxaG83PFl5OQ" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States announced it will stop selling the nerve agent pesticide, which is linked to brain damage in children. Yet the Trump administration still refuses to ban it entirely, leaving many vulnerable.</font></a></font></p><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ref many lnx grafs</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">INVESTIGATIONS</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">MORE</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A tea plantation worker sprays pesticides at Tata's Periakanal estate in Kerala, India. Photo: Vivek M. / Greenpeace</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Revealed: The pesticide giants making billions on toxic and bee-harming chemicals</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Groundbreaking joint investigation reveals enormous sales of ‘highly hazardous pesticides’ by leading members of the CropLife International lobby group</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">20.02.2020Crispin Dowler</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The world’s five biggest pesticide manufacturers are making more than a third of their income from leading products selling chemicals that pose serious hazards to human health and the environment, a joint investigation by Unearthed and Public Eye has found. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Analysis of a huge database of 2018’s top-selling “crop protection products” has revealed the world’s leading agrochemical companies made more than 35% of their sales from pesticides classed as “highly hazardous” to people, animals or ecosystems. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The investigation identified billions of dollars of income for agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta from chemicals found by regulatory authorities to pose health hazards like cancer or reproductive failure. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It also found more than a billion dollars of their sales came from chemicals – some now banned in European markets – that are highly toxic to bees. Over two thirds of these sales were made in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">By far the most valuable markets for the highly hazardous pesticides sold by these companies were the commodity crops soya and corn, grown in large part to provide animal feed for the meat industry.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Visualisations by Nadieh Bremer</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Industry database</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The database, obtained from leading agribusiness intelligence firm Phillips McDougall, covers $23.3bn in pesticide sales across 43 different countries. These sales represent the leading products in the world’s highest-spending pesticide markets, and amount to around 40% of the global agrochemical market. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Unearthed and Public Eye, an NGO that investigates human rights abuses by Swiss companies, combed this dataset for sales of chemicals on the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International list of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The investigation found that close to half (41%) of the leading products of the agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta contained at least one HHP.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">There is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying and what they are actually doing</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Between them these companies control close to two thirds of the global agrochemicals market, and comprise five out of six members of the influential lobby group CropLife International. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Of the $13.4bn of sales by the CropLife companies in the dataset, $4.8bn went on chemicals found by regulatory agencies to pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The group’s full annual income from these chemicals will be billions of dollars greater, because the data analysed covered less than half of total global sales.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The investigation’s key findings include that:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The CropLife members made 10% of their leading products income ($1.3bn) from chemicals classed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as highly toxic to bees. These include neonicotinoids produced by Germany’s Bayer and Switzerland-based Syngenta, which were permanently banned from outdoor use in the European Union in 2018. Brazil was their main market for these chemicals.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife members made almost $3bn (22% of sales) from chemicals found by regulators to pose chronic health hazards. Among their top sellers were BASF’s weedkiller glufosinate and Corteva’s fungicide cyproconazole, both classed by EU regulators as damaging to fertility, sexual function or the unborn child. But by far CropLife’s biggest seller was glyphosate, classed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a “probable human carcinogen”. Glyphosate manufacturer Bayer and various regulators have rejected this classification.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife members made $596m (4%) of sales from pesticides classed as highly toxic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or as fatal if inhaled. Syngenta accounted for a large majority of these sales, with its top sellers including paraquat, a herbicide so toxic that a single sip can kill, which has long been banned in Europe and Switzerland.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The CropLife group made the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide sales in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">These companies’ biggest markets for highly hazardous pesticides were the commodity crops soya and corn. These two crops alone accounted for around half of CropLife HHP sales.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">These five companies alone accounted for almost half (48%) of all HHPs identified in the Phillips McDougall database.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to PAN, told Unearthed: “This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">What is CropLife International?</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife International is an influential trade association and lobby group for the world’s major agrochemical and agricultural biotech companies. Its members Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, BASF, Corteva Agriscience, and FMC are the five biggest pesticide companies in the world by agrochemical turnover. CropLife’s sixth member is the Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical, the world’s 8th biggest pesticide company. Sumitomo is not included in this investigation.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In international negotiations on pesticide regulation, the CropLife International lobby group is a well-funded and influential voice. Its members include the five leading agrochemical companies by turnover, plus the Japanese company Sumitomo.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife argues that HHPs are an “important tool to fight against crop losses” and should be used as a last resort to help farmers “produce enough food for a growing population”. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But the group says the majority of HHPs sold in developing countries are not manufactured by its members, and that its own members have “led by example” with measures like training millions of people in risk reduction techniques, such as wearing protective equipment.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A cotton farmer prepares to spray his crop in Andhra Pradesh, India. Photo: Peter Caton / Greenpeace</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Read more</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Soya, corn and cotton make Brazil world leader for hazardous pesticides</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">However, Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, rejected the idea that the risks posed by HHPs could be managed safely.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The impacts are unquestionable, but the system is rigged so that they are also unprovable</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture,” Tuncak told Unearthed. “Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother’s breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Unearthed and Public Eye’s investigation found that the CropLife companies made on average 27% of sales income from HHPs in high-income countries; but for low- and middle-income countries the proportion rose to 45%. In their most important LMIC markets, Brazil and India, HHPs made up 49% and 59% of sales respectively.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Tuncak commented: “We are in the midst of an invisible explosion of pesticide use in low-and middle-income countries that are ill-equipped to manage such hazards.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Governments do not have enough capacity to monitor conditions on countless farms and plantations, analyse food and environmental samples, track the health of seasonal and migrant workers, investigate allegations of gross misconduct on farms and plantations, or verify the integrity of the information being provided by industry-funded scientists.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“From the testimonies of workers to the collapse of biodiversity, the impacts are unquestionable, but the system is rigged so that they are also unprovable.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife itself says that its members reviewed their entire portfolios between 2015 and 2016 and concluded that only 15% of their products were HHPs. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Further, they found that 10% were HHPs “that can be used safely and responsibly” and only 2.5% “required risk mitigation measures or were withdrawn from the market”.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">What are highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs)?</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) define HHPs as “pesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or the environment according to internationally accepted classification systems”. Environmental hazards include problems like water source contamination, or “disruption of ecosystem functions” like pollination. However, they have never produced a list of HHPs. To fill this gap Pesticide Action Network International produces the only consolidated list, which is based on classifications made by the WHO, the European Chemicals Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the US EPA.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife International declined to tell Unearthed which of its members’ products it classed as HHPs. However, its director of international regulatory affairs Christoph Neumann said their analysis had probably differed because they used different criteria to the Pesticide Action Network for defining HHPS. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In particular the group objects to the use of what it calls “environmental” criteria by PAN.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The criteria cited by PAN are often environmental criteria that are not agreed or yet endorsed” by the FAO and the WHO, he explained.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Driven toward extinction</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The only detailed classifications the UN agencies have so far agreed for HHPs concern effects on human health, like acute poisoning or cancer.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This has led pesticide companies to argue that there are in effect no globally agreed standards for classing a pesticide as highly hazardous on environmental grounds. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This argument may not last. A 2019 publication by the FAO and the WHO suggests there are strong grounds for classing neonicotinoid insecticides as highly hazardous. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We are losing wildlife, particularly insects. The crisis is driven by a combination of factors but there is no doubt that pesticides are harming pollinators</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">There is, it states, a “rapidly growing body of evidence” that “existing levels of environmental contamination” by neonicotinoids “are causing large-scale adverse effects on bees and other beneficial insects”.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“The need to severely restrict their use and prevent future registration is gaining a large consensus,” it continues. “The European Union has already issued a complete and permanent ban on all outdoor uses of the three most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Three quarters of the world’s food crops depend at least in part on pollinators, and a growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being “driven towards extinction”, according to a global 2016 study. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">UN special rapporteur Baskut Tuncak told Unearthed that the threat neonicotinoid pesticides “present to our food security and our biodiversity is a human rights concern, in and of itself”.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A dead bee. There is growing evidence that the use of neonicotinoids is adversely affecting bees on a large scale. Photo: Greenpeace</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was Syngenta’s biggest selling HHP in 2018, our investigation found, accounting for 7% of the company’s sales ($242.5m). Similarly, imidacloprid was in Bayer’s top ten biggest selling HHPs, with sales of $101m. In both cases, the main market was Brazil – a country that hosts up to 20% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In addition to these neonicotinoids, Unearthed and Public Eye identified a further 37 chemicals sold by the CropLife companies that are classed as highly toxic to bees. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Among them were chlorfenapyr and fipronil – another chemical linked to mass bee deaths – manufactured by the German chemicals giant BASF.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Syngenta and BASF both declined to comment directly for this story. Syngenta – which was responsible for close to half (42%) of CropLife’s $1.3bn of bee-toxic pesticide sales – has recently argued that journalists are “overstating the science that clearly exists” on insect declines.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">However, University of Sussex biology professor Dave Goulson told Unearthed: “There is overwhelming evidence that we are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis, with extinction roughly 1,000 times the natural rate. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“We are losing wildlife, particularly insects. The crisis is driven by a combination of factors but there is no doubt that pesticides are harming pollinators.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Read more</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Demand for animal feed is driving the hazardous pesticide industry, data reveals</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The toxic top 10</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The most common category of hazard in the CropLife members’ top sellers is chronic health effects like cancer, birth defects, or endocrine disruption. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Chemicals classed as posing these hazards accounted for $3bn (22%) of the CropLife sales we analysed, and seven of the group’s top ten HHPs. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It is absolutely clear that glyphosate can cause cancers in experimental animals</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">By far the biggest of these was glyphosate, the world’s most popular weedkiller, which accounted for $1.1bn of CropLife sales. Bayer alone accounted for $840m of those sales, as a result of its controversial 2018 takeover of Roundup manufacturer Monsanto. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A spokesman for Bayer Crop Science told Unearthed it was “incorrect” to class the herbicide as highly hazardous simply on the strength of its IARC classification as a “probable human carcinogen”. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He added that “leading health regulators around the world” – including the USEPA and the European Food Safety Authority – had “repeatedly concluded that our glyphosate-based products can be used safely as directed and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic”. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Glyphosate is currently authorised in the EU until 2022, but various countries including Germany have announced their intention to ban it by 2023 even if the EU extends its licence.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Chris Portier, a former director of the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry who worked on the IARC’s review of glyphosate, said he believed the agency’s classification was “exactly right”. “It is absolutely clear that glyphosate can cause cancers in experimental animals,” he told Unearthed. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“And the human evidence for an association between glyphosate and cancer is also there, predominantly for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the US, which is Bayer’s biggest glyphosate market according to our investigation, the company is facing lawsuits from tens of thousands of plaintiffs who allege Roundup gave them cancer. Fortune magazine recently reported that the company may anticipate spending $10bn to resolve current and future claims. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Pesticides are sprayed form a helicopter over vineyards in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Photo: Getty</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The CropLife members’ highly hazardous top ten also includes $336m sales of the herbicide glufosinate, $245m of the fungicide cyproconazole, and $191m of the fungicide epoxiconazole, all of which are classed as “reproductive toxicants” in the EU, believed capable of damaging fertility, sexual function, or the unborn child. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Many HHPs have now been phased out in the EU, which has some of the toughest pesticide regulations in the world. That, however, is not the case for BASF’s epoxiconazole, which includes Germany and the UK among its four most important markets, the investigation found.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Elsewhere, the CropLife HHP top ten includes a clutch of chemicals manufactured and sold by European companies that have long been banned in their home markets. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Among these are the herbicides paraquat and atrazine, both sold by several CropLife companies but mainly Syngenta. Both of these chemicals have been around since the 1960s, and are now banned in the EU and Switzerland.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Accidental or deliberate ingestion of even a small amount of paraquat is frequently fatal, and it is a leading means of suicide in poor and rural areas where it remains available. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Atrazine was banned in Europe over concerns about groundwater contamination, but it is also classed by the EU as an endocrine disruptor, and researchers in the US have found it “wreaks havoc with the sex lives of male frogs”.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hear about stories like this first. Sign up for daily news emails.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The top ten also shows Bayer selling $125m of acetochlor, a weedkiller that was banned in the EU over concerns about contamination of drinking water and genotoxicity. The EU ban also cited a “high acute risk” to birds from contaminated drinking water.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Unearthed submitted detailed questions to all the companies mentioned in this article, but all except Bayer allowed Croplife to respond on their behalf. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A spokesman for Bayer Crop Science said the company did not agree with the classification of Bayer products as HHPs, because these products were neither classified as highly toxic to humans by the WHO, nor listed for control under the Stockholm Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, or the Montreal Protocol.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This amounts to just four of the eight categories of HHPs that have already been agreed by the FAO and the WHO. But the Bayer spokesman said that for the other categories – including pesticides proven or presumed to be mutagens, reproductive toxicants, or carcinogens – there was “currently no internationally responsible body for classification”. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He added that it was “not correct” that the Phillips McDougall data treated all Monsanto sales from 1 January 2018 as Bayer sales, when the takeover was completed on 7 June 2018.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">After this story was published on 20 February 2020, Bayer published a statement expanding on why it disagreed with the classifications used by PAN. The statement added that Bayer was in the process of withdrawing products containing the pesticides methiocarb and carbendazim. Methiocarb is classed as acutely toxic by the WHO, while carbendazim is classed by the ECHA as presumed mutagen and reproductive toxicant.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CropLife International’s director of international regulatory affairs Christoph Neumann added that of the 19 chemicals our investigation identified as its members biggest selling HHPs, 12 were registered for use in the EU and 18 were registered for use in the US. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He continued: “CropLife International members support the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management and agree with the principle of pesticide risk reduction. We support countries to identify, and if necessary, remove HHPs from their markets.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He added: “When risk mitigation measures or good marketing practices are insufficient to ensure that the product can be handled without unacceptable risks to humans and the environment, then market withdrawal should be considered.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">How we did it</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This investigation is based on analysis of a huge dataset of pesticide sales from the agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall. This company conducts detailed market research all over the world and sells databases and intelligence to pesticide companies. The data covers around 40% of the $57.6bn global market for agricultural pesticides in 2018. It covers 43 countries, which between them represent more than 90% of the global pesticide market by value. And it focuses on sales of leading products in the most valuable “market segments” (an example of a market segment would be insecticides for cotton in India). </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We used the same methodology that pesticide industry analysts use to break up the value of product sales by active ingredient (in cases where a product included more than one active chemical), and we then established which of these chemicals had been classified by recognised authorities as posing environmental hazards like toxicity to bees, or hazards to humans, like acute toxicity, or chronic exposure risks like cancer. </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For the final stage we used the 2019 highly hazardous pesticides list created by Pesticide Action Network International, which collates all pesticides that have been ascribed one of these hazard categories by the World Health Organisation, the European Chemicals Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or the US Environmental Protection Agency.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In June 2018 the agrochemicals company Monsanto was taken over by Bayer. The Phillips McDougall data treats all Monsanto sales in the early part of 2018 as Bayer sales.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Any reference to the group of CropLife companies or CropLife members in this article refers only to BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, FMC, and Syngenta.</font></p></div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div>this refers to all agricultural chemicals, including herbicides and fertililizers</div><div>
</div><div>see also Monsanto, agribiz, atrazine, syngenta, GMOnsanto, neo-nics, toxins</div><div>
</div><div>promoted to primary b/c toxin emblematic of damage, Carson godmother, syngenta evil, 6/15 could be bought my monsanto</div><div>
</div><div>capt 915</div><div>
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</div><div>no lnx twit</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-bolsonaro-pesticides-2636194015.html</div><div>
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</div><div>JAIR BOLSONARO</div><div>
</div><div>Brazil's Bolsonaro Green-Lights 150+ Pesticides This Year</div><div>
</div><div> Mongabay May 03 POLITICS</div><div>
</div><div>Isac Nóbrega / PR / Flickr</div><div>
</div><div>By Sue Branford and Thais Borges</div><div>
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</div><div>With the ruralist lobby now in control of key sectors of the federal government, Brazil is rapidly approving new pesticides for use, some of which critics say are either unnecessary or excessively toxic. During the first 100 days of the Jair Bolsonaro administration, the Agriculture Ministry authorized the registration of 152 pesticides, putting Brazil on course to authorize more pesticides this year than in any previous year. Brazil is already the world's largest user of pesticides.</div><div>
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</div><div>The number of pesticides authorized each year has risen rapidly, from 139 in 2015 under the Dilma Rousseff administration, to 450 in 2018 under the Michel Temer government (see graph). An even higher number is expected to enter the Brazilian market this year, as the Agriculture Ministry considers registration of roughly another 1,300 pesticides. Most of these requests are coming from foreign multinational companies, mainly based in the U.S., Germany and China, which is increasingly becoming an important supplier.</div><div>
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</div><div>An employee from Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources surveys a heap of emptied pesticide containers on a farm.]</div><div>
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</div><div>Pro-Pesticide Government vs. Environmentalists</div><div>
</div><div>Despite the rapid rise in authorizations, Bolsonaro's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, said "there is no general liberation" of new pesticide registrations.According to her ministry, the products will merely give farmers a greater choice of existing pesticides, and access to new chemicals and there is no reason to be concerned: "The use [of pesticides] is completely safe, provided they are applied as instructed, within a context of good farming practice and with the use of individual protective equipment," said the government.</div><div>
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</div><div>Events within Brazil seem to deny the truth of Cristina's claims. Brazil has a higher per capita consumption of pesticides than any other country in the world — 7.3 liters per year per person — and it is already facing a serious problem with pesticide intoxication.</div><div>
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</div><div>According to Guilherme Franco Netto, an Environment, Health and Sustainability Specialist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, one of the world's top public health research institutions, about 100,000 cases of intoxication are recorded in Brazil each year. According to Alan Tygel, from the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and for Life, this figure seriously underestimates the real situation, as many rural workers fail to report pesticide intoxications.</div><div>
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</div><div>Brazil: Pesticide Poisonings in Rural Areas</div><div>
</div><div>In July 2018, the human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, published a report documenting acute intoxication at seven locations in Brazil, including indigenous communities, schools and quilombolas — communities of runaway slave descendants.</div><div>
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</div><div>"Pesticides sprayed in large plantations intoxicate children in schoolrooms in many parts of Brazil," said Richard Pearshouse, assistant director of the environmental and human rights division of Human Rights Watch. But the report found that many local inhabitants were too frightened to speak out.</div><div>
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</div><div>In five of the seven impacted communities, people said they were afraid of suffering reprisals if they complained. In 2010 a rural farmer was shot dead after putting pressure on local government to forbid aerial spraying of pesticides — a common application practice in Brazil, even though it allows wind-carried toxic sprays to settle far from crops in surrounding communities and natural areas.</div><div>
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</div><div>New Formulations Raise Alarms</div><div>
</div><div>Many of the requests given the go-ahead this year are for new formulations of already authorized pesticides."Once the initial manufacturer loses its patent, other companies start requesting registration so they can use the [same] active ingredients to produce new agricultural products," said Murilo Souza, from the State University of Goiás.</div><div>
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</div><div>Leonardo Melgarejo, vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Agroecology, believes that this practice is harmful as it will inevitably lead to a big increase in consumption nationwide. "We are approving several variations of the same pesticide," he said. "We're heading for a situation in which farmers will be able to 'self-medicate,' with two pesticide shops on every block." Little research has been done to see how hundreds of various pesticides might interact to become more damaging.</div><div>
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</div><div>The torrent of new approvals is also making it easier for Brazil's farmers to gain access to toxic pesticides with which the global community has serious concern. One such case is that of 2,4-D, an active ingredient in controversial defoliant Agent Orange, used by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and whose use is increasingly being controlled in other countries, after the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it in 2015 as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."</div><div>
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</div><div>The latest wave of Agriculture Ministry authorizations seen on 10 April, gave the go-ahead to 31 products via an official federal decree — Act 24 — including three new formulations of 2,4-D requested by multinational pesticide makers and distributors. One request came from the Chinese company, Rainbow Defensivos Agrícolas, while the other two were initiated by Dow AgroSciences for formulations to be manufactured in South Africa and exported to Brazil.</div><div>
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</div><div>These new Brazilian authorizations took place at a time when the Rio Grande do Sul Public Ministry, a group of independent public litigators, was carrying out an investigation into an allegation made by the Brazilian Wine Institute that last year the state lost almost a third of its grape harvest as a result of the aerial spraying of pesticides containing 2,4-D. Farmers spray this pesticide before they sow soy — also a time when grape, apple and olive trees are flowering, and when the spray can easily drift over neighboring farms.</div><div>
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</div><div>"The data from our survey [that showed a loss of almost a third of the grape harvest] is a conservative figure, as it relied only on information spontaneously offered by farmers," said Helio Marchioro of Brazilian Wine Institute. In fact, grape farmers themselves are calling for a 2,4-D ban, even as the Bolsonaro administration approves new 2,4-D formulations.</div><div>
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</div><div>Controversial Pesticides Approved for First Time in Brazil</div><div>
</div><div>Several of the pesticides authorized this year will be entirely new to Brazil. Some have already been classified by Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency as "extremely toxic." These include: mancozeb, a broad-spectrum fungicide used in agriculture and horticulture; the fungicide fluazinam; and the insecticide chlorpyrifos. In 2018 the Pest Management Regulatory Agency banned the use of mancozeb in Canada, except for foliar use on potatoes, due to "unacceptable risks to human health." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of chlorpyrifos in 2018 after its use had been associated with development disabilities in children.</div><div>
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</div><div>One particularly controversial newly approved chemical is sulfoxaflor. This pesticide was one of several believed to have caused an outbreak in Brazil of colony collapse disorder — the catastrophic sudden disappearance of worker bees from a bee colony, leading to the death of hives. According to a survey carried out by Agência Pública and Repórter Brasil, half a billion bees were found dead in four Brazilian states in the first quarter of 2019 — a staggeringly large die off posing a threat to the pollination of fruits and vegetables and to native vegetation.</div><div>
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</div><div>But at a press conference on April 9, Agriculture Minister Cristina seemed unaware that Brazil has already authorized sulfoxaflor. "The problem with the bees is that a product called sulfoxaflor was used. This [toxin] is not registered in Brazil," she said. "It probably entered Brazil illegally and is being used incorrectly and thus caused the death of the bees." In fact, sulfoxaflor was authorized at the end of last year by the Temer administration, though the official decree was only issued in January of this year under the Bolsonaro government.</div><div>
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</div><div>Sulfoxaflor is classified by Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency as "averagely toxic," but this evaluation is challenged abroad. Dow Chemical initially developed sulfoxaflor as a safer alternative to neonicotinoids, known to be harmful to bees. It was initially approved by the US EPA in 2013, a decision reversed in 2015 when studies found that sulfoxaflor was also dangerous to bees. Today sulfoxaflor can still be used in the U.S., but only in restricted circumstances.</div><div>
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</div><div>Pesticide Deregulation in the Works</div><div>
</div><div>Environmental activist Alan Tygel believes that the rapid rise in the number of pesticide authorizations is directly linked to the growing power of the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby in Congress. This lobby, he said, made its support for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 dependent on government backing for pro-agribusiness measures. "From then on, the counterweight that came from progressive sectors, from family farming and from agroecology, was lost, and today the ruralist agenda faces fewer obstacles in its drive to have more pesticides approved and to push through more permissive laws," Tygel said. The Bolsonaro presidential campaign greatly benefited from ruralist support, and it greatly helped sweep the former Army captain and legislator to victory last October.</div><div>
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</div><div>The next goal of the ruralist agenda — more permissive laws — may well get a major boost this year with congressional approval of PL 6299/2002, dubbed as the "poison package" by critics. The legislation, which would greatly deregulate pesticides, was endorsed by a Chamber of Deputies commission in June 2018 and it now awaits plenary debate. The Temer government justified the bill, presented to Congress by then Agriculture Minister and dedicated ruralist, Blairo Maggi, claiming that the country desperately needed to simplify the complicated process of getting new pesticides authorized in order to help farmers.</div><div>
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</div><div>But Castro Moreira, president of the prestigious Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, representing more than 100 scientific societies, disagreed strongly. He said at the time that the bill, "could have very serious consequences for the health of the Brazilian population and the environment … Its approval would be a backward step, because it follows the logic of mechanized agriculture, with high investments in fertilizers and pesticides, which is an outmoded way of thinking, dating from the end of the Second World War."</div><div>
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</div><div>Current Agriculture Minister Cristina is a strong proponent of PL 6299/2002, but there is bound to be opposition to the bill's approval, though it will likely be difficult for critics to block the measure. The ruralists have never had a stronger grip on both the legislative and executive branches, and they seem determined to press their agribusiness agenda.</div><div>
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</div><div>As President Bolsonaro ended his first 100 days in office, his popularity was slipping fast, with 30 percent of the population already assessing his administration as "very bad" and the markets believing the government is becoming unstable. However, that very perception of growing uncertainty seems to have only caused the ruralists to move forward with greater urgency. Meanwhile, conservationists and food experts continue to warn of the national and global environmental and health repercussions of Brazil's deregulated pesticide use — permissiveness likely to soon outstrip that seen among other major agricultural nations.</div><div>
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</div><div>Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay.</div><div>
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</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>
</div><div>Insects Could Go Extinct Within a Century, With 'Catastrophic ... ›</div><div>
</div><div>Brazilian government clears highly toxic pesticides ›</div><div>
</div><div>2019 Outlook: Brazil's Bolsonaro Pushes for Lax Pesticide Rules ›</div><div>
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</div><div>Bolsonaro business backers accused of illegal Whatsapp fake news ... ›</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>=</div><div>no lnx kos</div><div>it ’s rare when the findings on an environmental problem are this definitive. With shifting climate conditions and all the other aspects of human activity and how it impacts the biosphere, sharp population declines can take animals and plants to the brink of extinction and still leave scientists scratching their heads over what went wrong. That’s what makes the Interior Department analysis of the pesticides malathion and chlorpyrifos such a victory—and what happened next such a horror show.</div><div>
</div><div>The New York Times reports that the two pesticides were found to be such a threat that they “jeopardized the continued existence” of not just a few species, but over 1,200 species, ranging from tiny fish to colorful birds to kit foxes. The pesticides are a potent cocktail for disaster, and the Fish and Wildlife Service spent years putting together an airtight case that the two had to be banned to avoid massive ecological disaster. </div><div>
</div><div>The findings were set to become public at the end of 2017. But then … they didn’t. Instead, Donald Trump inserted industry lobbyist David Bernhardt as deputy secretary of the interior. Bernhardt blocked the release of the information, announced new rules narrowing the means by which Fish and Wildlife could evaluate the data, and sent the whole study back to square one—not just wiping out years of work, but putting hundreds of species and whole ecosystems at risk of collapse.</div><div>
</div><div>For his work in assisting the pesticide industry, Bernhardt is now on track for a promotion. He is Trump’s new nominee to be the next secretary of the interior, and his confirmation hearing is coming up on Thursday. Bernhardt would replace Ryan Zinke, who abruptly left his position after a series of scandals. It may not seem possible, but Bernhardt is worse. As the Natural Resources Defense Council explains, this isn’t Bernhardt’s first go-round in Washington. He’s a top predator in the lobbyist swamp, having spent more than 20 years on every aspect of ruining public lands from opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee to oil drilling, to putting snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park.</div><div>
</div><div>And it will come as absolutely no surprise that Dow, the company behind chlorpyrifos, donated $1 million to Trump’s shady inaugural committee.</div><div>
</div><div>Since Trump’s crew took over, Dow has been a regular visitor at both the EPA and the Interior Department. The changes in the way pesticides are being treated that Bernhardt put in place didn’t originate with Bernhardt. They are exactly what Dow requested.</div><div>
</div><div>Dow and other pesticide manufacturers were aware of the study when Trump came into office. They followed up their fat contributions with letters to Zinke at Interior, Scott Pruitt at EPA, and Wilbur Ross at Commerce, asking all of them to “set aside” the findings. Zinke was still interior secretary when the regulations were turned back, but it was Bernhardt who put his name to the policy changes and tossed a study that would have dealt with a massive ecological threat that will now continue for years.</div><div>
</div><div>Since taking office, Trump has made hundreds of vague and unsupported statements about how America’s water was “cleaner than ever” and how the country had “moved to the top of the charts” on the environment. Trump continues to produce these nonsensical statements, pulled from the so-so-clean streams of his nether regions, even as he lifts bans on pollution from fracking, allows mines to fill streams and rivers with waste, and leaves a rapidly ticking time bomb of pesticides in place.</div><div>=</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html</div><div>
</div><div>The Insect Apocalypse Is Here</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-house-brain-damaging-pesticides-2613568873.html</div><div>
</div><div>Trump White House Pushes to Let Minors Spray Brain-Damaging Pesticides on Farms</div><div>
</div><div>The White House's just-released list of planned environmental and public health rollbacks includes letting high-school-age kids spray brain-damaging pesticides on commercial farms.</div><div>
</div><div>The plan would drop the age of workers permitted to spray restricted-use pesticides on crops from 18 to 16. Minors would be allowed to apply dangerous chemicals such as chlorpyrifos, which U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists say can cause brain damage in children even in small doses.</div><div>
</div><div>The move, which would take effect next September, was first announced last year by Scott Pruitt, the former head of the EPA, who was forced in July to resign after a string of ethical scandals. In one of the first acts of the Trump administration, Pruitt aborted a scheduled ban of chlorpyrifos just weeks after meeting with the CEO of Dow, chlorpyrifos's manufacturer.</div><div>
</div><div>Pruitt's reversal of the ban was recently overturned by a federal appeals court. Under acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, the EPA is fighting the court's order to ban the pesticide.</div><div>
</div><div>The minimum age rules were enacted by the Obama administration to protect minors who work on farms. Many of these teenagers are migrant workers who speak little English, making it harder to understand directions on how to apply pesticides safely. The rules were championed by physicians and farmworker-rights advocates, who led a multi-year effort to improve protections for farmworkers.</div><div>
</div><div>"Letting younger teenagers handle dangerous pesticides fits perfectly with the Trump administration's war on children's health protection," said EWG President Ken Cook. "There are other farm jobs they could do that don't involve strapping containers of dangerous chemicals on their backs that they will inhale and ingest. But this administration will let unscrupulous farm bosses risk these kids' health."</div><div>
</div><div>"Maybe the president should pick up a spray nozzle for a day and see what it's like walking through a plume of pesticide fumes," said Cook. "But the closest he gets to a farm is flying over them on the way to his golf resorts and MAGA rallies."</div><div>
</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Hawaii Bans Use of Toxic Pesticide Chlorpyrifos ›</div><div>Trump Administration Asks Court to Re-Hear Case That Banned ... ›</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/chlorpyrifos-epa-ban-2594491287.html</div><div>
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</div><div>Court Rebukes EPA, Orders Ban on Pesticide That Harms Kids’ Brains</div><div>
</div><div>In a scathing opinion, a federal court on Thursday ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide linked to brain damage in children.</div><div>
</div><div>The ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals nullified the decision last year by then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to cancel the agency's proposal to ban chlorpyrifos—an insecticide that in small doses can harm children's brains and nervous systems—from use on food crops.</div><div>
</div><div>Pruitt's reversal of the proposed ban came a few weeks after he met with the CEO of Dow Chemical Company, the world's largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, according to The Associated Press.</div><div>
</div><div>In the Ninth Circuit's opinion, released Thursday morning, District Judge Jed Rakoff blasted the EPA's actions, stating that there "remains no justification for the EPA's 'continued failure to respond to the pressing health concerns presented by chlorpyrifos,' which has now placed the agency in direct contravention" of federal laws regulating food and pesticides.</div><div>
</div><div>"Today's court decision is a huge victory for public health, especially that of children," said Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney for the Environmental Working Group. "By requiring the EPA to finally ban chlorpyrifos, the Ninth Circuit is ensuring that the agency puts children's health, strong science and the letter of the law above corporate interests."</div><div>
</div><div>The Ninth Circuit decision orders the EPA to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations for chlorpyrifos within 60 days....</div><div>
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</div><div>818</div><div>
</div><div>Pesticide Food Poisoning Suspected as 10 Die After Funeral in Peru EW</div><div>
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</div><div>https://www.salon.com/2018/05/19/long-before-scott-pruitt-epa-colluded-with-industry/</div><div>
</div><div>epa fail</div><div>
</div><div>a memo (p. 45) from the Poison Papers dated May 7, 1982, one of the EPA’s most senior scientists, Adrian Gross, wrote bluntly to John Melone, acting director of EPA’s Hazards Evaluation Division, that: “the evidence is overwhelming that permethrin has a marked tumor-inducing or carcinogenic activity which is expressed in many different forms.”</div><div>
</div><div>Gross drew his conclusion from the seven long-term rat and mouse carcinogenicity studies on permethrin that were available to the EPA at the time. Five of the seven were audited by the Agency and all showed clear evidence of scientific misconduct that disguised evidence of harm:</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx twit</div><div>JAIR BOLSONARO</div><div>Brazil's Bolsonaro Green-Lights 150+ Pesticides This Year</div><div> Mongabay May 03 POLITICS</div><div>Isac Nóbrega / PR / Flickr</div><div>By Sue Branford and Thais Borges</div><div>
</div><div>With the ruralist lobby now in control of key sectors of the federal government, Brazil is rapidly approving new pesticides for use, some of which critics say are either unnecessary or excessively toxic. During the first 100 days of the Jair Bolsonaro administration, the Agriculture Ministry authorized the registration of 152 pesticides, putting Brazil on course to authorize more pesticides this year than in any previous year. Brazil is already the world's largest user of pesticides.</div><div>
</div><div>The number of pesticides authorized each year has risen rapidly, from 139 in 2015 under the Dilma Rousseff administration, to 450 in 2018 under the Michel Temer government (see graph). An even higher number is expected to enter the Brazilian market this year, as the Agriculture Ministry considers registration of roughly another 1,300 pesticides. Most of these requests are coming from foreign multinational companies, mainly based in the U.S., Germany and China, which is increasingly becoming an important supplier.</div><div>
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</div><div>IBAMA / Mongabay</div><div>
</div><div>An employee from Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources surveys a heap of emptied pesticide containers on a farm.</div><div>
</div><div>Pro-Pesticide Government vs. Environmentalists</div><div>Despite the rapid rise in authorizations, Bolsonaro's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, said "there is no general liberation" of new pesticide registrations. According to her ministry, the products will merely give farmers a greater choice of existing pesticides, and access to new chemicals and there is no reason to be concerned: "The use [of pesticides] is completely safe, provided they are applied as instructed, within a context of good farming practice and with the use of individual protective equipment," said the government.</div><div>
</div><div>Events within Brazil seem to deny the truth of Cristina's claims. Brazil has a higher per capita consumption of pesticides than any other country in the world — 7.3 liters per year per person — and it is already facing a serious problem with pesticide intoxication.</div><div>
</div><div>According to Guilherme Franco Netto, an Environment, Health and Sustainability Specialist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, one of the world's top public health research institutions, about 100,000 cases of intoxication are recorded in Brazil each year. According to Alan Tygel, from the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and for Life, this figure seriously underestimates the real situation, as many rural workers fail to report pesticide intoxications.</div><div>
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</div><div>Brazil: Pesticide Poisonings in Rural Areas</div><div>In July 2018, the human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, published a report documenting acute intoxication at seven locations in Brazil, including indigenous communities, schools and quilombolas — communities of runaway slave descendants.</div><div>
</div><div>"Pesticides sprayed in large plantations intoxicate children in schoolrooms in many parts of Brazil," said Richard Pearshouse, assistant director of the environmental and human rights division of Human Rights Watch. But the report found that many local inhabitants were too frightened to speak out.</div><div>
</div><div>In five of the seven impacted communities, people said they were afraid of suffering reprisals if they complained. In 2010 a rural farmer was shot dead after putting pressure on local government to forbid aerial spraying of pesticides — a common application practice in Brazil, even though it allows wind-carried toxic sprays to settle far from crops in surrounding communities and natural areas.</div><div>
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</div><div>New Formulations Raise Alarms</div><div>Many of the requests given the go-ahead this year are for new formulations of already authorized pesticides."Once the initial manufacturer loses its patent, other companies start requesting registration so they can use the [same] active ingredients to produce new agricultural products," said Murilo Souza, from the State University of Goiás.</div><div>
</div><div>Leonardo Melgarejo, vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Agroecology, believes that this practice is harmful as it will inevitably lead to a big increase in consumption nationwide. "We are approving several variations of the same pesticide," he said. "We're heading for a situation in which farmers will be able to 'self-medicate,' with two pesticide shops on every block." Little research has been done to see how hundreds of various pesticides might interact to become more damaging.</div><div>
</div><div>The torrent of new approvals is also making it easier for Brazil's farmers to gain access to toxic pesticides with which the global community has serious concern. One such case is that of 2,4-D, an active ingredient in controversial defoliant Agent Orange, used by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and whose use is increasingly being controlled in other countries, after the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it in 2015 as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."</div><div>
</div><div>The latest wave of Agriculture Ministry authorizations seen on 10 April, gave the go-ahead to 31 products via an official federal decree — Act 24 — including three new formulations of 2,4-D requested by multinational pesticide makers and distributors. One request came from the Chinese company, Rainbow Defensivos Agrícolas, while the other two were initiated by Dow AgroSciences for formulations to be manufactured in South Africa and exported to Brazil.</div><div>
</div><div>These new Brazilian authorizations took place at a time when the Rio Grande do Sul Public Ministry, a group of independent public litigators, was carrying out an investigation into an allegation made by the Brazilian Wine Institute that last year the state lost almost a third of its grape harvest as a result of the aerial spraying of pesticides containing 2,4-D. Farmers spray this pesticide before they sow soy — also a time when grape, apple and olive trees are flowering, and when the spray can easily drift over neighboring farms.</div><div>
</div><div>"The data from our survey [that showed a loss of almost a third of the grape harvest] is a conservative figure, as it relied only on information spontaneously offered by farmers," said Helio Marchioro of Brazilian Wine Institute. In fact, grape farmers themselves are calling for a 2,4-D ban, even as the Bolsonaro administration approves new 2,4-D formulations.</div><div>
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</div><div>USDA</div><div>
</div><div>Monsanto Lasso herbicide to be sprayed on food crops showing proper protective gear.</div><div>
</div><div>Controversial Pesticides Approved for First Time in Brazil</div><div>Several of the pesticides authorized this year will be entirely new to Brazil. Some have already been classified by Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency as "extremely toxic." These include: mancozeb, a broad-spectrum fungicide used in agriculture and horticulture; the fungicide fluazinam; and the insecticide chlorpyrifos. In 2018 the Pest Management Regulatory Agency banned the use of mancozeb in Canada, except for foliar use on potatoes, due to "unacceptable risks to human health." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of chlorpyrifos in 2018 after its use had been associated with development disabilities in children.</div><div>
</div><div>One particularly controversial newly approved chemical is sulfoxaflor. This pesticide was one of several believed to have caused an outbreak in Brazil of colony collapse disorder — the catastrophic sudden disappearance of worker bees from a bee colony, leading to the death of hives. According to a survey carried out by Agência Pública and Repórter Brasil, half a billion bees were found dead in four Brazilian states in the first quarter of 2019 — a staggeringly large die off posing a threat to the pollination of fruits and vegetables and to native vegetation.</div><div>
</div><div>But at a press conference on April 9, Agriculture Minister Cristina seemed unaware that Brazil has already authorized sulfoxaflor. "The problem with the bees is that a product called sulfoxaflor was used. This [toxin] is not registered in Brazil," she said. "It probably entered Brazil illegally and is being used incorrectly and thus caused the death of the bees." In fact, sulfoxaflor was authorized at the end of last year by the Temer administration, though the official decree was only issued in January of this year under the Bolsonaro government.</div><div>
</div><div>Sulfoxaflor is classified by Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency as "averagely toxic," but this evaluation is challenged abroad. Dow Chemical initially developed sulfoxaflor as a safer alternative to neonicotinoids, known to be harmful to bees. It was initially approved by the US EPA in 2013, a decision reversed in 2015 when studies found that sulfoxaflor was also dangerous to bees. Today sulfoxaflor can still be used in the U.S., but only in restricted circumstances.</div><div>
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</div><div>Pesticide Deregulation in the Works</div><div>Environmental activist Alan Tygel believes that the rapid rise in the number of pesticide authorizations is directly linked to the growing power of the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby in Congress. This lobby, he said, made its support for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 dependent on government backing for pro-agribusiness measures. "From then on, the counterweight that came from progressive sectors, from family farming and from agroecology, was lost, and today the ruralist agenda faces fewer obstacles in its drive to have more pesticides approved and to push through more permissive laws," Tygel said. The Bolsonaro presidential campaign greatly benefited from ruralist support, and it greatly helped sweep the former Army captain and legislator to victory last October.</div><div>
</div><div>The next goal of the ruralist agenda — more permissive laws — may well get a major boost this year with congressional approval of PL 6299/2002, dubbed as the "poison package" by critics. The legislation, which would greatly deregulate pesticides, was endorsed by a Chamber of Deputies commission in June 2018 and it now awaits plenary debate. The Temer government justified the bill, presented to Congress by then Agriculture Minister and dedicated ruralist, Blairo Maggi, claiming that the country desperately needed to simplify the complicated process of getting new pesticides authorized in order to help farmers.</div><div>
</div><div>But Castro Moreira, president of the prestigious Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, representing more than 100 scientific societies, disagreed strongly. He said at the time that the bill, "could have very serious consequences for the health of the Brazilian population and the environment … Its approval would be a backward step, because it follows the logic of mechanized agriculture, with high investments in fertilizers and pesticides, which is an outmoded way of thinking, dating from the end of the Second World War."</div><div>
</div><div>Current Agriculture Minister Cristina is a strong proponent of PL 6299/2002, but there is bound to be opposition to the bill's approval, though it will likely be difficult for critics to block the measure. The ruralists have never had a stronger grip on both the legislative and executive branches, and they seem determined to press their agribusiness agenda.</div><div>
</div><div>As President Bolsonaro ended his first 100 days in office, his popularity was slipping fast, with 30 percent of the population already assessing his administration as "very bad" and the markets believing the government is becoming unstable. However, that very perception of growing uncertainty seems to have only caused the ruralists to move forward with greater urgency. Meanwhile, conservationists and food experts continue to warn of the national and global environmental and health repercussions of Brazil's deregulated pesticide use — permissiveness likely to soon outstrip that seen among other major agricultural nations.</div><div>
</div><div>Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay.</div><div>
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