EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees

hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."

Comments

Re:Some Questions

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Most of your questions are answered in TFA, and those that aren't, are thoroughly covered in the linked PDF (except for the political ones.) The short version is that the stuff propagates very easily through the environment and is toxic to bees even in very low doses.

Re:Some Questions

[kamelkev]

> I'm not a fan of pesticides but I won't deny that they increase food and crop yield.

Prove it. I don't believe this whatsoever.

There has been a growing of evidence showing that the overuse of pesticides has led to a *decline* in crop yields, not an increase.

See:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5995.cfm
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/June/04060701.asp

Unless you are familiar with changes in farming techniques over time it's very very hard to have a substantive position on this. Since about 1960-1970 there has been a *huuuge* increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers that essentially parallels the use of pesticides. Sadly there was a limit to how much nitrogen fixation can actually take place in the presence of pesticides. Keep in mind that nitrogen is required for plants to grow, nitrogen fixation is required for plants to use nitrogen and... research has now shown that pesticides interferes with nitrogen fixation.

I'm not making a broad claim one way or another, but the government clearly isn't researching the things they should be.

Re:Some Questions

[sqldr]

What about the UK

There was a horizon program on the BBC here called "what's killing our bees?", which suggested that the only country not really affected (yet) was Australia, who have a roaring trade selling bees now.

That was 2 years ago. Yes, the UK is affected.

Re:One More Bush Era Screw Up

[je ne sais quoi]

I'd just like to add that, while strongly worded, the parent post isn't actually a troll. The Bush adminstration closed a research lab for honeybees and canceled funding for projects that were focused on determining the cause of the mysterious honey bee deaths. It's tempting to say that the Bush administration canceled those projects because it already knew the truth about what was killing the honeybees, but I don't really see how they could have known that precisely was the cause, more than likely they just didn't care.

As further evidence, the number of lawsuits issued by the EPA dropped by 75% under the Bush administration. (!) It's no coincidence that during the last decade we had increasing food safety alerts about E. Coli, etc. in our food, increased mercury in bodies of water, etc., etc. etc. This was done intentionally in the belief that applying the following rules always works: "regulation = bad" "business interests = good". Stupid and short-sighted.... (And yet somehow the American people felt it was a good idea to let these guys back into control of congress? WTF? They're going to get what they deserve, the only problem is I'm going to get what they deserve it too since environmental problems affect everyone.)

Re:Some Questions

[TubeSteak]

The FDA screens pesticides for how they will be used, how mobile the pesticide is and how long the residue lasts. If this was not done then cry foul.
...
I have not found the application for use as a seed coating but Bayer would have needed to go through a process to get that approved by the EPA.

Did you RTFA?
"...Bayer was granted a 'conditional registration' while the Environmental Protection Agency waited for them to conduct further field studies on the pesticides impact on bee colonies."

Long story short: The original study was crap, the EPA allowed it, and Bayer knew that the pesticide was a bee killer.

Re:One More Bush Era Screw Up

[Moridineas]

I'd just like to add that, while strongly worded, the parent post isn't actually a troll

Let's see, in reality clothianidin was granted full approval this year -- April 2010! That's 4 years of a completely Democratically controlled congress and 2 years of a Democratic House+Senate+President. Most politically appointees from the Bush years are LONG gone by now. Turnover in agencies is incredible around election time. I'm very, very glad to see more stuff of this type appear on Wikileaks (though I wish some other government's dirty laundry would start showing up too). The troll part is being so blindly partisan. IMHO, it's that kind of super-polarized partisanship that helps lead to so many of our political problems.

Additionally, CCD is occurring around the globe--even in countries that don't use clothiandin.

As further evidence, the number of lawsuits issued by the EPA dropped by 75% [enO's-newswire.com] under the Bush administration. (!) It's no coincidence that during the last decade we had increasing food safety alerts about E. Coli, etc. in our food, increased mercury in bodies of water, etc., etc. etc

What on does the EPA have to do with E. coli outbreaks? Does the EPA really control wild boards running through spinach fields? Or indeed have ANYTHING to do with that situation?

Re:Some Questions

[sjames]

Also, it's apparently used in the UK. Are only North American bees susceptible to this? The article says:

Of course not. The better question would be has the UK had a problem with colony collapse as well? The answer to that would be yes, it has.

Re:malicious skepticism

[he-sk]

This is especially so, given that research shows that old farming techniques and organic practices are equally or more effective, and cause no permanent damage to people or the environment. Virtually none of the artificial stuff spread on the farmlands of the world are *necessary*, even if one's sole criteria is increased yield.

Before someone shoots down your argument, wondering what research you are refering to, I thought I'd provide a link to underscore your point: http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2007/july/19783.htm

A study by the University of Michigan showed that organic methods are sufficient to feed the current global population and more without an increase in the landbase used for agriculture.

Re:Where are those who dubbed wikileaks 'terrorist

[traindirector]

While WikiLeaks is a current and exciting topic, the clothianidin/EPA leak has nothing to do with WikiLeaks.

Quoting a prominent secondary story linked from TFA:

So how did Theobald (pictured above) end up with such a contentious document?

Bayer, the corporation behind clothianidin (the pesticide in question), published a life cycle study about it in 2006 at the EPA's request. The study was flawed--test and control fields were, for example, planted as close as 968 feet apart. But the EPA continued to allow the use of clothianidin, which has been on the market since 2003 for use on corn, canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat (and which has been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects on bees, birds, and other species).

Fast forward to this year. Theobald wrote an article in the July issue of Bee Culture about clothianidin. Then an employee at the EPA called Theobald to tell him the article had led the EPA to review the pesticide's original life cycle study before approving clothianidin for use on cotton and mustard.

"They told me that EPA scientists had reviewed the original lifecycle study and determined it wasn't scientifically sound, and I asked if it had been documented, if there was a hard copy," he says, "The [employee] said yes, and I asked if I could get a copy." And just like that, he had the proof he needed that the EPA had overlooked something that could be killing America's bees.

Real data

[Per Abrahamsen]

Here is the EU data on the pesticide.

Some highlights: It is an insecticide, so it should not really surprise that it kills bees. The toxitity to honey bees is well known (LD50 = 0.004 ug/bee, which the document interpret as "high" risk). And it is approved for use in most EU countries, including Italy and Germany.

Said study by Bayer associate

[Esteanil]

The study you are referencing was made by Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, who has economical ties to Bayer (The producer of the pesticide cited). Ref: NYT via http://www.ktradionetwork.com/tag/dr-jerry-bromenshenk/

Re:EP(what?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Growers of organic food still use pesticides (if you try growing crops without any pesticides you'll realize why).

Some organic growers use it. They use a lot less of it, and only specific chemicals (with little to no synthetic stuff):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Pesticides
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification

Re:Fungus and virus combo.

[Fnkmaster]

Yeah, except the NY Times article failed to mention that that study was funded by Bayer Crop Sciences, whose product was the principle other suspect behind Colony Collapse Disorder.

See this CNN piece in response to the NY Times article: http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm

And this article posted a few threads up: http://www.ktradionetwork.com/tag/dr-jerry-bromenshenk/

Not clear what the real answer is, but it just goes to show that it's easier to mislead a New York Times journalist than one would think and that any scientific study that answers questions of economic significance are subject to meddling with money. Though we sometimes assume that scientists are truly objective, they are human beings and subject to biases and influence like the rest of us.

These sorts of potential conflicts of interest need to be better disclosed - and it's rather embarrassing that the New York Times never published a clarification or follow-up story about this (at least as far as I know).