Herbicides and pesticides are actively harmful to bees. Even if chemicals in the herbicides aren't toxic to bees, you're still killing off the "weeds" that the bees feed upon. When there's less food and the bees have to travel further, they're more susceptible to parasites and disease.
We can't just casually sever links in the food chain, then wonder why ecosystems are collapsing.
I have no doubt we'll find out eventually about how they are harmful to humans as well. Companies indiscriminately puring millions of gallons of chemicals with unknown long term health impacts is an insane policy for an advanced nation. I don't know why we don't focus on mechanical treatments. We have the technology.
The “inert” label is a colloquial misnomer, though. As the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes, inerts aren’t
necessarily inactive or even nontoxic. In fact, pesticide
users sometimes know very little about how inerts function
in a pesticide formula. That’s partly because they are
regulated very differently than active ingredients.
Somewhat worse, depending on your perspective, is that inert ingredients are confidential business information so while EPA has a list of what inerts are in what pesticides, that list is not publicly shareable. So, you as a consumer or citizen don’t even know what inerts are in the pesticides being used. Unless the manufacturer shares them, but they don’t typically, because they’re the proprietary information that separates Company A’s generic pesticide using active ingredient X (plus confidential inerts) and Company B’s generic pesticide using active ingredient X (plus their I’m sure very different inerts).
Its time to prosecute the Scientists & Business people who privately gain from the public harm they do.
It's insane to me that such actors are let off the hook regarding the millions or billions of damages they are liable for.
Frankly, I understand why China executes white collar criminals--
I wish more scientists responsible for developing toxic chemicals, and the businesspeople who pay them-- were prosecuted and handed capital sentences for their crimes against wildlife & humanity.
Perhaps then-- by holding them responsible and making examples of them-- their future ilk would be responsible actors.
We've seen example after example of "Scientists & Business" knowing full well that their products are harmful and doing everything they can to cover that fact up and prevent the public from learning the truth, and even examples where the FDA itself knew full well that the products are harmful and yet the products are allowed to continue to be sold.
The entire system is broken and part of what is missing, perhaps the most important part, is accountability and meaningful consequences.
Obviously, companies who were genuinely unaware that their products were harmful and who immediately recalled and ceased production of those products after finding out aren't the biggest problem, but they still show that the product safety testing practices of both the company and the FDA are inadequate.
It frustrates me when privacy prevents anyone discovering about a companies bad product.
If a company has a list of buyers of their product, they should be able to hand that to healthcare providers and have those healthcare providers check medical records to see if, for example, everyone who uses this brand of toilet cleaner ends up getting arthritis 10 years later.
If it’s really unknowingly they shouldn’t be held responsible. But we have plenty of examples where companies knew exactly what’s going on and they covered it up for decades. See lead gas or tobacco. Or the food industry who pours sugar into everything. They know exactly that they are generating millions of diabetics.
The thing is, it seems they usually do know. And we don’t prosecute and handle that case yet. So the “unknowingly” seems to be the least of our worries.
That only scratches the surface. In every high stakes business, they have prepared the ground for themselves through lobbying and regulatory capture to minimize the level of necessary care while maximizing protection against liability.
The biggest shock is that we still put the burden of proof on science to demonstrate the extent to which food chains are disrupted by isolated uses of pesticides, as if habitat fragmentation, global warming, land use change, pollution, water table pollution and change, overpopulation, etc. doesn’t all tie in. We are so, so myopic.
It’s about time the burden of proof falls on chemical companies to show their products don’t do such tremendous damage, instead of leaving it to be discovered and reported in already obliterated ecosystems.
Agreed. And while the articles focuses on bees, it's important to know that the insect population as a whole have been severely hit over the past two decades (especially flying insects).
It's shocking and really disturbing how big the decline is, and there is some evidence that this decline at least partially effects other parts of the ecosystem, as freshwater fish populations have great declined too.
in chemical engineering, there is a long and rigorous body of science on toxic and poisonous properties. When a chemical result gets close to a product, things diverge. When the products are profitable in some markets, things diverge even more.
All that means to say -- "harmful" is very well studied. The design of the product on the market is not the same.
People have blocked or regulated all kinds of new chemical products over centuries.. Product liability is a "third rail" of commerce politics. There are huge incentives to bury publications, news items, science studies and other things, that might bring financial liability to the makers of products on the market. Its a systemic property. Incentives of reward to discover, produce, distribute and market products is also a systemic property.
There are multiple serious, moving works of popular science writing that do cross that third rail - Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is often cited.. there are more.
People will believe it isn't harmful to all insects because the manufacturer says it's only harmful to specific classes of insects.
(Carefully crafted) Studies will confirm that.
And the government tacitly endorses the claims (by the EPA approving its sale).
What is the customer supposed to do? Doubt everything the manufacturer, scientists, and the government say? Ok, some doubt is healthy. But then then what?
Should the customer test the chemical on all classes of insects himself? And what if the effects aren't immediately obvious (as is the case here)?
I guess you're arguing for pesticide-free farming here, which is unsustainable for almost all farms.
Presumably you could use techniques for discouraging pests we (the public) understand better. You can do this for any class of substance, though this isn't always possible (e.g. good luck replacing cancer medications with something over the counter). We've been farming for thousands of years; it's a little ridiculous to suggest there's no alternative to a chemical developed in the last century.
Hell, just off the top of my head you can spray the plants with narrowly-targeted substances that are known to be human safe specifically tested against pollinators (e.g. you might use capsacin to discourage mammal consumption).
You could also use natural predators to groom the crops. This is a well-documented and ancient technique, although I'm sure it's much more difficult to scale and has a lot of externalities. I.e. lean into the existing ecological web rather than trying to make our own emaciated one which evidently isn't self sufficient. And maybe we just use too many pesticides—we certainly produce far more food than we consume, even if we're not great at distributing it, perhaps taking some loss in the short term will prevent a catastrophic loss in the long term (I know, literally unimaginable to quarterly-oriented individuals).
Ultimately, without some known alternative there's not much you can do aside from calling your representative to complain that we need our agencies to be more skeptical and to mandate making the production process public.
Article is talking about a fungicide. Not an insecticide.
> The new study exposed honeybees to two treatments: the isolated active ingredients in the fungicide Pristine, which is used to control fungal diseases in almonds and other crops, and the whole Pristine formulation, including inert ingredients. The results were quite surprising: The whole formulation impaired honeybees’ memory, while the active ingredients alone did not.
Literal poisons, designed as such, may be harmful? I cannot sanction stupid newspeak hogwash like this. Is it not possible to openly say the truth anymore?
Ha, this appears to be sold as sugar substitute. Of course it would be promoted on here. Very profound, thank you. Any other suggestions popular with fat people?
We can't just casually sever links in the food chain, then wonder why ecosystems are collapsing.