Tom's Corner

Here’s an article in Mother Jones about how Midwestern Waters are Full of Bee Killing Pesticides.

The U.S. Geological Survey is important not only because it reveals neonicotinoids in Midwestern waters at killing levels, but because this is just the kind of soil and water surveying the EPA and USDA have carefully avoided despite recommendations 11 years ago by EPA Risk Assessment scientists that it must be done. The consensus is that the EPA and USDA have avoided this lest it reveal how significantly they have failed to protect the environment and the American people.

Here is another good article on the systemic pesticides.

How the New DDT Wreaks Havoc on the Bottom of the Food Chain cites the statistics of Jean-Marc Bonmatin of France, that the neonicotinoids are 5,000 to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT. At its peak in 1959, 80 million pounds of DDT were used. The toxic equivalent of the neonicotinoids used only on soybeans and corn in 2013 was 740,000 pounds. That would equal the toxic equvalent of 3.7 billion pounds of DDT. Since then I’ve found recent figures on total neonicotinoid use in 2009: 3.4 million pounds. If the earlier figure wasn’t astounding enough, try to get your mind around this one. The total useage of neonicotinoids in 2009 has the toxic equvalent of 17.5 BILLION POUNDS of DDT!!

Remember, these are water soluble pesticides with a half life of years which may have no safe dose, however small. Certainly the scorekeepers know full well that to report pesticide comparisons by the pound without regard to toxicity is at best incompetent and irresponsible, but based on the evidence you have to conclude that they aren’t just stupid and this must be a conscious effort to deceive. In Poison Spring, E. G. Valianatos characterizes the scorekeepers as “The Pesticide Mafia.” He spent twenty-five years in the Office of Pesticide Programs, the one we have had so much trouble with, and it is beginning to look like his insider’s view is being confirmed from the outside evidence.

I stumbled across this article about how insecticides put world food supplies at risk this morning when looking for something else. While it is several weeks old, it is well worth reading for the overview it gives of the neonic controversy. It refers to the Worldwide Task Force on Systemic Pesticides.

This air pollution story, Runaround: Three Months of Correspondence with the EPA, sounds all too familiar. We have seen the same thing in the pesticide arena. If they had thrown up this shield in 2010 do you think the leaked memo would ever have seen the light of day?

They have secreted themselves behind an administrative wall of their own creation and it appears that nobody (read congress) is prepared to exercise any intelligent management over this conduct.

The worker bees don’t throw up these delays and obstacles because they are inherently evil, but because they are being instructed to by an EPA management that is corrupt if not criminal.

The EPA is in the bunker and EPA management is determined that nobody will find out anything about anything because it would reveal their failures. If congress is not equally corrupted it should demonstrate this with some action to remove the miscreants and change these evasive tactics. The public and the environment are ill-served by all of them.