Nadia Prupis writes—Pesticide Companies' Own Secret Tests Showed Their Products Harm Bees: Report:
Agrochemical giants Syngenta and Bayer discovered in their own tests that their pesticides caused severe harm to bees, according to unpublished documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the environmental group Greenpeace.
The companies conducted the trials on products that used the controversial pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, which have long been linked to rapid bee decline. Neonics are also the world's most commonly used pesticide.
According to their own studies, Syngenta's thiamethoxam and Bayer's clothianidin were found to cause severe harm at high levels of use, although the effect was lessened when used under 50 parts per billion (ppb) and 40ppb respectively, the Guardian reports.
However, as Greenpeace notes, the research "assumes a very narrow definition of harm to bee health and ignores wild bees which evidence suggests are more likely to be harmed by neonicotinoids."
That means the findings may "substantially underestimate" the impact of neonics, Greenpeace said.
Still, the studies are significant not just for the admission of risk to bees, which help pollinate three-quarters of the world's food supply, but also because they expose the agrochemical industry's disregard for environmental and food security concerns, experts said.
"If Bayer and Syngenta cared about the future of our pollinators, they would have made the findings public. Instead, they kept quiet about them for months and carried on downplaying nearly every study that questioned the safety of their products. It's time for these companies to come clean about what they really know," Greenpeace's Ben Stewart told the Guardian. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Michelle Obama—hugs and haters:
The right-wing racists in this country who still haven't recovered from the two-time installation of a black family in the White House have dredged up yet another reason to hate on the first lady. This last week it was about water. When I read about the manufactured controversy at Wonkette, I thought it was a joke. Rush-bloat got into the act, with his par-for-the-course bigot act, and so it went ... on and on ad nauseam, from one right-wing website to another. The FLOTUS has, as part of her goal to improve our children's health, simply suggested that they—gasp—drink more water.
The comments sections to the stories on those sites were predictably slime-filled. Usually, I can just brush the crud off of my psyche, shrug my shoulders and wonder who are these people who seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time on the internet inventing new ways to degrade and demean the FLOTUS?
The problem is that they are people, who own computers, who though faceless and sometimes anonymous, live real lives in my country. And though I may be able to withstand the filth and accept that my world is still full of too many hateful folks, I began to wonder what effect of all of this has on the Obama daughters.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin & Armando go at it again! Back to square one on police shootings. Rosalyn MacGregor spots the “conservative” pre-emption trend in MI. More Trump foundation excuses, debunked. Campus carry accidents happen, despite concessions.
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