https://www.nationofchange.org/2021/07/31/bayer-to-pull-glyphosate-products-including-roundup-from-us-home-and-garden-market/

Bayer's decision comes in response to the many lawsuits related to glyphosate that it inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018.

​Bayer will no longer sell glyphosate-containing products to U.S. home gardeners, the company announced on Thursday.
The move comes as the company currently faces around 30,000 legal claims from customers who believe use of these products — including the flagship Roundup — caused them to develop cancer, as AgWeb reported.
“Bayer’s decision to end U.S. residential sale of Roundup is a historic victory for public health and the environment,” Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell said in a statement. “As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers remain at risk. It’s time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses.”
Glyphosate is a controversial ingredient because it has been linked to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as Cure noted. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that it was “probably carcinogenic to humans,” in 2015. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former President Donald Trump ruled that the chemical did not pose any risk to human health, the Biden Administration later admitted that the review was flawed and needed to be redone, as Common Dreams reported. Still, it refused to take it off the market in the meantime.
Bayer’s decision comes in response to the many lawsuits related to glyphosate that it inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018. Juries sided with the plaintiffs in three highly-watched trials before Bayer settled around 95,000 cases in 2020 to the tune of $10 billion. That settlement, which was one of the largest in U.S. history, allowed Bayer to continue to sell Roundup without any warnings. However, the company still faces further litigation, and said it decided to pull the product from residential use in order to prevent more. More than 90 percent of recent claims come from the residential home and garden market, AgWeb reported.
“This move is being made exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns,” the company said when it announced its decision.
The products will be replaced with different active ingredients beginning in 2023, following reviews by the EPA and state regulatory bodies. January 2023 was the earliest the change could reasonably be implemented, Bayer Crop Science Division president Liam Condon told AgWeb.
“This is from a regulatory and logistical point of view (of what’s) possible,” Condon said during a conference call with investors, as AgWeb reported.

Philadelphia, January 28, 2021
CERTIFICATION: This is to certify that Bill No. 200425-A was presented to the Mayor on the third day of December, 2020, and was not returned to the Council with his signature at a meeting held January 28, 2021 (being more than ten days after it had been presented to him).
THEREFORE, Pursuant to the provisions of Section 2-202 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, the ordinance becomes as effective as if the Mayor had approved it.
Michael A. Decker
Chief Clerk of the City Council
(Bill No. 200425-A)
AN ORDINANCE
Amending Title 6 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled “Health Code,” by creating a new Chapter 6-1300 entitled “Healthy Outdoor Public Spaces,” to promote a healthy environment that protects the public from the risks of toxic herbicides by prohibiting their use on all city-owned or used public grounds including but not limited to parks, trails, recreation centers, and playgrounds; establishing reporting requirements; and establishing a private right of action, all under certain terms and conditions.
THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA HEREBY ORDAINS: SECTION 1. The Council makes the following findings.
(1) As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and in an effort to avoid spreading the virus as city residents shelter in place, unprecedented numbers of people of all ages are seeking exercise, recreation, and access to natural beauty in the over 10,400 acres that comprise city parks and public grounds. It is imperative that parks be free of toxic substances, which have been shown in scientific studies to cause disease and compromise immune systems.
City of Philadelphia - 1 -
City of Philadelphia
BILL NO. 200425-A continued Certified Copy
(2) Healthy, sustainably, and organically managed soils increase organic nutrients and soil microorganisms, allowing grasses and other desirable plants to out-compete other plant species over time, ultimately resulting in a reduction of weeds and pests. Implementation of organic land management practices complements important goals established by the City in “Greenworks: A Vision for a Sustainable Philadelphia, 2016” that affirm the right of all Philadelphians to have access to healthy food and clean water, in addition to greenspace and healthy waterways.
(3) Philadelphia currently uses synthetic herbicides, including glyphosate and 2,4-D, throughout its park system, trails, recreation centers, playgrounds, and other publicly owned land.
(4) Scientific studies conducted by the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, among others, have linked exposure to certain toxic chemicals with asthma, cancer, developmental and learning disabilities,
nerve and immune system damage, liver and kidney damage, reproductive impairment, birth defects, and disruption of the endocrine system and the microbiome.
SECTION 2. Title 6 of The Philadelphia Code is hereby amended to read as follows: TITLE 6. HEALTH CODE
** *
CHAPTER 6-1300. HEALTHY OUTDOOR PUBLIC SPACES § 6-1301. Definitions.
In this Chapter, the following definitions shall apply:
(1) “Grounds” means property or land owned by the City of Philadelphia, including any and all parks, open space, trails, lawns, playgrounds, recreation centers, sports fields, land, and real property. “Grounds” does not include the interior spaces of buildings, parking lots, nor any land or other real estate that is not open for use by the general public.
(2) “Organic Land Management” means a problem-solving strategy that prioritizes a natural, organic approach to turfgrass and landscape management, and care of trees and shrubs without the use of pesticides. It mandates the use of natural, organic practices that promote healthy soil and plant life as a preventative measure against the
onset of turf and landscape pest problems.
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(3) “Pesticide” means any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any plant, insect, or fungal pest. This includes any herbicide, insecticide, or fungicide.
(4) “Synthetic” means a substance that is formulated or manufactured by a chemical process or by a process that chemically changes a substance extracted from naturally occurring plant, animal, or mineral sources, except that such term shall not apply to substances created by naturally occurring biological processes.
(5) “Synthetic herbicide” means any herbicide containing a Synthetic substance, including any material or agent containing a Synthetic substance that harms, adversely affects, or kills any plant, except synthetic herbicides that are allowed on the National List of Allowed Substances under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), as published by the National Organic Standards Board (7 C.F.R. § 205.601 [2020 edition]).
§ 6-1302. Prohibited Use of Synthetic Herbicides.
(1) Except as provided in subsection (2), no person shall use or apply synthetic herbicides on any City Grounds. This prohibition shall be effective thirty-six (36) months after the ordinance adding this Section 6-1302 to the Code becomes law for golf courses and athletic fields and effective eighteen (18) months after the ordinance adding this Section 6-1302 to the Code becomes law with respect to all other City Grounds.
(2) Upon constitution of the advisory committee authorized under subsection (3), and upon request for a waiver by an applicant, the Department of Public Health may authorize the use or application of a synthetic herbicide on any City Grounds after receiving a recommendation from the advisory committee, if the Department determines the following criteria are met with respect to such use or application:
(a) Such use or application is appropriate to address an emergency that
threatens the public health, safety, or welfare of persons; or involves an invasive species that threatens the overall health of the ecosystem and is necessary after organic methods prove insufficient;
(b) The applicant has carefully evaluated all alternative methods
and materials, including but not limited to, non-herbicide management tactics and non-synthetic herbicides, and is requesting to use the minimum amount of the least toxic, most effective herbicide necessary;
(c) The person or entity using or applying the synthetic herbicide will, to the greatest extent practical, minimize the impact of the application on abutting properties; and
(d) The authorized use or application of the synthetic herbicide will not be detrimental to the public’s health, safety, or welfare.
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(3) The City is authorized to create an advisory committee to evaluate and make recommendations to the Department of Public Health concerning waivers requested under subsection (2).
§ 6-1303. Advance Posting of Notice of Anticipated Pesticide Use.
City Council recognizes that the Department of Parks and Recreation has committed to post signs prominently providing notice in advance of applying pesticides including (a) the date application will be occurring; and (b) a contact number for questions. The signage will be posted 48 hours prior to pesticide application and remain for 72 hours after pesticide application.
§ 6-1304. Organic Land Management
City Council recognizes that the Department of Parks and Recreation will develop an organic land management plan. Organic land management practices shall be the method of choice to understand, prevent, and control actual and potential plants considered to be noxious weeds. The essential practices of organic pest land management include, but are not limited to:
(1) Regular soil testing;
(2) Addition of approved soil amendments as necessitated by soil test results, following, but not limited to, the recommendations of the Northeast Organic Farming Association;
(3) Selection of plantings using criteria of hardiness, suitability to native conditions; drought, disease and pest-resistance; and ease of maintenance;
(4) Modification of outdoor management practices to comply with organic horticultural science, including scouting, monitoring, watering, mowing, pruning, proper spacing, and mulching;
(5) The use of physical controls, including hand-weeding and over-seeding;
(6) The use of biological controls, including the introduction of natural predators, and enhancement of the environment of a pest’s natural enemies;
(7) Through observation, determining the most effective treatment time, based on pest biology and other variables, such as weather and local conditions; and
(8) Eliminating pest habitats and conditions supportive of pest population increases. § 6-1305. Reporting and Record Keeping on Pesticide Usage.
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BILL NO. 200425-A continued Certified Copy
(1) Effective July 1, 2021, usage of any kind of pesticide shall be reported at least annually
to the City Council and to the general public on the City’s website.
(2) The required report under this subsection must include the following information: (a) the common name of the pesticide; (b) the trade name of the pesticide; (c) the registration number designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency; (d) the amount of pesticide applied; (e) the method of application; (f) the location where the pesticide was applied; (g) the square footage of area where the pesticide was applied; (h) the name of the person applying the pesticide; (i) the name of the entity employing or directing the person applying the pesticide; and (j) whether the person applying the pesticide posted any notices informing the public that the pesticide was applied.
(3) The Departments of Parks and Recreation, Streets, and all other departments that apply pesticides on city Grounds are required to make this report based on applications by their staff, contractors, and sub-contractors. Such reports shall be maintained centrally by the Department of Records as well as by individual departments.
(4) The Department of Records shall preserve and maintain the records reported to Council pursuant to this Section on Council’s behalf for no less than three years after the last date of application of the pesticide identified in any such report..
Explanation:
Italics indicate new matter added.City of Philadelphia - 5 -
City of Philadelphia BILL NO. 200425-A continued Certified Copy City of Philadelphia - 6 - 

​

Source: Grassroots Environmental Education: 
(New York City) A coalition of non-profit organizations and individuals has persuaded the New York City Council to pass a new law prohibiting the use of all toxic chemical pesticides in New York City parks. The coalition, led by Grassroots Environmental Education, Beyond Pesticides and The Black Institute, and joined by citizen activists for pesticide reform and environmental justice, claimed victory at a rally in New York this morning, just before the City Council voted unanimously to adopt the new law. 

"This year's theme for Earth Day is 'Restore our Earth,' and New York City is doing it's part by getting rid of chemical pesticides in all of the city's 1700 parks," said Grassroots' Executive Director Patti Wood, who personally lobbied more than 35 members of the City Council on behalf of the bill. "This is a big win for the people of New York, and we hope other cities will follow suit." 

In 2010, Grassroots was instrumental in helping to pass state-wide legislation in New York to prohibit the use of pesticides on all school playing fields and grounds for grades K-12 including day care centers. The organization was subsequently contracted by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to train facilities directors across the state in the science of natural lawn care. To date, the law remains the strongest one of its kind in the country. 

"We always felt that the children of New York City didn't really benefit from the NY State school pesticide  law, because in most cases, they play in the City's parks," says Patti. "With this new law, those kids will be protected from exposure to toxic chemicals that could seriously impact their health, just like the rest of the kids in this state."

For more information about pesticides and their potential impact on the health of children and everyone else, please visit our website, Grassrootsinfo.org. 

Plans call for organic maintenance of parks in communities nationwide.
In 2018, Stonyfield Organic launched the StonyFIELDS program in an effort to help keep families free from harmful pesticides in parks and playing fields across the country. To further the program’s impact, Stonyfield Organic announced a new goal to help convert New York City’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to be organically maintained by 2025.
The yogurt brand found that around 69% of American parents want to lessen their children’s exposure to pesticides, but 67% of those same parents don’t consider exposure at sports fields, playgrounds and parks to be of concern. So far, Stonyfield has converted more than 35 parks across the country through this program and contributed over $2 million dollars to the initiative. Stonyfield teams up with communities nationwide to assist with their transitions to organic grounds management and bringing organic model fields to millions of people.
This year, Stonyfield Organics aims to help change some of the country’s urban parks, and is working with a coalition of organizations to get Intro 1524, which will prohibit city agencies from applying toxic pesticides to any property owned or leased by the city, passed in New York City. From there, Stonyfield will make a donation that will help organizations like Grassroots Environmental, Beyond Pesticides, Osborne Organics, The Black Institute, Parks for Kids NYC, to work with the city to provide training and begin organic maintenance.
Each community that is selected for the program will receive a monetary donation to use toward the purchase of organic inputs and/or landscaping equipment needed for organic grounds management, as well as technical support and guidance from Stonyfield Organics and their collaborators, including Beyond Pesticides, Non-Toxic Neighborhoods, Osborne Organics and Midwest Grows Green. 
Stonyfield Organics has also launched a pesticide portal for the community to tag a park in your community to have it reviewed by the StonyFIELD task force. If chosen, Stonyfield will provide local park officials in your community with the proper tools to test for harmful pesticides and offer resources for them to transition.

Source: https://www.amny.com/news/two-new-york-city-parks-to-become-free-of-pesticides-with-help-from-national-yogurt-brand/



Kids and pets will soon be able to play in the grass at some of the country’s largest parks without being exposed to pesticides.
Yogurt company Stonyfield Organic is continuing a major initiative to convert parks and playing fields nationwide into organic grounds. The recent effort includes Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and Grant Park in Chicago. The company is working with a coalition of organization to pass a bill to allow the transition to take place in New York City parks.
The goal is to transform these famous parks and many other local parks by the end of 2025 as part of the company’s StonyFIELDS (emphasis on “fields”) #PlayFree initiative to keep harmful pesticides out of parks and playing fields around the country. Grant Park will be the first of the major parks to begin the transition by the end of this month.1
“At Stonyfield, we are obsessed with fields. Since 1983, we have prioritized providing green and organic pastures for our cows to roam and graze – always free from harmful pesticides,” Kristina Drociak, director of public relations for Stonyfield, tells Treehugger. “However, we realized that organically maintained playing fields and parks can have an even bigger impact on our families and pets.”
That’s why the company launched the nationwide initiative in 2018 to have parks, playgrounds, and playing fields managed organically.1
"Whether you eat on them, get your food or ingredients from them, or play on them – we believe all fields (both farms and parks!) should be free from harmful chemicals," Drociak says. 
The Dangers of PesticidesIn a 2012 study of managers of 66 athletic playing fields, about 65% reported applying pesticides. The majority used herbicides. Managers of rural fields were more likely to apply pesticides than managers of urban and suburban fields.2
An American Academy of Pediatrics statement on pesticides says: “Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems. Related animal toxicology studies provide supportive biological plausibility for these findings.”3
The group supports integrated pest management to minimize or possibly replace the use of harmful chemical pesticides.3
But it can be difficult to get governments and communities to make those changes.
“There are policy challenges in transitioning parks to organic grounds management,” Drociak says.
Stonyfield is working with a coalition of organizations, she says, to pass a bill that would ban all New York city agencies from applying toxic pesticides, including glyphosate, to any property owned or leased by the city, including parks and fields.1
The most widely used herbicide in the U.S., glyphosate is the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”4 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, has consistently maintained that the pesticide is safe.5
The bill, called Introduction 1524-2019, has the support of City Council members but is waiting for a vote.1
Once the pill is passed, Stonyfield’s donation will help the coalition to work with the city to provide training and begin organic maintenance.
“Sometimes a city is hesitant to move to organic management because there is a learning curve, and it takes time to transition," Drociak says. "Sometimes, organic maintenance can be more costly at the start of a transition until the soil is brought back to its natural health."
She adds: “Eventually though, we’ve seen in many cases that by year two or three costs can actually decrease for a city. A great way to get over some of these challenges is to start with a pilot park which many of the cities we’ve worked with have done.” 
How to Transition a Local ParkSince the program’s launch, more than 35 parks have been converted to organic grounds management and Stonyfield has contributed more than $2 million to the initiative.1
“The ultimate goal is to help keep families free from toxic persistent pesticides in outdoor spaces across the country," Drociak says. "We also want to empower everyone to make changes locally and at home to protect the health of children, their pets, and the environment."
The program allows people to visit an online “pesticide portal” where they can tag a local park for review. If chosen, community officials will be given tools to test for harmful pesticides and the resources to transition to organic grounds management.
“In the end, our real goal and dream is to inspire and ignite a movement — where all cities and families manage their parks and backyards organically and free from harmful pesticides," says Drociak.

Source:https://www.treehugger.com/central-park-free-pesticides-5176590?utm_campaign=treehugger&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cn_nl&utm_content=23537683&utm_term=

Harper's Magazine: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/weed-whackers/

​On a Friday evening in January, a thousand people at the annual California Native Plant Society conference in San Jose settled down to a banquet and a keynote speech delivered by an environmental historian named Jared Farmer. His chosen topic was the eucalyptus tree and its role in California’s ecology and history. The address did not go well. Eucalyptus is not a native plant but a Victorian import from Australia. In the eyes of those gathered at the San Jose DoubleTree, it qualified as “invasive,” “exotic,” “alien” — all dirty words to this crowd, who were therefore convinced that the tree was dangerously combustible, unfriendly to birds, and excessively greedy in competing for water with honest native species.
In his speech, Farmer dutifully highlighted these ugly attributes, but also quoted a few more positive remarks made by others over the years. This was a reckless move. A reference to the tree as “indigenously Californian” elicited an abusive roar, as did an observation that without the aromatic import, the state would be like a “home without its mother.” Thereafter, the mild-mannered speaker was continually interrupted by boos, groans, and exasperated gasps. Only when he mentioned the longhorn beetle, a species imported (illegally) from Australia during the 1990s with the specific aim of killing the eucalyptus, did he earn a resounding cheer.
​California native-plant partisans are a committed lot, and not only in their dislike of eucalyptus trees. Many of them are influential in local government, and they yearn to restore the treeless “native” grassland that greeted the first European settlers of the Bay Area in 1769. (For centuries, Native Americans had cleared the trees to facilitate hunting.) Thus the romantic Monterey cypress is a frequent target for the chain saws of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department — even though two small stands in Monterey, just fifty miles south, are cherished and protected as natives. The cypress is not the only item on the nativist hit list. Over the next few years, more than 450,000 trees in Oakland, Berkeley, and neighboring areas are due to be destroyed in the name of “wildfire-risk reduction.”
Defining “native” and “invasive” in an ever-shifting natural world poses some problems. The camel, after all, is native to North America, though it went extinct here 8,000 years ago, while the sacrosanct redwood tree is invasive, having snuck in at some point in the past 65 million years. The National Invasive Species Council defines the enemy as “an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” But the late, great evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould dismissed such notions as “romantic drivel.” Natives, he wrote, are simply “those organisms that first happened to gain and keep a footing,” and he ridiculed the suggestion that early arrivals “learn to live in ecological harmony with [their] surroundings, while later interlopers tend to be exploiters.”
Even so, anti-invasive ideology is prevalent across the country, from university biology departments to wildlife bureaucracies to garden clubs. In Virginia, where I spend part of my time, a nice lady from the Virginia Native Plant Society told me that her idea of a truly natural landscape was the one viewed by the Jamestown settlers in 1607. To that end, she sternly urged me to uproot my yellow-blossomed forsythia (of Balkan origin) and replace it with a “good native shrub.” In Texas, George W. Bush used to devote much of his presidential vacation time to destroying the tamarisk trees — reviled Eurasian imports — that grew on his ranch. Many states maintain invasive-plant councils (and sometimes exotic-pest-plant councils) to monitor and eradicate alien invaders. Last year, the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council gave its annual Certificate of Excellence to two forest rangers who had detected a small patch of cogongrass — an invasive unwittingly imported from Asia in packing crates, which the Vietnamese call “American weed,” because it spread on land defoliated by Agent Orange.
As it happens, an erstwhile supplier of Agent Orange, the Monsanto Company, also manufactures America’s most popular remedy for cogongrass: glyphosate. The active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and many other weed killers, glyphosate is the weapon of choice for battling all sorts of invaders. A 2014 study by the California Invasive Plant Council found that more than 90 percent of the state’s land managers used the compound, which is particularly recommended as a slayer of eucalyptus trees. Discussing Phragmites australis, the reed found in wetlands throughout the country, Massachusetts conservation officials similarly tout this “effective” weed killer. Pennsylvania urges glyphosate’s deployment against purple loosestrife, while Illinois recommends it for Japanese knotweed. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries prescribes it for cogongrass but warns that “multiple applications for full control” may be required.

This anti-invasive mania is not merely a local phenomenon. It is the official position of the federal government, as expressed by the State Department, that “invasive alien species pose one of the most serious threats to our environment, affecting all regions of the United States and every nation in the world.” In February, National Invasive Species Awareness Week was celebrated in Washington, complete with a reception on Capitol Hill. Last year, the federal government spent more than $2 billion to fight the alien invasion, up to half of which was budgeted for glyphosate and other poisons.
That’s small change, nativists argue, when measured against the damage such interlopers inflict on the national economy. The Department of the Interior claims that the annual tab is $120 billion. But this number comes from a 2005 report by David Pimentel, an ecologist and scholar at Cornell, whose dislike of aliens apparently extends to the human variety, as evidenced by his public opposition to both legal and illegal immigration. Pimentel extrapolated at least some of his findings from such dubious assumptions as the dollar value of grain consumed by each rat in the United States. In an earlier paper, he concluded that cats were costing us $17 billion every year, after calculating that our furry (and, in his view, non-native) friends kill an annual 568 million birds, and arbitrarily valuing each bird at $30.

On close examination, other examples of the damage said to be caused by exotic invaders look no less questionable. The supposedly supercombustible eucalyptus, for example, survives fires that consume surrounding plant life — and rather than unfairly appropriating water, the tree actually irrigates soil by absorbing moisture from the coastal fogs through its leaves and funneling it out through its roots. (Though still cited as the prime culprit in the devastating 1991 Oakland firestorm, the eucalyptus was in fact cleared of responsibility in a FEMA report.) Monarch butterflies belie its reputation for repelling wildlife, the eucalyptus being their favored wintering abode in California.
As for the tamarisk, it consumes no more water than the beloved cottonwood, native to the Southwest. Nor, contrary to rumor, is it inhospitable to other species, as certified by the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher, which delights in roosting amid the tamarisk’s foliage. According to Matthew Chew, a historian of biology at Arizona State University, the tree’s sorry reputation dates to a ploy during the 1940s by a local mining corporation, whose operations required enormous quantities of river water — which had already been allocated to local farmers and other businesses. The solution was to generate studies demonstrating the heinous quantities consumed by the thirsty tamarisk. The destruction of the trees would theoretically free up huge quantities of “new” water in the rivers, which could then be used by the selfsame mining corporation.
Then there is the zebra mussel. This immigrant from the Caspian Sea is a perennial target of the nativists, thanks to its tendency to reproduce in vast numbers, encrust jetties, clog water-intake pipes, and crowd out God-fearing American mussels. But zebra mussels have successfully filtered pollution in the notoriously filthy Lake Erie and other waterways, thus promoting the revival of aquatic plants. The mussel also feeds a growing population of smallmouth bass and lake sturgeon.
It is the common reed, however, that has inspired one of the most determined and dubious campaigns of extermination. Phragmites is accused of robbing other plants, fish, and wildlife of essential nutrients and living space. Delaware has responded by spraying and respraying on an annual basis a 6,700-acre expanse of the Delaware River estuary with thousands of gallons of glyphosate-based weed killer. In 2013, locals in the Hudson River community of Piermont, New York, discovered a plan to destroy a 200-acre reed marsh fronting the town. Outraged, they fought back. “We love the marsh,” an indignant Marthe Schulwolf, who is active in opposing the scheme, told me. “It’s beautiful, a living environment, with lots of wildlife, and it protected us from the Hurricane Sandy storm surge.” The townspeople were especially alarmed to learn that the state’s “toolbox” for eradication included heavy spraying of herbicides — glyphosate being the customary choice — right next to two playgrounds.
As usual, the nativist dream of eradicating the interloper is intertwined with a fantasy of restoring the landscape to its “original” condition. The common reed has also covered vast stretches of the New Jersey Meadowlands, to the irritation of nativists who yearn for the return of the original cordgrass. Peter Del Tredici, formerly a senior research scientist at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, points out that the New Jersey Turnpike bears much of the blame: by blocking tidal flows, inimical to phragmites, it has allowed the reed to flourish. Ripping out the highway would bring back the cordgrass soon enough. “Meanwhile,” he adds, “there are over five hundred landfills in this area that are leaking nitrogen and phosphorus, and phragmites is actually cleaning the site up.” In any case, he said, the very idea of “re-creating a lost landscape is an impossibility, because the conditions under which these landscapes evolved no longer exist. The world is a totally different place as a result of human activity. There’s no going back in time.”
Mark Davis, a professor of biology at Macalester College and a frequent critic of anti-invasive hysteria, put it more pungently. “It’s the same perspective as ISIS wanting to re-create the seventh-century caliphate,” he remarked. “It’s ecological fundamentalism, the notion that the purity of the past has been polluted by outsiders.” Far from crowding out native species, he argued, invasives tend to move into areas that have been ravaged, or at least disturbed, by human activity. They are, in other words, a symptom, not a cause. Cogongrass is one striking example, but the same pattern recurs with many vilified species. Ailanthus, a salt-friendly seaside tree from China, spread inland from the East Coast along the fringes of America’s interstates, tracking the salt religiously spread by highway departments during winter snowstorms.

If the anti-invasive movement rests on such debatable foundations, why has it flourished in this country, winning endorsement from activists, local, state, and federal bureaucracies, and respected academics? It’s not as though hostility to newly arrived plant species has been a great American tradition.1 In California, the eucalyptus was once universally cherished for its graceful and colorful appearance in a land often devoid of trees — indeed, during the 1870s, it was planted by the hundreds of thousands. A century ago, the tamarisk was promoted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as an ideal means to prevent soil erosion in the Southwest. Even kudzu was once hailed as the “Lord’s indulgent gift to Georgians”: government nurseries grew millions of seedlings and distributed them to farmers as a restorative for depleted soil.
1 Overseas, it was another matter, notably in Hitler’s Germany. Nazism’s view of non-native plants was consistent with its view of non-native humans. “As with the fight against Bolshevism, in which our entire Occidental culture is at stake, so with the fight against this Mongolian invader, in which the beauty of our home forest is at stake,” wrote a team of German biologists in 1942 regarding Impatiens parviflora, a small plant native to Asia. “In advocating native plants along the Reichsautobahnen,” wrote Stephen Jay Gould, “Nazi architects of the Reich’s motor highways explicitly compared their proposed restriction to Aryan purification of the people.”Nowadays, the notion that plants and animals have a “natural” habitat, from which outsiders must be expelled, has taken firm hold in the United States — first among a cadre of biologists, then in the media, and ultimately at the highest levels of the federal government. What happened? David Theodoropoulos, a California naturalist and seed merchant and the author of Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience, is blunt about what he sees as a deadly inversion of environmental priorities. “Thirty years ago,” he told me, “the greatest threats to nature were chain saws, bulldozers, and poisons. Now the greatest threats are wild plants and animals. And what do we use to fight them? Chain saws, bulldozers, and poisons. Who does this serve?”
Retracing some recent history may help to answer his question. During the Reagan era, when environmentalists were still imbued with the spirit of Earth Day, nobody worried about invasive species. Instead, well-organized, militant groups were busy fighting chemical pollution, nuclear power, shale-oil drilling, logging devastation, and other corporate onslaughts. According to Jeffrey St. Clair, a historian of environmentalism, “People like [Reagan’s interior secretary] James Watt definitely mobilized the movement, and so the corporations weren’t really able to get all that they wanted.”
By 1992, the movement had a self-appointed standard-bearer in the political arena: Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. That year he published his best-selling Earth in the Balance, in which he manfully vowed to bear the political costs of his environmental crusading:
Every time I pause to consider whether I have gone too far out on a limb, I look at the new facts that continue to pour in from around the world and conclude that I have not gone far enough. . . . The time has long since come to take more political risks — and endure more political criticism — by proposing tougher, more effective solutions and fighting hard for their enactments.
These uplifting sentiments were not always matched by actions. Critics noted Gore’s championship while in Congress of the $8 billion Clinch River breeder-reactor project, riddled with fraud and bribery. They also pointed out his legislative maneuvers on behalf of the Tellico Dam, on the Little Tennessee River, a $100 million boondoggle denounced by David Brower, the founder of Friends of the Earth, as “the beginning of the end of the Endangered Species Act.” Following the 1992 election, former Gore staffers moved into key environmental posts at the EPA and elsewhere. There they would benefit would-be polluters such as Disney (which had just been fined for dumping sewage in the Florida wetlands) and food processors (irked by a 1958 ban on carcinogens, soon to be repealed under the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act).
Nevertheless, as far as the public was concerned, nature had no more stalwart defender than Gore. So when Senator Bob Graham of Florida wrote to him in June 1997 about “the growing environmental threat posed by alien (non-indigenous) invasive species,” he received an enthusiastic response. In fact, the issue was already on Gore’s mind. A few weeks earlier, he had received a letter signed by a large group of biology professors, including the eminent scholar and ant expert E. O. Wilson, warning that “a rapidly spreading invasion of exotic plants and animals not only is destroying our nation’s biological diversity but is costing the U.S. economy hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” Among the ominous examples cited were the zebra mussel and the invasion of San Francisco Bay by a new exotic species “on the average of once every twelve weeks.”
Gore sprang into action. He reassured Graham that Clinton’s circle of scientific advisers had already established a Biodiversity and Ecosystems Panel, which would “be considering the issue of invasive species and will report their recommendations at the end of the year.” The panel’s chair, he noted parenthetically, was Peter Raven.

The official White House biography of Peter Raven listed him as the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and noted that he held a professorship at Washington University in St. Louis. That description failed to convey the full reach of his power and prestige as America’s leading botanist. Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist at the University of British Columbia, describes Raven as a “total force of nature. He took a staid Midwest botanical garden and put it on steroids, turning it into the greatest institution of its kind on earth.” A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Time magazine Hero for the Planet, chairman of the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration, Raven was (and is) a hugely influential figure, with a network that extends through academic, government, and corporate bureaucracies.
He originally made his name in scientific circles with a 1964 paper, “Butterflies and Plants: A Study in Coevolution,” written with Paul Ehrlich, a biologist later famous for the dire (and largely unfulfilled) predictions sketched out in his 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb. Like Ehrlich, Raven tended to express a gloomy view of the planet’s prospects. He regularly lamented the wholesale loss of our biodiversity, brought about by the accelerating extinction of plant and animal species. “We’re over the mark anyway in preserving the world’s sustainability,” he told me in a recent conversation. “We’ve passed the point at which we can really do that effectively.”
Raven’s panel set to work and released its report, Teaming with Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America’s Living Capital, in March 1998. The report took a bearish view of the ecological future, sounding an apocalyptic note on the first page:
Collectively, all human beings, including Americans, are playing a crucial role in the sixth major extinction event to occur in the course of more than three billion years of life on Earth. . . . During the history of the United States, more than 500 of its known species have been eliminated (half of these since 1980) by various causes, including destruction of habitat by human activities or invasive species.
Although the document repeatedly stressed the virtues of biodiversity, it showed little sympathy for “invasive species such as killer bees, zebra mussels, fire ants, and the Mediterranean fruit fly,” which were supposedly devastating the natural environment and posing “threats to the health of our human population.” The zebra mussel, receiving no thanks for its heroic pollution-control efforts, was singled out for obloquy, having “cost more than $5 billion just to clean out pipes clogged by extremely densely clustered populations.” (A decade later, a careful study by a team of Cornell scientists assessed zebra-mussel damage at one twentieth of that amount over fifteen years.)
Amid the gloom, however, the report identified a ray of hope: genetically modified organisms (GMOs). “It is anticipated that the U.S. market for seeds of genetically modified crops will grow to $6.5 billion during the next ten years,” it noted, “and the annual production value of the plants derived from those seeds will be many times that amount.”

The Monsanto Company could not have put it better. This was not surprising, since Raven (who retired in 2010) and Monsanto were close, both geographically and financially. The Missouri Botanical Garden was located just a few miles from Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis, and it owed much of its explosive growth to the beneficence of the corporation, which was in the process of changing its public identity from a chemical manufacturer and purveyor of Agent Orange to a “life sciences company” — one heavily invested in GMOs. In April 1996, Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro joined Raven to break ground for the Monsanto Center, a four-story structure designed to house the garden’s unique collection of botanical books and dried plants. Monsanto had contributed $2 million toward the center’s construction, and had also donated the land and $50 million for the Danforth Plant Science Center, another GMO-intensive research facility.
“Monsanto loved Raven,” a former senior executive at the company told me. “They were always showing off the Missouri Botanical Garden, bringing important visitors down to meet him, having him give tours, talks. He was definitely our showpiece.”
For his part, Raven spoke publicly about the virtues of GMOs. The company’s grand scheme was to genetically modify crops — particularly corn, soybeans, and cotton — to render them immune to the glyphosate in Roundup. This would allow farmers to spray weeds without killing the crops. Teaming with Life featured a Monsanto photograph of a flourishing bioengineered plant next to a pathetic nonengineered plant obviously about to expire. “Major companies will be, are, a major factor if we are going to win world sustainability,” Raven told an interviewer in 1999. “There is nothing I’m condemning Monsanto for.” (In his conversation with me, Raven defended his former patron even more stoutly, noting Monsanto’s many civic philanthropies and absolving the company of any ill intent: “They obviously have no interest in poisoning everybody or doing something bad.”)
I asked Raven whether his efforts to protect the natural world didn’t clash in some way with his support for something very unnatural: GMO technology. “What’s natural anymore?” he replied. “If we’re going to play God, we might as well be good at it.”
While Monsanto played God during the 1990s, the Clinton Administration had its back — a policy consistent with its corporate-friendly approach to environmental issues. When, for example, the French balked at allowing GMO corn into their country, the president, the secretary of state, the national-security adviser, and assorted U.S. senators pleaded Monsanto’s cause. (The French finally caved when Gore himself phoned the prime minister to lobby on the corporation’s behalf.)2 In addition, Washington’s revolving door whirled many Clinton Administration officials onto the Monsanto payroll, while the president’s committee of science and technology advisers included Virginia Weldon, the corporation’s senior vice president for public policy.
2 For years, Monsanto’s MON810 corn was the only GMO crop cleared for cultivation within the European Union. In May 2014, however, the French parliament reversed its earlier policy and banned the crop as a threat to the environment.The Raven panel’s recommendation to join battle with invasives got rapid traction. “The invasion of noxious weeds has created a level of destruction to America’s environment and economy that is matched only by the damage caused by floods, earthquakes, wildfire, hurricanes, and mudslides,” cried Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt when the report was released. Within a year, Clinton signed Executive Order 13112, creating the National Invasive Species Council “to prevent the introduction of invasive species and provide for their control and to minimize the economic, ecological, and human health impacts that invasive species cause.” Among the founding members of the council’s advisory committee was Nelroy E. Jackson, a product-development manager and weed scientist for Monsanto who had helped to develop Roundup formulations specifically for “habitat-restoration markets” — that is, for eradicating invasives.

For all Monsanto’s talk of “life sciences,” the company’s profits, especially in those days, rode on glyphosate. According to Tao Orion’s book, Beyond the War on Invasive Species, the compound was originally invented to clean dishwashers and other appliances. Then someone noticed that it destroyed any plant it touched. By the late 1990s, Monsanto’s Roundup revenues were growing at 20 percent a year, and the compound was duly revered inside the corporation. As the former company executive put it to me: “Roundup was God at Monsanto.”
Such divine status was assured by its symbiotic relationship with Monsanto’s bioengineered corn and soybeans. The strategy worked. Farmers were planting GMO crops in ever-increasing amounts — from just over 4 million acres worldwide in 1996 to 430 million in 2013.
The results of this exotic intervention were not so positive, however, for Raven’s treasured biodiversity. The larva of the monarch butterfly, for example, feeds exclusively on milkweed, a plant that glyphosate is tremendously effective at killing: unlike other herbicides, it attacks the milkweed’s roots. As the rain of glyphosate increased, surpassing 141,000 tons on U.S. crops in 2012, the butterfly’s food supply dwindled to the vanishing point. In 1995, at the dawn of the Roundup Ready era, a billion monarchs fluttered over America’s fields; by 2014, the number had fallen to 35 million, and there was talk of declaring the butterfly an endangered species.
Raven remains optimistic about the monarch, citing Monsanto’s “very exciting” plan to foster milkweed growth in noncultivated areas. Such natural oases, however, are few and far between in the Corn Belt. Those that remain are likely to host other invasive plants, such as garlic mustard, denounced as a “serious invader from the east” by Iowa State University, which inevitably recommends “spot applications” of glyphosate as a remedy.
Meanwhile, the growth curve in glyphosate use has steepened, thanks to a practice that began in 2004. Late in the season, many farmers are now spraying the compound on crops that are not bioengineered to resist it, in order to kill them off and produce artificially early harvests.
“You can imagine the residue levels on the damn wheat,” said Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist at Washington State University. “If you buy whole-wheat bread, the glyphosate will be ground up with the whole-wheat kernel and it will be part of the flour. It’s a very high exposure. When they make white flour, the bran gets separated out and is used in the food supply in other places. That bran will have three or four times the concentration of glyphosate, because that’s where the residues are lodged. It’s insanity.”
Over the years, there have been repeated allegations that glyphosate is dangerous for humans — charges vehemently denied by Monsanto and its friends in high places. “Table salt and baby shampoo are more toxic, or as toxic, as glyphosate,” Rand Beers told 60 Minutes in 2001. Beers, George W. Bush’s assistant secretary of state for international narcotics, was defending the U.S.-funded spraying of a glyphosate-based compound on millions of acres in Colombia as part of an effort to wipe out coca plantations. Despite Beers’s dutiful denials, however, the mixture turned out to be a lot more dangerous than baby shampoo, afflicting the population with painful rashes and other ailments. It also did a fine job of wiping out the vegetables and poultry that made up the local food supply, while often failing to kill the coca plant, its intended target.
This disaster made no difference. Nor did a 1985 EPA study suggesting that glyphosate might give humans cancer, a finding that the EPA reversed in another study six years later. In 2013, a French report on the compound’s carcinogenic effect on rats was withdrawn in the face of an intense lobbying effort by the company. Through thick and thin, Monsanto stuck to its mantra: in the words of a company spokesperson, “All labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health and supported by one of the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product.”

Then came a massive speed bump. This past March, seventeen scientists met in Lyon, France, under the auspices of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, to assess the carcinogenic potential of several chemicals. The group was led by Aaron Blair, an internationally renowned epidemiologist and the author of more than 450 scientific papers, who spent thirty years at the National Cancer Institute. Among the chemicals they evaluated was glyphosate.
As Blair explained to me, the group reviewed three kinds of data: lab tests on animals, epidemiological studies on humans who had been repeatedly exposed to glyphosate, and “mechanistic” analyses of the ways in which the compound could cause cancer.
The animal studies, Blair said, “found excesses of rare tumors.” Absent glyphosate exposure, the tumors “are really rare. They almost never just occur.” The studies on human beings, conducted in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, pointed to an equally grim conclusion. “They showed a link between people who used or were around glyphosate and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Different studies, in different places, suggested that they might go together.”
3 When asked about Blair’s report, the Monsanto spokesman reiterated that “glyphosate is not a carcinogen” and cited a 2013 EPA study that concluded, “Glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans.” He also noted that the I.A.R.C., in its own words, identifies cancer hazards “even when risks are very low with known patterns of use or exposure.”According to Blair, there were good grounds to declare that glyphosate definitely causes cancer. This did not happen, he said, because “the epidemiologic data was a little noisy.” In other words, while several studies suggested a link, another study, of farmers in Iowa and North Carolina, did not. Blair pointed out that there had been a similar inconsistency in human studies of benzene, now universally acknowledged as a carcinogen. In any case, this solitary glitch in the data caused the group to list glyphosate as a probable (instead of a definite) cause of cancer.3
The reaction from Monsanto was predictably irate. GMO Answers, a P.R. website put together by the biotech-food industry, featured a host of derisive posts about the study. Sympathetic journalists went to bat on behalf of the lucrative toxin. Hugh Grant, Monsanto’s chairman and CEO, was curtly dismissive: “It’s unfortunate that junk science and this kind of mischief can create so much confusion for consumers.”
As it had on previous occasions, the company demanded a retraction of the report. When we talked, it didn’t sound as if Blair was likely to do any such thing. “Historically, the same thing happened with tobacco, the same thing happened with asbestos, the same thing happened with arsenic,” he said. “It’s not junk science.”
The French government agreed, promptly banning the sale of Roundup by garden stores in response to Blair’s report. The Colombian authorities meanwhile halted the coca-spraying program, over U.S. government protests. The program had not been a huge success, of course, given the target plant’s remarkable ability to survive the spray.
But unintentional glyphosate resistance is not confined to coca. Although Monsanto scientists had deemed such a development nearly impossible for weeds targeted by the Roundup Ready system, species subjected to prolonged exposure began to adapt and survive even as farmers were harvesting their first bioengineered crops. “It’s a disaster,” said Benbrook. “As resistant weeds spread and become more of an economic issue for more farmers, the only way they know how to react — the only way that they feel they can react — is by spraying more.” It has now become common for farmers to spray three times a season instead of once, and Benbrook estimates that the extra doses of herbicide will add up to 75,000 tons in 2015.
All of which brings us to horseweed, or mare’s tail, a plant native to North America and once highly prized for its medicinal qualities. It has hairy stems, and grows about four feet tall. A nuisance in corn and soybean fields, it has naturally been a glyphosate target. But in recent years, farmers have been encountering a new kind of mare’s tail: a superweed produced by years of glyphosate treatment. Not only does it refuse to die when drenched with four times the recommended dose but it appears to gain strength from the experience, growing up to eight feet tall, with stems thick enough, according to one farmer, to “stop a combine in its tracks.”
In other words, a very alien invasive, made right here in America.

Andrew Cockburnis the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine and the author, most recently, of Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins.

"This alarming assessment leaves no doubt that this hideously dangerous pesticide should be banned in the U.S., just as it is across much of the world."
In a first-ever nationwide assessment, the Environmental Protection Agency found the pesticide atrazine harms more than 1,000 endangered plans and animals. The analysis, which was required by the Endangered Species Act, came just two months after the EPA re-approved the endocrine-disrupting pesticide for an additional 15 years.
Atrazine, which is banned in more than 35 countries worldwide, pollutes groundwater and drinking water, is linked to cancer and reproductive issues, and “can chemically castrate male frogs at extremely low concentrations, including those allowed in drinking water,” according to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity.
“With this troubling finding, even the EPA has been forced to acknowledge the unacceptable harm caused by atrazine,” Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “It’s beyond me how it can still be approved for such widespread use across this country.”
The pesticide, which is made by Syngenta, is the second most used pesticide after glyphosate, but, according to the assessment, atrazine is harmful to 1,013 protected species including the endangered whooping crane, California red-legged frog and San Joaquin kit fox.
“Finally the EPA has been forced to acknowledge atrazine’s far-reaching harms,” Donley said. “This alarming assessment leaves no doubt that this hideously dangerous pesticide should be banned in the U.S., just as it is across much of the world.”
While the EPA made major changes to atrazine’s use restrictions in September—banning the pesticide in Hawaii, on forests, on Christmas tree farms and along roadsides—the harm done to endangered species outside the proposed ban areas was nearly 100%, according to a press release from the Center of Biological Diversity.
The Center for Food Safety, Center for Biological Diversity and a coalition of public-interest groups sued the EPA last week over the EPA’s decision to re-approve atrazine for the next 15 years.

​Source: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/11/07/widely-used-pesticide-re-approved-by-epa-said-to-harm-more-than-1000-endangered-plants-and-species/

WATCH VIDEO HERE
​Pesticide Free Public Parks – One Solution for Two Issues: Environmental Justice and the Climate Crisis
The use of toxic pesticides as a land management strategy on public land poses unnecessary health and environmental hazards. Land management choices should not endanger the health and well-being of our residents. Pesticides diminish the soil’s capacity to draw down carbon from the atmosphere and undermines the resiliency of canopy trees and understory vegetation. This webinar will review the health and environmental impacts of toxic pesticides, the inadequacy of regulation and look at how organic land management can help Philadelphia protect public health and the environment, meet land management goals and address the challenges of the climate crisis.

Presented by Toxic Free Philly member and ecological restorer Peg Shaw for Greenfest.
Greenfest Philly presented by Toyota Hybrids has been the Philadelphia-area's largest environmental festival for 15 years and has gone virtual in 2020.
Greenfest is full of sustainable content from September 12-27. For more info and a full schedule of events, go to https://cleanair.org/greenfest/.

(Beyond Pesticides, September 2, 2020) It’s being called the Monarch Massacre—hundreds of monarch butterflies found dead after the Vector Control Department of Cass County, North Dakota aerially sprayed the county for mosquito control. This incident occurred during a moment in history that is seeing monarchs at the edge of extinction, with the number of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico having declined 53% from last year, according to a count conducted by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico. This tragedy happened as the nation and the world are experiencing an insect apocalypse and severe biodiversity decline, threatening the web of life. (See Study Predicts Demise of Insects within Decades if Pesticide Dependence Continues.)
While it is critical that steps be taken by communities nationwide to protect their local ecology, the incident generated a response from Cass County that claims that the insecticides used are “the lowest toxicity products on the market for mosquito control,” and points to the “monarch migration [that] is a sporadic event that unfortunately occurred during the latest adult mosquito control application.” 
The County justifies the spraying because of nuisance mosquitoes and a finding in the “surrounding communities” of mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus (WNv). In its Facebook statement, the County provides no monitoring data for WNv, does not disclose the threshold levels of insect borne disease, and fails to identify any risk to human and environmental health from its pesticide use. Instead, the agency refers to “lowest toxicity” products, claims made by chemical manufacturers but not verified by the independent scientific literature. In fact, the Vector Control Department’s website indicates that it is using the highly toxic insecticide permethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid linked to neurotoxicity and cancer. The Department states on its website:
“Cass County uses a number of synthetic pyrethroids to control adult mosquitoes. Pyrethroids are synthetic chemical insecticides that act in a similar manner to pyrethrins, which are derived from chrysanthemum flowers. Pyrethroids are widely used for controlling various organisms including head lice. Permethrin, bifenthrin, and etofenprox, are synthetic pyrethroids commonly used in mosquito control programs to kill adult mosquitoes.” (See County website.)
Clearly the Department is downplaying the toxic nature of the chemicals that it uses. As stated, the pesticides being used by the county are synthetic pyrethroids not natural chemicals “derived from chrysanthemum flowers,” known as pyrethrums. Like other communities, Cass County mosquito management relies solely on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pesticide registration, which is disputed by independent science, and its own history of past pesticide use to justify continued pesticide use—without any reference to the controversy associated with synthetic pyrethroid use captured in the scientific literature. In an effort to reduce its characterization of hazards associated with the mosquito pesticides, the Department points to its use of ultra low volume (ULV) applications to downplay concerns about public exposure. To further justify widespread and indiscriminate use of synthetic pyrethroids for mosquito control, the county website cites other widespread uses of these pesticides, including “household insect foggers; ant and other insect sprays for the home; tick and flea sprays; flea dips & sprays; collars for cats and dogs; termite treatments; agricultural and livestock products; [and] for the treatment of head and body lice.”
Beyond Pesticides has noted that exposure to synthetic pyrethoids exacerbates the very threats associated with coronavirus. In effect, the use of these chemicals and public exposure increase the risk factors associated with Covid-19. (See Beyond Pesticides webpage and factsheet.)
Context is critical to the threat that monarchs are suffering. WWF’s monarch count found that monarchs occupied seven acres this winter, down from 15 acres last year. Reports indicate that 15 acres is a minimum threshold needed to prevent a collapse of the butterfly’s migration and possible extinction.
The threat to ecosystems from widespread spraying for mosquito management made national news when over two million bees killed after aerial mosquito spraying in South Carolina in 2016. Smaller wildlife kills often go unreported in the news.
Because monarchs are under threat, mosquito spraying adds considerably to the species decline. Recent research finds that western monarch milkweed habitat contains a “ubiquity of pesticides” that are likely contributing to the decline of the iconic species. The research, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, provides a grim snapshot of a world awash in pesticides, and raises new questions about the U.S. regulatory process that continues to allow these toxic chemicals on to the market without adequate review and oversight. (See Milkweed in Western Monarch Habitat Found to be Completely Contaminated with Pesticides)
Tell Public Officials to Stop Mosquito Spraying and Adopt a Safe, Effective Mosquito Management Plan.
For information on ecological based mosquito management, see Beyond Pesticides Safer Mosquito Management page. Also, see Public Health Mosquito Management Strategy for Decision Makers and Communities.