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Hobbyists sweetening the picture for threatened honey bees
By Chris Reinolds
Green Right Now
Beekeeper Laura Johnson enjoys tending to her buzzing friends, but the real motive behind her hobby is stopping the decline of honey bees.
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder has been threatening bees, and the crops they serve, around the world for the past several years.
So Johnson, an organic gardener in suburban Atlanta, decided it was time to jump into honey.
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Tags: · bee farming, bee keeping, Beekeepers, Colony Collapse Disorder, honey bees, honey harvest, loss of bees, Organic gardening, pesticides, pollen, pollinating
Study shows pesticide used on crops is killing frogs in the Sierras
From Green Right Now Reports
Birds, bees and frogs. We’ve known for a long time that they’re affected by pesticides and chemical pollution.
In the last few years, many scientists have come to see frogs, whose populations are in steep decline, as one of the most vulnerable; humankind’s canary in the coal mine.
Now researchers at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale are illuminating why frogs are in such deep trouble. They’ve found that just a few grains of a pesticide ingredient commonly used in California agriculture can make mountain streams lethal to frogs.
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Tags: · Central Valley, contamination, endosulfan, frogs, grapes, lethal levels of pesticides, neurotoxin, nuts, peaches, pesticides, polluted water, Sierra Mountains, tomatoes
Toxicologists say media, activists overstate chemical threats
From Green Right Now Reports:
As toxicologists see it, our chemical world is neither as dangerous as portrayed by the mainstream media and environmental groups, nor as safe as the American Chemistry Council and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) would have us believe.
That’s according to a survey of 937 members of the Society of Toxicology in early 2009. The survey, released Thursday, was administered by Harris Interactive and conducted by the nonprofit Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University.
“This survey suggests that the public doesn’t get a full and balanced picture of chemical risk,” said Dr. Robert Lichter, the survey director.
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Tags: · bisphenol-A, chemicals, genetically modified organisms, GMOs, high fructose corn syrup, hormone disruptors, Organic Food, organic products, pesticides, phthalates, Teflon
Countries to reduce reliance on DDT to fight malaria
From Green Right Now Reports
For decades, relief work in Africa has fought a deadly disease with an environmentally deadly chemical, spraying with DDT to quell malarial outbreaks, even though world health agencies know that DDT has a devastating effect on the environment, killing wildlife and contaminating water supplies.
 Today, the UN Agencies announced they will try to move 40 countries in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia, away from reliance on the persistent, toxic chemical by using other methods to fight mosquito-born malaria, which infects more than 250 million people a year, claiming 880,000 lives annually.
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Tags: · DDT, insects, malaria, mosquitoes, pesticides, Public Health
Potential endocrine-disrupting pesticides to be tested
By Harriet Blake
The EPA has issued a list of pesticides that will be screened for possibly disrupting the human, as well as animal, endocrine system. The list, released Wednesday, focuses on “endocrine disruptors” which are chemicals that can negatively impact hormones produced by the endocrine system. The system regulates all biological processes in the body – specifically, growth, metabolism and reproduction.
“Gathering this information,” said EPA Adminstrator Lisa P. Jackson, “will help us work with communities and industry to protect Americans from harmful exposure. Endocrine disruptors can cause lifelong health problems, especially for children.”
The endocrine, or hormone, system is found in all mammals, birds and fish. It is made up of glands, hormones that are produced by the glands and receptors in different organs that respond to the hormones.
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Tags: · atrazine, carbaryl, diazinon, Endocrine Disruptors, EPA, hazardous chemcals, herbicides, insecticides, lawn treatment, malathion, permetrhin, pesticides, toluene, Toxins
An eco-fungicide to save your broccoli and greens
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Discerning diners would probably not find this much of a topic for dinner discussion, but back in the fields where their broccoli is grown, fungus can stop a good crop cold. Most farmers apply fungicides to deal with the problem, but fungicides, a subset of pesticides, can kill beneficial organisms and cause environmental damage in the course of attacking the problem invader.
Fungicides, like other pesticides, also can wind up growing better fungus as the disease adapts to fend off the poison. The fungus becomes resistant to the pesticide, and creeps back ever-more resilient. Which requires more chemical treatments; which can increase resistance; requiring more treatments…
To try to break this cycle, researchers in Canada have been developing new “green” fungicides that are less environmentally damaging because they go in for a targeted kill. This surgical approach plays off the plant’s own defense strategy by attacking the fungal infection as it ramps up to break through the plants defenses. Effectively, the new eco-fungicides, called “paldoxins,” disrupt the fungus’ response to the plant.
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Tags: · Canada, environment, fungus, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Ca, pesticides, row crops, Trees/Plants/Yard
Pesticides in combination shown to be toxic to salmon
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
What happens when salmon are given a pesticide cocktail? The effects are more pronounced than the damage done from exposure a single pesticide, according to a study just released in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal.
In an attempt to replicate real world pesticide exposures, researchers from NOAA Fisheries Service and Washington State University studied how coho salmon reacted to five common pesticides, individually and in various combinations.
They found that almost every pesticide pairing resulted in a chemical reaction in the brain – a reduction of an enzyme – that could lead to the accumulation of acetylcholine, which would affect the salmon’s behavior, jeopardizing its ability to survive.
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Tags: · carbaryl, carbofuran, chlorpyrifos, diaznon, Environmental Health Perspectives, malathion, NOAA, pesticides, Salmon, Washington State University
Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in full flight
By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now
Geoff LeBaron gets paid to count birds, among other things. And this is an especially busy time of year for him and all bird watchers. From Dec. 14 through Jan. 5 the National Audubon Society conducts its annual Christmas Bird Count. LeBaron has served as its director since 1987.
 “It’s neat to be able to work for the National Audubon Society in this [endeavor] that brings birding and ornithology together,” LeBaron says, explaining that ornithologists like himself are trained scientists who study what birds do, while birders are folks, also like himself, who are captivated by watching birds. Not all ornithologists, he points out, enjoy birdwatching as a pastime.
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Tags: · Audubon Society, Christmas Bird Count, DDT, endangered wildlife, pesticides
Schools Get Clean Green Slate For Fall
By Harriet Blake
Other than the intoxicating smell of new text books and notebooks, the familiar scents of back-to-school may be changing. Ammonia-scented hallways, newly sealed and fuming gym floors, odorously painted classrooms as well as lawns with the subtle scents of pesticide treatments, may be a thing of the past.
In today’s more environmentally conscious world, public and private schools are rethinking how they maintain their buildings. Reducing toxic chemicals in schools – as in our homes — is not only good for the environment, but for those who use these buildings.
In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside of Washington D.C., the public schools have long taken a pro-active approach in using non-toxic cleaners.
“We want our buildings to be clean and at the same time healthy for our students, faculty and the person doing the cleaning,” says Larry Hurd, building services trainer for the school district.
Ten years ago, the district, which oversees 200 schools, changed from an oil-based sealer for their wood gym floors to a water-based sealer. It works well, says Mr. Hurd, and toxins are no longer an issue. “The oil-based sealer was bad for the students and other visitors to our schools, but it was real, real bad for the person applying the sealer.” That person was exposed to the sealer fumes for as much as four hours.
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Tags: · Green Cleaners, Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaners, Illinois, Montgomery County, New York, Non-Toxic Cleaners, Northwest School, pesticides, Schools, Seattle
Germany and France ban pesticides linked to bee deaths; Geneticist urges U.S. ban
By Shermakaye Bass
In light of recent European bans of a pesticide linked to Bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), at least one key be e expert is calling for a ban of the same pesticide in the United States.
“In the United States, drastic action is needed,” says Canadian geneticist Joe Cummins, explaining that U.S. farmers and beekeepers shouldn’t have to wait for more evidence or for an air-tight explanation for the complex syndrome, which threatens one in every third bite of food in the United States. Now most apiarists and scientists realize that pesticides are a factor in CCD, he says.
Cummins’ remarks, in an interview with GreenRightNow, come less than a month after Germany’s ban of clothianidin, a pesticide commonly used to keep insects off of corn crops. Germany banned the pesticide after heaps of dead bees were found near fields of corn coated in the pesticide, and in response to scientists who report that the insecticide severely impairs, and often kills, the honeybees that corn and other crops depend on for pollination.
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Tags: · Bee Colony Collapse, Bees, clothianidin, corn, genetically altered food, imidicloprid, pesticides, seed coating
Bee Colony Collapse: Experts Race To Unravel Mystery; Beekeepers Fear A Deepening Crisis
February 11th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Photo: Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium
Worker bees
By Shermakaye Bass
A year and a half ago, news of a mysterious phenomenon captured the country’s attention – something known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that was affecting up to 30 percent of America’s commercial honeybee producers, whose mobile apiaries pollinate one-third of the country’s food supply.
For months, the international media carried reports on CCD (essentially a disappearing act by America’s worker honeybees), projecting repercussions that would drive produce and dairy prices through the roof and eventually cause large-scale food shortages in the U.S.
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Tags: · Bee Colony Collapse Disorder, Beekeepers, Bees, pesticides, pollinators
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