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Nathan Donley Profile picture
@Nathan_Donley
Jun 7, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
My new paper just published in Environmental Health

USA lags behind EU, Brazil and China in banning harmful pesticides

Don’t have time to read it? Take a stroll through this thread.

ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
I compiled the approval status of over 500 pesticides and found that the U.S. stills uses a whole lot of pesticides in outdoor agricultural applications that are banned or being phased out in the EU, China and Brazil.

Just how much is truly staggering Image
As you would imagine, pesticides banned by at least 2 of these nations but still approved in the U.S. are not on the benign end of the spectrum. Image
Bensulide, dicrotophos, phorate, terbufos and tribufos are in the neurotoxic organophosphate class that was once used in chemical warfare in World War II. Same class as #chlorpyrifos
Paraquat is one of the most acutely lethal pesticides still in use today, with a teaspoon-sized dose being enough to kill a grown adult. Image
Oxytetracycline and streptomycin, two medically-important antibiotics, have elicited opposition from the FDA and CDC that they could facilitate the development of antibiotic-resistant human pathogens.

nytimes.com/2019/05/17/hea…
Why haven’t these been banned in the US? Because pesticide makers haven’t wanted to cancel them

In the last 10 years, the EPA has unilaterally cancelled only 1 pesticide active ingredient. The pesticide industry has voluntarily cancelled 34 Image
The EPA relying almost exclusively on voluntary cancellations means that economic reasons, rather than human and environmental health reasons, drive the decisions of which pesticides stay and which get the boot
To be fair, some voluntary cancellations are the result of negotiations between EPA and industry and probably can’t be considered truly “voluntary.”

But should the banning of highly hazardous pesticides be negotiated?
There is a lot of complexity here. Part of the issue lies with EPA and its capture by the pesticide industry, another part lies with our weak and ineffective pesticide laws.

But it’s a problem that likely won’t be solved by a new administration. The roots go deeper than that
You can read more about it on my blog post

blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-biology/201…

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More from @Nathan_Donley

Nathan Donley Profile picture
Jun 21, 2022
The House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy just released an investigation into seresto that found the flea collar should be taken off the market

A lot of new info in the report that had not been reported on previously

I'll sum it up 🧵

investigatemidwest.org/2022/06/15/con…
Here’s the report. It takes you through the approval of the collar in 2012 to the present. It provides examples of EPA failing to stand up to an industry that feels so entitled, that even the mention of commonsense restrictions was met with derision

oversight.house.gov/sites/democrat…
We have a lot more detail of what EPA was seeing and saying – stuff that was redacted in our FOIA documents

Seresto had 163% more incidents labeled either “Death” or “Major” than the 2nd most dangerous product, and 428% more than the 3rd
Read 17 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Jul 20, 2021
As someone who is not opposed to genetic engineering but often at odds with how it is currently used in agriculture, I think we need more nuanced looks at GMOs in the media.

Instead we get this

nytimes.com/2021/07/20/mag…
In academia I genetically engineered non-pathogenic bacterial cells and human cells to better understand the genetic basis of chronic diseases like cancer. I understand how genetic engineering works and the promises it can hold, particularly in the biomedical field
It’s easy to find some small company that genuinely wants to better people’s nutrition through genetic engineering and use that as a poster child

But it's a disservice to not adequately explain “what is” instead of “what could be” in some fairytale world that does not exist
Read 10 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020
We’re in the middle of a public health crisis and the pesticide industry and USDA are working to weaken international guidance aimed at making sure lifesaving medicines still work in the future

How and why is the pesticide industry doing this? 👇

nytimes.com/2020/09/24/hea…
For starters, medically important antibiotics are used as pesticides to kill bacteria on crops. Fungicides, similar to antifungals used in humans, are also widely used as pesticides

The more you use them, the more likely it is that fungi or bacteria will become resistant
Increasingly, there is worry that the overuse of these medicines as pesticides can lead to antibiotic and antifungal resistance in human pathogens and cause these medicines to not work when our lives depend on it
Read 18 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020
There's a small bright spot in EPA’s atrazine re-approval

Thanks to a legal settlement by conservation groups, atrazine will be prohibited in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the North Mariana Islands

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…
This is an incredible conservation win as these places are biodiversity hotspots. Use of atrazine will also be prohibited along roadsides, in forests and on X-mas trees in the continental U.S.

The harm from atrazine’s re-approval is immeasurable, but these areas will be spared
This is being billed by the EPA and industry as “voluntary” measures they are taking, but there is nothing voluntary about this.

They had to do this as the absolute minimum step of beginning to come into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
Read 5 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 22, 2020
The ecological risk assessment for #chlorpyrifos was released today. The career scientists at EPA found that invertebrates could be exposed to more than 8,600-fold more than the level known to harm them

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USAEP…
For mammals it's 1,900-fold more than the level known to cause harm. For birds it's 380-fold. For fish it's 160-fold.
The Fish and Wildlife Service found that #chlorpyrifos would put 1,400 endangered species at risk of extinction?

No wonder

nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/…
Read 5 tweets
Nathan Donley Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020
I need to do something to stop stewing over the supreme court, so I'm just going to tell the story of how the endocrine disrupting pesticide #atrazine went from being on its last leg in the U.S. to being rubberstamped for the foreseeable future

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…
No one is going to tell this story because there are a thousand other scandals happening right now and because it's super wonky.

Unlike a lot of the big environmental rollbacks that will hopefully be reversed after the election, this will likely fall under the radar
In 2016, under the Obama admin., EPA put out a devastating eco risk assessment of atrazine basically saying that its use has to be scaled back dramatically or there will be serious environmental consequences

In 50 years, this was the most hard-lined position EPA had taken
Read 13 tweets

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