Every year around this time, a news outlet usually covers pesticide use in Xmas trees. And every year I’m disappointed in how little actual information is given. There’s usually a couple of anecdotes, but very little hard data.
A USDA survey of Xmas tree growers in six states (accounting for 63% of Xmas trees produced in the U.S.) found that Christmas trees in these six states are sprayed with 270,000 pounds of pesticides each year.
So the total for the country is likely around 400,000 lbs every year
85% of this consists of just 8 pesticides: chlorothalonil, atrazine, simazine, glyphosate, hexazinone, carbaryl, chlorpyrifos and dimethoate
Give yourself a pat on the back if you can recite the opening verse of Rudolf while subbing in these 8 pesticides for Santa’s 8 reindeer
These are BAD pesticides, some of the worst used in the U.S. Xmas tree growers in Oregon have also been given special permission to dump #chlorpyrifos out of a helicopter on these trees
A fair question would be: “Do we really need pesticides to grow trees in F’ing Oregon?!!”
This is not to single out Xmas tree growers, this type of thing happens all throughout horticulture. The same thing is going on with that non-organic tree or shrub you get at the local nursery.
The problem is much bigger than Xmas trees, it's with our pesticide regulatory system
When @EPA allows a neurotoxin to be dumped from the sky or atrazine (a widespread pesticide water contaminant) to be sprayed in a water-logged rainforest like western Oregon, it's simply failed
Xmas trees are but a small blip of the pesticide use in the U.S., but I hope this serves as a compelling example of just how much we need to reform our pesticide laws in this country and change the toxic, industry-ridden culture @EPA’s pesticide office
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
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
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.
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
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? 👇
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
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
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.
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
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
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