Scientists have proven that pesticides like Dow’s Sulfoxaflor are the cause of unprecedented colony collapse
The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped restrictions on the use of a powerful pesticide known to be particularly lethal to honeybees for some 190 million acres of U.S. cropland.
Scientists have warned that sulfoxaflor is part of the massive pollinator die-off across the U.S.
Excerpt from this story from Truthout:A group of beekeepers joined forces on Friday against Trump’s EPA by filing a lawsuit over the agency’s move to put a powerful insecticide—one that scientists warn is part of the massive pollinator die-off across the U.S.—back on the market.
The lawsuit charges that the EPA’s approval of sulfoxaflor—touted by its manufacturer, agro-chemical giant Corteva, as a “next generation neonicotinoid”—was illegally rendered as it put industry interests ahead of the health of pollinators and ignored the available science.
“Honeybees and other pollinators are dying in droves because of insecticides like sulfoxaflor, yet the Trump administration removes restriction just to please the chemical industry,” said Greg Loarie, an attorney with Earthjustice, the legal aid group representing the beekeepers. “This is illegal and an affront to our food system, economy, and environment.”
Trump’s EPA gave the okay to the ‘emergency’ use of sulfoxaflor, the bee-killing pesticide, on 13.9 million acres across 11 states. Back in 2015, beekeepers sued to suspend the use of sulfoxaflor and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the EPA’s usage of this harmful pesticide saying there had not been enough studies made …
The agency says sulfoxaflor poses less risk than alternatives and is a critical tool for farmers.
Excerpt from this Washington Post story:
The Environmental Protection Agency approved broad new applications Friday for a controversial insecticide, despite objections from environmental groups and beekeepers who say it is among the compounds responsible for eviscerating the nation’s bee populations.
Alexandra Dunn, head of the EPA office that oversees pesticides, said the agency was “thrilled” to be able to approve new uses and lift past restrictions on sulfoxaflor, which she called a “highly effective” tool for growers around the country — but which the agency itself considers “very highly toxic” to bees. The decision will allow the chemical to be applied to a wide array of crops, including citrus and corn, soybeans and strawberries, pineapples and pumpkins.
“EPA is providing long-term certainty for U.S. growers to use an important tool to protect crops and avoid potentially significant economic losses, while maintaining strong protection for pollinators,” Dunn said.
The agency’s critics, some of whom successfully sued the EPA in federal court during the Obama administration to restrict use of the pesticide, were anything but thrilled with Friday’s announcement.
“At a time when honeybees and other pollinators are dying in greater numbers than ever before, EPA’s decision to remove restrictions on yet another bee-killing pesticide is nothing short of reckless,” Greg Loarie, an attorney for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, said in an email.
The news comes during a time that commercial honeybee colonies have been declining at a startling rate. The annual loss rate for honeybees during the year ending in April rose to 40.7 percent, up slightly over the annual average of 38.7 percent, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit group associated with the University of Maryland.
In deciding to grant broad approval to sulfoxaflor, Dunn said the agency relied on a host of new, industry-backed studies that showed the insecticide dissipates in the environment more quickly than widely used alternatives, thereby lowering the risk to bees. In addition, the agency said sulfoxaflor often requires fewer applications than other insecticides, resulting in reduced risks to wildlife.
US EPA seeks measures to protect endangered species from common insect pesticide.
This link is to a report published in Chemical & Engineering News:
Hailed as a safer alternative to organophosphates, neonicotinoids, and other insecticides, sulfoxaflor may harm hundreds of endangered species and is likely to put 63 of them at risk of extinction, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concludes in a final evaluation, released March 30. The agency is working with the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and pesticide makers to mitigate some of the risks identified in the report.
The EPA released a draft evaluation of the risks of sulfoxaflor to endangered species in July 2022. Since then, it has proposed changes to the pesticide’s label to help protect vulnerable species. The agency included those changes in its final evaluation and still determined that sulfoxaflor is likely to harm more than 462 endangered species, including more than 300 plants.
Sulfoxaflor is used to combat aphids and other difficult-to-control insects on several crops. It requires fewer applications than other commonly used insecticides, according to the EPA. But environmental groups and beekeepers have been raising concerns for many years about the insecticide’s harmful effects on bees. The EPA’s final evaluation shows that the effects go beyond just bees.
“In spite of efforts to lessen the harm it causes, this one insecticide is likely to drive the Miami tiger beetle, Dakota skipper, rusty patched bumblebee and 60 other endangered species to extinction,” Lori Ann Burd, environmental health program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, says in a statement. “The EPA needs to prohibit sulfoxaflor’s use immediately in the places where these endangered species live,” she says.
