Perreault Magazine - 36 -
PESTICIDES & HONEY BEES
Last year, Earthjustice challenged the EPA’s decision to approve sulfoxaflor, a pesticide that’s been shown to be highly toxic for honey bees and other pollinators. Why the interest in this particular pesticide?
Over the past few years, honey bee colonies have experienced widespread die-offs in a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Many beekeepers, as well as scientists, believe that a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids—of which sulfoxaflor is one —is the culprit. Yet the EPA rubber-stamped these pesticides, failing not only the beekeeping industry, but all of us, as bees are responsible for pollinating one out of every three bites of food we eat.
We believe that the EPA acted irresponsibly and illegally, which is why we brought this lawsuit on behalf of our clients.
The truth is, though, that Earthjustice has long fought to keep toxic pesticides like sulfoxaflor off of our farms and out of our lives. For nearly 40 years, Earthjustice has worked to protect people and the environment from dangerous chemicals. For example, we’ve worked to end spraying of roadsides in Northern California with herbicides
where schoolchildren wait for buses; we’ve undertaken campaigns to protect farmworkers in the Northwest and elsewhere from noxious chemicals; and we’ve successfully challenged the registration of a highly toxic soil fumigant known as methyl iodide in California and Florida. We’ll keep up these fights as long as dangerous pesticides are on the market.
FRACKING, a process that uses water and chemicals to crack open underground rock formations to force deposits of oil and gas up to the surface, is a concern for many. Why?
Well, there are many concerns, which is why people across the country are fighting back to keep fracking out of their own communities. People have a right to know what’s going on in their backyards, but unfortunately the oil and gas industry doesn’t feel that way.
Take, for example, the issue with fracking chemicals. Many of them are toxic, and those are just the ones that we know about. Industry secrecy keeps us in the dark about the identity of many of these chemicals, as well as their health and environmental effects.
by Chris Jordan Bloch
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