Autism and Disappearing Bees: A Common Denominator?

"The brain of insects is the intended target of these insecticides.  They disrupt the bees homing behavior and their ability to return to the hive, kind of like “bee autism.”   But insects are different than humans, right?   Human and insect nerve cells share the same basic biologic infrastructure.  Chemicals that interrupt electrical impulses in insect nerves will do the same to humans.  But humans are much bigger than insects and the doses to humans are  miniscule, right?
During critical first trimester development a human is no bigger than an insect so there is every reason to believe that pesticides could wreak havoc with the developing brain of a human embryo.   But human embryos aren’t out in corn fields being sprayed with insecticides, are they?  A recent study showed that every human tested had the world’s best selling pesticide, Roundup, detectable in their urine at concentrations between five and twenty times the level considered safe for drinking water.
The autism epidemic and disappearing bees are real public health emergencies created by allowing our world to be overwhelmed by environmental toxins.  Environmental protection is human protection, especially for the smallest and most vulnerable among us."

Insecticides linked to honeybee die-offs

Published: March. 15, 2012 at 3:41 PM

WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- Die-offs of honeybees critical for pollinating food crops -- part of so-called colony collapse disorder -- is linked to an insecticide, a U.S. journal reports.

Researchers from the University of Padua in Italy writing in the journal Environmental Science & Technology say the springtime die-offs have been linked to technology used to plant corn coated with insecticides.

In some parts of Europe where farmers use the technology to plant seeds coated with so-called neonicotinoid insecticides, widespread deaths of honeybees have been reported since the introduction of the technique in the late 1990s, they said.

Such insecticides are among the most widely used in the world, popular because they kill insects by paralyzing nerves but have lower toxicity for other animals.

Scientists said they suspected the bee die-offs might be due to particles of the insecticide made airborne by the pneumatic drilling machines used for planting that forcefully suck seeds in and expel a burst of air containing high concentrations of particles of the insecticide coating.

They found that honeybees that flew through the emission cloud of the seeding machines used in mid-March to May corn planting were dying.

Future work on the problem should focus on a way to prevent the seeds from fragmenting inside the pneumatic drilling machines, the researchers said.

© 2012 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Atrazine and the Roots of ALEC's State Data Quality Act

The herbicide atrazine, one of the most heavily used herbicides in the United States has been found in almost 94 percent of U.S. groundwater and can harm human health in multiple ways. ALEC has promoted "model" legislation friendly to Syngenta, atrazine's primary manufacturer, across the country. At least once, this legislation was introduced to ALEC by a lobbyist paid by Syngenta.

The "Data Quality Act"

more on atrazine

Just STOP spraying roundup Made my dog sick and deformed and killed kittens

Links listed below, will provide mirror site for information later this evening... I am looking for cohorts, like minded conscious folks, Alliances to fight this madness that has convinced good folks that roundup is safe. I am here to tell you that Roundup and similar products are far from what is considered safe for any all life.

A few months ago, my landlord (he takes the name seriously, days of serfdom, I am obliged and beholding to him)sprayed a tremendous amount of roundup on every outline of three gardens all containing eatables, drive, grounds around trees which keep falling over in high winds ... dead. I have three cats that enjoy the yard, gardens and sunning in the driveway, I received no notification to keep them indoors or that Jeff T. was even going to spray roundup. I don't mean to defame you and I am not, this is just the cold hard facts you need to be aware of. Kittens had at least a week or more before due date, they were still born within 24 hours one lived a few days. Second round of roundup as if fifty gallons on an acre of land wasn't enough, the second weekend of June. I am working in my garden while it is sprayed all around me within 50ft. I get tremendously sick, nausea back aches like a kidney, and I never get back aches, I go to doctor miss two weeks of work till better. In the meantime, my dog is dying, kittens are born again but without tails, with shorter curly tails, ears are backwards, nose is turned like a pigs. WTF  do I do?

Wonder

links to read and learn mirrored here as of 7/01/2011

I googled .... here

Dangers of Roundup Weed Killer for Pets

 pesticide health effects 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5

 More of Claire's work

Watch 'The World According to Monsanto' shown today on FSTV available there for a deal 877-378-8669

Grit TV: Queen of the Sun

and...

"American families have a fundamental right to clean air and clean water, but this bill is the biggest assault on both in recent history," said Anna Aurilio, director of the Washington, DC office for the advocacy group Environment America. "Americans may have voted for a lot of things in November, but they surely didn't vote for more asthma attacks, more contaminated drinking water supplies and more threats to our treasured national parks." ~CommonDreams

Wonder

Twenty Years Ago

Some good news

Published on Thursday, October 8, 2009 by Huffington Post

In Reversal of Bush Policy, EPA Launches New Study of Atrazine’s Health Effects

by Danielle Ivory

The Environmental Protection Agency today reversed its stance on the potential hazards of atrazine, one of the most commonly-used herbicides in the country, saying it will re-examine how the chemical affects human health.

EPA officials said in a statement that the agency will take a close look at the weed-killer’s potential to cause cancer, as well as birth defects, low birth weight, and premature births. Agency scientists also will conduct research for the first time examining whether atrazine interferes with the hormone and reproductive systems of humans and amphibians.

The announcement marks a departure from the agency’s policies on atrazine during the Bush administration, when officials said that the concentrations of the herbicide measured in drinking water did not endanger public health. As recently as June, Steve Bradbury, deputy office director of the EPA’s office of Pesticide Programs, told the Huffington Post Investigative Fund [1] “we have concluded that atrazine does not cause adverse effects to humans or the environment.”

Today, EPA spokesman Dale Kemery told the Investigative Fund, “This administration is taking a hard look at the atrazine decision made by the previous administration.”

As the Investigative Fund reported [1] in a series [2] of articles [3] in August, the EPA failed to notify the public about data it had collected showing that atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. After the Investigative Fund analyzed and published the data, the EPA posted its data online and said it would continue to update it.

Atrazine, manufactured by the Swiss firm Syngenta, is primarily sprayed on cornfields and other major crops. The European Union has banned the use of atrazine, saying there was not enough information to prove its safety, and the EPA has long fielded criticism from environmental activists for allowing the chemical to remain on the market.

The EPA’s announcement of its new atrazine study follows a private September meeting between the EPA's senior staff and the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) According to a senior staffer on the committee, Boxer’s team encouraged the EPA to open a new analysis of the risks of atrazine and to keep the public informed about the levels of the weed-killer in drinking water.

The committee plans to hold a hearing on atrazine and the EPA later this year, the staff member said.

The EPA said it will announce its specific plan for evaluating the effects of atrazine next month, and that the study would conclude in September 2010. Officials said the report also will include results from a National Cancer Institute Agricultural Health Study due next year.

“I think it is important for the EPA to evaluate the effects of atrazine on humans and I am very pleased to see that they are emphasizing transparency in this evaluation process,” said Jason Rohr, a specialist in ecotoxicology at the University of South Florida who served on the EPA’s atrazine panel this past spring. “Given atrazine's consistent effects on freshwater vertebrates, it would not surprise me if a weight-of-evidence approach also revealed consistent effects on humans.”

In September, Rohr and colleagues published an article [4] in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives examining more than 100 scientific studies of the weed-killer. They concluded that the chemical affected the developmental, behavioral, immune, hormone, and reproductive systems of aquatic animals.

That contrasted with an EPA statement in July, when the agency updated its Web site [5] to say: “atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development… and EPA believes that no additional testing is warranted to address this issue.”

“At the very least,” Rohr said, “the public should be notified when atrazine levels in their drinking water exceed the maximum contaminant level set by the EPA.”

© 2009 Huffington Post

Atrazine Gyros

New Research: Herbicide Atrazine Linked to Cancer, Birth Defects, Endocrine Disruption, and Endangered Species Impacts

SAN FRANCISCO - August 27 - New research on birth defects at extremely low concentrations and documentation of widespread ground- and drinking-water contamination has strengthened the case for banning the toxic compound atrazine, the most commonly used herbicide in the United States. Atrazine is a widely used weed killer that chemically castrates male frogs at extremely low concentrations and is linked to significant human and wildlife health concerns, including endocrine disruption, birth defects, fertility problems, and certain cancers.

"It's time to ban atrazine to protect our drinking water and our most imperiled wildlife," said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. "There is no reason to continue use of this poisonous contaminant given the building evidence of harm to humans and endangered species."

Atrazine is a potent chemical that is the most common contaminant of ground-, surface, and drinking water nationwide. Recent research published in peer-reviewed journals suggests that small amounts of atrazine in drinking water can be harmful at much lower concentrations than federal standards, and link the pesticide to birth defects, low birth weights, premature births, and menstrual problems. Previous research has provided evidence linking atrazine to prostate cancer and decreased sperm count in men, and higher risk of breast cancer in women.

Articles this week in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Huffington Post discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency is ignoring unsafe atrazine contamination levels in surface and drinking water in the Midwest and South. Agency documents show that numerous watersheds and drinking-water systems are contaminated with atrazine, which was banned by the European Union and in Switzerland, the home country of its parent company Syngenta, because of dangers to both people and wildlife.

Atrazine is linked to declines of endangered amphibians and fish in California such as the California red-legged frog, California tiger salamander, Delta smelt, coho and chinook salmon, and steelhead trout. Atrazine also harms many other endangered species throughout the country, including sea turtles in Chesapeake Bay, Barton Springs salamanders in Texas, endangered mussels in Alabama, shortnose sturgeon in Midwest waters, the Wyoming toad, and the Illinois cave amphipod.

Numerous studies have definitively linked pesticides and herbicides with significant developmental, neurological, and reproductive damage to amphibians. Pesticide contamination can cause deformities, abnormal immune system functions, diseases, injury, and death. Studies by Dr. Tyrone Hayes at the University of California show that atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that interferes with reproduction and "assaults male sexual development." Dr. Hayes demonstrated that atrazine chemically castrates and feminizes male frogs at concentrations 30 times lower than levels allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Although exposure levels as low as 0.1 parts per billion (ppb) result in frog hermaphrodites, the agency's atrazine criterion for the "protection of aquatic life" is 12 ppb.

Conservationists sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 for failing to review the impacts of atrazine on several endangered species. The registration for atrazine was revised later that year, revealing the agency's obeisance to the agrochemical industries it was intended to regulate. Despite numerous studies and overwhelming evidence linking atrazine to significant human and wildlife health concerns, the agency imposed no new restrictions on its use.

The Center for Biological Diversity has mounted a Pesticides Reduction Campaign to hold the Environmental Protection Agency accountable for pesticides it registers for use and to cancel or restrict use of harmful pesticides within endangered species' habitats. Our 2004 report, Silent Spring Revisited: Pesticide Use and Endangered Species, details the decades-long failure of the agency to regulate pesticides harmful to endangered species. In 2006 the Center published Poisoning Our Imperiled Wildlife: San Francisco Bay Area Endangered Species at Risk from Pesticides, a report analyzing the agency's dismal record in protecting Bay Area endangered species and the agency's ongoing refusal to reform pesticide registration and use in accordance with scientific findings.

We and our allies have filed numerous lawsuits to force assessment of pesticide impacts on endangered species and prohibiting use of such chemicals within endangered species habitats until formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been completed. In 2005, our lawsuit forced the Environmental Protection Agency to assess impacts of atrazine and five additional pesticides on the Barton Springs salamander in Texas. In 2006, we reached a settlement agreement that prohibits the use of 66 toxic pesticides in and near core California red-legged frog habitats. In 2009 we reached a proposed agreement restricting the use of 74 pesticides and evaluation of their impacts on 11 endangered species in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Although required by court order in 2003 to further assess atrazine, the Environmental Protection Agency entered into a private deal whereby the atrazine manufacturer Syngenta was allowed to conduct contaminant monitoring, assessing a mere 3 percent of the watersheds identified as "at risk" of atrazine contamination. A recent report by conservationists analyzing agency monitoring data reveals that the agency has been ignoring the atrazine contamination problem, and that the monitoring is misleading and its regulation insufficient. The monitoring programs were not designed to find the biggest problems, the screening levels are too permissive, and the monitoring ignores more than 1,000 vulnerable watersheds.

Resources on Atrazine:

Atrazinelovers - Dr. Tyrone Hayes' web site informing the public about the dangers of atrazine

Hayes et al. 2006 - Pesticide Mixtures, Endocrine Disruption, and Amphibian Declines: Are We Underestimating the Impact

Hayes 2004 -There Is No Denying This: Defusing the Confusion about Atrazine

Harper's Magazine, August 2006 - US: It's Not Easy Being Green: Are Weed-Killers Turning Frogs into Hermaphrodites?

Innovations Report, February 2006 - Pesticide Combinations Imperil Frogs

Sierra Magazine, 2004 - A Frog Biologist Battles an Agrichemical Giant

from commondreams.org and here on WoWonder not so new research.


and....

Published on Thursday, August 27, 2009 by The Huffington Post Investigative Fund

Water Utilities Lack Proper Filters for Weed-Killer

by Danielle Ivory

Results from a federal drinking water monitoring program show that many public water companies are ineffective at removing a widely used weed-killer from their water supplies.

As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to notify the public about data showing that the herbicide atrazine has been found at levels above the federal safety limit in drinking water in at least four states. Atrazine has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union.

But the EPA’s data also reveals that many public water filtration systems are not removing the herbicide. In many places, atrazine levels in untreated water sources such as rivers directly match the levels that come out of the tap.

A carbon filter with granular activated carbon — in other words, a giant Brita-like filter — should absorb all or most of the atrazine. But the EPA’s atrazine monitoring data shows that many water utilities in the Corn Belt do not use carbon filtration. Many use rapid sand filters instead. They are cheaper and last longer, but are unable to remove organic compounds such as PCBs, phthalates, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides such as atrazine.

“Carbon filters might have to be replaced every couple of years whereas sand filters could last 20 to 30 years,” said Alan Roberson, director of security and regulatory affairs at the American Water Works Association, a non-profit organization representing water utilities.

To recover the cost of filtering atrazine, water companies in six states are preparing a lawsuit against the makers of atrazine, the Swiss company Syngenta.

When you compare the raw and finished water of an effective carbon filtration system, you see something like the chart below, which shows weekly levels of atrazine in river water and drinking water as measured last year in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Bowling Green added carbon filters to the water system in 2000. “We installed the filters to take care of taste and odor problems, but it [also] gets the atrazine out of there,” said Chad Johnson, assistant superintendent at the water utility. “These filters are expensive, though. Our new building cost about five million dollars.”

Every year, the utility replaces six of the 12 filter vessels at a cost of $126,000, Johnson said. He said the water plant had received $5 million in stimulus funds, which will be used to partially fund an $11 million project to install new membranes, which will remove nitrates and other chemicals from the water.

Atchison, Kan., is among water systems that do not have adequate filters in place. The chart shows weekly levels of atrazine in river water and drinking water as measured last year.

“I’ll be darned,” said Michael Matthews, the utilities director in Atchison, Kan., upon hearing that atrazine was barely being filtered from his drinking water. “That’s bad.”

Water plant managers said the economic downturn has made it even harder to convert to more effective filters. “Right now, we can’t afford anything,” said Lloyd Littrell of the Beloit, Kansas water plant, where rapid sand filters are used.

“It’s impossible to get atrazine out of the water with these filters. There’s no way to remove it,” he said. “But people need this water. We can’t just shut our doors and tell people to drink from the river.”

Stan Schafer of the Baxter Springs plant, where sand filters are used, said it was difficult to get funding for water cleanup even prior to the recession. “Shoot, I’d like another filter,” he said. “But they’re expensive. We did a $2.5 million update about three years ago and that system is falling apart.”

A civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech University, Marc Edwards, said that the cost of granular activated carbon treatment could double the total cost of drinking water treatment in some rural and poor communities.

“We are used to paying very little for tap water,” Edwards said. “It is hard for some rural communities to justify the higher costs of advanced treatment.”

“Most water systems don’t have the resources to buy a new filter,” said Kirk Leifheit, Assistant Chief of the Drinking Water Program at the Ohio EPA. “They are reporting to us needs in the billions.”

The EPA only monitors the river water and drinking water in about 150 water systems, so it is unknown whether other communities might be experiencing problems filtering atrazine. Washington, D.C., and Maryland, for example, are not part of that program.

However, atrazine is heavily used in the Maryland area, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The Washington Aqueduct, which treats water from the Potomac River for about 1 million in the DC area, does not filter for atrazine.

Water systems in 57 cities are preparing a lawsuit against the atrazine manufacturer, the Swiss company Syngenta, to recover the cost of filtering the chemical out of drinking water. Utilities in Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa are preparing to file suits in state courts. A hearing in Illinois is scheduled for Monday.

“Many of those water providers have incurred an enormous amount of expenses at a time when their tax base is shrinking,”said Stephen Tillery of the Korein Tillery law firm in St. Louis, who represents the water systems. “They’re cash strapped.”

Jere White, executive director of the Kansas City Corn Growers Association and the Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association, has been fighting atrazine regulation at both a local and national level since 1995. He has been vocal about opposing the class action lawsuit against Syngenta.

“The difference between them [the lawyers] and an ambulance chaser is the fact that with an ambulance chaser, you at least assume that there’s an ambulance and an injury,” White said in a phone interview.

White is also chairman of the Triazine Network which has been fighting atrazine regulation since 1995. The Network and the Corn Growers, according to White, receive regular funding from Syngenta — for travel, speaking engagements (including EPA hearings), and education, though he pointed out that it has never been earmarked specifically for “advocacy.” The Network, according to its website, “strives to keep the beneficial triazine herbicides available in the United States.”

© 2009 The Huffington Post Investigative Fund

Gyros....

Growth of Ocean ‘Garbage Patch’ Alarms Experts

Three-week Pacific voyage highlights ‘shocking’ amount of plastic debris

"Seeing that influence just floating out here in the middle of nowhere makes our power painfully obvious, and the consequences of the industrial age plain," she wrote. "It's not a pretty sight."

and more

Now you have to read the book, the documentary split away from original intentions, know that feeling of flight. The Shock Doctrine.

no Wonder

Tigger on his 'empty' dog house

Unnatural Wonders

Probably wondering if I actually believe most religious folk believe my sarcastic statements about them trashing the earth without remorse, it is sarcasm mentioned only to cause an effect similar to thought even if from anger. Here is an example of like efforts from the religious community which I applaud as wonderful work indeed!

News: Off the beaten path in coal country

By Patrick J. Kiger

July/August 2006 Issue

The Reverend John Rausch looked past a large sign that warned “No Unauthorized Entry Past This Point” and at the approaching pickup truck whose burly, hard-hat-wearing occupants seemed to be staring in his direction. “I wonder if they’re coal company security,” he said, a bit uneasily. The truck passed, and Rausch went back to surveying the barren, gouged-out plateau that had once been a tree-lined mountaintop. “It’s really something, isn’t it?” he asked the four photo-snapping sightseers tagging along on his “Mountaintop Removal Tour,” a whirlwind two-day excursion to take in the ravages of coal mining in the hollows of southeastern Kentucky. “It’s even more disturbing to realize that when you flip a switch and waste electricity, you may be contributing to taking down a mountain.”

The lanky, bearded, 61-year-old director of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia eschews clerical black in favor of Levi’s and sweaters. His lack of a mountain twang betrays his Philadelphia roots, but except for brief stints in Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, he’s spent most of his career in Appalachia as an environmental activist. In these parts, Rausch’s crusade against the coal industry isn’t always met with enthusiasm: He was once asked not to return to a local parish after he gave a guest sermon that irked a coal company executive in the congregation.

So in his current calling as a tour guide, Rausch hopes to lure well-meaning outsiders to see what happens when you blow up the tops of mountains to get at the coal inside. The concept of turning environmental devastation into tourism isn’t unique—Gray Line now offers a $35 “Hurricane Katrina: America’s Greatest Catastrophe” tour of New Orleans. But Rausch’s aim isn’t to indulge lurid curiosity. “The whole idea is to make people angry about what they see,” he explained. “That way, maybe they’ll go out and do something.” Everyone on his tour gets a pamphlet that he’s written on “care of creation,” a theological argument that includes quotes from Pope John Paul II on the sacred obligation to protect the environment. “It’s a part of the church’s teachings that’s often overlooked,” Rausch said. (A growing number of Protestant evangelicals have also embraced this concept, including several hundred ministers and professors who signed the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, which condemned environmental destruction as a form of sinfulness.)

As clouds of dust from mining sites swirled in the distance, Rausch assembled his latest tour group in the Wal-Mart parking lot in the small mining town of Hazard. “It’s the most convenient location for us to meet, but I tell everybody they’re absolutely forbidden to buy anything,” Rausch quipped. (Proponents of mountaintop removal have argued that it provides more flat land for building box stores.) The group included a social worker from North Carolina and a pair of Congregational ministers from Louisville, each of whom had donated $100 to spend the next 27 hours being shocked and awed.

After a lunch of vegetable soup and homemade banana cream pudding in the rectory of Our Mother of Good Counsel Church, everyone headed off for a high-speed drive down battered country roads. As a succession of 60-ton coal trucks passed by, Jeff Combs, a 25-year-old Eastern Kentucky University student, gave a quick lecture on the history of coal mining in Appalachia. The group stopped to snap photos of the rusting remains of an abandoned coal-washing plant while Combs, whose family has lived in the area since the 19th century, explained that his ancestors once owned this land. “My great-grandfather is buried out there, past the slurry pond,” he said.

The tour group spent the night at a monastery, then headed back into the hollows to meet locals whose homes had been damaged by mining company blasting. “My husband thought it was an earthquake, it was so bad,” explained a woman in her 60s, who added that her driveway and even the seals on her windows had been cracked by the explosions: “They shake your whole body! Turned my well water the color of tomato soup, too.” A Baptist minister recounted how his community had been flooded five times in an 18-month period, and how continuous exposure to dust from coal trucks had permanently damaged his health. “I only have 40 percent lung capacity now,” he said. “Every time I go to a doctor, he wants to know how close I am to the mining road. It’s three feet from my house.”

The last stop was Hazard’s small airport—built on a mountaintop removal site—where everyone took turns squeezing into a prop plane for an aerial tour of nearby mining sites. The sprawling expanse of rust-colored scars is precisely the sort of jaw-dropping sight that Rausch hopes will motivate visitors to think beyond coal. “Why not turn southeastern Kentucky into a center for developing alternative energy?” he asked. “That’d provide some of the economic opportunities that people here need.”

Rausch isn’t the only one who sees environmental tourism as a possible cure for Appalachia’s troubles; Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher has proposed spending $3 million on wildlife viewing stations to lure nature lovers to coal country’s denuded mountaintops. Rausch is skeptical. But as he led his band of anti-ecotourists around another flattened peak virtually devoid of vegetation, he made a surprising discovery. “Elk turds!” he exclaimed. “Who says we don’t have economic development here?”