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Four out of five Americans are being exposed to a little-known chemical found in popular oat-based foods — including Cheerios and Quaker Oats — that is linked to reduced fertility, altered fetal growth, and delayed puberty. The Environmental Working Group published a study in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology on Thursday that found a staggering 80% of Americans tested positive for a harmful pesticide called chlormequat. The “highly toxic agricultural chemical” is federally allowed to be used on oats and other grains imported to the US, according to the EWG. When applied to oat and grain crops,...

London (AFP) – British wildlife groups and campaigners have hit out at government's plans to ditch legislation covering pesticide use, as part of a drive to remove EU laws after Brexit. The government in London said it will scratch 570 environmental laws from the statute book, after they were rolled over from Britain's time in the European Union. On Wednesday, popular wildlife television presenter Steve Backshall joined a chorus of opposition, warning that overturning laws on pesticides could have a deadly effect on bee populations and river pollution. In recent times increasing pesticide use has caused localised extinctions of bee...

A livestream by a Chinese influencer came to a tragic end, when she died after drinking a bottle of pesticide after being egged on by viewers. It all started on Oct 14, when the influencer from Hunan, China, known as Luo, uploaded a video on Douyin. She informed her 678,000 fans that it was "probably [her] last video", thanking them for their company and support. According to reports from Chinese media, Luo shared with her fans that she had been struggling with depression for some time, and previously spent two months in the hospital undergoing treatment. "My diagnosis is official,...

Parks are New Yorkers’ oasis. They’re where we escape the crowds, the din of traffic, and our often tiny apartments; where we play with our children, walk our pets, and relax in the sun. Parks should be a place where New Yorkers can relax and play without being exposed to dangerous chemicals. So why is a herbicide believed to cause cancer being sprayed in our parks? The New York City parks department is a prolific user of Roundup, a popular weedkiller sold by Monsanto. Yet research by the World Health Organization has linked the active chemical in Roundup, glyphosate, to...

Globalisation and increased movement between countries and continents means movement of agricultural pests is becoming more common. Global trade means global pests. Credit: CSIRO __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CSIRO scientists have confirmed the hybridisation of two of the world's major pest species, into a new and improved mega-pest. One of the pests, the cotton bollworm, is widespread in Africa, Asia and Europe and causes damage to over 100 crops, including corn, cotton, tomato and soybean. The damage and controlling the pest costs billions of dollars a year. It is extremely mobile and has developed resistance to all pesticides used against it. The other...

03/29/2017 Contact Information: U.S. EPA Media Relations (press@epa.gov) WASHINGTON -- Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide crucial to U.S. agriculture. “We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Pruitt. “By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.” “This is a welcome...

On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers. Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that colony collapse disorder was not the culprit — in that odd phenomenon, workers vanish as though raptured, leaving a living queen and young bees behind. Instead, the dead heaps signaled the killer was less mysterious, but no less devastating. The pattern matched acute pesticide poisoning. By one estimate, at a single apiary — Flowertown...

Areas of Miami, Florida, are now being sprayed with the insecticide naled in an attempt to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito — carrier of the zika virus. Naled, a potent neurotoxin that kills mosquitoes on contact, is perfectly safe, or so the Environmental Protection Agency insists, despite Puerto Rico’s rejection of its use to combat the spread of zika there — due to concerns about its safety.To keep naled airborne where it would be most effective, the agent is sprayed in very fine aerosol droplets — about two tablespoons can be dispersed to cover an area the equivalent of...

Latest Zika Info Lacking Balance | Presentation-R2L.org (Right 2 Life) Summary: Nobody should be careless about getting Zika. But allowing a panic to deflect attention from the most important issues is no help either. These are Microcephaly Kids. Their Moms probably didn’t have Zika. As you can see, they’re terrific people. I want to be with them. If God were to send me one, I would probably learn to “wag more, bark less” from them. The most highly regarded American reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, reports that while Zika has been associated with increased incidences of microcephaly births, there is little...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has refused to pay claims filed by two Idaho families who contend its pesticide treatment contaminated their crops and poisoned a cattle herd. Instead, USDA told the families to file a lawsuit — a costly endeavor that could bankrupt the farms and risk the $70 million potato pest eradication program in Idaho. The Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN) was discovered in 2006, threatening Idaho’s $900 million potato industry. The next year, the USDA began treating infected fields with methyl bromide. The treatment reduced the pest, but it was stopped in 2014 because of concerns from a...

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “noble” cause corruption. Documentation follows. From IceAgeNow - the American EPA has stunned observers, with a list of inert additives for pesticide formulations they intend to ban, which includes the noble gas Argon. Its hard to imagine a more inoffensive substance than Argon. As a noble gas, Argon is chemically inert – it participates in no chemical reactions whatsoever, except under exotic conditions – there are no known chemical compounds which can survive at room temperature which include Argon. Argon is not a greenhouse gas. But Argon is incredibly useful to...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian prosecutors said on Thursday they had detained a man of Iraqi nationality after a series of letters containing a nerve gas ingredient were sent to the prime minister's office and the U.S. and British embassies. A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office told a news conference the 45-year-old man was arrested late on Wednesday in the western Belgian town of Deinze. Two postal workers were taken to hospital after being exposed to the chemicals in the letters at mail depots. No one else was hurt by the 10 letters sent to a variety of targets, including...

Cats love catnip. Mosquitoes? Not so much. According to Science Daily, catnip repels mosquitoes more effectively than DEET. Grow it in your garden or apply undiluted catnip oil to the skin for up to two hours of protection.

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

Nicotine is bad for you and apparently it has the same poisonous effect on pests, getting scientists' attention for a potential alternative to traditional commercial pesticides. Tobacco and nicotine make one of the-hardest-to-get-rid-of vices of modern society – smoking, which can lead to lung cancer and early death. For hundreds of years now, tobacco leaves have been used on a small scale, as a natural organic pesticide, and as the growing concerns about health risk related to tobacco sales are harming tobacco farmers in some parts of the world, scientists looked for a new way of using this plant. Dr...

Over 1 million urge EPA to suspend use of pesticide harmful to bees, fix broken regulatory system (Washington, DC) Today, commercial beekeepers and environmental organizations filed an emergency legal petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend use of a pesticide that is linked to honey bee deaths, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, which specifies the pesticide clothianidin, is supported by over one million citizen petition signatures, targets the pesticide for its harmful impacts on honey bees. “EPA has an obligation to protect pollinators from the threat of pesticides,” said Jeff Anderson of California...

Scientists have been alarmed and puzzled by declines in bee populations in the United States and other parts of the world. They have suspected that pesticides are playing a part, but to date their experiments have yielded conflicting, ambiguous results. In Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that...

The Brand names include Havoc, Talon, Contrac, Maki, Ratimus and d-CON Mouse Pruf II. The EPA now is moving to curb widespread use of these rodenticides, starting next June. That move, however, could be short-circuited by a lawsuit filed by the multinational corporation the sells d-CON products. Pesticide manufacturers, applicators and health officials say controlling rats is an important public health goal because they can spread a number of diseases, including hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, salmonellosis and rat bite fever.

Odds are most supermarket strawberries come from California — that's where 90 percent of the berries are produced. And if the strawberries are not organic, they were likely grown in fumigated soil, which is creating a stir between scientists and regulators in California. The two groups recently faced off over the expected approval of a potentially dangerous pesticide. Currently, farmers use a fumigant called methyl bromide. But it is being phased out internationally because it damages the ozone layer. And the leading alternative — methyl iodide — has its own set of problems When the Environmental Protection Agency approved methyl...

LUCKNOW: SNIPPET: "The body of 36-year-old Suresh Gupta was found from the hotel near SGPGI in Mohanlalganj area on Saturday, they said, adding a bottle of pesticide was also recovered from the spot. Two suicide notes were also recovered."