Chemicals

"Pesticides bring major benefits to modern agriculture, keeping dangerous bugs and fungi and pathogens at bay while boosting yields and making farming more efficient. But what about risks? Like any chemicals — manmade or not — pesticides can be bad for human health and ecosystems if they’re toxic enough and the amount that ends up in the environment is high enough. It’s often tough, however, to get a clear picture of the full array of problems a pesticide may cause."

"HINKLEY, Calif. -- Maneuvering his pickup through this Mojave Desert town, resident Daron Banks pointed at empty lot after empty lot."

"Home improvement chain Lowe's Cos Inc will stop selling a type of pesticide suspected of causing a decline in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, following a few U.S. retailers who have taken similar steps last year."

"U.S. consumer groups, scientists and food companies are testing substances ranging from breakfast cereal to breast milk for residues of the world's most widely used herbicide on rising concerns over its possible links to disease."

"An influential European scientific body said on Wednesday that a group of pesticides believed to contribute to mass deaths of honeybees is probably more damaging to ecosystems than previously thought and questioned whether the substances had a place in sustainable agriculture."

"The neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin is a likely contributor to monarch butterfly declines in North America, finds new research by a team from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Theirs is the first report of neonicotinoids affecting monarchs or any other butterflies."

"The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy will hold a legislative hearing next week to discuss the draft of a House bill to reform the nation’s toxic chemical laws."

"A remedy for a concentrated pool of solvents directly under the manufacturing site where at least 1,500 people still work may take years to find."

"New research from investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests that Corexit EC9500A, an oil-dispersal agent widely used in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, contributes to damage to epithelium cells within the lungs of humans and gills of marine creatures."

"Environmentalists are outraged that the Environmental Protection Agency is allowing an herbicide that contains glyphosate to be used in nine more states, despite growing concerns that the chemical probably causes cancer."