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Report: “Weight of Evidence” Links Pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder

May 14, 2012 Comments off

Report: “Weight of Evidence” Links Pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder
Source: Pesticide Action Network

Earlier today, beekeepers and environmental health advocates released a report highlighting the link between a specific class of pesticides — neonicotinoids — and colony collapse disorder (CCD) and called on state and federal officials to use the evidence for action to protect honeybees. The report comes a day before the Assembly Agriculture Committee discusses a policy that would urge state environmental officials to create a clear timeline and plan for protecting pollinators in California.
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Pesticides and Honey Bees: State of the Science documents evidence that pesticides are a key factor in explaining honey bee declines, both directly and in tandem with two leading co-factors, pathogens and poor nutrition. These studies, in U.S. and in Europe, have shown that small amounts of neonicotinoids—both alone and in combination with other pesticides—can cause impaired communication, disorientation, decreased longevity, suppressed immunity and disruption of brood cycles in honeybees.

Neonicotinoids are a relatively new class of systemic, neurotoxic pesticides that are known to be particularly toxic to honeybees and have rapidly taken over the global insecticide market since their introduction in the 1990s. Neonicotinoids (like imidacloprid and its successor product clothianidin) are used as seed treatments in hundreds of crops from corn to almonds. These products can persist for years in the soil, and, as systemics, permeate the plants to which they are applied to be expressed as pollen, nectar and guttation droplets (water exuded from plants). Honeybee exposure to this class of pesticides is widespread and in the U.S. the rate of seed treatment with clothianidin increased five-fold (0.25 > 1.25 mg/seed) around the same time that CCD symptoms were first reported in the U.S.

Pesticide corporations, including Bayer, have attempted to discredit dozens of independent studies evaluating the impacts of neonicotinoids in the last few years. At the same time, EPA allowed Bayer to continue selling neonicotinoid products even as the agency’s scientists discredited the experiments the pesticide corporation submitted as part of the pesticide’s approval.

+ Full Report (PDF)

Categories: ecology, environment, Pesticide Action Network, science
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