Toxic Earth | Task Force on Systemic Pesticides
Moderator’s
Note: The use of systemic pesticides
has expanded across the world including Europe where scientists are intensively
studying the effects of these toxic substances on wildlife and ecosystems.
According to a new report from a group of European scientists the impact of
pesticides on wildlife is alarming with specific concern for the “rapid decline
in inset and arthropod populations across Europe.”
According to the web site for the
European Task Force on Systemic Pesticides (TFSP), these toxic chemicals are
different from more conventional agri-chemicals because “unlike other
pesticides which remain on the surface of treated foliage, systemic pesticides
are taken up by the plant and transported to all the tissues (leaves, flowers,
roots and stems, as well as pollen and nectar).” This quality of pervasiveness,
as well as their cumulative persistence in the environment, is having a
disastrous impact on many species including beneficial insects like pollinators.
The most common systemic pesticides are
the increasingly controversial Neonicotinoids and Fipronil (neonics). According
to the report, these are a class of neuro-active, nicotine-based systemic
insecticides that were developed in 1991 and brought into commercial use in the
mid-1990s. Their most serious impact is growing evidence that these substances
are directly implicated in the collapse of honeybee colonies.
The European scientists explain how “[n]eonics
act on the information processing abilities of invertebrates, affecting
specific neural pathways that are different from vertebrates.” Furthermore, this
“makes them popular as broad-spectrum insecticides, as they are considered less
directly toxic to vertebrate species including humans.” This is a clear-cut
case of anthropocentrism.
The assessment also notes that systemic
insecticides “have become the most widely used group of insecticides globally,
with a market share now estimated at around 40% of the world market.”
Finally, the report also challenges some
of the myths perpetrated by the agro-chemical industries including the idea
that these are safer for non-targeted organisms – like the honeybee. The
scientific evidence suggests otherwise:
Neonicotinoids are still toxic even at very low doses. They have a high
persistence in soil and water, remaining in situ for months on average, and
this results in sustained and chronic exposure of non-target organisms, such as
invertebrates. Because they are relatively water-soluble, they run off into
aquatic habitats easily. Growing concern about their connection to bee colony
collapse disorder has led to restrictions on their use in EU Countries. Concern
about their impact on other non-target species including birds, has been
growing for the last five years.
I received this alert on the initiation
of a website to share the findings of this worldwide assessment of the
environmental impacts of systemic pesticides from Ian Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., Executive
Director of the Bioscience Resource Project in Ithaca, NY. Latham explains the
effort below, with the appropriate links.
The
Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impact of Systemic Pesticides on
Biodiversity and Ecosystems
Jonathan Latham |
Ithaca, NY | June 28, 2014
In 2009 a group of European scientists
from several disciplines convened amid growing scientific concern about
the rapid decline in insect and arthropod populations across Europe.
Their objective was to consider all
the possible causes of the decline from the 1950s to the
present time. This included the intensification of
agriculture with its accompanying loss of natural habitats and massive use
of pesticides and herbicides, the manifold increase in roads and
motorized traffic, climate change, continent-wide nocturnal light pollution and
other types of pollution and stress introduced by modernization.
During their analysis, using a range
of records and data sets, the group observed a significant escalation in
the decline across most species beginning in the 1990s. This began in
Western Europe, followed by Eastern and Southern Europe and presented
as massive collapses of different species, genera and families of
arthropods. These collapses additionally coincided
with the severe decline of populations of different insectivorous bird
species previously considered ‘common’ such as swallows, sparrows and
shrikes.
Without any a priori assumption
privileged, and on the basis of existing studies, numerous
observations in the field and extensive circumstantial evidence, the
group concluded that a new generation of pesticides, the persistent,
systemic and neurotoxic neonicotinoids, introduced in the mid 1990’s,
might be considered as one of the main causes of the escalation in
decline.
To test this, the Task Force on Systemic
Pesticides was established to set about a systematic meta-analysis of all
the available scientific studies of the effects of systemic
pesticides on biodiversity and ecosystem services with a focus
on pollinators and other non-target species.
The Link:
Jonathan Latham, PhD
Executive Director
The Bioscience Resource Project
Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
and
Skype: jonathanlatham2
Tel: 1-607-319-0279
"Good with Science"
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