Pesticide Action Network NEWS Advancing alternatives to pesticides worldwide • www.panna.org
Spring 2013
The Buzz Grows Louder
PAN Sues EPA to Protect Bees As Europe restricts use of pesticides harming bees, attention turns to U.S.
With your support, PAN and our allies have kept the pressure on EPA to protect bees. We helped file more than two million public comments and a legal petition with two dozen beekeepers — and yet the agency continues to drag its feet. Now we’re taking EPA to court. As other options waned, PAN, beekeepers and food safety organizations filed a lawsuit against the agency in March for its failure to take decisive action in the face of dramatic honey bee die-offs. With pressure mounting on all fronts, EPA will have to act soon.
Scientific evidence mounting Increasingly, scientific research points to a combination of factors causing bee declines— often called colony collapse disorder (CCD)—including nutrition, pathogens and pesticides. Based on the most recent studies, neonicotinoid insecticides are a critical factor, directly affecting bees by weakening their immune systems, impacting their brain function and making them more susceptible to other stresses. Neonicotinoids are a newer class of systemic insecticides that are absorbed by plants and transported throughout the plant’s vascular tissue, making the entire plant potentially toxic to insects. They first came into heavy use in the mid-2000s, at the same time beekeepers started observing widespread cases of colony losses. They are now the most widely used class of insecticides in the world. Our lawsuit comes on the heels of the most challenging season to date for California’s almond farmers, who produce 80% of the world’s almonds. Almonds are entirely reliant on bees for pollination and growers rely on beekeepers to bring billions of bees from across the country to their orchards. This year many beekeepers are reporting losses of more than 40%. The shortages have left many California almond growers without enough bees to support their crops.
Europe steps up for honey bees In April, Europe adopted continent-wide restrictions on use of neonicotinoids. Governments there have reacted to the emerging science and public pressure by placing increasing limitation on three pesticide products used on more than 20 million acres of mostly corn and canola: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. Pesticide corporations, especially Syngenta and Bayer, have not taken this lightly; they’ve mounted aggressive public relations campaigns, appeared on talk shows and paid for bogus economic analyses in an effort to keep their products on the market. continued on back page
Demonstrating in April at Parliament Square in London for the proposed European Union neonicotinoid ban: PAN UK director Keith Tyrell with Katherine Hamnett, long-time PAN supporter and a leading British fashion designer famous for campaigning on issues ranging from organic cotton to nuclear disarmament. Photo: Paul Lievens/PAN UK
Inside This Issue Midwest Mother p. 2 Actor Susan Clark p. 3 Going the Distance p. 3
A Midwest Mother Looks for Answers Crystal Rayamajhi grew up on a small dairy farm near Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Today she lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with her husband Manoj and infant daughter, and is pursuing graduate work in earth system science. Manoj is in the University of North Dakota nursing program. It was during a classmate’s presentation that Crystal first heard about Pesticide Action Network. A month later, she received a call from another friend asking if she was interested in joining PAN’s Drift Catcher air monitoring program. Unrelated to her graduate program, Crystal’s interest in the health impacts of pesticides stemmed from both her own research and her personal experience: her daughter was born with a tumor in her mouth. While it was successfully removed and proved benign, the tumor raised a lot of questions. She’d been very careful about eating healthfully during her pregnancy and had avoided even cold medicines. Yet Crystal has concerns about how chemicals may impact DNA during fetal development. She worries that by the time the science is fully certain of connections between pesticides and DNA damage, we will have passed birth defects along to generations of children. Curious to see if pesticides from nearby fields were drifting into the densely populated campus area where her family
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cannot know conclusively why my baby needed surgery on her third day after birth, but I am happy to work with PAN to prevent this from happening to other children.
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Crystal Rayamajhi
lives, in March Crystal joined 25 other volunteers learning to use the Drift Catcher. After attending a day-long training in Mahnomen, Minnesota, she was visited at home by PAN’s Midwest organizer Linda Wells and staff scientist Dr. Emily Marquez to be certified on the technology. They tested her skills with the equipment and helped her select the best locations and timing to document drift. Crystal and many other volunteers will also be working with PAN to sample their drinking water for atrazine and other harmful pesticides, feeding data to EPA as it reviews the widely used herbicide. To learn more about PAN’s Drift Catcher program, see www.panna.org/science/drift. on the web
The Science
for your conversations about pesticides Between 1975 and 2004, a 25% increase in new cases of childhood cancers was observed in the U.S. While it’s difficult to point to a single chemical as the cause of an illness, public health research suggests that cumulative impacts of chemical exposures can have significant effects on childhood disease. Examples from PAN’s recent report, A Generation in Jeopardy, include: • Childhood cancer risk is significantly higher among U.S. children who live in areas of high agricultural activity from birth to age 15. • Birth defect risk is higher among infants conceived between April and July, when elevated concentrations of the herbicide atrazine are found in surface water, according to a multi-year national review of USGS water data and CDC birth defect records. • Neuroblastoma, a nerve tissue cancer, is the most common cancer among infants. Risk of this cancer is higher among children whose parents report garden and home pesticide use, and among those whose fathers are landscapers or groundskeepers.
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Crystal Rayamajhi and Mack Ivers, a beginning farmer from Hendrum, Minnesota, learn to use the Drift Catcher. PAN invented the instrument to enable farmworkers and community members to document otherwise invisible pesticide exposure. The Drift Catcher is simple, affordable and scientifically robust. It samples air for laboratory analysis Photo: Linda Wells
Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2013
Decades of Dedication Actor Susan Clark and her late husband,
actor and athlete Alex Karras, first joined PAN more than two decades ago. Susan, known for her work for over thirty years in films and TV (including her role as Katherine on the 1980s sitcom Webster), is now starring in the play Habitat at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Susan has long been aware that the rise in illnesses in recent decades might be linked to toxins in the environment. Back in 1982, she heard PAN’s co-founder and first executive director, Monica Moore, give a lecture and “everything she said made a lot of sense.”
We crossed up a little hill and I suddenly felt like I’d been hit. I got very dizzy, my head started spinning, I lost my balance and went slowly down to my knees. “Oh my god,” I gasped, “What’s happening?” As she helped me up my landlady calmly said, “Oh, they’re spraying.” We walked to the top of the hill and there were huge trucks with giant sprays arching out. It could have been water but it was pesticides — herbicides or fungicides — which, I’m not sure. The smell was very sweet, almost syrupy, and revolting. Business as usual for potatoes destined for french fries. On another occasion they were spraying the potato fields and there were fishponds nearby, you know, where they put the baby fish to grow up. The wind direction changed one day and overnight there were thousands of fish belly-up.
Provide for a safe & sustainable food system
So I got in touch with Monica at PAN and told her “a lot of people up here are angry at being poisoned. What can we do?” I put Monica together with a young woman who’d started to organize, linking her with activists across Canada and in the U.S.
Susan has a step-grandson who is autistic, and one of Alex’s nephews has an autistic child. They grew up in the Midwest, and the fathers and grandfathers were raised in Gary, Indiana, a steel mill town. So what they were eating and breathing and drinking had all the toxic elements of that kind of heavy manufacturing. We all need to know if there is a connection, for future generations. It is so important for PAN supporters to work with children — children in schools, children after school. Show them how to grow a garden, let them taste the difference between foods that are junk and foods freshly grown. And PAN can guide us into asking questions and not accepting easy answers.
Read our extended conversation with Susan at www.panna.org/pan-conversation-susan-clark on the web
OUR MISSION• •Pesticide Action Network North America works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens’ action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.
Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2013
90 COUNTRIES
Join the PAN Sustainers Circle by pledging a monthly or quarterly donation. Pledging provides reliable funding and shows your commitment to a resilient and fair food system, grounded in science and rooted in our commitment to justice and equity. Pledge $10 a month or more, and we’ll thank you with honey from Nine-Acre Farm in New Jersey. Learn more at panna.org/Gift
Susan Clark is currently starring in the play “Habitat” at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Photo courtesy of Susan Clark
30 YEARS
Susan herself was exposed to pesticides in 1996 while on location on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, which is famous for its oysters, mussels and potatoes. She was staying at a bed and breakfast during production of the television series Emily of New Moon. One day, as she was out walking with her landlady, something dramatic happened.
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We’re just getting started in the U.S. As in Europe, we face significant opposition in the U.S. from the Big 6 pesticide manufacturers when trying to curb widespread use of their bee-harming products. And we know that litigation alone will not solve the problem. But in combination with a concerted public outcry and support from policymakers—as Europe has also taught us — litigation will give EPA no choice but to act.
What you can do Sign PAN’s petition urging Congress to press EPA for action to protect bees from pesticides. Go to www.panna.org/bees.
Write a letter to your local paper or find ways to organize in your community. Visit www.honeybeehaven.org to learn more. Create a bee haven in your yard. Visit www.honeybeehaven.org. Donate now to strengthen our fight for honey bees. Go to www.panna.org/donate. Together we can protect these vital pollinators. on the web
www.panna.org/bees
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merica’s beekeepers cannot survive for long with the toxic environment EPA has supported. Bee-toxic pesticides in dozens of widely used products, on top of many other stresses our industry faces, are killing our bees and threatening our livelihoods, crop pollination and honey production. It’s time for EPA to recognize the value of bees to our food system and agricultural economy.”
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Steve Ellis, owner of Old Mill Honey Co., Minnesota & California
Big thanks to PAN staff, interns and board who this spring raised PAN’s profile and more than $3,500 in the Oakland Running Festival. Board chair Jennifer Sokolove, staffer Matt Belli and intern Diane Hannigan completed the half marathon; staff members Emily Marquez and Devika Ghai ran the 5k. PAN supporters will soon have more opportunities to raise funds for PAN through sporting events. Stay tuned!
Photo: Janet Stephens
Thank you for going the distance for PAN!
After completing the marathon on March 24th, PAN runners Matt Belli, Emily Marquez and Diane Hannigan toast to a successful fundraiser with organic wine provided by Frey Vineyards, a PAN business supporter.
Connect Online 8 Sign up for Action Alerts and the GroundTruth blog at www.panna.org/subscribe. 8 Join us on Facebook and Twitter
our CFC number is 11437
PAN, 1611 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 1200 • Oakland, CA 94612 • 510.788.9020 • www.panna.org Printed with soy-based ink on New Leaf Reincarnation: 100% Recycled, 50% PCW, Processed Chlorine Free.