Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/pesticides/)
The maker of a popular flea and tick collar did not report thousands of adverse incidents to federal authorities as required until after an investigation by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting (Investigate Midwest) and USA TODAY was published.
In summer 2020, a federal court ruled the EPA showed too much deference to Bayer when it approved the company’s dicamba herbicide. This invalidated the approval. But, weeks later, Bayer began working the EPA again, according to newly obtained emails.
Although President Joe Biden has promised to limit people’s exposure to “dangerous chemicals and pesticides,” his administration has defended several actions by the Trump administration that generally deregulated pesticides.
More than a decade ago, nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council petitioned the EPA to ban the use of a pesticide called tetrachlorvinphos in pet products like flea and tick collars. The organization cited studies showing that the chemical, a possible carcinogen, had been linked to brain and nerve damage in children.
After looking at the facts, anyone with half a brain would say the pesticide chlorpyrifos has no place in agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency first registered the Dow Chemical and DuPont concoction way back in 1965 to kill bugs on a host of crops from corn and soybeans to fruit and nut trees, broccoli, cauliflower, cranberries and Brussels sprouts. And for good measure it was also heavily applied on golf courses.
We now have an admission of guilt from EPA that it wrongly issued 2018 dicamba registrations for Bayer's XtendiMax herbicide, BASF's Engenia herbicide and Corteva's FeXapan herbicide. New acting assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said as much to EPA staffers in an internal e-mail on March 10 that read in part:
The pesticides glyphosate and dicamba, both in products produced by Bayer (formerly Monsanto) have made headlines in the past year as lawsuits mount against the company for damages from these products.
Seresto, one of the most popular flea and tick collars in the country, has been linked to hundreds of pet deaths, tens of thousands of injured animals and hundreds of harmed humans, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents show.
Yet the EPA has done nothing to inform the public of the risks.
In late July 2019, a group of migrant farmworkers from south Texas was working in a cornfield in DeWitt County, Ill., when suddenly a crop duster flew overhead, spraying them with pesticides. Panicked, the crew, which included teenagers and a pregnant woman, ran off the field with clothes doused in pesticides. Their eyes and throats burned and some had trouble breathing.
Honeybee colonies' average yearly production has dropped 30 percent since 1995.