It’s been five years since SafeLawns blew the whistle on the fact that a group of pesticides was responsible for the sudden die-off of bees known as colony collapse disorder. We were threatened with lawsuits and endured a smear campaign, but ultimately our bee story has been picked up by thousands of other media outlets.

It’s been a year since America’s top bee scientist finally agreed with us and all the other organizations that had reached the conclusion that these pesticides — synthetic nicotines known as imidacloprid and clothianidin — were killing bees. This was the “smoking gun” research that SHOULD have compelled our government to finally take action to protect the bees once and for all.

But nothing. Several films have been produced to draw attention to the matter. Bee keepers have visited Washington, D.C., to beg the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Department of Agriculture to take action. But still nothing.

Most recently on Jan. 3 a new study out of Purdue University signed, sealed and delivered the bee science. In lay terms, the scientists found that bees get poisoned: 1) when the synthetic pesticides are applied to fields and lawns; 2) when the pesticides wind up in the pollen of dandelions and other flowers in and around the fields and lawns; and 3) when bees drink water contaminated by pesticides. In other words, if the pesticides are applied, the bees will find them.

The national pesticide group Beyond Pesticides is trying to get the word out about this new study. Mother Jones and its excellent environmental writer, Tom Philpott, is also staying on top of the case:
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/purdue-study-implicates-bayer-pesticide-bee-die-offs. Meanwhile, as Philpott reports, the manufacturer of these pesticides, Bayer, continues to accumulate record sales.

This comes down to the health of our food system and planet vs. the health of Bayer’s bottom line. Five years ago our first headline asked: “Is Bayer Killing the Bees?” The answer has proven to be yes.

The government is still sitting idly by . . . but we can’t let it.

In this, a campaign year, ask all your elected officials if they understand colony collapse disorder and the fact that bees are necessary for at least a third of the meals we consume. Take a few minutes of your own time to send a comment to this link: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0865-0001.

Better still, contact EPA’s Jim Jones at Jones.jim@epa.gov or call him at 1-202-564-2902 to demand that the agency bans synthetic nicotine pesticides — just like they did years ago in France, Germany and several other countries. If enough of you call or email, you will get noticed.

You can make a difference.

The author of this note, for now, shall remain anonymous to protect her from the potential wrath of her neighbors and co-workers. But we applaud her for speaking out in the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that she can. It’s what we all need to do, isn’t it?

Hello Paul,
I give you a lot of credit for what you do. After I got cancer this June I was and am still stunned by our society and the use of pesticides. I know in my heart that some environmental toxin caused my cancer. I had always gotten my period every 28 days up until the age of 46. I skipped a month in March 2010 and then it was quite heavy. I cried, “Oh, no, I am in menopause,” but then my cycles resumed every 28 days until March or April came again in 2011. Menopause is not seasonal and March and April are when the lawn chemical trucks drive up and down the streets.

Well, my husband is a simple man, but he has a saying that I do like: “hell is only half full.” I said this before cancer and always taught my kids this as well. When you’re diagnosed with cancer you’re so shocked and scared of dying . . . and you don’t want to stand before God and have him ask: “I gave you this knowledge and this gift and what did you do with it?”

Jones, who has been at the EPA for 30 years, has steadfastly defended the agency against assertions from its own scientists that it’s not doing enough to protect the public from pesticide toxicity.

“I feel very comfortable for the American public that we will have assured the safety of pesticides for infants and children, for senior citizens, for the American public at large,” he recently told Marketplace.

His acting appointment would only become permanent with approval of the U.S. Senate and many political strategists believe the Obama administration may wait until after next year’s election before bringing a potentially contentious fight forward.

That’s ashame, though. The President, if he were forward thinking, could score many high-profile points with the business community by getting rid of someone like Jones, who has clearly operated with blinders on for far too long.

And lawn stories often make us chuckle. In Framingham, Mass., for example, a man was arrested after allegedly chasing women with his lawn edger. And from the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print New York Times comes this riveting piece about a severed foot found on a lawn in Queens. It was a bear foot (b-e-a-r) as opposed to a bare child’s foot as was originally suspected.

Some lawn stories are not without their outright tragedies. Yesterday’s San Francisco newspaper ran this story about a 41-year-old man who drove his lawn mower into the pool and drowned to death: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/07/state/n062900S26.DTL. Apparently he couldn’t swim. In a gruesomely sad story, a 19-year-old toddler was killed last Friday when his grandmother ran over him with a lawn mower. She was using the machine to pull a wagon when the boy fell out and became caught up in a swirling mower blade. Why the mower blade was engaged with a child around is anyone’s guess.

I wish I could say these were isolated incidents, but death or injury from mowing is far more common than you might guess — just as poisoning by lawn pesticides and fertilizers is something that happens daily without notice. It’s collateral damage from an at-all-cost nationwide obsession with keeping-up-with-the Joneses. It’s a dangerous silence that lurks loudly in every suburban neighborhood on Saturday mornings.

And, so, energized from a week away, we’ll get back to work. We’ll keep bringing attention to the atrocity of lawn pesticide abuse, just as we celebrate the slow-but-sure movement to make our lawns, playgrounds and playing fields safer. We congratulate Kerry Bokenfohr, a mom who led a 10-year fight to have lawn chemicals banned around schools in her western Canadian town of Vernon: http://www.bclocalnews.com/community/133272348.html. We stand in spirit with our friends at the Canadian Cancer Society today as it works to move forward with a full provincial ban in British Columbia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/872964/media-advisory-groups-ask-why-risk-unnecessary-exposure-to-cosmetic-pesticides-when-there-is-a-threat-to-health. As I headed off on vacation last week, I wore their “I Fight Cancer” T-Shirt in solidarity and must have been asked a dozen times why the American Cancer Society doesn’t take the same aggressive stance against lawn and garden products that say “Caution,” “Warning,” or “Danger” and “Keep out of the Reach of Children” on the packages.

We can’t be everywhere at once. And sometimes we can’t even be on this blog.

But thanks for all the many notes of concern. We’re back, we’re fine and we’re more ready than ever to keeping leading the charge.

Students from an Ohio middle school were evacuated earlier this month when chemical weed killers were applied to nearby fields. Ironically, the children were evacuated to a site near the sprayed fields that made at least 47 children ill (GANNETT PHOTO).

When I arrived home today after another whirlwind week on the road, the in-box was abuzz with news of a a tragic event in Ohio that poisoned 47 young schoolchildren. Six were hospitalized and lawyers for a slew of parents are circling the wagons in the midst of the incident that occurred back on Oct. 11.

I’m not quite sure how it slipped under our radar until now, but anytime children wind up sick after an application of a chemical designed to kill dandelions, an enduring question must be asked: “How the hell can we keep allowing these products anywhere near our kids?”

The story in Ohio, chronicled in local papers (http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/chemical-spray-spurs-middle-school-evacuation-students-taken-to-hospital-1267163.html), was apparently brought on by a set of atmospheric and wind conditions that caused the weed-killer known as Momentum (containing 2,4-D and two other toxic ingredients) to drift directly into the school while windows were open. By the time the first student alerted an adult to the smell, 46 others were already sick with nausea, blurred vision, headaches and dizziness — which is exactly what the material safety data sheet (MSDS) says can happen.

The reality is that this sort of affliction happens EVERY SINGLE DAY, SEVERAL THOUSANDS TIMES A DAY somewhere in the United States — but because it doesn’t happen to a group of children all at once, it doesn’t make the news. Say, for instance, that your neighbor is applying weed killers to his or her lawn and your child breathes it in. He or she gets a tummy ache, or a headache, and you, as a parent, have no idea why your child is sick. It’s probably your neighbor’s lawn chemicals.

There was no indication that the pesticide company did anything illegal in this case, or applied too much material. Maybe the company should have told the school to close the windows; maybe the company could have applied the material when the 820 students weren’t in school and these 47 kids wouldn’t have gotten sick.

But the main point here is that day to day to day across the U.S. these products are applied by professionals and homeowners; kids breath them in and kids get sick. In this Ohio incident 6 percent of the 820 students were made ill; isn’t that 6 percent too many?

Some scientific reports estimate that 1 in 6 children get sick from even incidental exposure to pesticides. It’s just not reasonable to shut every window and keep every child in the neighborhood inside when lawns are being treated; the only reasonable thing to do is to ban the products like they’ve done in Canada.

I can’t say I’m happy this event happened; if my student were in that school, I’d be justifiably irate just as I’m sure many of the parents were.

But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that this event NEEDS TO BE USED AS EVIDENCE that lawn chemicals to kill weeds and insects have no place on our parks and playgrounds, our playing fields and even our own back yards. More than 80 percent of the nation in Canada has already made this decision — chemicals used for cosmetic purposes of killing weeds are illegal — and it’s time for the United States to follow suit.

We need to take the Child Safe Playing Fields Act in New York and, at a minimum, make it national legislation. Call your state and nationally elected officials and tell them you don’t want lawn chemicals anywhere near your children. Send them a link to this story; make your voice heard!

Theo Ormrod Davis, 15, won a prestigious photography honor in England for this photo of a dandelion.

MY DAUGHTER, AIMEE, WILL PROUDLY TELL YOU THAT SHE’S four and three-quarters now, and not just four and a half. Upon this momentous birthday occasion my wife decided it was time to move beyond the picture books with our nightly story-telling and, as has probably been true in millions of homes, Charlotte’s Web was her first choice as a “big girl” book.

They had been reading a chapter a night with regularity for five bedtimes when, on the sixth night, my wife shrieked my name so loudly it could be heard across the house. When I sprang from my Red Sox game to see what was the matter, my wife read the passage aloud from Page 43 of E.B. White’s timeless classic.

“In early summer there are plenty of things for a child to eat and drink and suck and chew. Dandelion stems are full of milk, clover heads are loaded with nectar . . . everywhere you look is life; even the little ball of spit on the weed stalk, if you it apart, has a green worm inside it.”

“I thought you’d appreciate that,” she said. “I guess dandelions weren’t seen as bad guys back then.”

The next day I saw this item from a newspaper in England:
http://www.westsussextoday.co.uk/news/teenager_s_photograph_wins_him_a_top_award_1_3090215. Taken by a 15-year-old photographer, the photograph of a dandelion, above, won a prestigious honor.

“I like to photograph less obvious aspects of nature, such as detailed studies of lacewings, dewdrops, frost patterns,” said the boy.

Imagine if that boy lived at most homes in my neighborhood. He wouldn’t have had any dandelions to photograph.

Imagine living back in 1952 when White penned his masterpiece about a spider and a pig. Weed ‘n feed was advertised in Horticulture magazine and Ladies Home Journal, but obviously hadn’t made its way to the remote farm in Maine where the author’s niece cavorted with farm critters.

I can imagine that farm life, because my childhood in Maine in the 1960s was no different than White’s surroundings of the 1950s.

On the eve of the 60th anniversary of Charlotte’s Web, I can think of no greater way to honor the book than to help children understand that dandelion stems are still full of milk, clover heads are still loaded with nectar . . . everywhere you look is still full of life.

We’ve been at this now for more than five years. As one of the first organizations in North America to go public with the notion that a class of pesticides made from synthetic nicotine were responsible for the sudden bee death known as colony collapse disorder, we were threatened legally, verbally and, yes, even physically.

These days it’s widely accepted that imidacloprid and clothianidin are responsible for the unprecedented wipeout of 30-50 percent of the world’s beehives each year, yet our Environmental Protection Agency appalling does nothing. Movies have been made about the subject, the EPA admitted that clothianidin never should have been registered in the first place and the government’s own scientist has come forward with a smoking gun study.

And nothing. As we head toward winter, our food supply continues to hang in the balance.

Our friend, Joe Speeney, from New Jersey send along this video from Dan Rather that offers one of the best overviews of the subject that I’ve seen: http://vimeo.com/29419200. Rather, as you’ll see, is well past his prime as he approaches 80 next month — but it’s gratifying to know that he still likes to dig for the right stories. The former CBS news anchor also has this piece on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-rather/honeybees-pesticides-food-chain-_b_975934.html?ir=Food.

A petition launched late last year at Change.org generated more than 13,700 signatures, but — like everything else — failed to compel our government to take action.

It’s unlikely a Internet report from an 80-year-old news anchor will change anything, either. But everyone can make a difference this autumn by avoiding all grub-killing products that include imidacloprid or clothianidin. If you’re really motivated, send a link to this blog to your elected officials and ask them to get involved. If you’re bold, call EPA leader Lisa Jackson herself: 202-564-4700.

How long are we going to let this go on?

Kathryn Gilje helped lead the efforts against methyl iodide in California.

By Kathryn Gilje

I was born 20 miles from the Canadian border, as the crow flies. Childhood runs for a ‘mack’ and regular trips to the border were common. But this week, my Canadian journey was quite different: to Ottawa, seat of the Canadian government, and to a convergence of over 50 pesticide regulators from 30 countries, the global CEO of the pesticide industry, grower organizations, and PAN, the Pesticide Action Network.

I had the honor of representing PAN at the first International Gathering of Heads of Pesticide Regulatory Authorities, convened by the Canadian government. The meeting offered a rare opportunity to think outside the box with pesticide rulemakers from around the world.

In my plenary presentation to the delegates, I reinforced PAN’s global message: to protect human health and the environment, we need a paradigm shift that runs all the way down. Effective (and enforced) pesticide rules must be paired with robust, proactive investment in agroecology — the science and practice of sustainable agriculture.

ON-THE-GROUND EVIDENCE OF HARM

The first point of evidence came from PAN International’s global report, Communities in Peril, which documents that 30 years of pesticide rules alone just haven’t worked. Key findings:

Of the 2,200 people interviewed in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the vast majority couldn’t afford or find effective equipment that protected them from pesticide exposure.

More than 1/3 of those interviewed had experienced immediate pesticide poisoning symptoms, and were worried about chronic health problems.

In California and the U.S., pesticides are in the air in levels that concern both communities and EPA officials.

I shared with delegates PAN’s firm belief that we need a new food system, and that the building blocks for this change already exist. We need a food system that connects, rather than alienates. One that offers resiliency and strength in the face of climate change and resource shortages. One that provides solid returns for communities. And one that grows healthy soil and yes, indeed: good food. Around the world.

Science and practice from around the world reinforces this truth: we need to collectively jump off the pesticide treadmill, and invest in innovative, place-based food and farming. Bottom line: we need to wrestle the farmers’ toolbox out of Monsanto, et. al’s hands.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Some tidbits from the Ottawa meeting that offered me hope:

100% IPM: The new European Commission (EC) law on pesticides ends the use of many highly hazardous products. All farmers across the European Union will adopt integrated management by 2014.

Bees and wild pollinators: the group was alive with scientists and policymakers seriously worried for bees, and staying up late at night to analyze the best science that can help us find a fix.

Global attention is building for a real green revolution: We know this from the ground, but indeed, Mark Davis, the global UN Food and Agriculture Organization representative in attendance presented FAO’s framework for this movement – Save and Grow.

Truth be told, though, as I heard the struggles of government leaders from around the world, the challenges we face became both crystal clear and overwhelming. This threat is, though, also our opportunity. The health of our people, future generations and the ecosystems upon which we all depend are on the line.

The regulatory process is slow, and the pesticide industry is fierce and funded. It will take us all, from each corner of the world, working together (yes, even the pesticide regulators!) to change course. PAN will keep on being there, from Penang to Argentina, from Illinois to Ottawa. And our strength is in the science, and in the powerful push of each of you.

Kathryn Gilje is Co–Executive Director at Pesticide Action Network North America (PAN). Kathryn’s background is community organizing, organizational development and agricultural science.