[HN Gopher] 'Inert' ingredients in pesticides may be more toxic ...
___________________________________________________________________
'Inert' ingredients in pesticides may be more toxic to bees than
thought
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-12-10 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| kurthr wrote:
| The key is this: The "inert" label is a
| colloquial misnomer, though. As the U.S. Environmental
| Protection Agency notes, inerts aren't necessarily
| inactive or even nontoxic. In fact, pesticide users
| sometimes know very little about how inerts function in a
| pesticide formula. That's partly because they are
| regulated very differently than active ingredients.
| constantly wrote:
| Somewhat worse, depending on your perspective, is that inert
| ingredients are confidential business information so while EPA
| has a list of what inerts are in what pesticides, that list is
| not publicly shareable. So, you as a consumer or citizen don't
| even know what inerts are in the pesticides being used. Unless
| the manufacturer shares them, but they don't typically, because
| they're the proprietary information that separates Company A's
| generic pesticide using active ingredient X (plus confidential
| inerts) and Company B's generic pesticide using active
| ingredient X (plus their I'm sure very different inerts).
| mock-possum wrote:
| That's a good (if frustrating) clarification - I was
| immediately thinking, well they can't be all _that_ inert if
| they're having an effect!
| staplers wrote:
| Why would anyone believe a "pesticide" would be anything but
| harmful to almost all insects?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| in chemical engineering, there is a long and rigorous body of
| science on toxic and poisonous properties. When a chemical
| result gets close to a product, things diverge. When the
| products are profitable in some markets, things diverge even
| more.
|
| All that means to say -- "harmful" is very well studied. The
| design of the product on the market is not the same.
|
| People have blocked or regulated all kinds of new chemical
| products over centuries.. Product liability is a "third rail"
| of commerce politics. There are huge incentives to bury
| publications, news items, science studies and other things,
| that might bring financial liability to the makers of products
| on the market. Its a systemic property. Incentives of reward to
| discover, produce, distribute and market products is also a
| systemic property.
|
| There are multiple serious, moving works of popular science
| writing that do cross that third rail - Silent Spring by Rachel
| Carson is often cited.. there are more.
| staplers wrote:
| "People lie to make money" would have been more concise.
|
| Still doesn't address how adults can genuinely believe
| pesticides wouldn't be harmful to insects.
| parineum wrote:
| So, if I can identify one pesticide that doesn't harm all
| insects, we can answer why an adult could genuinely believe
| that.
|
| Is it your assertion that there are zero pesticides that
| don't harm all insects?
| tredre3 wrote:
| People will believe it isn't harmful to all insects because the
| manufacturer says it's only harmful to specific classes of
| insects.
|
| (Carefully crafted) Studies will confirm that.
|
| And the government tacitly endorses the claims (by the EPA
| approving its sale).
|
| What is the customer supposed to do? Doubt everything the
| manufacturer, scientists, and the government say? Ok, some
| doubt is healthy. But then then what?
|
| Should the customer test the chemical on all classes of insects
| himself? And what if the effects aren't immediately obvious (as
| is the case here)?
|
| I guess you're arguing for pesticide-free farming here, which
| is unsustainable for almost all farms.
| JeffSnazz wrote:
| > But then what?
|
| Presumably you could use techniques for discouraging pests we
| (the public) understand better. You can do this for any class
| of substance, though this isn't always possible (e.g. good
| luck replacing cancer medications with something over the
| counter). We've been farming for thousands of years; it's a
| little ridiculous to suggest there's no alternative to a
| chemical developed in the last century.
|
| Hell, just off the top of my head you can spray the plants
| with narrowly-targeted substances that are known to be human
| safe specifically tested against pollinators (e.g. you might
| use capsacin to discourage mammal consumption). You could
| also use natural predators to groom the crops. This is a
| well-documented and ancient technique, although I'm sure it's
| much more difficult to scale and has a lot of externalities.
| I.e. lean _into_ the existing ecological web rather than
| trying to make our own emaciated one which evidently isn 't
| self sufficient. And maybe we just use too many pesticides--
| we certainly produce far more food than we consume, even if
| we're not great at distributing it, perhaps taking some loss
| in the short term will prevent a catastrophic loss in the
| long term (I know, literally unimaginable to quarterly-
| oriented individuals).
|
| Ultimately, without some known alternative there's not much
| you can do aside from calling your representative to complain
| that we need our agencies to be more skeptical and to mandate
| making the production process public.
| computerdork wrote:
| Agreed. And while the articles focuses on bees, it's important
| to know that the insect population as a whole have been
| _severely_ hit over the past two decades (especially flying
| insects).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations
|
| It's shocking and really disturbing how big the decline is, and
| there is some evidence that this decline at least partially
| effects other parts of the ecosystem, as freshwater fish
| populations have great declined too.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I think someone messed up copying the title?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Fixed
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| If you bathe your land in pesticides, don't be surprised to find
| it eventually kills everything.
| senderista wrote:
| The real shocker here is that whole-pesticide testing wasn't
| required in the first place.
| zahma wrote:
| The biggest shock is that we still put the burden of proof on
| science to demonstrate the extent to which food chains are
| disrupted by isolated uses of pesticides, as if habitat
| fragmentation, global warming, land use change, pollution,
| water table pollution and change, overpopulation, etc. doesn't
| all tie in. We are so, so myopic.
|
| It's about time the burden of proof falls on chemical companies
| to show their products don't do such tremendous damage, instead
| of leaving it to be discovered and reported in already
| obliterated ecosystems.
| adrr wrote:
| Article is talking about a fungicide. Not an insecticide.
|
| > The new study exposed honeybees to two treatments: the isolated
| active ingredients in the fungicide Pristine, which is used to
| control fungal diseases in almonds and other crops, and the whole
| Pristine formulation, including inert ingredients. The results
| were quite surprising: The whole formulation impaired honeybees'
| memory, while the active ingredients alone did not.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Title currently says "pesticide", which includes both
| insecticides and fungicides. Did the title change from
| "insecticide"?
| calibas wrote:
| Herbicides and pesticides are actively harmful to bees. Even if
| chemicals in the herbicides aren't toxic to bees, you're still
| killing off the "weeds" that the bees feed upon. When there's
| less food and the bees have to travel further, they're more
| susceptible to parasites and disease.
|
| We can't just casually sever links in the food chain, then wonder
| why ecosystems are collapsing.
| derpiederpie wrote:
| Its time to prosecute the Scientists & Business people who
| privately gain from the public harm they do.
|
| It's insane to me that such actors are let off the hook regarding
| the millions or billions of damages they are liable for.
|
| Frankly, I understand why China executes white collar criminals--
|
| I wish more scientists responsible for developing toxic
| chemicals, and the businesspeople who pay them-- were prosecuted
| and handed capital sentences for their crimes against wildlife &
| humanity.
|
| Perhaps then-- by holding them responsible and making examples of
| them-- their future ilk would be responsible actors.
| parineum wrote:
| If "Scientists & Business" develop solutions that unknowingly
| do harm amd were approved by the FDA, who should be held
| responsible?
| autoexec wrote:
| We've seen example after example of "Scientists & Business"
| knowing full well that their products are harmful and doing
| everything they can to cover that fact up and prevent the
| public from learning the truth, and even examples where the
| FDA itself knew full well that the products are harmful and
| yet the products are allowed to continue to be sold.
|
| The entire system is broken and part of what is missing,
| perhaps the most important part, is accountability and
| meaningful consequences.
|
| Obviously, companies who were genuinely unaware that their
| products were harmful and who immediately recalled and ceased
| production of those products after finding out aren't the
| biggest problem, but they still show that the product safety
| testing practices of both the company and the FDA are
| inadequate.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It frustrates me when privacy prevents anyone discovering
| about a companies bad product.
|
| If a company has a list of buyers of their product, they
| should be able to hand that to healthcare providers and
| have those healthcare providers check medical records to
| see if, for example, everyone who uses this brand of toilet
| cleaner ends up getting arthritis 10 years later.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| If it's really unknowingly they shouldn't be held
| responsible. But we have plenty of examples where companies
| knew exactly what's going on and they covered it up for
| decades. See lead gas or tobacco. Or the food industry who
| pours sugar into everything. They know exactly that they are
| generating millions of diabetics.
| girvo wrote:
| The thing is, it seems they usually _do_ know. And we don't
| prosecute and handle that case yet. So the "unknowingly"
| seems to be the least of our worries.
| parineum wrote:
| Do they _usually_ know or are there just a handful of very
| high profile cases where they did?
|
| It seems like everyone's go to example of this is the oil
| industry and global warming and tobacco and cancer.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Literal poisons, designed as such, _may_ be harmful? I cannot
| sanction stupid newspeak hogwash like this. Is it not possible to
| openly say the truth anymore?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-10 23:00 UTC)