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Authors: E. G. Vallianatos
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from forming their lifesaving hard cover known as an exoskeleton. This insecticide, Ciba-Geigy figured, would have to be sprayed on cotton fields at least ten times per growing season.
According to Norman Cook, the same EPA ecologist who defended honeybees, the chemical was extremely toxic to aquatic invertebrates in amounts of less than 100 parts per trillion . Equally troubling, the toxin was also extremely persistent in the environment with a half-life of 6.2 years in pond sediments; bluegill sunfish absorb this poison at a rate of more than 100,000 times its concentration in water.
Cook told Ciba-Geigy to “drop further development of this compound since the results to date show potentially devastating hazards to nontargets” such as beneficial insects and other animals. Cook also alerted other EPA scientists to keep their eyes open for CGA-112913 and similarly dangerous insecticides. “The Dimilin-like and DDT-like qualities of this [Ciba-Geigy] chemical cannot be overemphasized,” he wrote. 13
Despite this history, the EPA approved and registered CGA under the name chlorfluazuron. To say I was astonished by this act would be an understatement. Despite what I had seen, I wanted to believe there was some wisdom left among decision makers in the EPA. I was wrong.
Make no mistake: the “nontarget” costs of spraying lethal poisons in the environment are often extraordinarily high. In a cotton field, everything but the bugs feeding on cotton is a “nontarget”: that includes not only birds, beneficial insects, other crops, and wildlife but also farmers, farmworkers, and their children. In fact, poisoning of “nontargets” continues to take place in thousands of streams, rivers, forests, and farms when the annual ritual of billions of pounds of toxic sprays hit the shining surface of the water and the green carpet of the land.
Despite “alarming” evidence that farm poisons get into our soil and disrupt or kill the very microorganisms responsible for making the soil fertile, official agriculture remains silent on this tragedy.
“It is important to consider that in intensive agriculture such as the Midwestern corn/soybean production system, heavy applications of chemical pesticides and fertilizers are made to the same land year after year,” Rosmarie von Rumker, an EPA consultant, has pointed out. “Most of the chemicals remain in the upper 1–3 inches of topsoil, and their routes and rates of degradation under field conditions are often not known. It is surprising and somewhat alarming how little information is available on the individual or collective effects of these chemicals on the soil microflora and -fauna [microplants and microanimals in the soil] and on the long-term fertility of the topsoil, one of our most important resources.” 14
I remember an EPA colleague telling me that midwestern farmers had made their fertile land into a biological desert, the soil turned into nothing but a conduit to the corn and soybean seeds for synthetic fertilizers, insect sprays, and weed killers. Yet my colleague was no friend of organic farming; he mocked efforts to grow food without pesticides. He rose in the EPA ranks from the moment of its inception in December 1970 until his retirement more than thirty years later. His organization justified the use of pesticides in America, always siding with the manufacturers of pesticides, always concluding there was no way America could feed itself and the world without toxic sprays.
Although the EPA agreed to fund Rosmarie von Rumker and Sharon Hart and other university researchers who explored the issues of agricultural production and pesticides, the agency did little to publicize the data on the harmful effects of pesticides that were bulging from its files. In the end, senior EPA officials remained unwilling to help put an end to decades of covering up for agribusiness.
Conclusion
Better Living and a Healthier Natural World Through Small Family Farms
In a
According to Norman Cook, the same EPA ecologist who defended honeybees, the chemical was extremely toxic to aquatic invertebrates in amounts of less than 100 parts per trillion . Equally troubling, the toxin was also extremely persistent in the environment with a half-life of 6.2 years in pond sediments; bluegill sunfish absorb this poison at a rate of more than 100,000 times its concentration in water.
Cook told Ciba-Geigy to “drop further development of this compound since the results to date show potentially devastating hazards to nontargets” such as beneficial insects and other animals. Cook also alerted other EPA scientists to keep their eyes open for CGA-112913 and similarly dangerous insecticides. “The Dimilin-like and DDT-like qualities of this [Ciba-Geigy] chemical cannot be overemphasized,” he wrote. 13
Despite this history, the EPA approved and registered CGA under the name chlorfluazuron. To say I was astonished by this act would be an understatement. Despite what I had seen, I wanted to believe there was some wisdom left among decision makers in the EPA. I was wrong.
Make no mistake: the “nontarget” costs of spraying lethal poisons in the environment are often extraordinarily high. In a cotton field, everything but the bugs feeding on cotton is a “nontarget”: that includes not only birds, beneficial insects, other crops, and wildlife but also farmers, farmworkers, and their children. In fact, poisoning of “nontargets” continues to take place in thousands of streams, rivers, forests, and farms when the annual ritual of billions of pounds of toxic sprays hit the shining surface of the water and the green carpet of the land.
Despite “alarming” evidence that farm poisons get into our soil and disrupt or kill the very microorganisms responsible for making the soil fertile, official agriculture remains silent on this tragedy.
“It is important to consider that in intensive agriculture such as the Midwestern corn/soybean production system, heavy applications of chemical pesticides and fertilizers are made to the same land year after year,” Rosmarie von Rumker, an EPA consultant, has pointed out. “Most of the chemicals remain in the upper 1–3 inches of topsoil, and their routes and rates of degradation under field conditions are often not known. It is surprising and somewhat alarming how little information is available on the individual or collective effects of these chemicals on the soil microflora and -fauna [microplants and microanimals in the soil] and on the long-term fertility of the topsoil, one of our most important resources.” 14
I remember an EPA colleague telling me that midwestern farmers had made their fertile land into a biological desert, the soil turned into nothing but a conduit to the corn and soybean seeds for synthetic fertilizers, insect sprays, and weed killers. Yet my colleague was no friend of organic farming; he mocked efforts to grow food without pesticides. He rose in the EPA ranks from the moment of its inception in December 1970 until his retirement more than thirty years later. His organization justified the use of pesticides in America, always siding with the manufacturers of pesticides, always concluding there was no way America could feed itself and the world without toxic sprays.
Although the EPA agreed to fund Rosmarie von Rumker and Sharon Hart and other university researchers who explored the issues of agricultural production and pesticides, the agency did little to publicize the data on the harmful effects of pesticides that were bulging from its files. In the end, senior EPA officials remained unwilling to help put an end to decades of covering up for agribusiness.
Conclusion
Better Living and a Healthier Natural World Through Small Family Farms
In a
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