USA lags behind EU, Brazil and China in banning harmful pesticides

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-usa-lags-eu-brazil-china.html

by QuickToBan • 7 years ago

225 68 7 years ago

oneplane3• 7 years ago

Because harmful pesticides are easy money and easy money trumps health. At least, that is what everybody thinks when looking at the USA.

ncmncm• 7 years ago

One expects the US to be behind the EU, a place generally more concerned with the welfare of its citizens than the US, where corporate profits are King.

But when we fall behind Brazil and China, too, alarm bells should be ringing -- if they weren't, already, over US infant mortality soaring past that in dozens of other countries, or life expectancy reverting to a persistent downward trend.

You don't get declining life expectancy without really concerted mismanagement and corruption at the top.

seanmcdirmid5• 7 years ago

China isn’t really a rule of law country, so they have the option of banning things without really banning them (the law can be on the books but enforced only very seductively that most people ignore it). I’m not sure about Brazil, but in general it is very difficult to compare a developed country with a developing one.

inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

in general it is very difficult to compare a developed country with a developing one.

I don't know about that. Is done all the time. Also, 'developing/developed' is a incredibly crude taxonomy with few useful contexts and a very fuzzy border.

jimclegg2• 7 years ago

China isn’t really a rule of law country

I don't know about that, slightly unrelated but I'm 4 times less likely to get murdered in China than in the USA.

The population seems to adhere to laws against harming fellow humans better than we do in the USA.

eunos• 7 years ago

the law can be on the books but enforced only very seductively that most people ignore it

I think the issue of enforcement should be separated to the issue of the spirit of the "rule of the law".

seanmcdirmid5• 7 years ago

Selectively, not seductively.

vkou• 7 years ago

so they have the option of banning things without really banning them

Anyone who spent more then 30 seconds observing motorists on a freeway highway will know that this sort of selective enforcement is not limited to China.

oscargrouch• 7 years ago

I’m not sure about Brazil, but in general it is very difficult to compare a developed country with a developing one.

The context for Brazil is mostly that it is a democracy from 1888 til nowadays, but with a shadow institutional period from the 60´s to the mid-eighties.

So the country had to rebuild it´s own institutions from the eighties til now, to serve a democracy instead of serving the wills of a dictatorship.

Now, its in a point of testing its institutional maturity, and the rule of law, by the ongoing crackdown on corruption and organized crime. A lot of big political figures from all sides (and executives) are in jail right now, and theres a current crackdown going on in the organized crime front.

But the big test right now is the current Brazilian government with its backwards policy. Will the organized institutions from the society, and the other powers besides the executive able to make a stand against going backwards?

Theres a big test going on in Brazil right now, if 'we' are able to pass this dangerous phase and still have the democratic institutions and balances in one piece, than i guess it will probably move foward and get stronger with time.

In this sense also, the US was lucky to have England as a cultural parent, because England was/is great in making solid institutions. From government to the academy.

The colonization process of the countries colonized by the spanish and the portugueses, were mostly a vampire-like kind of relation. Where they took everything they could, leaving a trail of exploitation and slavery behind.

The portuguese colonizers even used to forbid Brazil of the colonial/empire era to have a University, which we only manage to create the first one here in the 20´s.

Anyway, i guess the answer to the rule of law, is both; is "good enough for most things", and "we are getting there". Not something to be proud of, not something very advanced, but not bad either..

tcgv• 7 years ago

I’m not sure about Brazil

In Brazil most federal inspection agencies are under funded and short on staff, limiting their operations. Offering bribe to inspection agents is also very common but risky since the government has been pushing a campaign and reforms against systemic corruption for the past few years.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

One expects the US to be behind the EU, a place generally more concerned with the welfare of its citizens than the US, where corporate profits are King.

It's real easy to ban things that make it easier to farm when you don't got much farming.

Geimfari• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what you're referring to, the agricultural sector in Europe is rather strong. The US is the world's top exporter of food, but the Netherlands come second.

gtirloni• 7 years ago

In general, Brazil has been quite strict with controlling pesticides because we depend a lot on the rich countries to want to buy our products.

The current government, not so much. The president has appointed a Minister of Agriculture that is known as the "Poison Muse". We shall see how that goes but there's a tendency of conflating liberalism with not having any rules that is getting scary with the current administration (e.g. taxes are the system crushing entrepreneurs, traffic laws are a "fee industry", everybody should have a gun, etc)

QuickToBan2• 7 years ago

Such pesticides and other toxic chemicals not only cause cancer, but they also explain the increasing infertility in the West as explainable by germline damage in both men and women. This should worry you a lot. Please refer to:

[1] Assessment of Glyphosate Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of Pathologies and Sperm Epimutations: Generational Toxicology. (2019)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31011160

The transgenerational pathologies observed include prostate disease, obesity, kidney disease, ovarian disease, and parturition (birth) abnormalities. Epigenetic analysis of the F1, F2 and F3 generation sperm identified differential DNA methylation regions (DMRs). A number of DMR associated genes were identified and previously shown to be involved in pathologies. Therefore, we propose glyphosate can induce the transgenerational inheritance of disease and germline (e.g. sperm) epimutations. Observations suggest the generational toxicology of glyphosate needs to be considered in the disease etiology of future generations.

[2] Environmental toxicant induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of ovarian pathology and granulosa cell epigenome and transcriptome alterations: ancestral origins of polycystic ovarian syndrome and primary ovarian insuffiency. (2018)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30207508

[3] The epigenetic impacts of endocrine disruptors on female reproduction across generations. (2019)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31077281

pkaye2• 7 years ago

So what is the safer alternative to Glyphosate?

QuickToBan2• 7 years ago

Organic (natural) pesticides tend to be safer. Unfortunately, USDA has been doing a terrible job with their USDA Organic certification. It is firstly very expensive. Secondly, it is no guarantee that glyphosate is not present. This could be due to fraud or negligence. Third, it is subject to lobbying to legalize nasty synthetic pesticides as being Organic. The USDA needs to step up and do its job.

Meanwhile, I nevertheless advocate buying Organic. Use a warm solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in which to dissolve fruits like apples and others for 12-15 minutes. It helps dissolve a fair portion of the pesticides, but is not a substitute for buying Organic. Refer to https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2017/10/nahco3-aka-baking-s...

inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

Solar powered weeding robots, big greenhouses and indoor hydroponics. Apparently environment control is the largest use of energy in farming, so much so, that you can actually use less energy by growing under lights.

oneplane3• 7 years ago

There are plenty of alternatives, but none of them are easy money. They are in the order of slightly-less-easy-money all the way down to intense-changes-but-still-earn-well. That is also the problem, as any change that even costs a cent on the bottom line is a cultural no-no.

feld2• 7 years ago

Nothing. Don't listen to this guy. Glyphosate is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Anyone using the wrong terminology is a conspiracy theorist you can safely ignore.

shaki-dora• 7 years ago

"One study found that not using pesticides reduced crop yields by about 10%"[0]

That's not terribly bad. There are also communities of organic farmers working on methods to improve yields without pesticides. There is a lot still to be learned (and re-learned) about crop cycling, for example. Other ideas are mixed fields with different crops, new tilling protocols etc.

Some pesticides are also legal under different certification schemes. Sulfur, for example, is the most used pesticide in the EU. Pyrethroid is allowed under some schemes, and it's actually a drug approved for human use (lice), and therefore (and because it's rather old) thought to be safe at the far lower doses one is exposed to via the food chain.

The chart https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pflanzenschutzmittel#/media/Da... is also rather interesting, in that it shows highly diverging use of pesticides and fertilizers across EU countries. There is no definitive pattern here, with Sweden and the Netherlands as the extremes on opposite sides, two countries that are rather similar both in economics as well as climate. Spain/Italy/Portugal might be high because they have much larger shares of multi-year crops such as wine and olive trees, while yearly crops such as corn and wheat are less susceptible because the diseases die with the plants every year. OTOH, at least olives aren't fertilized I believe.

What's also interesting is the positive correlation between pesticide use and fertilizer use. I expected the opposite, i. e. farmers compensating for expected losses to disease with increased fertilizer and vice versa. This not happening may point at a cultural issue at play here, with some farmers choosing these tools excessively, or maybe a lack of knowledge of alternatives.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide#Benefits

leakybit• 7 years ago

too bad glyphosate isn't one of the chemicals listed in the article.

patient_zero• 7 years ago

Perhaps because it is not banned currently. It is scheduled to be banned in 2022 by the EU parliament.

wardogs• 7 years ago

Pesticides are the ultimate culprits that harm human and all biological life. Unfortunately things like plastic ban occupy mindshare. Unlike plastics pesticides like Glyphosate get 'locked' into the body --- meaning your body cannot wash them out through its usual means --- resulting in cancer and what not.

feld2• 7 years ago

Microplastics do not wash out of your body...

edit: also glyphosate is not a pesticide

beatgammit• 7 years ago

Glyphosate is absolutely a pesticide. It's an herbicide, which is a type of pesticide.

And AFAICT, glyphosate doesn't pose a significant risk to humans in the amounts people would normally be exposed to. It's really quite harmless. However, it can become more harmful when mixed with other chemicals, but honestly, the other chemicals are probably more harmful than it.

7952• 7 years ago

Is it really a zero sum game when two different issues are pitted against each other like this? Hopefully people will develop better intuition about other similar issues.

chewz• 7 years ago

All those people who worry about plastic straws while wearing cotton t-shirts.

https://organiccotton.org/oc/Cotton-general/Impact-of-cotton...

https://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/cotton_environmental...

driverdan• 7 years ago

Unlike plastics pesticides like Glyphosate get 'locked' into the body --- meaning your body cannot wash them out through its usual means --- resulting in cancer and what not.

This is utter nonsense. Glyphosate doesn't get "locked" into the body.

alkonaut• 7 years ago

US lags behind rest of world in X, due to political inertia.

Don’t wake me up please.

agacera• 7 years ago

Brazil's new administration already approved more than 160 pesticides in 6 months. So they are catching up quickly.

https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2019/05/2...

xvf22• 7 years ago

It's also conceivable that enforcement isn't as thorough. While China did eventually raid the factories responsible for CFC-11, it took the international community pinpointing where it was coming from.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44738952

USA lags behind EU, Brazil and China in banning harmful pesticides

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