Chemical Controversies
Pesticides are substances that prevent, destroy, repel, or reduce the severity of pests. Pests are living things that occur where they are not wanted or that cause damage to humans, crops, or animals. Pests can be insects, rodents, unwanted plants, bacteria, viruses, or different types of fungus. Pesticides can vary in how toxic they are to humans and the environment. Some are persistent in the environment, animals, and birds, lasting for years; others break down soon after they are released. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants licenses, or registrations, to pesticides that it has found do not pose unreasonable risks to human health and the environment; it has registered at least 865 pesticides, which are used in thousands of pesticide products.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
First case of dicamba, 2,4-D herbicide resistance detected in hard-to-control Palmer amaranth weed population
Kansas State University (KSU) weed scientists have confirmed a Palmer amaranth population that resists the synthetic auxin (Group 4) herbicides ...
Roundup lawsuit: Plaintiff takes the stand against Monsanto in first federal glyphosate-cancer trial
Edwin Hardeman, the first person to challenge Monsanto’s Roundup in a federal trial, testified [March 5] that he sprayed the ...
RNA-based pesticides are coming, but how will they affect the ecosystem?
New research shows how a new kind of genetically engineered pesticide moves through and degrades in the soil. This new generation ...
Podcast: Roundup resistance—new tactics help farmers keep glyphosate-resistant weeds in check
Weed resistance to herbicides has no field boundaries....Jeff Evans is an ecologist and the owner of Farmscape Analytics, LLC. He ...
Biotech startup aims to challenge ‘Big Ag’s’ dominance in the US seed market
Farmers don’t have a reputation for skewing to the political left, but just get them talking about seeds. At an ...
Neutralizing toxic military explosives with GMO plants
Military preparedness means testing ammunition in controlled field trials, as well as decommissioning obsolete weaponry. The result is a significant ...
New herbicide controls hard-to-kill weeds, could be paired with resistant GMO crops
Purdue University researchers have developed a compound effective for controlling weeds that is also safe for people and the environment. They ...
Viewpoint: Monsanto’s Roundup is safe, but PR battle to defend weed killer may be lost cause
Let me state for the record. I believe glyphosate to be perfectly safe. There have been hundreds of studies by ...
Predatort Part II: How predatory lawyers, activist scientists hijacked IARC—International Agency for Research on Cancer—for personal profit and ideological vanity
How the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has forsaken academic integrity and knowingly contributes to the Predatort litigation ...
Viewpoint: Controversy flares over activist ‘predatort lawyers’ who ‘massaged facts’ in the Monsanto-glyphosate case
Lawyers often use a certain breed of self-interested scientist to terrify a jury of vulnerable non-specialists ...
Citing ‘unintended’ environmental impacts, Scottish politician urges UK to ditch EU’s neonicotinoid ban post Brexit
EUROPE’S ban on neonicotinoid pesticides should not be transferred into the UK’s post-Brexit legislation, according to Scottish Conservative MP Colin ...
Bayer’s legal woes multiply as chemical giant battles onslaught of glyphosate, dicamba lawsuits
Many Bayer AG investors didn’t realize just how much litigation risk they were getting when the German company spent $66 ...
As US legal battle over Monsanto’s Roundup rages, Brazil health officials say glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer
Analysts at Brazil health agency Anvisa have determined that the weed-killer glyphosate does not cause cancer while recommending a series ...
EU neonicotinoid insecticide ban, Brexit prompt some UK farmers to grow less risky crops to protect yields
The [UK] Paterson Farming Partnership is a joint venture between Worstead Farms, run by brothers Gavin, Bruce and Alex Paterson, ...
Activist group finds drinking 140 glasses of wine a day could expose alcoholics to potentially harmful levels of the herbicide glyphosate
A new report by the public-interest advocacy group U.S. PIRG reveals that tests of five wines and 15 beers....found traces of the controversial ...
Monsanto lawsuit: Judge threatens to ‘shut down’ plaintiff’s attorney for presenting banned evidence in glyphosate-cancer trial
Monsanto is facing its first federal trial over allegations that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, but a US judge has blocked ...
Nigeria has its first GMO cowpea. The battle for public acceptance is just getting started
A war of words over a recently-released genetically modified cowpea has divided the Nigerian public and raised concerns about the ...
Roundup on trial: Second glyphosate-cancer lawsuit heads to federal court
Bayer AG is set to face a second U.S. jury over allegations that its popular glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes ...
Talking Biotech: Epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat debunks flawed glyphosate-cancer meta-analysis. Were the mistakes deliberate?
A skeptical look at the latest glyphosate-cancer study reveals critical errors ...
US farmers to plant new biotech soybeans as DowDuPont receives final international regulatory approval
DowDuPont Inc has won the final international regulatory approval needed, from the Philippines, for a global launch of a new ...
US Rep Earl Blumenauer introduces bill to suspend neonicotinoid insecticide use, citing ‘devastating’ impact on bees
On [February 21], Congressman Earl Blumenauer [of Oregon] introduced legislation he said will help bees by suspending the use of insecticides that ...
Viewpoint: Pervert science at your peril—anti-GMO campaigners, vaccine deniers and ‘bee-pocalypse’ scaremongers find common ground in ‘evidence rejectionism’
Widespread misunderstanding of the nature of science and the confirmation bias spawned by social media and the internet can have ...
‘Unintended consequences’: UK restrictions on neonicotinoid insecticides may have harmed bees
One of Britain’s biggest beekeepers says he must relocate hundreds of hives because cabbage stem flea beetle has destroyed so ...
Trace amounts of glyphosate in Canadian foods spur more questions about safety of Monsanto’s Roundup
Data obtained and analyzed by the CBC show that more than one third of the [food] samples tested by the ...
Séralini pseudoscience syndicate: Lessons learned from decade-long assault on biotechnology orchestrated by French geneticist
A look at Séralini's modus operandi can equip journalists and other interested observers to turn a critical eye on Séralini ...
Glyphosate meta-analysis appeared to raise legitimate concerns that Monsanto’s Roundup may cause cancer, then Genetic Literacy Project pointed out study’s fatal flaws
In the new study, by a group of scientists from UC Berkeley, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the University of ...
How global climate change makes it harder to farm: Higher CO2 levels, warmer temperatures may spur glyphosate resistance in some weeds
Herbicides are the most commonly used means of controlling weeds. Recently, there has been growing concern over the potential impacts ...
