Take Action: Tell EPA to cancel bee-killing pesticide

EPA recently initiated a review of the neonicotinoid pesticide clothianidin as part of the agency’s registration review process for currently registered pesticides. The comments strongly urge EPA to consider the available science showing the chemical’s toxic effects on honeybees and to take swift action to cancel the chemical’s registration. Our main points are as follows:

-- Clothianidin’s Toxicity to Honey Bees. Like other neonicotinoids, it is an insecticide that is highly toxic to a range of insects, including honey bees and other pollinators. It is particularly dangerous because, in addition to be acutely toxic in high doses, it also results in serious, though sub-lethal, effects when insects are exposed to chronic low doses, as they are through pollen and water droplets laced with the chemical as well as dust that is released into the air when coated seeds are planted. These effects cause significant problems for the health of individual honeybees as well as the overall health of honeybee colonies and they include disruptions in mobility, navigation, feeding behavior, foraging activity, memory and learning, and overall hive activity.

-- Clothianidin’s Registration Is Unlawful. Clothianidin was initially registered by EPA in 2003 on the condition that the registrant, Bayer, completes and submits a field study demonstrating the chemical’s effects on pollinators. In addition to any registration of clothianidin being a violation of FIFRA’s prohibition of chemicals that pose “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment,” in December 2008, it was revealed that the pollinator study Bayer had submitted had been downgraded by EPA and deemed insufficient to fulfill the field study requirement upon which the chemical’s registration was contingent. Thus, following the agency’s own logic, there is no current basis for continuing to allow clothianidin to remain registered.

-- EPA Is Behind In Its Understanding of Pollinator Effects. Judging by the pollinator data requirements that EPA has stated it is seeking for clothianidin’s registration review, the agency is severely lacking in its understanding of how the chemical affects pollinators, and honeybees specifically. Despite allowing the chemical to be used on thousands of acres of American farmland over the past nine years, there is a still a great deal EPA does not know about how bees are exposed to clothiandin and what the consequences of exposure actually are for bee health on the individual, colony, and species level.

Submit comments directly to EPA’s docket or sign onto Beyond Pesticides’ comments by signing the petition above.