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Environment

Neonicotinoids Threaten Water, Activists Claim

by Britt E. Erickson
February 8, 2016 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 94, Issue 6

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) is urging EPA to adopt more stringent thresholds to better protect U.S. waters and aquatic organisms from neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides under scrutiny for their potential to harm bees. In a Feb. 2 petition, the advocacy group warns that widespread contamination of waters with neonicotinoids threatens aquatic invertebrates, including crabs and insects. “This petition formally urges EPA to respond to this unrecognized threat to our waters, the toxic effects of which will harm entire food chains and ecosystems,” says CFS attorney Peter T. Jenkins, the petition’s author. “Evidence of extensive and high-level neonicotinoid water contamination raises the alarm that we are approaching an ecological crisis,” he says. Neonicotinoids are applied on more than 150 million acres of cropland annually, according to CFS. The group is urging EPA to stop classifying neonicotinoids as “reduced risk” pesticides and to require safety data from manufacturers before the pesticides are allowed on the market.

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