Pesticide Contamination in Waterways Raises New Alarm for Aquatic Life, Citing Poor Regulation

June 23, 2021 | Small streams are prone to excessively high levels of pesticide contamination that are even more hazardous than once thought, according to a pilot study by a team of German researchers and published in Water Research. The results indicate significant risks for the health of aquatic ecosystems and should be used as […]

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Hazardous Pesticide Breakdown Chemicals Found in Streams Nationwide, Raising Health Concerns

March 31, 2021 | Pesticide breakdown products are just as ubiquitous as their parent compounds in urban streams throughout the U.S., according to research conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and published in Environmental Science and Technology. The first of its kind findings place an important spotlight on the long-term impacts of pesticide use […]

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Herbicide Use in “Regenerative” No-Till Contaminates Waterbodies

February 19, 2021 | Vermont Public Radio (VPR) reports on revelations from a retired state scientist, Nat Shambaugh, who finds that farmers’ efforts to reduce agricultural runoff from fields into water bodies, by planting cover crops, has resulted in significant increases in the use of herbicides to kill off those crops. So as one kind […]

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Pesticides are polluting our waters — and we often don’t know it

  By Puneet Kollipara April 13 Pesticides bring major benefits to modern agriculture, keeping dangerous bugs and fungi and pathogens at bay while boosting yields and making farming more efficient. But what about risks? Like any chemicals — manmade or not — pesticides can be bad for human health and ecosystems if they’re toxic enough […]

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Honeybees and Groundwater: Canaries in the Pesticide Coalmine

Maryland’s Pesticide Reporting and Information workgroup heard from a new voice about the need for a centralized reporting system for basic information — information that is already legally required — on when and where pesticides are used commercially in our state. In his testimony to the workgroup, President of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Roger Williams […]

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EPA Publishes Human Health Benchmarks for Pesticides in Water

(Beyond Pesticides, April 18, 2012) In the face of widespread pesticide contamination of U.S. waterways and the lack of drinking water standards for hundreds of pesticides, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced new health and environmental benchmarks for acute pesticide effects, postponing action on chronic effects to an unspecified future date. While a […]

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Chesapeake Bay watershed pesticide use declines but toxicity increases.

Environ Toxicol Chem. 2011 May;30(5):1223-31. doi: 10.1002/etc.491. Epub 2011 Mar 8. Hartwell SI Source NOAA/National Status and Trends Program, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Abstract Large areas of the Chesapeake Bay, USA, watershed are in agricultural land use, but there is no baywide program to track application rates of current-use pesticides in any of the watershed […]

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Anthropogenic Organic Compounds in Source Water of Nine Community Water Systems that Withdraw from Streams, 2002‚ 05

Prepared as part of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program, Source Water-Quality Assessment By James A. Kingsbury, Gregory C. Delzer, and Jessica A. Hopple Abstract Source water, herein defined as stream water collected at a water-system intake prior to water treatment, was sampled at nine community water systems, ranging in size from a system serving about […]

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Statistical Modelling Suggests That Anti-Androgens in Wastewater Treatment Works Effluents are Contributing Causes of Widespread Sexual Disruption in Fish Living in English Rivers

Susan Jobling, Robert W. Burn, Karen Thorpe, Richard Williams, and Charles Tyler Abstract This EHP-in-Press article has been peer-reviewed, revised, and accepted for publication. The EHP-in-Press articles are completely citable using the assigned DOI code for the article. This document will be replaced with the copyedited and formatted version as soon as it is available. […]

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Sexual Disruption Linked to Environmental Pollutants

(Beyond Pesticides, January 22, 2009) A new English study has found that chemicals found in rivers and waste waters could be linked to male infertility. These chemicals, known as anti-androgens, block the action of the male sex-hormone testosterone and could impact the development of male reproductive organs in humans. The study entitled, “Statistical Modeling Suggests […]

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