"German drug and chemicals-maker Bayer has made a takeover bid for agricultural giant Monsanto in a deal that could create the world's biggest supplier of seeds and pesticides."
"Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller brand, has been given a clean bill of health by the UN’s joint meeting on pesticides residues (JMPR), two days before a crunch EU vote on whether to relicense it."
"Tukaram Jadhav was barely surviving off of his tiny cotton farm when he killed himself last September. His widow, a petite mother of two, pulls her purple sari tightly around her, and says she discovered her husband as he lay dying."
"The evidence linking pesticide exposure to childhood cancers and learning and behavioral problems has grown increasingly strong."
"A leading brand of home and garden pest-control products says it will stop using a class of pesticides linked to the decline of bees."
"In the end, Maryland lawmakers couldn’t ignore the same haunting story from beekeepers. “I go into winter with a really strong population, managed them to be fat and healthy, treated for mites, with plenty of food,” said Bonnie Raindrop, a keeper in Baltimore County. “But at the end of winter, you open your hives and they’re all dead.”
State and federal officials Friday announced a plan to clean up more than a century's worth of toxic pollution from the lower eight miles of the Passaic river, in one of the largest and most expensive projects under EPA's 35-year-old Superfund program.
"Chances are, you've never heard of flubendiamide. It's not among the most toxic insecticides, and it's not among the widely used chemicals, either. In recent years, it has been used on about a quarter of the nation's tobacco and 14 percent of almonds, peppers and watermelons. But flubendiamide is now at the center of a public dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and the company that sells it, Bayer CropScience."
"Federal officials have rejected a complaint by an entomologist who charged that the government has tried to suppress negative research findings about a widely used pesticide, in a complex case involving monarch butterflies, scientific freedom and the safety of the nation’s food supply."
"Exposure to multiple fumigants commonly used together in California may increase cancer risk, says new report."
