Pesticides are Killing the Bees (And Possibly You)

Neonicotinoid.

This is the name of the terrible insecticide that is one of the main reasons why the bees are in grave danger of going extinct.

Neonicotinoids (neonics) were first introduced in the 1990’s and are one of the most used classes of insecticide in the United States and the world. Neonics were first designed to kill off harmful insects that get on the crops and ruin them, but like all insecticides, they cannot differentiate between helpful insects, like bees, and harmful insects.

The way that the neonics work, is that farmers treat the soil, or seeds themselves. The plants as they grow absorb the chemicals into the plant. So now the entire plant is basically an insecticide. This means that even the pollen is contaminated with the insecticide.

The chemicals are 5,000 to 10,000 times more harmful to bees than DDT, which has since been banned because of how harmful it was to the environment. Recently, the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, consisting of 29 scientists, whose job was to review whether neonics were harmful, assembled. The final assessment was that neonics were contaminating land, soil, and water.

Thus it was affecting bees, and other small animals like earthworms, butterflies, birds, and snails. But it is also poisoning you. Since it is a systemic pesticide, the fruits and vegetables that are produced from these plants are also infected with the toxin. This then means that you are being infected with these toxins, as well. Of course we are much larger than bees so we are not affected visibly, but there is no long term research done showing whether or not these toxins are harmful to humans.

Laboratory studies of bees have shown that neonics impair the bees immune systems, their ability to forage, and their internal GPS system, which causes bees to not be able to make it back to the hive. The symptoms that bees exhibit when they are exposed to neonics are the same symptoms that are related to Parkinson’s disease and Alzhiemer’s disease in humans.Due to the many studies done on neonics, in 2013, Great Britain banned three of the most common neonics that were on the market, imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam.

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