>> today on "earth focus," neonicotinoids. is the world's mo widely us pestide destroyg the basef the food chain? coming up on "earth focus." >> they're a mutagen. >> they're extremely persistent and extremely mobile. >> they are now found routinely in stream samples as well as well samples across the united states. >> if it's going to affect everything from honeybees to earthworms, uh, that is serious in and of itself. >> neonicotinoids are among the most widely used pesticides in the world. they bring in billions in profits for the companies that make them.

but now, growing evidence shows that these insecticides are not only killing target pests, they are killing many beneficial species and destroying the base of the food cha. this has hapned befo. are th the new ddt? >> we don't want to have an insecticide that kills things it shouldn't. >> we've been somehow railroaded by agrochemical companies into lying entirely on their products. >> and i think we should be really concerned. >>t began wi honeybees in 2006, large numbers of worker bees began to abruptly disappear from honeybee colonies. since then, beekeepers have been losing 30% or more of their hives annually, losses that are higher than normal. this phenomenon came to be called colony collapse disorder.

new york state beekeeper jim doan saw it firsthand. >> i've worked in bees for now 46 years, and so i know what normal looks like, and what we've seen over the last 6 or 7 years is not normal. >> neybee ls has consequees for t economy e-third food pruced in the u.sdepends honeybe pollination >> we e puttinat risk several hured billn dollar of product everyear. it is siificant beuse the crops thaare pollined a soe of th that rlly add diversity and vitality to our diet. >> honeee loss have be lied to muiple facrs, ke pestides, hatat deadation,alnutrition, athoge, and vaoa mite iestation for pesticide manucturer bayer crop science, the issue is

clear. >> most experts agree th the single greatest threat to honeybee health is the varroa mi, an invive bloosucking st thatoth direly parasites younand adulbees and vecrs bee diseases. where varroa mites are absent or well controlled, honeybees are thriving >> but jim says he knows why his bees are dying. >> we had a multitude of neonics that were showing up in our bees. it doesn't take much to kill a bee. >> neonicotinoids are a relatively new class of insecticide and coming on the scene in the 1990s. it is the fastest-growing group of insecticides in the united states. >> for the companies that make them, neonicotinoids, or neonics, are big business. they bring in over $2.6 billion a year in global sales. they are widely used as seed treatments, applied as soil drench, or sprayed onto foliage.

in the u.s., they are used on some 200 million acres of cropld, on almost all corn, cana, and half of all soybean crops, as well as many fruits and vegetables. >> they are used in home and garden products, often at concentrations that are far higher than those you will find in the agricultural sector. >> millions of pounds of these insecticides are used in urban and suburban areas. and in urban areas we're usually doing it to have the perfect rose or the nicest rhododendron or a lawn without any insect pests in it. >> manufacturers argue the pest-fighting power of neonics is indispensable to american agriculture. without neonics, consumers would pay higher prices for food, farm exports would be lessompetiti, and he u.seconomwould suer. >> in the 1940s, we had the

organochlorine insecticides, such as ddt and endosulfan, and initially these pesticides were viewed as a miracle chemistry. >> we started using re and more of these as industrial agriculture took hold in the fifties, sixties, and, really, this is what rachel carson talked about in "silent spring." using all these insecticides was really leading to what she felt was a collapse of biodiversity. we were kling the underpinning ofuh, of theood chain. >> by the 1970s, regulators were rushing to get these organochlorine pesticides off the market because of their persistence in the environment and their ssible linwith birth defects, cancers, eggshell

thinning in birds, and other problems. >> along in the late eighties and early nineties, really people started to think, well, we need something that is more targeted. we need chemicals that are not so broadly toxic to everything. and that's really where neonicotinoids came from. the idea was that these chemicals, although highly toxic to insects, are less acutely toxic to mammals, they're less acutely toxic to fish. they also thought, what if we can target them inside the plant? if we can target them inside the plant, this igoing to be better, because the animals outside the plant are not going to be affected. they became popular because they were used as a systemic insectide, so yocould appl it to the seed and it would just be put in e groundnd the ant woultake it as it gws, evenally ging the plant protection from pests.

>> they're found in theeaves, the stems, the roots, and the pollen and the nectar. and nobody really thought about that weak link, which was toxic pollen, toxic nectar, and toxic for a long time in these crops. >> neonicotinoids are nerve toxins afcting the nervous stem of oanisms. bar crop science says they are safe for honeybees. >> honeybee health in north america began to decline many years before neonicotiids were in use. we've tested these products for many years, and in the field under real exposure conditions, these products are fe, and have lo of studs to shothat. >>many scitis whose rearch is t funded by e peicide instry cllenge t saty of neics, sayg that even lolevels oexposurean affect thability ofoneybees to communite and canuppress their immune system, making them more susceptible to viruses and

varroa mites. >> the effects of these pesticides on the bees is manyfold. it affects reproduction. the navigational abili of the bees is impaired. they can't find their way home. if they can' find theiway homethey can't bringesources ack to theive, the hivgets depleted of worker bees and forager bees, and the hive just crashes after that. >> and it's not only honeybees that are affected. >> we're seeing broad-scale decline in really important pollinators, like our bumblebees. perhaps 30% of our bumblebees are in decline, and a quarter of them at risk of extinction in the near future. >> david goulson, a scientist based in the united kingdom, looked into how neonicotinoids affect bumblebees. >> we wanted to know what would happen to a bumblebee nest that was next to a field of a flowering crop like canola that had been treated as a seed

dressing with a neonicotinoid. so we simply took bumblebee nests and we either gave them healthy food for a fortnight or we gave them food that we'd added, um, neonicotinoids to to mimic the exact concentrations that would be in the pollen or nectar they gathered from treated or [indistinct] crop. and then we put the nests outside. they then had to forage for themselves. they had to fly into the landscape and bring back food. we compared how well the nests did that were either treated or not treated. and the effects were really astonishing. we found that the control nests, the ones eating healthy food, grew faster, got much bigger. compared to the treated nest, the treated nest produced 85% fewer new queens than the healthy, the control nest. if that's happening with wild nests, which there's no reason to believe that it wouldn't be, then that means that the following spring, there are going to be 85% fewer queen bees starting new nests, which you'd imagine could have huge knock-on long-term effects if that's

happening every year. >> and it's not only pollinators at risk. in june 2014, the task force on systemic pesticides, an independent group of scientists from 15 nations, found that neonics and the pesticide fipronil also harmed birds, amphibians, reptiles, as well as terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates. earthworms, vital for soil productivity, are especially vulnerable. neonics affect their tunneling behavior and sperm quality. jean-marc bonmatin of the national center for scientific research in france, was one the lead thors of t group's findings. >> [speaking french] >> the task force says systemic

pesticide contamination is so widespread that the diversity and stability of the world's ecosystems is at risk. the task force based its findings on an analysis of 800 peer-reviewed reports, the most comehensive review of the scientific literature on systemic pesticides to date. when asked to comment, bayer crop science said the task force only looks at wst-case scenarios, and that studies under realistic field conditions show that systemic pesticides do not harm honeybees, birds, or other wildlife. >> the main concern with neonics is that they have such a high toxicity to a broad range of invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic. they are extremely

persistent and extremely mobile. and you put those 3 conditions together and you're talking about removal of a large segment of the invertebrate community. >> they're accumuling the soil. e're awn up by hedger plants,y trees growig in faland, and so . d so esntially ything hat'living ifarmlands being owly poisoned all th time >> t other tng that has co t is tt they're mu more ter solue than eryone wa led toelievethis mes that when they get in theround witwater, ty move rdily in across the environment. they are now found routinely in stream samples as well as well samples across the united states. >> birds like swifts and swallows depend on insects as a food source. if insects are killed in their breeding ground,

usually a body of water, birds are deprived of fd. >> the concentrations of the neonics in our waterways are sufficient to kill the aquatic invertebrate life on which these birds depend. >> in canada, where neonicotinoids are widely used on crops, dr. christy morrissey is also finding high levels of wetland contamination. she focuses her research in canada's breadbasket, the prairie pothole region of saskatchewan, where agricultural land is laced with potholes, small temporary ponds fed by snowmelt and rain. >> in 2013 we found up to 90% of the ponds that we sampled in spring, even before the farmers were out seeding, had detectable levels of neonics in them. but our peak concentrations occurred after seeding, not surprising, particularly after rainfall events, at levels that

were, you know, upwards of, uh, 3 parts per billion, which is well known to affect aquatic insects. >> with over 40% of the cropland in canada's prairies treated with neonicotinoids, the impact on aquatic insects and the animals that rely on them for food could be significant. dr. morrissey's study is the first to look into this issue in canada. >> we have a field study that's trying to understand how neonicotinoids potentially get into wetlands and whether or not they affect aquatic invertebrates, which are the base of the food chain for all kinds of other wildlife species, and in particular, birds. so we're trying to link these 3 different things, um, from the--from the pesticide on the field to the wetlands to the bugs, and ultimately to the birds. we've found that neonicotinoids across the board have a range of toxicity for the different insect species. but for a certain group,

and particularly the mayflies and the midges, these species are extremely sensitive to neonicotinoids. >> the chicks, the young birds, need that supply of insects. as do the, uh, the female birds, the hens, when they're laying their eggs. they need that high protein source. and there's some critical points in birds' life where insects are key and critical. and if the--the amount, the availability of insects is reduced, it has been shown that that affects reproduction. >> so we put nest boxes up in different sites, some that are uncontaminated, that have no pesticide use and in sites that are more agriculturally intensi that ha extensive use of neonicotinoids. >> morrissey is only a year and a half into a 4-year study, but is already starting to see some alarming effects. >> the birds are lower body mass or got poor body condition at

some of these agriculturally intensive sites. so we know that there is some link or some correlation between how well the birds are doing in terms of their physiology and their health and their body condition and how many bugs or how abundant the bugs are. and that seems to relate well with the, uh, presence and levels of contamination in these ponds. >> there have been few studies to date on how neonics affect ocean life. this is an area of specialization for dr. craig downs, and what he is learning is troubling. >> for example, imidacloprid can affect crab larvae as low as 50 parts per quadrillion. it affects theimitochondria at this level, so that it's a mitochondrial poison. it can affect their muscles. if the mitochondria are damaged in the

muscles, it can cause paralysis. it also causes immune suppression in these crabs. meaning that they are much more susceptible to bacterial infections and fungal infections when co-exposed with imidacloprid. >> craig downs also studies the impact of imidacloprid on sea urchins. >> neonicotinoids cause dna damage in sea urchin sperm as low as 500 parts per trillion. it causes developmental abnormalities as low as 5 parts per trillion. it means that they're a mutagen. um, it means there's a direct threat to the reproductive fitness of the entire biodiversity of marine environments. if you have damage to sperm or if you have damage to eggs, the next generation will not be as fit or might not come into existence at all. um, so it threatens sterility. >> the meso-american reef stretches 700 miles from the

northern tip of mexico's yucatan peninsula to honduras. its home ta wide dersity marine fe. and . downs foundt is ctaminatewith onicotiids largy as a result runoffrom agricultul fields >> years ag a coraleef ornism-widsurvey w conducd to meare the aunt of pescides th could b nd in ateast 22 ral reef organis, rangi from cols queen cch to a mber of ral reefishes. at we disvered wathat outf all the sples thawe colleed, 68% othe samps th we colected were contaminated with imidacloprid. 53% of the samples we collected were contaminated with fiprol, which is another systemic pesticide. so the level of contamination on a coral reef, especially e second-largest barrier reef in the world, is pretty disturbing.

>> if neonics harm animals, what about people? in human surrogates like rats and mice, neonics are linked to a wide range of disorders. and in hun blood studies, they are linkedo dna dama and cell mutations. federal agencies like the environmental protection agency are really supposed to be, um, managing these insecticides in a way that causes minimal harm to humans and other animals. >> starting in the 1990s, agency scientists were raising red flags about the mobility, the persistence, the toxicity of these neonic products, including the effects on pollinators and other wildlife. >> epa documents show agency scientists knew imidacloprid

is highly toxic to songbirds, aquatic invertebrates, and honeybees as early as 1993. yet epa allowed imidacloprid on the u.s. market a year later. after decades of exposure, the cosequences a scientists once warned about are now confirmed by the task force on systemic pesticides. >> anunfortunately, these chemicals are often, and i would say most of e time, released before there is adequate information to show whether they are harmful the environment. i think neonicotinoids are a prime example of that. >> epa assesses risk posed by pesticides prior to their release on the market. safety studies are typically conducted and paid for by pesticide manufacturers on their own product. epa says its decisions are informed by the best science available. in addition to studies by manufacturers, epa

scientists review pesticide studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals and data from a wide variety of sources when they are available. but studies on pesticide safety that come out after a pesticide is on the market may not be evaluated by epa until a pesticide mes up for review, a process that canake as ng as 15ears. farmers like drew stabler of laytonsville, maryland say that neonics can be used safely and are indispensable to their business. >> well, i think that any product that's on the market has been tested and proven to do a job, and we have faith in that process. myself as a farmer, i've been farming 50, 60 years. i've been lucky enough to make a living doing what i like to do. and we try to use everything that's been tested and approved

and recommended at certain times and how much. we do that both for the benefitf the environment and the benefit of our pocketbook. you keep hearing about extra people in the world that need to be fed, so we can't back off on what our production abilities are. we feel we have to keep improving our production abilities. and some of these products will contribute to that. >> the reason that we're worried about neonicotinoids specifically is cause they're being used at an unprecedented scale. >> essentially, it seems to me the agri-chemical industry has persuaded everyone that they need these products as an insurance against a pest outbreak in their crop. but actually, most of the time these pests aren't there. so you're insuring against something which is never gonna happen. >> they have a real impact on natural enemies of the crop pests. we can cause secondary

pest outbreaks because these chemicals are so efficient at killing the predators and the parasit of the crop pests. perhaps 70% of the neonicotinoids used on soybeans in a seed treatment are not needed. there's no pest that they're controlling. so if we just use them only when they were needed, we could eliminate insecticide use over millions of acres. >> many people would say we need pesticides to grow the food to fe the growi world, the human population, and that maybe it's a necessary evil to sacrifice some wildlife along the way. fine. so you then look to see, to try to weigh up the damage that neonicotinoids seem to be doing against the benefit we get from them in terms of increased crop yield. and amazingly, it turns out there's virtually no evence that they're actually effective.

so there have been a whole sway of studies, particularly from north america, come out in the last year or two where they've simply grown crops with and without seed dressing and find that they get exactly the same yield without the seed dressing as they do with it. >> some actions are being taken to curb the use of neonics. in europe, the european union banned 3 neonics for a period of two years in 2013. the ban targets neonics used on plants and cereals attractive to pollinators. in the united states, the saving america's pollinators act was introduced in congress in 2013. earl blumenauer was one of the sponsors of the bill. >> what we're attempting to do with this legislation is blow a whistle. stop moving forward with the products within the next 6 months that has this potential exceedingly damaging effect and prohibit tir use until we're able to follow

through on theesearch to prove that they're safe. >> but congressional action is unlikely any time soon. in 2014, neonics were banned by the cities of eugene, oregon and spokane, washington on municipal property. the u.s. fish and wildlife service announced plans to ban neonics from all wildlife refuges by 2016. and the white house launched an initiative to strengthen federal action to improve pollinator research and to protect pollinator habitat. >> there are things that we can't control or not easily regulate, things like climate change, even habitat loss are things that we can't control. but things like pesticides we can. >> well, nature is pretty good at fixing itself. but then that assumes that you're going to remove the pressures that we're putting on it now. >> we depend on all these

things. we depend on bees to pollinate our crops, on worms and other organisms that live in soil to keep the soil healthy and so on. if we wipe them all out, then ultimately, we'll wipe ourselves out. fvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfz

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