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Due to a major policy report released last month by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Northern New England Poison Center (NNEPC) may be fielding a different type of call in the coming years — potential long-term pesticide poisonings due to exposures in back yards or school and municipal playgrounds. The AAP report said there is a growing body of evidence showing the relation between pesticides and negative health impacts to children. " The past decade has seen an expansion of the epidemiologic evidence base supporting adverse effects after acute and chronic pesticide exposure in children," according to the report, "Pesticide Exposure in Children." The report and policy recommendations were published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics. It said "prenatal and early childhood exposure to pesticides is associated with pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function and behavioral problems." The AAP report has moved closer to Canadian research efforts which, beginning more than a decade ago, found a scientific connection between pesticide use and early childhood diseases. These studies have prompted the ban of certain types of pesticides at certain locations in a number of municipalities and provinces in Canada.

The American Bird Conservancy (ABC), in comments submitted to EPA, stated that preliminary results of a study it is conducting show that EPA is underestimating the aquatic toxicity to birds and other wildlife of the neonicotinoids based on preliminary research results conducted at Carleton U. by Pierre Mineau, an environmental toxicologist with Environment Canada and a Carleton U. adjunct faculty member in Ottawa, ON. ABC is preparing a comprehensive review of the neonicotinoids' effects on birds and including recommendations to EPA on how to better assess those chemicals’ risks. The review is expected to be completed by February. If adopted by EPA, the study's recommendations would serve as yet another change to the agency’s ecological risk assessments for the neonicotinoids.

The current terrestrial risk assessment of insecticides regarding nontarget arthropods considers exclusively beneficial organisms, whereas herbivorous insects, such as grasshoppers, are ignored. However, grasshoppers living in field margins or meadows adjacent to crops may potentially be exposed to insecticides due to contact with or ingestion of contaminated food. Therefore, the present study assessed effects of five active ingredients of insecticides (dimethoate, pirimicarb, imidacloprid, lambda-cyhalothrin, and
deltamethrin) on the survival of Chorthippus sp. grasshopper nymphs by considering two routes of exposure (contact and oral). The experiments were accompanied by monitoring field margins that neighbored cereals, vineyards, and orchards. Grasslands were used as reference sites. The laboratory toxicity tests revealed a sensitivity of grasshoppers with regard to the insecticides tested in the present study similar to that of the standard test species used in arthropod risk assessments. In the field monitoring program, increasing grasshopper densities were detected with increasing field margin width next to cereals and vineyards, but densities remained low over the whole range of field margins from 0.5 to 20m next to orchards. Grasshopper densities equivalent to those of grassland sites were only observed in field margins exceeding 9m in width, except for field margins next to orchards. These results may indicate that current insecticide risk assessments are insufficiently protective for grasshoppers in field margins.

Smoking during pregnancy can treble the baby’s chance of developing meningitis, researchers warn, and children exposed to smoke from a parent’s cigarettes at home are twice as likely to have the deadly illness. Scientists estimate that more than 600 children a year in Britain develop meningitis as a result of their parents’ second-hand smoke. They think that passive smoking gradually weakens children’s immune system making them more susceptible to the illness. Every year around 2,500 people develop meningitis a year in Britain although it is most common in the under 5s. Up to 1 in 20 die and 1 in 6 are left severely disabled.

Pathological studies on Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suggest that PD pathology progresses from the enteric nervous system (ENS) and the olfactory bulb into the central nervous system. We have previously shown that environmental toxins acting locally on the ENS mimic this PD-like pathology progression pattern in mice. Here, we show for the first time that the resection of the autonomic nerves stops this progression. Moreover, our results show that an environmental toxin (i.e. rotenone) promotes the release of alpha-synuclein by enteric neurons and that released enteric alpha-synuclein is up-taken by presynaptic sympathetic neurites and retrogradely transported to the soma, where it accumulates. These results strongly suggest that pesticides can initiate the progression of PD pathology and that this progression is based on the transneuronal and retrograde axonal transport of alpha-synuclein. If confirmed in patients, this study would have crucial implications in the strategies used to prevent and treat PD.

Bayer CropScience is planning to break ground in February on a bee care center in the Research Triangle Park where one official said the company hopes to attract university researchers to look into factors that may affect bee health. The company, a subsidiary of the Germany company Bayer AG that works on crop protection, non-agricultural pest control, seeds and genetically determined traits, makes products in a class of pesticide that was linked in two studies published in the journal Science this year to harmful effects on bees. The company’s new “North American Bee Care Center,” slated to be finished in July, is expected to cost $2.65 million. It’s planned to be used as a gathering place for researchers, bee experts, students and visitors, according to a news release.

For at least 200 years it has been a yuletide staple, but the traditional world of the popular carol The Twelve Days of Christmas is now under threat as never before. Partridges (Perdix perdix) and turtle doves (Streptopelia turtur) are disappearing from the countryside at such alarming rates that without urgent action the species may cease to exist in the UK outside the verses of the festive classic, scientists have warned. Once widespread in southern Britain, the turtle dove population, estimated at 14,000 pairs, has seen a 60% drop in numbers in the five years to 2010. The UK grey partridge, estimated at around 43,000 pairs, has seen a 30% fall over the same period.

In this overview, I discuss colony collapse disorder (CCD), biogenic amines-based-pesticides (neonicotinoids and formamidines), and their disruptive effects on biogenic amine signaling causing olfactory dysfunction in honeybees. According to my hypothesis, chronic exposure of biogenic amines-based-pesticides to honeybee foragers in hives and agricultural fields can disrupt neural cholinergic and octopaminergic signaling. Abnormality in biogenic amines-mediated neuronal signaling impairs their olfactory learning and memory, therefore foragers do not return to their hive – a possible cause of CCD. This overview is an attempt to discuss a hypothetical link among biogenic amines-based pesticides, olfactory learning and memory, and CCD.

Representatives from Syngenta and Bayer CropScience were questioned by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee last week as it seeks to establish whether the UK should follow other European countries in banning or restricting neonicotinoid insecticides. But Syngenta, which makes the systemic insecticide Thiamethoxam, is unhappy at the committee's approach. Head of public affairs Luke Gibbs told Grower it had been established to consider a single variable - the action of insecticides on pollinating insects - when the problem of pollinator decline is "multi-variable", he said. "They will only look at a narrow range of scientific papers. But the real threats to bees are the Varroa mite and habitat loss. Focusing only on pesticides could lead to recommendations that are not balanced." Gibbs added that the inquiry "has inevitably attracted groups that are ideologically opposed to pesticide use", and he noted: "Several of the committee, such as Caroline Lucas, Zac Goldsmith and Martin Caton, have a long-stated public position on this."