Tag: pesticides

MAHA Advocates Urge Trump To Block Immunity For Pesticide And Chemical Manufacturers

As anticipation builds about the upcoming Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Report’s release, 241 MAHA advocates sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to prevent the House of Representatives from limiting regulation for pesticides and “forever chemicals” in its environmental appropriations bill.

“We ask you to take action to make sure any protections for pesticides are stricken from this Appropriations bill,” the letter says, or risk losing Republican backing.

The letter also expressed opposition to liability shields for pesticide companies.

Every year, more than 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are used on U.S. farmland, including dozens of chemicals banned in other developed nations, the letter states.

“These toxic substances are present in our food, air, soil, and water, and are increasingly in our children’s bodies, negatively impacting normal brain development and hormonal function,” the letter explains.

“Extensive peer-reviewed research has linked glyphosate to infertility, increased reproductive risks, and 6 of the top 10 most common cancers in the [United States]. At the same time, atrazine is a known endocrine disruptor affecting sexual development, and paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s and neurological and respiratory diseases.”

Signers of the letter highlighted provisions in the Fiscal Year 2026 House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill—Sections 453 and 507 —which they claim create broad product-liability protections for domestic and foreign pesticide and chemical manufacturers “by refusing to fund the critical, legally required scientific safety assessments needed to update labels across more than 57,000 synthetic chemicals.”

“Numerous pesticides that fall under Section 453 are chemicals that are already banned in multiple other developed nations. Despite a massive outcry from citizens, the House Appropriations committee passed the spending bill last month with Section 453 and Section 507 intact,” the letter states.

MAHA advocates also expressed concern about Section 507 because “it prohibits the EPA from finalizing risk assessments for PFOA and PFOS forever chemicals found in biosolids spread on farmer’s fields and eliminates funding for community health monitoring, new research, and the cleanup of more than 70 million acres of U.S. 2 farmland contaminated with PFAS from the application of biosolids.”

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Why the Pesticide Liability Protection Act Threatens Our Food Supply and the Health of a Nation

As stewards of the land and providers of our nation’s food supply, farmers and ranchers carry a profound moral obligation—to produce the safest, healthiest, and most nutritious food on the planet. It is not just our livelihood; it is our responsibility to future generations.

That is why I am writing today with deep concern regarding the Pesticide Liability Protection Act currently under consideration in Congress. If enacted, this legislation could cause irreparable harm—not just to the health of farmers and ranchers who work directly with these chemicals, but to the broader public who unknowingly consume their residues.

The Dangerous Path of Corporate Immunity

This bill threatens to open the floodgates for a new wave of pesticides and herbicides engineered by agrochemical giants—products that may be even more toxic than those currently on the market. By shielding these corporations from legal accountability, it removes their last remaining incentive to ensure their chemicals are safe.

We have seen this story before. In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, granting pharmaceutical companies immunity from liability for vaccine-related injuries. The consequences were swift and staggering: a surge in new products, rushed to market without proper safeguards, and a dramatic rise in chronic health conditions in children and adults alike. It was a public health turning point, and not for the better.

The parallels to our current situation are striking. Consider the case of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018) has faced more than 177,000 lawsuits involving the weedkiller and set aside $16 billion to settle cases. Over $11 billion has been paid out in Roundup lawsuit settlements, with individual jury awards reaching as high as $2.1 billion in recent cases.

These staggering financial settlements reflect the real human cost of inadequate chemical safety oversight. Even more alarming is the widespread exposure we’re seeing in our most vulnerable population: children. About 87 percent of 650 children tested had detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine, according to CDC analysis. Research shows that children exhibit higher levels of glyphosate in biofluids than adults, and recent studies indicate that higher levels of glyphosate residue in urine in childhood and adolescence were associated with higher risk of liver inflammation and metabolic disorders in young adulthood.

To repeat that same mistake with our nation’s food supply would be unconscionable.

Why the Pesticide Liability Protection Act Is Unconstitutional

The Pesticide Liability Protection Act fundamentally violates several core Constitutional principles that form the bedrock of American jurisprudence:

Due Process Violations (5th and 14th Amendments): The Act deprives citizens of their fundamental right to seek redress in courts for injuries caused by defective or dangerous products. This violates substantive due process by eliminating a basic property right—the right to compensation for harm—without adequate justification or alternative remedies.

Equal Protection Concerns: The legislation creates an arbitrary distinction between victims of chemical company negligence and all other tort victims. There is no rational basis for why those harmed by pesticides should have fewer legal rights than those harmed by other dangerous products.

Separation of Powers: By preemptively shielding an entire industry from judicial review, Congress unconstitutionally interferes with the judiciary’s role in adjudicating disputes and determining liability. This represents legislative overreach into the judicial branch’s constitutional domain.

Takings Clause Violations: The Act effectively takes private property—the right to legal recourse—without just compensation, violating the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that access to courts is a fundamental right, and any legislation that bars entire categories of claims must meet strict constitutional scrutiny. The Pesticide Liability Protection Act fails this test.

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Research Increasingly Links Pesticides To Neurological Disorders

Are neurological diseases increasing around the world? Yes and no, according to a report published by The Lancet in 2024 on the global burden of nervous system diseases between 1990 and 2021.

About 3 billion — a third of the world’s people — suffer from some nervous system condition. These diseases cause 11 million deaths and 443 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which are a measure of the years lost to illness, disability or early death. Neurological disorders are now the world’s largest source of disability.

The Lancet report does not include an analysis of the role of pesticides in the burden of neurological disease worldwide, although environmental health research continues to expand the evidence that pesticide exposure is a major contributor to that burden.

The Lancet report indicates that DALYs from Parkinson’s disease have increased by 10%, and autism spectrum disorder and dementia by 2% each.

Multiple sclerosis has declined by 1%, according to the report. Importantly, most of the improvement has come from medical interventions, not prevention — in other words, people are living longer with the diseases rather than avoiding them altogether.

But this is not true globally: The burden of disease, and particularly premature death, rests most heavily on the developing world, where medical interventions are much more scarce.

A focus on prevention would be a more equitable approach to the problem. See Beyond Pesticides’ deep archive of the evidence on pesticides and neurological diseases in “Pesticide-Induced Diseases: Brain and Nervous System Disorders” section. Our Gateway on Pesticide Hazards is also invaluable for information about specific pesticides and their adverse health effects.

The Lancet’s big picture does not demonstrate that the burden of pesticide-induced neurological disease is declining.

Such a decline seems a logical impossibility, given that more and more people are chronically exposed to more and more pesticides, and more and more research is establishing both population-level and mechanistic evidence of pesticides’ influence on disease induction and outcome, including neurological disorders.

A recent review by Chinese researchers demonstrates that there is no category of pesticide — not herbicides, not fungicides and not insecticides — that does not contribute to neurological dysfunction. The authors recite numerous examples: the herbicide glyphosate affects both cognitive and motor functions.

The fungicides tebuconazole and azoxystrobin are associated with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Organophosphate insecticides lead to sensory disruption, emotional disturbances and neurodevelopmental problems.

Several “natural” chemicals, including rotenone and the plant growth regulators gibberellic acid and indole-3-butyric acid, affect the expression of some neurologically relevant enzymes. One research group found that the insect repellent DEET applied to rats’ skin killed their neurons.

The review examines studies showing pesticides’ neurological damage relevant to long-term exposures, rather than the usual acute exposures that form the outdated regulatory toxicological approach to pesticide hazards and risks.

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EPA Defends Plan to Gut Key Office Studying Health Risks of Pesticides and Other Toxins

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will move forward with plans to gut the agency’s office that studies how air pollution, drinking water contamination and toxic chemicals, including glyphosate, affect human health, the agency announced Friday.

As part of its “reduction in force,” which reportedly will cut $748.8 million from the agency’s budget, the EPA is eliminating the Office of Research and Development (ORD).

ORD is strictly a scientific research organization. It has no regulatory responsibilities, which means it isn’t subject to industry influence in the same way as other sectors of the EPA.

As a result, ORD often reaches different conclusions than other EPA research groups, according to Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety.

The office’s findings underlie many of the policies and regulations issued by the agency. Its research is often used to justify stricter rules, prompting opposition from pesticide and chemical manufacturers and other industries — and even from other sections within the agency that are allegedly captured by the chemical industry.

For example, ORD identified glyphosate as a carcinogen when the EPA’s pesticide wing argued it was safe.

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PESTICIDES, like antibiotics, are fueling the rise of untreatable SUPERBUGS – study

In a remote Himalayan village, a polluted river reflects a grim reality: the water, once sacred, now teems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria thriving in a chemical soup of pesticides and hospital waste. This is Ground Zero for a public health crisis that scientists now trace back to industrial agriculture’s unchecked reliance on pesticides. For decades, these toxins have been hailed as saviors against crop-destroying pests, but recent studies reveal they are unwitting partners in an even deadlier crescendo—antibiotic resistance.

Key points:

  • Pesticides and antibiotics work synergistically to breed antibiotic-resistant superbugs in waterways, accelerating a global health crisis.
  • India’s contaminated water ecosystems—harboring deadly cholera pathogens and drug-resistant E. coli—exemplify a ticking time bomb of antibiotic resistance.
  • Bacteria evolve defenses like biofilms and gene-sharing plasmids to survive pesticide bombardment, creating drug-resistant strains that even modern medicine can’t combat.
  • Farmers, governments, and corporations face pressure to abandon chemical dependency in favor of organic farming or risk triggering a healthcare collapse.

Confronting a new Silent Spring

Modern medicine’s holy grail, antibiotics, are failing spectacularly, and pesticides are making it worse. Over 5 million people died from drug-resistant infections in 2019, a toll projected to surge to 10 million annually by 2050. India’s waterways, choked with runoff from agrochemical plants and sewage, have become nurseries of superbugs, warns a harrowing study. This is no accident—it’s a consequence of agriculture’s chemical war against nature, a conflict humanity is losing.

The post-World War II Green Revolution brought pesticides like DDT and BHC to India in the 1950s, promising food security through chemical might. By 1971, when regulations finally arrived, India had already built the template for 21st-century disaster: pesticides rampaging through ecosystems, duplicating insects’ resistance in microbes.

“The Green Revolution was never just about food—it was an ideological battle to conquer nature with chemicals,” says Dr. Rajeshwari Rajammal of India’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture. “But organisms adapt, and pathogens are playing catch-up faster than we can innovate.”

Today, India is the world’s fourth-largest pesticide producer, yet its farms use just 0.4 kg per hectare compared to China’s 1.83 kg—proof that scale isn’t the only problem. The chemicals India creates but doesn’t consume flow into global supply chains, spreading resistance worldwide. “You can’t binge on toxins and call it ‘growth’ forever,” Dr. Rajammal adds. “Nature always settles the bill.”

The antibiotics dumped into rivers through pharmaceutical waste (India is a top drug producer) only amplify resistance. In the Ganges River, antibiotic-resistant Vibrio pathogens cause untreatable cholera. Groundwater in Assam and Uttar Pradesh carries E. coli strains that laugh off ampicillin. Meanwhile, aquaculture in Bangladesh combines pesticides and antibiotics into a microbial arm’s race, creating monsters that even fortified drugs can’t kill.

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Booker Launches Bill That Gives Citizens Right to Sue Pesticide Makers as House Pushes Measure to Protect Big Chemical

Federal lawmakers are being asked to consider two dueling pieces of legislation: one that protects the right of Americans to sue a pesticide maker if exposure to the company’s product harms their health, and one that protects chemical companies from those very types of lawsuits.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) today introduced the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act of 2025. The proposed bill would amend the existing Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) law to ensure that agrochemical manufacturers can be held accountable if their products harm human health.

“If passed, the law would turn the tables on efforts by Bayer and a coalition of agricultural organizations as they push for state-by-state legislation blocking individuals from being able to file lawsuits in state courts accusing the companies of failing to warn of the risks of their products,” investigative reporter Carey Gillam wrote in The New Lede.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee approved an appropriations bill with a clause that would make it more difficult for states to regulate pesticides or for people harmed by agrochemicals to sue the companies that make them, according to the Center for Food Safety.

The clause limits the use of federal funds to regulate pesticides by restricting regulators’ ability to create new rules or require warnings stronger than those already approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Disturbing Study Suggests Living Near Golf Course Can Increase Parkinson’s Risk 126% Due to Pesticides

An alarming study claims living near a golf course, often considered prime real estate, can significantly increase one’s risk of developing Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the gradual loss of motor control.

Patients who lived within one to three miles of a course were most affected, according to the study.

The study, published in JAMA, compared data from 419 people with Parkinson’s from southern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin to a control group between 1991 to 2015. 

The data led researchers from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona and the Mayo Clinic to suspect pesticides sprayed throughout the expansive courses, which may seep into groundwater, could be to blame.

“After adjusting for patient demographics and neighborhood characteristics, living within 1 mile of a golf course was associated with 126% increased odds of developing PD [Parkinson’s Disease] compared with individuals living more than 6 miles away from a golf course,” the study states.

“Additionally, individuals living in water service areas with a golf course in vulnerable groundwater regions had 82% greater odds of developing PD compared with those in nonvulnerable groundwater regions,” the study states.

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GM crops fuel rise in pesticide use despite early promises, study shows

Spread of GM crops has not contributed to chemical reductions or land reclamations, but to increased use of the pesticides they were claimed to curtail. Report: Claire Robinson

GM crops have increased agriculture’s dependence on pesticides rather than reducing it, a study published in April 2025 found.

Drawing on data from four GM crops – Bt cotton, herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean, HT and/or Bt maize, and HT canola, the researchers – including agricultural development expert Prof Glenn Davis Stone from Washington and Lee University and Bt cotton expert K. R. Kranthi of the International Cotton Advisory Committee – traced the surge in chemical use over three decades.

They found a paradox: while GM seeds were supposed to reduce pesticide use, their introduction caused pesticide use to soar. The researchers explain this outcome using the Jevons paradox, an economic theory that dates back to 1865. British economist William Stanley Jevons argued that efficiency in resource use often leads to more, not less, consumption. The study applies this idea to GM crops, which were claimed to reduce pesticide use, but in reality have made it skyrocket.

The researchers consider the two most prevalent GM seed-pesticide technology regimes: Bt crops and herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops. Both seeds are billed as efficient technologies: HT crops are claimed to facilitate more efficient weed control, and Bt crops are claimed to control insect pests more efficiently.

However, the researchers found that, “Like other technological efficiencies… the increased use of GM crops over the past 30 years has not contributed to input reductions nor to land reclamations, but to the expansion of agricultural land and increased use of the very pesticides these technologies are purported to curtail.”

This is due to the complexity of agricultural systems: “The efficiencies of GM crops not only lower the cost for individual farmers to use, in aggregate, more pesticides; they also make those pesticides ever more essential to the political economy of agriculture through the input-intensive monocultures in which they are embedded. In fact, increases in chemical usage occur throughout these GM crop systems because technological substitutions like GM seeds cannot be separated from their cascading impacts on labour, weed and pest ecology or agricultural decision-making.”

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Cannabis extract proves to be highly effective at killing the most dangerous animals in the world

Every year, mosquito-borne diseases cut short more than a million lives across the globe, outpacing every other animal threat to humanity. The rising toll has public-health teams scrambling for fresh combat tools, especially as traditional chemical sprays lose their edge.

That loss stems from two hard truths. First, the very pyrethroid insecticides that once worked wonders now linger in soil and water, nudging delicate ecosystems off balance.

Second, mosquitoes adapt fast. Larvae soaking in tainted puddles and adults drifting through treated neighborhoods increasingly shrug off doses that once killed them.

Controlling the pests at their waterborne stage is vital, yet options that stay potent without harming everything else remain limited.

Cannabis, CBD, and mosquitoes

Recent research published in the journal Insects points to a solution hiding in plain sight: the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa.

After air-drying and grinding ordinary hemp leaves, scientists at The Ohio State University led by Erick Martinez Rodriguez extracted cannabidiol (CBD) and added the concentrate to cups of water teeming with yellow fever mosquito larvae.

Within 48 hours, both a strain that laughs at common insecticides and a non-resistant strain were wiped out.

“Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest animals in the world, mainly because as adults they serve as vectors of disease,” Rodriguez explained.

From resistance to vulnerability

Two important findings jumped out. The first was total mortality: every mosquito larva exposed to sufficient CBD died by the two-day mark, regardless of its genetic armor.

The second was efficiency. While industrial chemicals often push resistance higher with every generation, CBD’s effect cut straight through those defenses. Doses varied, but even modest concentrations proved lethal to all mosquito larvae.

“If you compare the amount of hemp extract needed to kill 50 % of the population to other synthetic conventional insecticides, it is on the high side, but when you compare it side by side to other natural extracts we have tested in our lab, only a relatively low amount is required to produce high mortality values in larvae,” said Martinez Rodriguez.

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California scientists sound alarm on role of pesticides in raising resistance to antifungal drugs

The proliferation of new fungicides in the U.S. agricultural sector may be raising resistance to critical antifungal medications in humans and animals, infectious disease experts are warning. 

Although antifungal pesticides have become vital to combatting the spread of crop disease, the ongoing development of new such fungicides may be leaving people more vulnerable to severe infections, according to new commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

“Antimicrobial resistant pathogens are a constant reminder for us to use agents judiciously,” lead author George Thompson, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Davis, said in a statement.

“We have learned that the widespread use of antibiotics for livestock resulted in the rapid development of resistance to antibacterials,” Thompson continued. “We have similar concerns regarding the use of antifungals in the environment.”

In the past few decades, fungi that cause severe infections in humans — such as the difficult-to-treat Candida auris — have undergone a rapid increase, the scientists noted.

Yet because there are relatively few antifungals available to eradicate such microbes from the body, Thompson stressed that “preventing resistance is of paramount importance.”

In the U.S. today, the researchers found that there are about 75,000 hospitalizations and 9 million outpatient visits linked to fungal diseases every year, with direct annual costs amount to $6.7 billion to $7.5 billion.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that fungi cause between 10 percent to 20 percent of crop loss, at a cost of $100 billion to $200 billion annually, according to the report.

However, scientists have now become increasingly aware that antifungal pesticides and antifungal drugs share some of the same mechanisms. The authors therefore warned that the promulgation of these chemicals “may select for resistant fungi in the environment, which can then endanger human health.”

The development of antifungal medications, meanwhile, is a difficult task due to the metabolic similarities shared by human and fungal cells, as well as the surge in antifungal resistance, the authors explained.

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