What About U.S.?

Within six months, Bayer and Syngenta’s bee-killing pesticides will be banned throughout the European Union, in a move aimed at protecting wild and commercial honeybees.

That’s great news . . . but what about the U.S.?

So far, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the “leadership” of Scott Pruitt—who never met a chemical (company) he didn’t like— shows no sign of protecting bees (or humans or the environment, for that matter) here in the U.S.

After 5 million people in the E.U. signed a petition demanding a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, campaigner Antonia Staats said:

“Finally, our governments are listening to their citizens, the scientific evidence and farmers who know that bees can’t live with these chemicals and we can’t live without bees.”

Neonicotinoids now join the list of more than 80 pesticides that are banned or tightly restricted in the E.U.—but allowed in the U.S.

P.S. Common sense would, or at the very least should, suggest that pesticides that are killing millions of bees are probably not good for people, either. Along those lines, a new study suggests that neonics may alter estrogen production in humans, because they belong to a class of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors.