Back in March, we posted Study shows endocrine-disrupting imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, messes up does and fawns.
On Wednesday, the ever-excellent South Dakota News Watch delved into the study and its implications in SDSU study shows world’s most common pesticide a danger to deer:
A groundbreaking study conducted by scientists in South Dakota has found that the world’s most widely used family of pesticides — neonicotinoids — is likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, deepening concerns over the chemical’s potential to harm large mammals, including humans.
A subsequent study by the wildlife scientists and ecologists at South Dakota State University in Brookings will examine whether ring-necked pheasants also could be harmed by neonicotinoid pesticides, which are used heavily in agriculture across the state.
The first study, with results published in March, showed that white-tailed deer with high levels of neonicotinoid pesticide in their spleens developed defects such as smaller reproductive organs, pronounced overbites and declined thyroid function. Fawns with elevated levels of the pesticide in their spleens were found to be generally smaller and less healthy than deer with less of the chemical in their organs. The study marks the first time neonicotinoid pesticide consumption has been linked to birth defects in large mammals.
“These (neonicotinoids) were deemed to be safe for higher organisms, and the fact that we saw so many diverse impacts on white-tailed deer, that was a big thing,” said Dr. Jonathan Lundgren an ecologist from Estelline, S.D., an independent scientist who co-authored the study. “And then, the fact that whitetail deer are not that far off from our livestock or even humans suggests that maybe we need to be examining these insecticides’ risks a little bit more closely.”
SDSU scientists told South Dakota News Watch that they are preparing to publish a similar study that looked at the effect neonicotinoids might have on ring-necked pheasants, a game bird that drives a multi-million hunting industry in the state. Because the results have not yet been published, the scientists said they couldn’t discuss the findings of that study.
Read the rest at South Dakota News Watch, which also looks at the presence of neonics in the human food chain:
The pesticide is often sold commercially as Imidacloprid, and is sold for home use in landscaping treatments such as Bayer Advanced Tree and Shrub Insect Control.
Neonicotinoids have not been definitively linked to human health issues. Until recently, scientists hadn’t been able to effectively monitor for the presence of neonicotinoids in the human population. Neonicotinoids can make their way into the human food chain when unabsorbed pesticides from farm operations become airborne or are carried into waterways and onto other crops by rain and run-off.
According to a paper published in September 2019, researchers with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found traces of the chemical in 49.1% of the urine samples collected from people during the 2015-16 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Based on the survey data, CDC researchers estimated that roughly half the U.S. population had recently been exposed to neonicotinoids. . . .
Why do we worry that this will not end well? Nick Lowrey's article concludes:
For [Jonathan] Lundgren, the SDSU deer study and its results are further evidence that farming practices need to change. Crop rotations should be more diverse and livestock should be integrated into more farming operations. Such practices would decrease the need for pesticides, make farms more resilient to extreme weather and have been shown to increase profitability, Lundgren said.
“Our farming decisions are having broad scale implications for the environment in ways that we didn’t predict, in ways that we can’t predict. And so while I’m not an advocate for banning all pesticides, I do think that we need to use them with a whole lot more respect than we are right now,” Lundgren said.
Photo: A whitetail doe and her fawn.
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