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Tag: Pesticides

  • Scientists Found Something Unexpected in Pet Poop—and It’s Not Good

    Fleas and ticks can be a nightmare for any pet owner to manage. But a convenient treatment for these external parasites could come with more risks for the environment than we knew, scientists have just found.

    Researchers in France studied the feces of cats and dogs administered certain antiparasitic medications known as isoxazolines. They continued to find some of the drugs in the pets’ poop even after their treatment had ended. They also concluded that essential, poop-loving bugs in the wild are likely being exposed to dangerous levels of these compounds via pest-treated pets.

    “These findings emphasize the need for further research on environmental contamination and impact of veterinary parasiticides on nontarget species,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published Wednesday in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

    A convenient but possibly risky option

    Isoxazolines are a relatively new type of antiparasitic medication, with the first drug of its kind approved in 2013.

    These drugs quickly became a popular option among veterinarians and pet owners for several reasons. They can treat both ticks and fleas, are usually available as an easy-to-take pill, and provide a long-lasting effect (at least a month) that can prevent further infestations. One of the newest approved drugs on the market, Bravecto Quantum, can even work for up to a year, though it does have to be taken as an injection.

    Impressive as isoxazolines are, some experts and health agencies have worried about the effect they could be having on unintended insects and other arthropods, since these drugs can seep into the environment through a pet’s feces, urine, and even hair. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recently called for a reevaluation of the environmental impact that flea and tick medications might have, for instance. They note that growing pet populations and increased use of these drugs could be raising environmental risks.

    The researchers recruited 20 dogs and cats owned by veterinary students for their study. The pets were given one of four commonly used isoxazoline drugs as recommended for three months (fluralaner, (es)afoxolaner, lotilaner, and sarolaner), and the researchers periodically tested their poop for traces of each.

    All the drugs had median half-lives ranging from 15 to 25 days, they found, though it differed depending on the species and specific drug. And two of the drugs (fluralaner and lotilaner) could still be detected in pets’ poop after the recommended treatment period was over.

    The researchers also ran simulations on the potential risk posed by these drugs left behind in pet poop to dung-feeding insects in the wild, based on their results. They determined that in most scenarios, there was likely a real risk of high exposure to these drugs, particularly fluralaner and lotilaner.

    A need for more study

    These findings don’t yet confirm that isoxazolines are wreaking havoc on insects in the wild everywhere. But they do highlight the urgent need for more research to figure out just how dangerous they could be to innocent bugs in parks and other places where our pets regularly do their business.

    “Our preliminary assessment suggests that pet ectoparasiticides may be detrimental to the environment and supports the conclusions from the EMA scientific opinion,” the researchers wrote.

    Understanding these risks better might also help us mitigate them. In countries and regions where garbage is routinely incinerated, for instance, it might be beneficial to recommend that pet owners always throw out their pet’s poop in the trash during their flea and tick treatment, the researchers suggested as a potential idea.

    Ed Cara

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  • RFK Jr. promised to ‘Make Our Children Healthy Again.’ Here’s how he plans to do it

    (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s strategy to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ includes investigating vaccine injuries and pharmaceutical practices but stops short of new regulatory action, for now.

    US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled the MAHA strategy on Tuesday, joined by Agriculture Department Secretary Brooke Rollins, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and other top Trump officials.

    The report hews closely to a draft document circulated in August that cites earlier Trump administration announcements — developing a definition for ultraprocessed foods, educating the public about synthetic kratom — but largely bypassed industry crackdowns.

    Language around pesticides strategy also remained unchanged. Environmental and food activists had rallied for the administration to include steps to reduce pesticide usage and probe potential health risks of commonly used chemicals such as RoundUp.

    The report says that USDA, EPA and the National Institutes of Health will develop a framework to study cumulative exposures to chemicals including pesticides and microplastics. USDA and EPA will also invest in new farming approaches to reduce chemical use, and EPA will launch a public awareness campaign about the limited risk of approved products.

    The commission’s first report this May suggested a broad range of factors driving chronic disease in the US, including ultraprocessed foods, environmental exposures, and overprescription of pharmaceuticals like antidepressants.

    The report noted previous announcements that HHS, the NIH and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are studying the causes of autism. Kennedy had previously promised some answers on the root causes in September; NIH is expected to announce autism research grants this month.

    Recent reports suggest that HHS will issue a report that links the development of autism to taking Tylenol during pregnancy.

    Medicines and vaccines

    Kennedy has drawn criticism for suggesting antidepressants, particularly those that are part of a family known as SSRIs are as addictive as heroin and can be dangerous. Following the August 27 shooting in Minneapolis, he told Fox News that HHS is launching studies “on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”

    SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are the most prescribed class of antidepressants for depression, anxiety disorders and many other mental health conditions. Several SSRIs have been on the market in the United States since the 1990s, including Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa. Experts agree that there is no scientific evidence or correlation between these drugs and violence towards others.

    Tuesday’s report states that HHS will assemble a working group of federal officials to evaluate SSRI prescribing patterns, specifically among children. HHS will also “evaluate the therapeutic harms and benefits of current diagnostic thresholds,” or the current common practices doctors use to diagnose patients with mental health disorders.

    Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, president of the American Psychiatric Association said access to care, not over-medication is the bigger problem when it comes to helping kids’ mental health in the country, and there is no mention of the issue in the report. The report said addressing a child’s nutrition, screen time, and exercise can improve their mental health, but can’t address everything. “Psychiatric conditions are complex in nature,” she said. Extreme poverty, post traumatic stress disorder, trauma-related factors should also be addressed, but there is no mention in the report of any of those issues either.

    “In terms of over medication, that’s not what we do. We have a comprehensive evaluation and we are evidence based. We diagnose than create a comprehensive treatment plan, “ Miskimen Rivera told CNN. “Medication can save lives, not only in children, but in adults and elderly.”

    When asked about whether or not the commission chose to consider gun violence – the leading cause of death for children – as one of the issues to be investigated, Kennedy doubled down on the issue of prescription drugs, saying “We are doing studies now, or initiating studies to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection between over medicating our kids and this violence.”

    HHS will also work with the White House Domestic Policy Council on a new vaccine framework that, the report said, will ensure “America has the best childhood vaccine schedule” and ensure “scientific and medical freedom.”

    The report comes as Kennedy continues to defend his shakeup of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over vaccine policy, including the ouster of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.

    The administration will also increase oversight of “deceptive” direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical products, including from social media influencers and telehealth companies, it said.

    Food policy stays the course

    FDA will continue work on developing a definition for ultraprocessed foods, but the report bypasses recommendations, like those of former FDA Director Dr. David Kessler, to essentially order certain additives off the market until they are reviewed.

    Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of Tufts Food is Medicine Institute said a definition of ultraprocessed foods would be “really important.” With more than half of calories in the food supply coming from ultraprocessed foods, addressing this and other issues involving the nation’s diet would mean a “massive fight with the industry and is going to be incredibly controversial, but is much needed.”

    “Overall, this is really quite thorough, quite specific, and even if parts of this are accomplished, this could have tremendous positive impact for Americans,” Mozaffarian told CNN.

    Other experts, like Marion Nestle, agreed the report was ambitious in scope, but noted it fell short on regulatory action. “What’s still missing is regulation. So much of this is voluntary, work with, promote, partner,” said Nestle, who is the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.

    The report also nods to new, user-friendly dietary guidelines expected later this year. Kennedy has promised a vastly shortened set of recommendations that will emphasize whole foods.

    The commission also cited ongoing work to reduce ultraprocessed foods in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Head Start.

    While the report also touches on agriculture deregulation with the aim of making it easier for small farms to get greater access to markets and schools, Ken Cook, co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, a health advocacy organization said the report abandons earlier MAHA promises to ban toxic pesticides and instead “echoes the pesticide industry’s talking points.”

    “Secretary Kennedy and President Trump cynically convinced millions they’d protect children from harmful farm chemicals – promises now exposed as hollow,” Cook said in a statement.

    There were minor changes from the draft document leaked in August. For instance, the August 6 draft stated that the FDA and other agencies will crack down on “Illegal Chinese Vapes,” while the final version promises enforcement on vapes more broadly.

    “We support the goal of making children healthier and addressing and preventing chronic disease, but unfortunately, the recommendations fall short in some really critical ways,” Laura Kate Bender, vice president nationwide advocacy and public policy for the American Lung Association told CNN.

    “They continue to cast doubt on vaccines, one of the most, important, proven public health interventions that we can have for kids health. They don’t address some major contributors to diseases in kids like pollution, tobacco use, beyond the mention of vaping, and this report is coming out at the same time that we’re continuing to see dramatic cuts in staff and funding of a lot of the programs that could make the good parts of the report a reality.”

    The report’s emphasis on kids’ health can help overall, Dr. Michelle Macy, director of the Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation Center in Chicago told CNN. “I’m really trying to look for bright spots in this report, and I think that the focus on data and infrastructure for us to be able to answer big questions about what environmental and food exposures and medication exposures do to shape the trajectory of someone’s health and chronic disease across the lifespan is something that has promise and potential.”

    Dr. Richard Besser, pediatrician and president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said that having a focus on preventing chronic disease in children is a good thing, but he said, with Kennedy’s track record that includes firing thousands of federal health employees, slashing millions in health research funding, dismantling entire offices that managed important issues like smoking and chronic disease specifically, in addition to his “assault on vaccinations” will undermine any potential good of this kind of report.

    “Neither RFK Jr.’s record, nor his policies outlined in the report give me confidence that he is going to make any difference whatsoever on chronic diseases in children,” Besser told CNN.

    Sarah Owermohle, Jen Christensen and CNN

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  • Chemical Safety, Cultivated Meat, and Our Health  | NutritionFacts.org

    More than 95 percent of human exposure to industrial pollutants like dioxins and PCBs comes from fish, other meat, and dairy.

    By cultivating muscle meat directly, without associated organs like intestines, the incidence of foodborne diseases “could be significantly reduced,” as could exposure to antibiotics, “pesticides, arsenic, dioxins, and hormones associated with conventional meat.” Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved seven hormone drugs to bulk up the production of milk and meat. “In the European Union, there exists a total ban on such use,” however. Even without injected hormones, though, animal products naturally have hormones because they come from animals. “Eggs, example given, contribute more to the dietary intake of estradiol [estrogens] than beef, whether the animal is legally treated with hormones or not.” After all, eggs come straight from a hen’s ovaries, so, of course, they’re swimming with hormones. But if you’re directly growing just muscle meat or egg white protein, you don’t need to include reproductive organs, adrenal glands, or any of the associated hormones.

    “Chemical safety is another concern for meat produced under current production systems.” There are chemical toxicants and industrial pollutants that build up in the food chain, such as pesticides, PCBs, heavy metals, and flame retardants, but there is no food chain with cultivated meat. We could produce all the tuna we wanted, with zero mercury.

    When the World Health Organization determined that processed meat was a known human carcinogen and unprocessed meat a probable human carcinogen, it wasn’t even talking about the carcinogenic environmental pollutants. When researchers tested retail meat for the presence of “33 chemicals with calculated carcinogenic potential,” like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides like DDT, and dioxin-like PCBs, they concluded that, in order to reduce the risk of cancer, we should limit beef, pork, or chicken consumption to a maximum of five servings a month.

    Why cultivate meat at all when you can just buy organic? Surprisingly, “consumption of organic meat does not diminish the carcinogenic potential associated with the intake of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).” A number of studies have recently compared the presence of environmental contaminants in organic meat versus conventional meat, and the researchers found, surprisingly, that organic meat was sometimes more contaminated. Not only organic beef either. Higher levels were also found in pork and poultry.

    If you look at the micropollutants and chemical residues in both organic and conventional meat, several environmental contaminants, including dioxins, PCBs, lead, and arsenic, were measured at significantly higher levels in the organic samples. As you can see below and at 2:56 in my video, The Human Health Effects of Cultivated Meat: Chemical Safety, the green is organic meat, and the blue is conventional. 

    Cooking helps to draw off some of the fat where the PCBs are concentrated, as shown here and at 3:01.

    Seafood seems to be an exception. Steaming, for example, generally increases contaminant levels, increasing contaminant exposure and concentrating mercury levels as much as 47 percent, as you can see here and at 3:15 in my video. Better not to have toxic buildup in the first place.

    More than 95 percent of human exposure to industrial pollutants like dioxins and PCBs comes from foods like meat, including fatty fish, and dairy, but the pollutants don’t appear magically. The only way the chicken, fish, and other meat lead to human exposure is because the animals themselves built up a lifetime of exposure in our polluted world, from incinerators, power plants, sewer sludge, and on and on, as you can see here and at 3:40 in my video.

    Unlike conventional meat production, a slaughter-free harvest would not only mean no more infected animals, but no more contaminated animals either. In terms of pollutants, it would be like taking a time machine back before the Industrial Revolution.

    Doctor’s Note:

    Cultivated meat means less contamination with fecal residues, toxic pollutants, antibiotics, and hormones; up to 99 percent less environmental impact; and zero pandemic risk. Cultivated meat allows people to have their meat and eat it, too, without affecting the rest of us.

    This is the final video in this cultivated meat series. If you missed the first two, check out the videos on Food Safety and Antibiotic Resistance.

    I previously did a video series on plant-based meats; see the related posts below.

    All videos in the plant-based meat series are also available in a digital download from a webinar I did. SeeThe Human Health Implications of Plant-Based and Cultivated Meat for Pandemic Prevention and Climate Mitigation.

    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them

    This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them

    “Growth, growth, fast growth,” Strey says of what investors were after. “You burn money to grow.” Before its introduction to venture capital, the Plantix team had imagined success as simply making a profitable business. But a modest goal “hasn’t always been that sexy for investors,” who prefer to rapidly build toward a single giant payout, Strey says.

    The team quickly realized that if Plantix was going to survive as a brilliant idea with no clear business model, they would have to give venture capitalists what they wanted: More downloads, more users who could somehow, someday be monetized.

    At that point, Plantix was considering operating in Mali, population 23 million. After learning at an innovation conference that India was home to approximately 150 million smallholders, Strey jumped to shift the company’s focus to the subcontinent. The team quickly established a partnership with a local research group and set up a field office in Hyderabad and began teaching the algorithm to recognize local pests and crops in Indian languages. By the end of January 2018, Plantix had grown to about 300,000 monthly users and raised $4.9 million in one more round of VC funding.

    Moving to India, where food and agriculture is an $800 billion industry, has become an obvious choice for aspiring agritech startups. In recent years, its government has aggressively expanded telecommunications infrastructure, increasing the number of smartphone users to about 450 million people and doubling coverage in rural areas. That meant a farmer walking through an ailing field in Jharkhand could be scrolling Plantix in search of remedies.

    To use the app, farmers provide their crop selection, acreage, and input applications, then upload photos with embedded GPS coordinates. Some growers use the app weekly or even daily, contributing to a deep and detailed real-time image of farming across India. Their use has helped Plantix’s AI grow more accurate while collecting information that could prove invaluable to crop buyers, seed sellers, tool manufacturers, loan lenders, insurance providers, and pesticide sellers.

    During pitches, Strey told me, she saw how investors lit up at just the mention of data. “[The idea] sold good toward the investors, even though we never proved that we could make money out of it.”

    The problem, as many companies have discovered, is that every buyer of data wants some particular slice of the information presented in a specific way. Plantix would need to be reorganized around producing and packaging marketable data products, and the economics never penciled out.

    Stephen Robert Miller

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  • Massachusetts cannabis regulators fine companies for record-keeping, pesticide violations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    Massachusetts cannabis regulators fine companies for record-keeping, pesticide violations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





    Massachusetts cannabis regulators fine companies for record-keeping, pesticide violations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





























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  • California legal weed industry in tumult after Times pesticide investigation – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    California legal weed industry in tumult after Times pesticide investigation – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





    California legal weed industry in tumult after Times pesticide investigation – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





























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  • Fighting Dirty Weed Through OCal Cannabis Certification – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    Fighting Dirty Weed Through OCal Cannabis Certification – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





    Fighting Dirty Weed Through OCal Cannabis Certification – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news






























    Tom Hymes

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  • After dog is poisoned, pest control company pays DC nearly $140K – WTOP News

    After dog is poisoned, pest control company pays DC nearly $140K – WTOP News

    A pest control company that was accused of putting people and pets at risk in D.C. has agreed to pay the District nearly $140,000 in civil penalties and cleanup costs.

    A Maryland-based pest control company that was accused of putting people and pets at risk in D.C. has agreed to pay the District nearly $140,000 in civil penalties and cleanup costs.

    “Each pesticide has a label, and you have to apply pesticides in accordance with that label,” said D.C. Assistant Attorney General Wesley Rosenfeld.

    Kenmore Pest Control & Termite Services was accused of ignoring safety regulations and laying down hazardous chemicals in areas that were easily accessible to children and animals. The company was also accused of allowing unlicensed employees to apply pesticides.

    “Kenmore did not apply pesticides on several occasions in accordance with its label, which led to a risk to health and the environment,” Rosenfeld said.

    WTOP reached out to the company for comment but did not receive a response.

    According to the settlement, Kenmore agreed to pay out $125,000 in civil penalties and $12,000 to cover D.C.’s costs to clean up any environmental contamination.

    The company was accused of improperly applying pesticides around two apartment complexes, including the Mayfair Mansion Apartments in Northeast and Columbia Heights Village in Northwest.

    At Columbia Heights Village, the situation led to a dog being poisoned.

    “On one occasion, a resident’s dog consumed the pesticide,” Rosenfeld said. “Our investigation showed that the dog was harmed and that the resident had incurred veterinary expenses.”

    The dog is fine now, Rosenfeld added, but the owner did have to take the dog to the vet to have its stomach pumped.

    At Mayfair Mansion Apartments, D.C. had to bring in crews for a substantial project to clean up the contaminated area.

    “They dug up the soil and put it into barrels, which were then transported to the appropriate disposal facilities,” Rosenfeld said.

    As part of the settlement, the company must ensure that all of its employees have the proper licenses with the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment.

    Current employees “are barred from applying pesticides until they receive eight hours of continuing education training in pest management,” according to the settlement.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Nick Iannelli

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  • California comedown: how illicit cannabis farms have left a wilderness where ‘you’re lucky to see a lizard’ – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    California comedown: how illicit cannabis farms have left a wilderness where ‘you’re lucky to see a lizard’ – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





    California comedown: how illicit cannabis farms have left a wilderness where ‘you’re lucky to see a lizard’ – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news




























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  • Circadian Rhythms and Our Health and Weight  | NutritionFacts.org

    Circadian Rhythms and Our Health and Weight  | NutritionFacts.org

    Given the power of chronotherapy—how the same dose of the same drugs taken at a different time of day can have such different effects—it’s no surprise that chronoprevention approaches, like meal timing, can also make a difference.

    The 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for “elucidating molecular mechanisms of the circadian clock,” our internal clock. For billions of years, life on Earth evolved to a 24-hour cycle of light and dark, so it’s no surprise our bodies are finely tuned to that pattern. But, even when we’re in total darkness without any external time cues, our body continues to cycle in about a 24-hour circadian rhythm. You can even take tissue biopsies from people and show the cells continue to cycle outside the body in a petri dish. Nearly every tissue and organ in our body has its internal clock.

    An intricate system of intrinsic clocks drives not only some of our behavioral patterns, such as eating, fasting, sleeping, and wakefulness, but it also drives our internal physiology—our “body temperature, blood pressure, hormone production, digestion, and immune activity.” Most of the genes in our body “exhibit daily fluctuations in expression levels, making the circadian expression rhythms the largest known regulatory network in normal physiology,” the biggest regulatory system in our body. This cycling is thought to allow for a level of “‘predictability’ and ‘functional division of labor’” so that each of our body processes can run at the best time. At night while we’re sleeping, a whole array of internal housekeeping activities can be switched on, for example, and as dawn approaches, our body can shift back into activity mode.

    Anyone who’s ever had jet lag knows what throwing off our cycle by even just a few hours can do, but now we know our circadian rhythms can be the difference between life and death. A study of more than 14,000 self-poisonings found that those who tried committing suicide in the morning were more than twice as likely to die than those who ingested the same dose in the evening. In the same vein, properly timed chemotherapy can not only end up being five times less toxic but also twice as effective against cancer. The same drugs, at the same dose, but with different effects depending on the time they’re given. Our body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes, and eliminates what we ingest differently, depending on when it is during the 24-hour cycle, as you can see below and at 2:19 in my video Chronobiology: How Circadian Rhythms Can Control Your Health and Weight. 

    We’re just beginning to figure out the optimal timing for different medications. Randomize people suffering from hypertension into taking their blood pressure pills at bedtime instead of in the morning, and not only does the bedtime group achieve better blood pressure control and suffer fewer heart attacks and strokes, but they cut their risk of death in half. (Yet, most physicians and pharmacists tell patients to take them in the morning, potentially doubling their risk of death.) If chronotherapy—the optimal timing of drugs—can have such an impact, maybe it should come as no surprise that chronoprevention—the scheduling of lifestyle interventions like mealtimes—can also make a difference.

    In the official Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics position paper on effective treatments for obesity, importance is placed not only on the quantity but also on the timing of caloric intake. “Potentially consuming more energy [calories] earlier in the day, rather than later in the day, can assist with weight management.” Some have gone further and even characterized obesity as a “chronobiological illness.” What evidence do we have to back up these kinds of claims?

    Well, the “timing of energy [caloric] and nutrient intake has shifted slightly over time, with a greater proportion of intake later in the day,” raising the question about a possible role in the rise of obesity. Middle-aged men and women who eat a greater share of daily calories in the morning do seem to gain less weight over time, and a study entitled “Timing of Food Intake Predicts Weight Loss Effectiveness” found that dieters eating their main meal earlier in the day seemed to steadily lose more weight than those eating their main meal later, as you can see in the graph below and at 4:12 in my video. 

    The obvious explanation for these findings would just be that those who eat later also tend to eat more. And, indeed, there does seem to be a relationship between when people eat most of their calories and how many calories they end up eating over the entire day, with those eating a greater proportion in the morning eating less overall. Maybe later eaters are overeating junk on the couch watching primetime TV? A tendency has been found for night owls to consume more fast food and soda, and fewer fruits and vegetables. In the field of social psychology, there is a controversial concept called “ego depletion,” where self-control is viewed as a limited resource, like a muscle that can become fatigued from overuse. As the day wears on, the ability to resist unhealthy food choices may decline, leaving one vulnerable to temptation. So, is it just a matter of later eating leading to greater eating?

    In the study I mentioned above where earlier eaters steadily lost more weight, to the researchers’ surprise, the early eaters ate as much as the late eaters, despite the difference in weight-loss magnitude. By the end of the 20-week study, the early eaters ended up about five pounds lighter than the late eaters, even though the two groups ate the same amount of food. There didn’t seem to be any difference in physical activity between the two groups either. Could it be that just the timing itself of caloric intake matters? Scientists decided to put it to the test, which we’ll cover next.

    Wasn’t that chemo data wild?

    If you are on blood pressure medications, please share this video with your physician and ask if your timing is optimized.

    We kicked off this chronobiology series by looking into the importance of breakfast when it comes to weight loss. In case you missed those videos, see Friday Favorites: Is Breakfast the Most Important Meal for Weight Loss, or Should It Be Skipped?.

    For more on this topic, check out the related posts below.

    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Pesticides in produce: 2024 ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘Clean 15’ list released

    Pesticides in produce: 2024 ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘Clean 15’ list released

    There is a new consumer alert before your next grocery run.

    The non-profit, Environmental Working Group (EWG), is out with its annual report of pesticides in produce. The list is dubbed “The Dirty Dozen.”

    Testing by the USDA and other government agencies revealed 95% of non-organic strawberries, leafy greens, grapes, peaches and pears contained pesticides.

    Nectarines, apples, peppers, cherries and green beans also made the “dirty” list.

    EWG also highlights the “Clean 15.” That list includes Avocado, sweet corn, pineapples, onions and papayas.

    Pesticides have been linked to serious health risks, including cancer.

    Remember, an easy way to reduce pesticide levels is to rinse your fruits and vegetables in water.

    Copyright © 2024 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.

    WPVI

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  • Pesticides in produce: 2024 ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘Clean 15’ list released

    Pesticides in produce: 2024 ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘Clean 15’ list released

    There is a new consumer alert before your next grocery run.

    The non-profit, Environmental Working Group (EWG), is out with its annual report of pesticides in produce. The list is dubbed “The Dirty Dozen.”

    Testing by the USDA and other government agencies revealed 95% of non-organic strawberries, leafy greens, grapes, peaches and pears contained pesticides.

    Nectarines, apples, peppers, cherries and green beans also made the “dirty” list.

    EWG also highlights the “Clean 15.” That list includes Avocado, sweet corn, pineapples, onions and papayas.

    Pesticides have been linked to serious health risks, including cancer.

    Remember, an easy way to reduce pesticide levels is to rinse your fruits and vegetables in water.

    Copyright © 2024 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.

    WPVI

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  • Are Cheerios and Quaker Oats safe to eat? Experts weigh in on new pesticide concerns. 

    Are Cheerios and Quaker Oats safe to eat? Experts weigh in on new pesticide concerns. 

    Should you pass on that morning bowl of cereal or oatmeal?

    That’s what some people may be asking in light of a study released this week by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on agricultural and chemical-safety laws in the U.S. The study looked at the prevalence of a pesticide called chlormequat in oat-based food products, including cereals like Cheerios and Quaker Oats. 

    The EWG said it found detectable levels of the chemical in 92% of nonorganic oat-based foods purchased in May 2023.

    “Studies in laboratory animals show that chlormequat can cause harm to the normal growth and development of the fetus and damage the reproductive system,” Olga Naidenko, vice president at the EWG, told MarketWatch. Those risks, the EWG report noted, can include reduced fertility. 

    It has not been proven that the substance affects humans in the same way the studies cited by the EWG found it does lab animals, and there are other studies that have found chlormequat had no effect on reproduction in pigs or mice, or any impact on fertilization rates in mice.

    The EWG is still advocating that concerned consumers buy organic oat products as an alternative, however. 

    “Certified organic oats are, by law, grown without synthetic pesticides,” Naidenko said. 

    Representatives for General Mills
    GIS,
    +1.28%    ,
    the company that makes Cheerios, and PepsiCo
    PEP,
    -0.92%    ,
    which owns Quaker Oats, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    “‘Any family raising kids or thinking about starting a family should do whatever they can do to avoid chlormequat. It’s not a safe product.’”


    — Charles Benbrook, a scientific consultant who focuses on pesticides

    The EWG’s recommendation to go organic was echoed by experts that MarketWatch contacted. 

    Charles Benbrook, a scientific consultant based in Washington state who focuses on pesticides, said he’s an oatmeal eater who chooses organic oatmeal “when I can get it.”

    Regarding chlormequat, Benbrook said, “It’s not a safe product.”

    “Any family raising kids or thinking about starting a family should do whatever they can do to avoid chlormequat,” he said.

    Melissa Furlong, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Arizona, said it’s important to note that chlormequat is not the only pesticide that is found in oat-based cereals. There’s still much we need to learn about the health effects the substance might have on humans, she added.

    “That’s not to say it isn’t the worst [pesticide]. We don’t really know,” Furlong said. 

    Chlormequat has not been approved for use on food crops grown in the U.S., according to the EWG, but it can be found in oats and oat products from other countries. Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency started allowing imports of such products into the U.S., the EWG noted, which is why chlormequat can be found in some cereals sold in this country.

    The EPA is considering approving chlormequat for use on crops grown in the U.S., according to the agency’s website. In a call for public comment on its proposed decision, the agency said, “Based on EPA’s human health risk assessment, there are no dietary, residential, or aggregate (i.e., combined dietary and residential exposures) risks of concern.”

    The EPA didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.

    For her part, Furlong said that while she usually buys organic oat products, she isn’t rigid about it — and she might still buy the occasional box of Cheerios.

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  • Hemp Cannabinoids Could Be Source of New Pesticides | High Times

    Hemp Cannabinoids Could Be Source of New Pesticides | High Times

    Recent research into the potential uses of hemp shows that cannabinoids produced by the plant could one day be the source of new natural pesticides, according to researchers at Cornell University in New York. The study by scientists at the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell AgriTech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) found that a higher concentration of cannabinoids in the leaves of hemp plants showed less damage from chewing insects compared with leaves less rich in cannabinoids. 

    The researchers hope that further study could build on these findings to eventually produce new natural insecticides, most likely for use on non-edible plants only. The potential for using the new pesticides on food crops seems unlikely at this point because of the pharmacological effects of cannabinoids including CBDA, THCA and GBGA, which can be converted to CBD, THC and CBG, respectively, with the addition of heat in a process known as decarboxylation. 

    Larry Smart, a plant breeder and professor at CALS, says that researchers have studied the intoxicating and medicinal effects of cannabinoids, which are produced almost exclusively by cannabis plants, since the compounds were first identified decades ago. But little research has been conducted to determine exactly why cannabis plants first developed the more than 100 distinct substances.

    “It has been speculated that they are defensive compounds, because they primarily accumulate in female flowers to protect seeds, which is a fairly common concept in plants,” said Smart, the senior author of the study, according to a report from Hemp Today.

    “But no one has put together a comprehensive set of experimental results to show a direct relationship between the accumulation of these cannabinoids and their harmful effects on insects,” Smart continued. 

    Cornell’s Hemp Breeding Program Launched in 2017

    The research was conducted as part of Cornell’s hemp breeding program, which was launched by the Ivy League university in upstate New York in 2017. The program began its work by evaluating different commercially available hemp cultivars so recommendations could be made to farmers about which varieties are best suited to the local soil and climate. 

    The researchers noticed that varieties of hemp sourced from a breeding program in Ukraine that did not produce cannabinoids were all highly susceptible to damage from Japanese beetles. Other hemp varietals that produce cannabinoids were not similarly prone to damage from the insects.

    “In the absence of cannabinoids, we saw heavy insect damage, and in the presence of cannabinoids, we saw much less damage,” said Smart.

    The researchers then isolated CBDA and CBGA for use in controlled insect feeding studies. THCA was not studied as part of the research because strict federal limits on THC in hemp crops prevent Cornell researchers from working with the compound.

    The cannabinoid extracts were added to an artificial insect diet in varying concentrations. The researchers determined that insect larvae grew less and had lower rates of survival as the concentration of cannabinoids was increased.

    “The study gives us insight into how cannabinoids function in natural systems, and can help us develop new THC-compliant hemp cultivars that maintain these natural built-in defenses against herbivores,” said George Stack, a postdoctoral researcher in Smart’s lab and one of the authors of the new study.

    The researchers plan further investigation to determine if sap-sucking insects such as aphids are also adversely affected by cannabinoids. However, Stack noted that the research is hindered by the continued illegality of marijuana at the federal level.

    “The potential use of cannabinoids as a pesticide is an exciting area for future research, but there will certainly be regulatory barriers due to pharmacological activity of the compounds, and more studies are needed to understand what pests cannabinoids will be effective against,” Stack said.

    The study, “Cannabinoids Function in Defense Against Chewing Herbivores in Cannabis Sativa L.,” was published in October by the peer-reviewed journal Horticulture Research.

    A.J. Herrington

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  • Is It Safe to Take Weight-Loss Pills?  | NutritionFacts.org

    Is It Safe to Take Weight-Loss Pills?  | NutritionFacts.org

    Why don’t more people take the weight-loss medications currently on the market? 

    Despite the myriad menus of FDA-approved medications for weight loss, they’ve only been prescribed for about 1 in 50 patients with obesity. We tend to worship medical magic bullets in the United States, so what gives? As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Are Weight-Loss Supplements Safe and Effective?, one of the reasons anti-obesity drugs are so “highly stigmatized” is that, historically, they’ve been anything but magical and the bullets have been blanks—or worse. 

    To date, most weight-loss drugs that were initially approved as safe have since been pulled from the market for unforeseen side effects that turned them into a “threat to public health.” As you may remember from my video Brown Fat: Losing Weight Through Thermogenesis, it all started with DNP, a pesticide with a promise to safely melt away fat that melted away people’s eyesight instead. (That actually helped lead to the passage of the landmark Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938.) Thanks to the internet, DNP has made a comeback with “predictably lethal results.” 

    Then came the amphetamines. Currently, more than half a million Americans may be addicted to amphetamines like crystal meth, but the “original amphetamine epidemic was generated by the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession.” By the 1960s, drug companies were churning out about 80,000 kilos of amphetamines a year, which is nearly enough for a weekly dose for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Billions of doses a year were prescribed for weight loss, and weight-loss clinics were raking in huge profits. A dispensing diet doctor could buy 100,000 amphetamine tablets for less than $100, then turn around and sell them to patients for $12,000.  

    At a 1970 Senate Hearing, Senator Thomas Dodd (father of “Dodd-Frank” Senator Chris Dodd) suggested that America’s speed freak problem “was no by means an ‘accidental development’: ‘Multihundred million dollar advertising budgets, frequently the most costly ingredient in the price of a pill, have, pill by pill, led, coaxed and seduced post-World War II generations into the ‘freaked-out’ drug culture…’” I’ll leave drawing the Big Pharma parallels to the current opioid crisis as an exercise for the viewer.  

    Aminorex was a widely-prescribed appetite suppressant before it was pulled for causing lung damage. Eighteen million Americans were on fen-phen before it was pulled from the market for causing severe damage to heart valves. Meridia was pulled for heart attacks and strokes, Acomplia was pulled for psychiatric side effects, including suicide, and the list goes on, as you can see below and at 2:51 in my video. 

    The fen-phen debacle resulted in “some of the largest litigation pay-outs ever seen in the pharmaceutical industry, with individual amounts of up to US$200,000 and a total value of ~US$14 billion,” but that’s all baked into the formula. If you read the journal PharmacoEconomics (and who doesn’t!), you may be aware that a new weight-loss drug may injure and kill so many that “expected litigation cost” could exceed $80 million, but Big Pharma consultants estimate that if it’s successful, the drug could bring in more than $100 million, so do the math. 

    What does work for weight loss? I dive deep into that and more in How Not to Diet.  For more of my videos on weight loss, check out the related videos below. 

    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Say No to Fish for Five Years Before Pregnancy  | NutritionFacts.org

    Say No to Fish for Five Years Before Pregnancy  | NutritionFacts.org

    Advisories telling pregnant women to cut down on fish consumption may be too late for certain persistent pollutants. 

    If you intentionally expose people to mercury by feeding them fish (like tuna) for 14 weeks, the level of mercury in their bloodstream goes up, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:14 in my video Avoiding Fish for Five Years Before Pregnancy. As soon as they stop eating fish, it drops back down such that they can detox by half in about 100 days. (So, the half-life of total mercury in our blood is approximately 100 days.) Even if you eat a lot of fish, within a few months of stopping, you can clear much of the mercury out of your blood. But what about your brain? 

    The results from modeling studies are all over the place, providing “some extreme estimates (69 days vs. 22 years).” When put to the test, though, autopsy findings suggest the half-life may be even longer still at 27.4 years. Once mercury gets in our brains, it can be decades before our body can get rid of even half of it. So, better than detoxing is not “toxing” in the first place. 

    That’s the problem with advisories that tell pregnant women to cut down on fish intake. For pollutants with long half-lives, such as PCBs and dioxins, “temporary fish advisory-related decreases in daily contaminant intake will not necessarily translate to appreciable decreases in maternal POP [persistent organic pollutant] body burdens,” which help determine the dose the baby gets. 

    Consider this: As you can see in the graph below and at 1:32 in my video, an infant may be exposed to a tumor-promoting pollutant called PCB 153 if their mom ate fish. But if mom ate only half the fish or no fish at all for one year, levels wouldn’t budge much. A substantial drop in infant exposure levels may only be seen if the mom had cut out all fish for five years before getting pregnant. That is the “fish consumption caveat.” “[T]he only scenarios that produced a significant impact on children’s exposures required mothers to eliminate fish from their diets for 5 years before their children were conceived. The model predicted that substituting produce for fish would reduce prenatal and breastfeeding exposures by 37% each and subsequent childhood exposures by 23%.” So, “a complete ban on fish consumption may be preferable to targeted, life stage–based fish consumption advisories…” 

    If you are going to eat fish, though, which is less polluted—wild-caught or farmed fish? In a recent study, researchers measured the levels of pesticides, such as DDT, PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and toxic elements, such as mercury and lead, in a large sample of farmed and wild-caught seafood. In general, they found that farmed fish were worse. Think of the suspect as farmed and dangerous. The measured levels of most organic and many inorganic pollutants were higher in the farmed seafood products and, consequently, so were the intake levels for the consumer if such products were consumed. For example, as you can see in the graphs below and at 3:09 in my video, there was significantly more contamination by polycyclic hydrocarbons, persistent pesticides, and PCBs in all of the farmed fish samples, including the salmon and seabass (though it didn’t seem to matter for crayfish), and the wild-caught mussels were actually worse. If you split adult and child consumers into those only eating farmed seafood or only eating wild-caught seafood, the level of pollutant exposure was significantly worse with the farmed seafood.  

    Overall, the researchers, who were Spanish, investigated a total of 59 pollutants and toxic elements. They concluded: “Taking all these data as a whole, and based on the rates of consumption of fish and seafood of the Spanish population, our results indicate that a theoretical consumer who chose to consume only aquaculture [farmed] products would be exposed to levels of pollutants investigated about twice higher than if this theoretical consumer had chosen only products from extractive fisheries [wild-caught fish].” So, when it comes to pollutants, you could eat twice the amount of fish if you stuck to wild-caught. That’s easier said than done, though. Mislabeling rates for fish and other seafood in the United States are between 30 and 38 percent, so the average fraud rate is around one in three.  

    In my previous video on this topic, How Long to Detox from Fish Before Pregnancy, I mentioned a study that suggests detoxing from fish for one year to lower mercury levels, but other pollutants take longer to leave our system. 

    For optimum brain development, consider a pollutant-free source of omega-3 fatty acids. Check out Should Vegan Women Supplement with DHA during Pregnancy?. 

    Aside from pollutants, there are other reasons we may want to avoid excessive amounts of animal protein. See Flashback Friday: The Effect of Animal Protein on Stress Hormones, Testosterone, and Pregnancy.

    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • EcoClear Partners With the City of St. Petersburg to Minimize Pests

    EcoClear Partners With the City of St. Petersburg to Minimize Pests

    EcoClear’s RatX® is poison-free and only affects target species, improving the quality of life in the area.


    SARASOTA, Fla., June 22, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    EcoClear Products, Inc., a leading manufacturer of safe, eco-friendly pesticides, announces an agreement with the City of St. Petersburg, Florida’s Sanitation Department. The city will use EcoClear’s RatX® as a city-wide rodent control solution, in order to safely resolve the common problem of rodent overpopulation without affecting people, their pets, and the local wildlife. 

    “The residents of St. Petersburg are living in a city that cares about its people, pets, and wildlife,” Christopher Stidd, President of Ecoclear Products, said. “The city’s choice to use EcoClear’s effective and poison-free method of extermination sets the city and its citizens ahead of the curve.” 

    RatX ® is an all-natural product with two active ingredients, corn gluten meal and sodium chloride, safe to use around people and pets, with no risk of secondary kill to non-target species like birds of prey or wildlife. It reduces the smell of dead rodent carcasses by up to 90% while also providing a more cost-effective solution than poisons and private extermination contractors. 

    “Using RatX® will save the taxpayers money, as the city no longer has to use outside services to control rodents,” Stidd said. “The city is choosing a sustainable way to get rid of unwanted pests like rats and mice, while at the same time protecting the health and safety of people and non-target animals.” 

    RatX® Pellets are effective for indoor and outdoor rat and mouse control when used as directed and are safe to use around landscaping, near livestock housing, or under buildings or garden structures.   

    EcoClear’s rodenticides are made with ingredients that meet the Food & Drug Administration’s GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) standard. They target only the specific, intended species, so non-target animals such as pets, wildlife, and birds are safe from harm. 

    For more information, please visit www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro.  

    About EcoClear Products 

    EcoClear Products, Inc. is a leading developer of specialty products, which include ecological cleaning, odor removal products, and pest control solutions. Based in Sarasota, Florida, and founded in 2013, EcoClear’s mission is to develop innovative and effective products safe for people, pets, and wildlife. EcoClear has been recognized for its commitment to advancements in sustainable chemistry and efficacy. For more information, visit www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro. 

    Source: EcoClear Products, Inc.

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  • EcoClear Products Reports Its Pest Control Supplies are Unaffected, Following EPA Proposal Release

    EcoClear Products Reports Its Pest Control Supplies are Unaffected, Following EPA Proposal Release

    The company’s pest control solutions, like RatX®, MouseX®, VoleX®, and MoleX® are formulated to only affect target species.

    Press Release
    –

    Mar 7, 2023


    SARASOTA, Fla., March 7, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently found that several common pesticide ingredients pose a risk to humans, animals and the environment, and proposed new regulations that would impose restrictions on their use. EcoClear Products, maker of minimum-risk pesticides and cleansers, has reviewed the EPA action and announces that its pest control solutions, like RatX®, MouseX®, VoleX®, and MoleX®, do not include the targeted FGAR and SGAR ingredients.

    “Our pest control products are formulated with FDA GRAS ingredients and are safe to use around non-target animals when used as directed,” said Christopher Stidd, founder and CEO of EcoClear Products. “EcoClear Products has long been an industry leader in effective, poison-free pest control, and we continue to aim to educate industry leaders and various sectors through our extensive knowledge and research.”

    Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), EPA must review registered pesticides every 15 years, Stidd explained. The law ensures that as products and practices change, and as science develops a better ability to assess health risks, pesticides continue to meet the standard of causing no adverse effects on human health or the environment.

    The most recent evaluation ruled that several common chemicals in pesticides are harming non-target animals and posing a risk to both humans and the environment. When the EPA identifies unreasonable adverse effects, it proposes amendments to pesticide labels to mitigate these risks.

    The new EPA proposal suggests new measures be taken for 11 rodenticides currently on the market. Pesticide companies that use these chemicals would be required to remove them from their products, or, in some instances, a designated person from a pest control company would need to observe the area where the pesticide was used for a specific timeframe and report what animals died as a result.

    EcoClear Products uses patented and proprietary compounds and processes, and its chemists continue to expand the company’s green cleaning, odor-neutralizing, and minimum-risk pesticide products, Stidd said, reiterating that its pesticide offerings contain none of the ingredients the EPA has found to merit new protective measures.

    Rodenticides are necessary because rodents cause significant damage to property, crops and food supplies across the country. They may also spread diseases, posing a serious risk to public health. Rodenticides are used in residential, agricultural and non-agricultural settings to control a variety of pests, including house mice, moles, ground squirrels and mongooses.

    EcoClear Products is dedicated to researching, developing and perfecting non-poisonous pest management solutions available for home and business owners across the United States. To learn more about EcoClear Products, visit www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro.

    About EcoClear Products

    EcoClear Products, Inc. is a leading developer of specialty products, which include ecological cleaning, odor removal products, and pest control solutions. Based in Sarasota, Florida, and founded in 2013, EcoClear’s mission is to develop innovative and effective products safe for people, pets, and wildlife. EcoClear has been recognized for its commitment to advancements in sustainable chemistry and efficacy. For more information, visit www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro.

    Source: EcoClear Products

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  • EcoClear Products to Showcase and Attend AAHOA Central Midwest Regional Conference and Trade Show

    EcoClear Products to Showcase and Attend AAHOA Central Midwest Regional Conference and Trade Show

    Maker of eco-friendly cleaning products will showcase its odor eliminator and cleaning agent lines at Midwest’s largest regional event for hotel operators

    Press Release
    –

    Feb 21, 2023 08:00 EST


    SARASOTA, Fla., February 21, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    EcoClear Products, maker of award-winning environmentally friendly cleansers, pesticides and odor eliminators, will showcase its new and established products to a key market at the AAHOA Central Midwest Regional Conference & Trade Show.

    The event, which takes place on Wednesday, March 1, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Overland Park, Kansas, is the largest regional event connecting hotel operators and vendors. The AAHOA is the nation’s largest hotel owners association, with its 20,000 members owning 60% of U.S. hotels.

    At the show, hotel operators will be seeking new solutions that help them deliver peak guest services while meeting budget and ROI targets. The event also provides hoteliers with the opportunity to catch up on the latest industry news and updates as well as network with fellow AAHOA members and political leaders from the area.

    “EcoClear has a track record of helping to keep hotel facilities clean and pest-free while also being safe for guests and economical,” said Christopher Stidd, founder and CEO of EcoClear Products. “The AAHOA Midwest Regional Tradeshow provides us with a great opportunity to inform leading hotel owners and operators of our expanded and continually improving product lines.”

    Among the EcoClear products being showcased at the event:

    RatX Bait Discs:

    Ready-made rat control discs that are perfect for use in RatX® bait stations or similar outdoor bait boxes. Weather-resistant, they’re perfect for sheds, barns, or any area exposed to more extreme weather conditions. EcoClear’s patented blend of food-grade ingredients presents an attractive taste and scent to draw rats, making them the choice of professionals and homeowners alike.

    RatX Throw Packs:

    For hard-to-reach areas like rat burrows, easy-to-use RatX® Throw Packs are formulated using naturally derived ingredients and contain a measured dose of RatX® pellets, effective for indoor and outdoor rat control. The bag is made of biodegradable and compostable cellophane—easy for rats to chew through.

    SmokeOut® RTU Spray:

    Instantly and safely removes smoke-related odors on contact, instead of simply masking odor-causing molecules (such as air fresheners). Formulated to eliminate the stubborn unpleasant odors left behind by cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, SmokeOut® destroys smoke smells at their source—both in the air and on fabrics and other porous surfaces.

    SmokeOut® Cannabis RTU Spray:
    Easily control and neutralize the unmistakable odor of cannabis with SmokeOut® Cannabis ready-to-use (RTU) spray. The scientifically tested and approved formula completely neutralizes odor molecules caused by unburned or smoked cannabis.

    System 6: A novel single-component cleansing system developed to deliver unsurpassed cleaning performance in the most demanding janitorial and housekeeping applications. When using the System-6® dispenser (sold separately), six preset blends operate at the touch of a button to automatically measure, mix and dispense a ready-to-use cleaning solution. This means you can easily tailor your specific cleaning application, using your existing water source on-site.

    EcoClear Products boasts safe, effective and harmless cleaning agents that use patented and proprietary compounds and processes. Its chemists have received Presidential Awards for “green” chemistry as a result of their extensive experience in pesticides, rodenticides and detergents and their passion for creating innovative offerings.

    To learn more, visit http://www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro

    About EcoClear Products

    EcoClear Products, Inc. is a leading developer of specialty products, which include ecological cleaning, odor removal products, and pest control solutions. Based in Sarasota, Florida, and founded in 2013, EcoClear’s mission is to develop innovative and effective products safe for people, pets, and wildlife. EcoClear has been recognized for its commitment to advancements in sustainable chemistry and efficacy. For more information, visit www.ecoclearproducts.com/pro

    Source: EcoClear Products

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  • Trade partners see red over Europe’s green agenda

    Trade partners see red over Europe’s green agenda

    Press play to listen to this article

    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    The EU’s green ambitions are, for its trading partners, turning into a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

    Developing nations, especially, worry that Brussels is throwing up trade barriers in its pursuit of climate neutrality and sustainable food production. To them, it looks like all the EU can export is rules that will hold back their own economic progress.

    Indonesia, for example, has warned the EU should not attempt to dictate its green standards to countries in Southeast Asia. “There must be no coercion, no more parties who always dictate and assume that my standards are better than yours,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo told European leaders at the EU-ASEAN summit last month.

    In another striking example of the anger provoked by the EU’s green agenda, Malaysia has threatened to stop exports of palm oil to the bloc over new rules aimed at fighting deforestation.

    The EU’s ambitions to become climate neutral by 2050 — its so-called Green Deal — herald a huge economic transformation for the world’s largest trading bloc. 

    Now that the Green Deal is being translated into actual legislation, developing nations are waking up with a hangover of its effects. 

    One diplomat from a third country said Brussels is mishandling the power of the EU’s single market instead of respecting the sovereignty of its trading partners.

    “We see a regulatory imperialism by the EU whereby Brussels sees itself as an exporter of rules to third countries — as the legislators of the world,” said Philippe De Baere, managing partner at law firm Van Bael & Bellis.

    The Green Deal goes beyond the so-called Brussels effect, in which multinational companies use EU rules as global standards. De Baere said Brussels had gotten “drunk on its success” and started exporting environmental objectives to developing nations, “which are unable to comply economically, or if they comply, it is with an enormous economic cost.”

    Imposing new taxes 

    The EU’s carbon border levy is the latest, and most symbolic, measure to upset the EU’s trade partners. The idea is that producers importing carbon-intensive products into the bloc will have to buy permits to account for the difference between their domestic carbon price and the price paid by EU producers.

    “There must be no coercion, no more parties who always dictate and assume that my standards are better than yours,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo told European leaders | Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

    The goal of the levy, called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), was to level the playing field for EU producers and avoid companies moving their production over lower climate standards — so-called carbon leakage. For Brussels, the sense of climate urgency is too high to wait for others to follow suit, or to reach a deal at the multilateral or global level. 

    But there is a difference between the intent and real-word outcomes, said Milan Elkerbout of the Centre for European Policy Studies: “If you’re not in the internal logic of the European debate, this will just look like the perfect example of the EU having a protectionist intent.”

    Brazil, South Africa, India and China have jointly expressed their “grave concern regarding the proposal for introducing trade barriers, such as unilateral carbon border adjustment, that are discriminatory.” The measure is likely to be challenged at the World Trade Organization.

    Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch MEP who helped craft the CBAM, said the measure should be offset by the delivery of tens of billions in annual public financing promised for climate projects in the developing world.

    “I think they are absolutely right in their complaints about the EU (and other developed countries) not fulfilling their pledges,” he said of these emerging economies. But it would be impossible for the EU to end protections for heavy industry at home while granting exemptions to other countries.

    Even for the poorest countries, Chahim said, an exemption “would be the wrong signal, they also have to decarbonize their industry to make it futureproof.” But under the newly minted regulation, those countries were eligible for support to comply, he added.

    Making imports harder 

    The carbon border levy is far from the only measure to make exporting to the world’s biggest trading bloc harder. 

    Brussels’ Farm to Fork strategy seeks to prioritize sustainability in agriculture by slashing pesticide risk and use in half by 2030. A plan announced last September to ban imports of products containing residues of harmful neonicotinoid insecticides from 2026 has drawn “unprecedented” criticism from other countries, according to a senior European Commission official. 

    As the Green Deal tightens rules on pesticide use in the EU, new trade barriers are going up, said Koen Dekeyser of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM). “Certain farmers can make those investments. Other, more small-scale farmers are likely to seek other markets, for example in Asia,” said Dekeyser.

    The EU’s effort to stop deforestation is likely to have similar results. 

    Under new rules, it will be illegal to sell or export certain commodities if they’ve been produced on deforested land. 

    Brussels’ Farm to Fork strategy seeks to prioritize sustainability in agriculture by slashing pesticide risk and use in half by 2030 | Jean-François Monier/AFP via Getty Images

    One third-country diplomat said it was easy for the EU to take a stand on deforestation in the developing world, having already deforested its own land in the past.

    Countries in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia have lobbied hard against the proposal, calling it “discriminatory and punitive in nature” and arguing in a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that it will result in “trade distortion and diplomatic tensions, without benefits to the environment.” 

    In technology, where the 27-country bloc has passed a series of rules to promote its standards on privacy, online competition and social media to the wider world, other countries, too, have chafed at what they see as overly bureaucratic rules that favor well-resourced regulators within the EU. These can be difficult to implement in developing countries with less expertise and money at their disposal.

    More far-reaching legislation is still underway. The EU is also preparing a sustainable production law for companies to police their supply chains against forced labor and environmental damage. Brussels wants to hold companies responsible for abuses throughout their supply chains. 

    Same goal, different roads 

    In their deforestation letter, the group of developing countries touch on a sensitive point. While they agree with the EU’s climate goals, they regret that Brussels is imposing its own measures instead of forging an international deal.

    The Paris climate agreement is based on the logic of common, but differentiated, responsibilities. At least, that allows countries to move at their own speed and determine their policies toward the same goal.

    “Now, not only is the EU telling them what to do, but a lot of developing countries also feel they are now prohibited to do what Western countries have done for decades: industrialize without thinking about pollution and subsidizing infant industries,” said Ferdi De Ville, a professor in European political economy at the University of Ghent.

    The unilateral character of a lot of these measures is creating resentment, argues De Ville, especially given the bloc’s huge market power.

    “In Brussels, everyone looks at these measures separately,” said another diplomat from a third country. “But who looks at it together and thinks about what it means to us? CBAM, deforestation, the Farm to Fork strategy. These are all unilateral measures which are making things harder for our exporters.” 

    European officials stress, however, that Brussels is not inflicting its Green Deal on the rest of the world.

    But Brussels is also being pushed by NGOs to lead by example. “Europe is one of the major contributors to the current crises related to climate, biodiversity, energy and human rights violations around the world. Therefore we consider it the responsibility of the European Union and other countries in the Global North to urgently start tackling these crises through lawmaking,” said Jill McArdle from the NGO Friends of the Earth.

    Agreeing on new rules on the multilateral front remains the EU’s first best option. But, in the absence of a well-functioning World Trade Organization, Brussels has little choice but to go at it alone, EU officials and diplomats argue. “If we want to achieve the Paris targets, there is no time to wait,” one EU official said.

    Mark Scott contributed reporting. This story has been updated.

    Karl Mathiesen and Barbara Moens

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