Home/Posts Tagged ‘pesticides’
Posts Tagged ‘pesticides’
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 29th, 2012,
The jury is in: common agricultural pesticides disrupt the navigation systems of honeybees and reduce the weight and number of queens in bumblebee hives. Two separate studies showed strong links between pesticides and the epidemic disappearance of honeybees in the US and UK, known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Experiments showed that honeybees died or failed to return to their hives in much greater numbers than expected. Bumblebees exposed to typical levels of pesticides saw their hives populations shrink by 10% versus hives not exposed. What’s worse is they almost lost their ability to produce new queens. Only queens live…
Tags: bumblebees, CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, honeybees, pesticides, UK, US
Conservation, Natural disasters, Wildlife & Flora, Jan 16th, 2012,
We depend on honeybees to pollinate some 70 crops. Due to a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), honeybees, mainly in North America, are dying off at a shocking rate – 30% every year since 2006. In the US, bee die-offs have qualified some beekeepers for disaster relief from the Department of Agriculture. Though the exact cause, or causes, of CCD are murky – it has been attributed to parasites and satellite communication – the most obvious culprits are pesticides, specifically insecticides. From the Guardian: Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids…
Tags: beekeeper, beekeeping, bees, CCD, honeybee, pesticides
Climate Change, Conservation, Nature, Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 7th, 2010,
We are heading to the US Southwest today to find one of the most critically endangered species in the country: the Southern Mountain Yellow-legged Frog. This little critter is so endangered that Animal Planet actually lists it on their Top 5 Endangered Frogs list. This creature is mainly found in the Sierra Nevada area of California. They range approximately between 2 and 3 inches (5 and 7.5 cm) in size, have orange or yellow coloring on their underside, yellow or red coloring on their topside, and black or brown spots. They love sunny riverbanks, lake borders, and meadow streams; unfortunately,…
Tags: amphibian, chytridiomycosis, Climate change, Conservation, Creature Feature, critically endangered species, introduced fish, pesticides, population decline, Sierra Nevada, Southern Mountain Yellow-legged Frog, wildlife
Health, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Sep 12th, 2010,
Xintang, China is home to some 15,000 textile factories which produce 200 million pairs of blue jeans every year. The wastewater from these factories turns local rivers an unnatural shade of blue. Residents of Xintang complain of health problems such as birth defects, breathing difficulties and skin rashes, but no serious studies have been conducted to link health maladies to pollutants from the textile industry. Meanwhile, the cotton industry in India is being blamed for health problems linked to the toxic pesticide endosulfan. Pesticides are also believed to cause children’s hair to turn grey. But pesticides and cotton are huge…
Tags: blue, China, cotton, factories, Greenpeace, health problems, India, jeans, Pearl River, pesticides, river, textiles, Xintang
Green living, Aug 25th, 2010,
I’d choose paper bags for my groceries, but since plastic bags are offered for free in shops and said to be not that bad for the environment, it’s hard to resist them. What is more eco-friendly: plastic or paper shopping bags? A: Neither. We have been conditioned to believe that paper bags are eco-friendly. Paper is made from trees, which are logged by clear-cutting methods. When the collected trees are dry, they are cooked into a pulp for many hours in a chemical mixture. The pulp is then washed and bleached; both stages require thousands of gallons of clean water….
Tags: biodegradable, bioplastics, chemicals, clear-cutting, eco-friendly, fertilizers, fossil fuel, GMO, paper bags, pesticides, petroleum, plastic bags, Pollution, re-usable, Recycling, shopping bags, TOXIC, transport
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 8th, 2010,
Poor bees. We steal their honey, enslave them in order to pollinate apple orchards and then have the audacity to go berserk if one of them lands in our Frappuccino. Oh yeah, it also turns out we’re probably poisoning them with pesticides, causing their numbers to drop dramatically. The decline of the European honeybee – known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD – could in turn spell disaster for the future of monoculture crops, such as fruits, nuts, vegetables, flowers, seeds, beans and spices. A new study has linked common pesticides with CCD, spurring environmental groups into a new effort…
Tags: air, bees, CCD, control, European, Germany, honey, honeybees, monoculture, neonicotinoids, pesticides, quality, study
Green living, Health, Nov 12th, 2009,
Malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases remain a serious threat in many poor communities around the globe; fogging entire towns and neighborhoods used to be the normal practice to prevent this. That method is not only expensive and outdated; it is also impractical because it is off-target and widespread spraying makes most mosquitoes more resistant to the pesticide. Insects, wildlife and other domestic animals also remain at risk from exposure to pesticides due to fogging. More contemporary and targeted pesticide application methods have been developed throughout the years. One such method is using pyrethrin-soaked bed nets to protect sleeping children. Although…
Tags: malaria, pesticides
