David Carpenter is a leading expert on the impacts of toxic chemicals on human health. He has been involved in a number of high-profile cases involving pesticides, including the PCB scandal at the World Health Organization. And now he s turning his attention to a new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which could be to blame for the decline of the honeybee population. In this episode, David talks about the dangers of these pesticides, and how they could affect human health and the bees that depend on them for their survival. Plus, he tells the story of when he was a kid growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, when he first saw a honeybee colony in his backyard. And then, one day, that colony disappeared. It s a global apocalypse of insects, and it s not just a problem for honeybees. It s affecting other insects, too, like butterflies, mites, and other little creatures. And it s a problem that no one seems to be able to figure out how to deal with, because they can t get out of their hives. Guest: Dr. David Carpenter, expert witness in the PCB case at the EPA v. Erin Brockovich trial, and author of the book Toxic: The Pesticide Poisoning from the Inside Out, on the effects of Neonicotinoid Pesticides on Human Health and the Honeybee Colony Collapse, on this episode of Mythology and the Science of Pollinators, on today s episode of the podcast. Music: "In Need of a Honeybee" by Jeff Perla, "Goodbye" by Suneaters, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith, "goodbye, honey, goodbyes, goodbye, goodnight, good morning, good night, bye bye, bye, good love, bye" by Mr. and Goodnight, bye Bye Bye, Bye, bye. by Seren and Goodbye, bye! by John Rochard, by Haley, Sarah, Maureen, Caitlyn, and Joe, and Good Morning, and Goodbye, and Bye, Goodbye, Love, Goodbye! by Rachel, and Ollie, and Koko, and Cheez "Bye, and Love, and Blessings, and See You, and Come Back, , and Good Luck, and Thank You, Bye by Susan, And Love, And Bye, And Good Luck by
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, I'm really happy to have one of my old, old friends and an inveterate expert witness in a number of cases that I've been hanging out with for almost 40 years on the Hudson River, working on the PCB cases.
00:00:17.000David Carpenter is well known to both plaintiffs and defense attorneys all across the country as one of the leading And most respected experts when it comes to looking at the impacts of toxic chemicals on human health.
00:00:34.000Let me just ask you something that's really a preoccupation of mine, which is these neonicotinoid pesticides.
00:00:44.000That have essentially replaced DDT and some of the old organophosphate pesticides that were used in this country and discredited, but in many ways seem almost as bad.
00:00:56.000And we're watching the collapse of bee colonies Something like 80% of winged insects have disappeared over the past decade.
00:01:17.000So tell us about this class of pesticides and what they mean to human health and the ecology.
00:01:24.000The neonicotinides are a class of pesticides that everybody thought was just God's gift to mankind.
00:01:34.000These are a class of pesticides where you don't spray them.
00:01:37.000You impregnate the seeds of your food crop with these pesticides.
00:01:44.000They get incorporated into the leaves of the plant.
00:01:49.000And any insect that eats the leaves or the stems of the plant is killed.
00:01:55.000So, well, you know, Bobby, I was in the car all day driving back literally for about eight hours.
00:02:02.000And you and I both remember the days when you would drive for several hours and your windshield would be covered with dead bugs.
00:02:09.000We drove for eight hours and there were a few bugs, but not many.
00:02:13.000And that just indicates how much our use of pesticides have reduced the numbers of insects, the flying insects that used to get on our car.
00:02:24.000And the mechanism of these chemicals is that they interfere, they activate acetylcholine receptors.
00:02:33.000Now that sounds dangerous for us because acetylcholine is a major neurotransmitter in our nervous system.
00:02:41.000It's the transmitter between nerves and muscle.
00:02:44.000So if your acetylcholine receptors don't work, you're paralyzed.
00:02:47.000And things like cobra venom, some of the snake venoms, will block the activation of acetylcholine receptors, and that kills people by suffocation.
00:02:56.000Well, it turns out that the acetylcholine receptors in insects Are a little different from those in humans.
00:03:03.000And so the neonicotinamides were developed to target, to activate the acetylcholine receptors of insects, but they don't do anything to humans.
00:03:17.000Now, the target then is insects that eat plants, alphids, beetles, corn borers, a lot of insects that are real pests to plants, but should not be a problem for humans.
00:04:45.000Now they can't find their way back home.
00:04:47.000I want to just tell you, interrupt you for a second, because when I was a kid with my 10 brothers and sisters, we had a field of clover in our yard, so we had lots and lots of honeybees, and we would go try to find the hives to get a honey, to smoke them out and get a honey.
00:05:04.000And the way that we would do it is we'd go out there and we'd catch four or five bees and then take them to different areas and release them and triangulate.
00:05:14.000Because when they left that jar and you had captured them, they'd fly directly toward their hive.
00:05:21.000So it's very, very easy to find a hive by triangulating the bees.
00:05:25.000So they asked to make a bee line where they used to before we got these neonicotinamides.
00:05:33.000And nobody quite understands how they do that.
00:05:36.000It's an extraordinary thing for an insect that has a very, according to us, very primitive brain.
00:05:43.000But they have extraordinary skills and they go great distances and still come directly back to their hive.
00:05:52.000However, if they drink nectar and use pollen to take back to the hives to feed the young, That contains even trace amounts of neonicotinamides.
00:06:04.000Their sense of direction is screwed up.
00:06:07.000They no longer can have normal sleep-waking cycles.
00:06:10.000Most people don't think about insects having sleep-waking cycles, but every kind of animal does.
00:06:16.000And for the bees, just as it is for us, if they don't get a good night's sleep, they're screwed up.
00:06:44.000Now, Europe has banned most neonicotinamines.
00:06:48.000In the U.S., We haven't done anything.
00:06:51.000They're about 20% of the total market for what we call pesticides, which is a term we use for pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, the whole range of chemicals that we apply.
00:07:05.000On crops to control both pests and weeds and undesirable things.
00:07:23.000The birds that used to survive by eating insects.
00:07:26.000No wonder we have a loss of songbirds.
00:07:29.000Most of the songbirds are insect eaters, but there are very few insects to eat any longer.
00:07:35.000And our dependence on bees is extraordinary because they're the pollinators.
00:07:41.000They're the ones that pollinate the fruit trees, the apples and the oranges and the apricots and the pears.
00:07:47.000But they also pollinate a lot of garden vegetables, a lot of grain seeds.
00:07:53.000And if we don't have the pollinators, what are we going to do?
00:07:57.000That's going to grossly adverse our food supply, which is already threatened because of climate change.
00:08:03.000So, you know, the problem is there isn't a simple solution.
00:08:07.000Clearly we need to grow food so we can feed the world.
00:08:11.000We still have people that are hungry because they don't have adequate food.
00:08:14.000And pesticides and herbicides have been very helpful in increasing food production.
00:08:20.000At the same time, they're killing off the pollinators that are absolutely essential for food production.
00:08:28.000And then of course the other issue of How we've disrupted the balance of nature by use of so many herbicides, which turn out not only to have ecological effects, but while usually we thought they would have no human health effects, now we find they do.