HOW HEALTH AUTHORITIES ARE SACRIFICING BEES AND ENDANGERING OUR HEALTH
AND THAT OF OUR CHILDREN IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF THE AGROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY
Under pressure from agrochemical multinational firms, French and European health authorities are trying to silence what may be one of the biggest health and environmental scandals of the coming decades.
A group of eminent scientists - researchers, oncologists, toxicologists, working at universities and in the main research institutes in France (CNRS, Inserm, INRA) - has sounded the alarm to warn us against the massive use of a class of pesticides, SDHI ("Succinate Dehydrogenase Inhibitors"), whose particular mode of action - it attacks the cellular respiration essential to living beings - could have devastating effects on the environment and our health in the coming years. (1)
In particular, they point to major risks for bees and human health....
But under the influence of large agrochemical companies and their powerful networks of lobbyists, health authorities, whose task it is to protect our health and environment, prefer to turn a blind eye.
Worse still: in order to protect the interests of the agrochemical business, they are trying to discredit the work of scientists, who are among top specialists in the world when it comes to mitochondrial diseases. They are using all means possible to try to prevent the scandal from breaking out.
This is why our NGO, POLLINIS, which aims to protect bees and pollinators in France and Europe, and works for a transition to an agricultural system that is favourable to them...
...has partnered with these researchers to bring you this message of information, and ask you to help us spread it as widely as possible across Europe.
In only six years, the use of SDHI pesticides has massively increased in agriculture:
In France, SDHI is dumped on 70 % of common wheat crops and 80 % of barley crops (2). It is used for sunflowers, rapeseed, fruits (apples, grapes, apricots, cherries, tomatoes...), vegetables (cabbage, asparagus, carrots...)
And can be found in most sports fields, golf courses, football stadiums...
SDHI is everywhere in the environment, including in the water we drink and the air we breathe (3). And on our plates: boscalid, the best-selling SDHI, manufactured by the agrochemical company BASF, was found in half of the strawberry samples tested, 71% of salads, 86% of non-organic mueslis...(4)
Traces of SDHI were found in the hair of 63% of the pregnant women studied, and their children after birth. (5)
In total, nearly 600 tons of SDHI are dumped into French fields each year, and thousands of tons all though Europe. (6)
It is a ticking time bomb for mankind....
"If SDHI continues to be used on such a large scale, it’s highly likely that many serious diseases will occur in 10 or 20 years within the population: neurological diseases, cardiomyopathies for children and adults, cancers...."
"Abnormalities in the functioning of SDH (succinate dehydrogenase) can lead to cell death by inducing severe encephalopathies, or on the contrary uncontrolled cell proliferation, and is at the origin of other human diseases". (7)
A study showed formation of liver, kidney and thyroid tumours in rats for 85% of the SDHI pesticides studied... (8)
...and for nature:
Scientists have observed a dramatic drop in the number of earthworms, volunteer soil cleaners that are essential to maintain a soil suitable for agriculture, by 30% in just one year after the application of an SDHI (9).
Research has shown that bees are more vulnerable to diseases when they are exposed to SDHI, even at low doses. (10) Some SDHI studied by the researchers even turned out to be more damaging to bee cells than those of the fungi they are supposed to control! (10.2) Several investigations conducted (in Rhône-Alpes, Ariège, Sarthe...) following the mysterious deaths of entire colonies of bees, also point to the responsibility of SDHI (11)...
These initial findings are very similar to what happened with bee-killing neonicotinoids in the 1990s....
... and should alone justify an immediate halt to the use of SDHI in agriculture!
“It is madness to use SDHI pesticides on a massive scale. We have tested them in laboratory, they kill the enzyme of earthworms, as well as that of bees and humans, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the environment and our health.”
Professor Pierre Rustin, Research Director at CNRS and l'Inserm/Physiopathology and therapy of mitochondrial diseases - Hôpital Robert Debré.
And yet...
Despite this flood of evidence, French authorities refuse to react. They constantly refer to "Europe" "to hide behind undeniable standards", says one of the alerting scientists. (12)
13 pesticides of the SDHI family are authorized by the European Union. Of these, half (exactly 7) have been classified by EFSA, the European Health Authority, as "likely to cause cancer" (13)....
...but they are still allowed and used in European fields!
The regulatory tests that have led to the approval of these substances and their widespread marketing in Europe do not intend to study most of the effects pointed out by researchers, - the consequences on foetal cells in the womb of their exposed mother, or epigenetic diseases, disrupting the expression of the genetic heritage, or on metabolic reprogramming, a major actor in tumour transformation, to mention a few examples...
Nor do they foresee the study of chronic exposure of bees and other pollinators essential for the reproduction of the plants and food we eat, despite the prodigious evolution of scientific knowledge in this field, which has made it possible to identify the deadly effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees in particular.
But it is these outdated tests, developed hand in hand with agrochemical companies, that the authorities and decision-makers are using as a cover to justify their inaction towards the French scientists and their desperate alarm.
This is unacceptable!
Faced with the reaction of the French health authorities, who have clearly decided to give priority to the short-term interest of large agrochemical companies rather than the health of its citizens and the preservation of organisms essential to agriculture, POLLINIS and the scientific whistle-blowers have decided to take the fight to the European level.
And we need your help, and your mobilisation, to reveal the scandal in Europe and put decisive pressure on European politicians.
We have submitted a petition to the European Parliament, which is now in the hands of its Members (14). We must now organise a massive mobilisation of citizens from all European countries to support this initiative, and force MEPs to put this issue to a vote as a priority.
We can do this, if we are hundreds of thousands, even a million, of citizens to unanimously demand an immediate suspension of SDHI pesticides that are dangerous to bees and human health.
POLLINIS, our NGO, has already rallied more than 370,000 people to this petition - mainly in France and Belgium. With your help, we want to reach citizens from Germany, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Denmark... from all EU Member States, to create a huge wave of protest across the continent and force politicians to act despite the pressure from the lobbies !
It is unacceptable that a small group of well-positioned multinational firms can dump hundreds of thousands of tons of poison known to be toxic to bees, auxiliary insects, and all living organisms - including humans - into our fields with impunity...
...and this, with the approval of the authorities who are supposed to control them!
With your help, we will make this scandal known to as many citizens as possible across Europe and inform them of the major health and environmental risks that health authorities are making them and their children take...
... to avoid hitting the huge profits that big agrochemical companies make from this juicy market!
Europe represents more than a third of the global SDHI market, with a turnover of nearly a billion dollars in 2018. The market is so promising that firms plan to double this figure in the next 5 years - their goal: to reach a global turnover of 6.4 billion dollars in 2024... (15)
To ensure this, these powerful firms and their sprawling networks do not hesitate to use their influence by all possible means to silence any dispute over their products:
>>> Systematic attacks on scientists who warn of the dangerousness of their products: in France, alerting scientists have been the subject of slander campaigns organised by agrochemical lobbies through their network of complacent media on the Internet (16);
>>> Direct influence of national and European health authorities: by regularly organising international congresses and symposia promoting SDHI, to which the senior staff of these institutions is invited, ensuring their complacency in the future. In France, for example, ANSES, the national authority responsible for pesticide evaluation and control, regularly participates in meetings on SHDI funded by Syngenta, Bayer or other agrochemical giants. When this institution finally agreed to convene a group of "experts" to study the researchers' alert, it was composed of 3 people who had never studied the issue, and a fourth who had promoted SDHI at the last agrochemical congress... (17)
>>> control over the evaluation protocols for their own substances: the regulatory tests that allow insecticides, fungicides and herbicides to be registered and sold on the market have been developed by work groups dominated by the agrochemical industry, are outdated and do not take into account many scientific advances made since. Large firms and their powerful lobbies are fighting hard in Brussels to ensure that new and more comprehensive assessment protocols - on the effects of their substances on bees and pollinators, for example - are never implemented...
To stop them and force European decision-makers to protect our health and environment rather than their profits, citizens must rise up massively, and instantly, across the continent.
This is why I ask you to do these two essential things to enable us to win the battle against the lobbies in Brussels:
1/ Add your signature to the European petition #StopSDHI launched by POLLINIS
2/ Spread this message as widely as possible around you:
You can share it on social networks:
Or copy/paste the link to this page into an email to your contacts, or post it on blogs, platforms, news sites you use:
You also have the choice of simply closing this page and resume your activities. But remember one thing: if we, as citizens concerned about our health and environment, don't mobilise, no one else will do it for us.
National authorities, who betray the general interests they are supposed to defend for the benefit of a few well-positioned giant companies will think that this situation doesn't spark anger or indignation.
They will be happy that the scandal does not break out, and will continue their small arrangements with the big firms as if nothing had happened.
The way will be wide open for companies to double or even triple their turnover by marketing products as dangerous as SDHI without worrying about the effects on bees, agricultural beneficial insects, mammals and humans...
Meanwhile, beekeepers will see their hives emptied, entomologists will be alarmed by the dramatic decline in insects and biodiversity, doctors at Debré Hospital who have sounded the alarm will see more and more cases of sick children arriving...
...knowing very well what poisoned them, but powerless to stop it...
In 10 or 20 years, when the collateral damage from the massive use of SDHI will be identified and recognized, it will be too late to react. Survivors and their families will have the possibility of suing of course, as with asbestos and Mediator (benfluorex): but the damage will be done.
Today, we have the opportunity to prevent this. There is still time: do not miss this unique chance to avoid a huge health and environmental disaster in the future!
On behalf of all pollinators, auxiliary organisms, birds, rodents, animals and human beings that your action will save: a big thank you in advance for your essential mobilisation in this fight for life!
With kind regards,
Nicolas Laarman
Managing director of POLLINIS
POLLINIS is a French not-for-profit NGO, funded exclusively by donations from individuals to protect wild and honey bees and to promote sustainable agriculture in order to help preserve pollinators.
#StopSDHI
