Advocates call on Hochul to sign pesticide ban into law; Farm Bureau wants veto

Dec. 13—ALBANY — A group of environmental advocates, health professionals, farmers and a state senator are asking Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul to sign a bill to ban a range of pesticides they say are causing serious harm to children in New York.

On Wednesday, Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, D-Manhattan, joined a press conference with the environmental advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as medical doctors and green farming advocates to call for Hochul to sign the "Birds and Bees Protection Act," which would widely ban a group of pesticides known as neonicotinoids.

Neonicotinoid pesticides, called neonics, are a derivative chemical of nicotine, the addictive chemical in tobacco.

They're fairly widely used in home and garden applications and in industrial crop agriculture.

They have been found by researchers at Cornell University to proliferate widely once introduced into an ecosystem. Agricultural communities are much more likely to find neonics in their water and food, but the chemicals have been found in nearly every community in the state.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has found that the chemicals are causing environmental collapse where they're especially prominent, and are contributing to high death rates and low birth rates for more than 200 species in the U.S.

"These pesticides are emerging as the most ecologically destructive pesticides since DDT," Hoylman-Sigal said, referencing a pesticide commonly used in the mid-20th century that was found to be a likely cause of cancer and built up easily in human and animal fat cells.

Neonics work by binding to an insect's nerve cells, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Once a dose is delivered to an insect, its neurological system shuts down. Even in nonlethal doses, insects are permanently damaged by exposure to neonics. The chemicals impact pollinator species like bees and birds, seeping into their skin and causing significant damage to their neurological systems. That's why officials named their bill the "Birds and Bees Protection Act."

"These are nerve agents, folks," Hoylman-Sigal said.

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and a professor of medicine and child health advocate, said the pesticides also attack human nerves.

"These are chemicals deliberately engineered to attack the brain and the central nervous systems," he said. "And humans share quite a bit of biology with other species on this planet, including the same receptors in the brain that neonics is attacking in insects."

He said children and infants are especially at risk of severe neurological damage from exposure to neonics, because their brains are developing rapidly in the first few years of life. Any chemical imbalance, or damage to important areas of the brain at that stage can lead to lifelong defects.

"The (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) did a survey, they found measurable quantities of neonics in 95% of pregnant women in the state," he said, citing a 2019 study that also found that people of Asian background and young children are prone to more exposure to neonics than other age ranges or ethnicities.

Neonics are introduced in a variety of ways. In the home, they can be found in insect sprays, seed treatments, tree injections and in anti-flea treatments used on dogs and cats. Many household plants come with a spray of neonics on their leaves in high concentrations. In the industrial farming sector, the chemicals are applied as a seed coating when the seeds are produced. When the seed is planted, the neonics seep into the soil and up through the plant roots.

Dan Raichel, acting director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the chemicals are meant to make the plant itself toxic when used as a seed coating, and generally only 2% of the chemical put onto the seeds makes it into the plant itself, with the remaining 98% spread around the environment.

Despite the widespread concerns raised among medical and environmental professionals about the use of neonics, the New York Farm Bureau and the national Farm Bureau advocate against a ban on the use of the chemicals, and have asked Hochul to veto the measure. They say the loss of the use of the pesticide would put farmers, landscapers, golf course owners and other outdoor-focused industries on the backfoot in the fight against pests.

They argue the loss of the use of neonics would require more tilling to battle pest infestation in industrial farming applications, which would release more carbon emissions and hurt the state's progress toward its climate goals.

"Seeds treated with neonicotinoids were designed to be safer and reduce pesticide use," said NY Farm Bureau President David Fisher when the measure passed earlier this year. "While we share the same goal as supporters of this legislation, to always look for ways to reduce our environmental footprint, we believe the end result of this ban will force farms to revert back to spraying greater amounts of older pesticides as well as increasing tillage to combat harmful pests, releasing more carbon in the soil and increasing the likelihood of soil erosion."

Hochul called for the bill to be delivered to her desk Tuesday. The governor has until Dec. 22 to sign or veto the bill, or it will be an automatic veto, also called a "pocket veto."