Thursday, November 7, 2013

Nuclear Waste Disposal Documentary

Published on Jun 2, 2013
http://www.youtube.com/user/SubscriptionFreeTV

A new documentary that examines the nuclear waste disposal problem in just one location. We have these sites across the globe, all over our oceans. There are even instances where pipes have been setup in the sea, so the waste can be disposed off even easier and unseen.




 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
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Mongolia

After serious opposition had risen about plans and negotiations between Mongolia with Japan and the United States of America to build nuclear waste facilities in Mongolia, Mongolia stopped all negotiations in September 2011. These negotiations started after U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel B. Poneman visited Mongolia in September, 2010. Talks were held in Washington DC between officials of Japan, the United States and Mongolia in February 2011. After this the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which wanted to buy nuclear fuel from Mongolia, joined in the negotiations. The talks were kept secret, and although The Mainichi Daily News reported on it in May, Mongolia officially denied the existence of these negotiations. But alarmed by this news, Mongolian citizens protested against the plans, and demanded the government withdraw the plans and disclose information. The Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj issued a presidential order on Sept. 13 banning all negotiations with foreign governments or international organizations on nuclear waste storage plans in Mongolia.[85] The Mongolian government has accused the newspaper of distributing false claims around the world. After the presidential order, the Mongolian president fired the individual that was supposedly involved in these conversations.

Illegal dumping
Main article: Toxic waste dumping by the 'Ndrangheta

Authorities in Italy are investigating a 'Ndrangheta mafia clan accused of trafficking and illegally dumping nuclear waste. According to a turncoat, a manager of the Italy’s state energy research agency Enea paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US, with Somalia as the destination, where the waste was buried after buying off local politicians. Former employees of Enea are suspected of paying the criminals to take waste off their hands in the 1980s and 1990s. Shipments to Somalia continued into the 1990s, while the 'Ndrangheta clan also blew up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast.[86] According to the environmental group Legambiente, former members of the 'Ndrangheta have said that they were paid to sink ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.[87]
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The 10 worst toxins hidden in vitamins, supplements and health foods

The 10 worst toxins hidden in vitamins, supplements and health foods
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) I'm absolutely shocked at how many people don't investigate what's really in the products they swallow. When something is sold as an herb, vitamin, superfood or supplement, they think it's automatically safe. And while the natural products industry has a truly remarkable safety record -- especially in contrast to the massive number of deaths caused by pharmaceuticals -- it still suffers from a lot of hidden toxins that are routinely used throughout the industry.

I know this because I've been an investigative journalist and activist in the natural health industry for over a decade. Natural News is arguably the most-read natural health news website in the world, reaching millions of readers a month. I've walked the floors of countless trade shows, conducted hundreds of interviews and spent tens of thousands of dollars on laboratory tests to determine what's in these products. On top of that, I'm deep into organic product formulations and certified organic food production, serving as the supervisor of a USDA-certified organic food production and packing facility.

When I look around the natural products industry, I see examples of super honest, high-integrity companies like Nature's Path and Dr. Bronner's. I also see an alarming number of cheats, crooks and charlatans who are only involved in the industry to profit from the explosion of interest in health supplements. In truth, some nutritional products are downright dangerous to your health. My role as a journalist and activist is to help you tell the difference between products that are GOOD for you vs. products that might actually be toxic. Because ultimately, I want you to be healthy, vibrant, intelligent and active. I want you to enjoy life and improve the quality of your life.

Be prepared to be shocked in reading what follows. After reviewing this list, you will probably throw out quite a few products in your refrigerator and pantry. Very few people are willing to tell you the truth revealed here, so some of this may come as a complete shock (see #1 and #2, below).

#1) Maltodextrin (from GM corn)

Let's start out with the big one first: If you pick up a natural product and the ingredients list says "maltodextrin," chances are very high that the maltodextrin in the product is derived from Monsanto's GM corn.

Virtually all the maltodextrin used throughout the natural products industry is genetically modified. Products that are certified USDA organic, however, are not using GMO maltodextrin.

The non-GMO, non-corn replacement for maltodextrin derived from GM corn is tapioca maltodextrin, and you'll find tapioca starch / maltodextrin in many certified organic, non-GMO products. Corn maltodextrin should be avoided unless it's certified USDA organic. Look for tapioca maltodextrin instead (or no maltodextrin at all).

#2) Vitamin C / acorbic acid (from GM corn)

Here's another whopper that's sure to open some eyes: Nearly all the "vitamin C" sold in vitamins across America right now is derived from GMO corn.

This means that many of the supplements sold at Whole Foods, the vitamins sold on Amazon.com, the pills at your local pharmacy, and especially the products at the grocery store are (nearly) all routinely made with genetically modified vitamin C. It's typically called "ascorbic acid," and nearly 100% of the ascorbic acid used in the natural products industry is derived from GMOs.

Sourcing non-GMO vitamin C requires you to go outside the United States. There is no existing supply chain of certified organic, non-GMO ascorbic acid available anywhere in America (at least not to my knowledge). You can't even run batches of non-GMO ascorbic acid production in the USA because all the facilities are contaminated with residues of GM corn.

Rest assured that all those cheap "vitamin C" pills sold at retail are derived from genetically modified corn.

#3) Hexane-extracted soy and rice proteins

Nearly 100% of the "natural" soy proteins sold in the USA are extracted in China using a hexane extraction method.

CLARIFICATION (updated): The primary manufacturer and distributor of brown rice protein in the USA, which imports brown rice protein processed in China, insists that hexane has never been used in the extraction of their product, not in the conventional brown rice protein nor their organic brown rice protein.

Their brown rice protein is a "hexane-free, non-GMO, Prop 65 compliant, Gamma Oryzanol-rich whole grain Oryzatein powder" and the manufacturer is Axiom. They supply a lot of the brown rice protein to numerous sources in the USA, and this is the best brown rice protein product available today, partially because it is NOT hexane extracted.

There is brown rice protein that's hexane extracted in China, however, but that's not carried by Axiom. So if you're buying anything with brown rice protein, make sure it's sourced from Axiom and not from another source that uses hexane. I also encourage you to eat only certified organic brown rice protein, not conventional brown rice protein.

Anything from China, by the way, should be double checked for metals content just to make sure it's all clean. This is true across the board for all food products from China, not just brown rice protein. We have consistently found nutritional products from China to be contaminated with worrisome levels of metals, which is why I personally won't put my brand name on anything from China other than a few exceptions that are well-tested such as goji berries (grown in the Himalayas). The Axiom company says their brown rice protein tests completely clean, but until I run those tests myself, I can't say for sure whether I concur with the claims.

What the industry really needs right now is a U.S. manufacturer of brown rice protein, for which a multi-million dollar market already exists. If Axiom would find a certified organic U.S. grower for its brown rice protein, the company would receive a huge endorsement from Natural News and probably find a whole new wave of demand from consumers who want U.S. grown products. Texas, by the way, produces a lot of organic brown rice. Surely there must be a way to extract the protein in America and not have to go all the way to China to find this.

On the issue of soy protein, no one disputes the fact that it's routinely extracted with hexane. Here's a list of many of the protein bar brands currently using soy protein:
http://www.naturalnews.com/032862_soy_protei...

Hexane is a highly explosive chemical. It is not only extremely hazardous to the environment, there may also be trace amounts of hexane left remaining in the resulting protein products. My understanding is that hexane extraction is not allowed in certified organic proteins, so if you have a choice, go for certified organic instead of just "natural" (which means nothing anyway).

Hexane extraction, by the way, is also used in the manufacture of textured vegetable protein (TVP). Read more about TVP here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/033728_TVP_textur...

#4) High levels of Aluminum in detox products

Natural News helped expose high aluminum levels (over 1200ppm) in a popular detox liquid, causing the main U.S. distributor to issue a "recall" notice and provide over $1 million in refunds to customers.

The manufacturer of this product, Adya Clarity, intentionally and knowingly deceived consumers by mislabeling the product and not mentioning the 1200ppm of aluminum it contained. The FDA seized some of the products and ran its own lab tests, confirming the high aluminum level as well as identifying multiple labeling violations.

Adya Clarity is just one of many so-called "detox" products containing alarming levels of aluminum and other metals. Ingesting these in order to "detox" your body may be harmful to your health. This experience also proves you can't always trust health products sold through online webinars, where manufacturers can ignore labeling laws and fabricate false claims. Buyer beware when it comes to metals in detox products that claim seemingly magical results.

#5) Lead and arsenic in herbs from China

China is the most polluted nation on the planet (by far), yet many fruits, vegetables and herbs are grown in China and exported to North America for use in natural products.

High levels of lead and arsenic are routinely found in various food, supplement and herbal products from China. I'm not concerned about 1ppm or lower, by the way, of heavy metals like lead and mercury. Even aluminum isn't necessarily a problem when found organically grown inside foods that test at higher levels such as 150ppm. But when lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium get to high saturation levels (or are present in inorganic forms), it makes the products potentially a source of heavy metals poisoning for consumers.

Astonishingly, many of the small and medium-sized companies that import and retail products from China conduct no metals testing whatsoever. I know this as a fact because I've talked to people doing this.

For the record, everything packed under my own brand name (Health Ranger Select) and sold at the Natural News Store is independently tested by us to ensure full product safety and regulatory compliance.

#6) Inorganic minerals in cheap vitamins

Would you eat iron filings and call it nutrition? The majority of people don't know that most of the cheap vitamins sold today are made with iron filings. "Scrap metal," almost.

The calcium found in cheap vitamins is often just ground-up seashells, and magnesium is often sold as cheap magnesium oxide which may be completely useless to your body's cells. If you're buying mineral supplements, you may be wasting your money unless the minerals are in the right form: Magnesium orotate or malate, for example.

When it comes to mineral supplements, you'll often find trace levels of scary things like barium and lead in liquid supplements, but these are typically at such low levels (ppb) that they are no real concern. But the No. 1 best source for all minerals is, not surprisingly, fresh plants. If you really want to boost your minerals, feed 'em to sprouts or garden plants, then eat or juice those plants. Your body wants "organic" minerals from plants, not inorganic minerals from rocks.

#7) Carrageenan?

The Cornucopia Institute, a highly-effective food activism group that we've long supported, recently published a warning about carrageenan in foods. Cornucopia says carrageenan is linked to "gastrointestinal inflammation, including higher rates of colon cancer, in laboratory animals."

It goes on to report:

Given its effect on gastrointestinal inflammation, Cornucopia urges anyone suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms (irritable bowel syndrome/IBS, spastic colon, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic diarrhea, etc.) to consider completely eliminating carrageenan from the diet to determine if carrageenan was a factor in causing the symptoms.

Personally, I have never had any problem with carrageenan, and given that it's derived from seaweed, I also didn't mind the source. I actually consume quite a lot of carrageenan in Blue Diamond almond milk, which I drink when I'm too busy to make my own raw almond milk. And I've never had a problem with it whatsoever. So from my personal experience, I don't see carrageenan as a worrisome ingredient, but I do understand that some people experience it differently, and it may be troublesome for people whose digestive systems are more sensitive than my own.

For the record, I definitely don't consider carrageenan to be anywhere near as worrisome as, say, aspartame, GMOs or MSG.

#8) Acrylamides

Acrylamides are cancer-causing chemicals produced during the cooking of carbohydrates. Fried snack chips, for example, contain acrylamides. They don't have to be listed on labels because they are technically not "ingredients." They are chemicals produced during cooking or frying. Consuming acrylamides increases kidney cancer risk by 59 percent.

The FDA has published an extensive reference guide on acrylamide levels in foods, revealing that french fries have the highest levels of all. But they are also present in prune juice and even breakfast cereals.

A bag of organic snack chips can have just as many acrylamides as a bag of conventional snack chips. This is why fried snack chips should be eaten only sparingly, or never at all. I'm guilty of eating some of these chips myself from time to time, but I limit the quantity and make sure I'm taking chlorella or other superfoods at the same time to counteract the acrylamides.

Interestingly, it turns out that vitamin C blocks acrylamides from causing damage to your body. But if your vitamin C is from a GMO source (see above), you may want to rethink that strategy. Natural citrus juice, rose hips or even camu camu berry powder is a much better choice of natural, full-spectrum vitamin C.

If you eat fried foods of any kind, make sure you ingest a lot of vitamin C, astaxanthin and chlorella before and after your meal or snack.

#9) Hidden MSG / yeast extract

Hidden MSG is a huge issue across the natural products industry. Pick up almost any veggie burger, and you'll find it's made with yeast extract, a hidden form of MSG (monosodium glutamate).

Yeast extract is unbelievably prevalent in the food industry because it looks nicer on the label than "MSG." Most people are trained to avoid MSG, but yeast extract slips by, so food manufacturers put it into canned soups, dip mixes, snack chips, microwave dinners and especially in vegetarian products, many of which are so loaded with chemicals and additives that I won't dare touch them. Just because a food says "vegetarian" doesn't mean it's healthy.

Hidden MSG is also labeled as "autolyzed yeast extract" or "torula yeast" or even "hydrolyzed vegetable protein."

#10) Fluoride in green tea

Green tea is famous for being contaminated with high levels of fluoride. This is frustrating, because green tea is phenomenally good for your health. It has been proven to lower "bad" cholesterol levels, and it may even help prevent cancer and neurological disorders. It's probably one of the healthiest beverages you can ever drink.

The tea plant that produces green tea just happens to uptake a huge amount of fluoride from the soils. So when there's fluoride present in those soils, the green tea will have a surprisingly high concentration, sometimes as much as 25ppm.

An interesting article on this issue is found at Toxipedia.org:
http://toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Fluor...

While this fluoride in green tea might not be a health hazard all by itself, the governments of the world seem insistent on pumping even more synthetic, chemical fluoride into the water supplies, thereby creating a high risk for fluorosis. Adding green tea to the fluoride consumption you might experience from tap water is a recipe for disaster: brittle bones, discoloration of teeth and even cancer.

The final "dirty little secret" of the natural products industry

Finally, there's one more secret you need to know about. Most importers, packers, vendors and retailers of natural products foolishly trust the lab results provided by the manufacturers and exporters!

So a typical U.S. company that sells, for example, pomegranate powder on the internet may never conduct their own tests for lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum. They will simply take the lab tests provided by the manufacturer and consider those to be absolute fact!

This is extraordinarily foolish. Growers and exporters routinely lie about their lab tests in order to pull the wool over the eyes of importers, formulators and retailers. The lab tests are easily faked or simply bought off in their home country. Contaminated products can be easily sold and exported because the FDA doesn't routinely check imported raw materials for heavy metals contamination.

On the good news side, I do know for a fact that all the higher-end retailers such as Natural News, Mercola, Gary Null, etc., all routinely test their raw materials for contaminants. I'm pretty sure Gaia herbs (www.GaiaHerbs.com) routinely tests all their batches, and I know that VitaCost, before it changed hands a few years ago, was running their own lab to test raw materials on-site (for their in-house formulations). But I also know of smaller retailers who absolutely do not test anything and are far more interested in moving boxes than knowing what's really in them. I also know that some operations are claiming to sell "organic" products even though they do not have any kind of organic certification, and that's an irresponsible practice that should be rectified. (Look for the USDA organic logo when you buy "organic" products. If they don't have the logo, they aren't really organic.)

So once again, buyer beware. You need to be asking for lab test results on anything from China, and it's good to ask for them on just about everything else as well. For our part, Natural News Store is already in the process of building a mechanism where we can post lab results for all the batches we import, pack and retail. We reject anything with high levels of metals, which is why it took us so many months to secure a really clean source of chlorella.

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Scientists discover another cause of bee deaths, and it's really bad news

Scientists discover another cause of bee deaths, and it's really bad news

Jaymi Heimbuch
July 26, 2013

So what is with all the dying bees? Scientists have been trying to discover this for years. Meanwhile, bees keep dropping like... well, you know.
Is it mites? Pesticides? Cell phone towers? What is really at the root? Turns out the real issue really scary, because it is more complex and pervasive than thought.

Quartz reports:
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
The researchers behind that study in PLOS ONE -- Jeffery S. Pettis, Elinor M. Lichtenberg, Michael Andree, Jennie Stitzinger, Robyn Rose, Dennis vanEngelsdorp -- collected pollen from hives on the east coast, including cranberry and watermelon crops, and fed it to healthy bees. Those bees had a serious decline in their ability to resist a parasite that causes Colony Collapse Disorder. The pollen they were fed had an average of nine different pesticides and fungicides, though one sample of pollen contained a deadly brew of 21 different chemicals. Further, the researchers discovered that bees that ate pollen with fungicides were three times more likely to be infected by the parasite.
The discovery means that fungicides, thought harmless to bees, is actually a significant part of Colony Collapse Disorder. And that likely means farmers need a whole new set of regulations about how to use fungicides. While neonicotinoids have been linked to mass bee deaths -- the same type of chemical at the heart of the massive bumble bee die off in Oregon -- this study opens up an entirely new finding that it is more than one group of pesticides, but a combination of many chemicals, which makes the problem far more complex.
And it is not just the types of chemicals used that need to be considered, but also spraying practices. The bees sampled by the authors foraged not from crops, but almost exclusively from weeds and wildflowers, which means bees are more widely exposed to pesticides than thought.
The authors write, "[M]ore attention must be paid to how honey bees are exposed to pesticides outside of the field in which they are placed. We detected 35 different pesticides in the sampled pollen, and found high fungicide loads. The insecticides esfenvalerate and phosmet were at a concentration higher than their median lethal dose in at least one pollen sample. While fungicides are typically seen as fairly safe for honey bees, we found an increased probability of Nosema infection in bees that consumed pollen with a higher fungicide load. Our results highlight a need for research on sub-lethal effects of fungicides and other chemicals that bees placed in an agricultural setting are exposed to."
While the overarching issue is simple -- chemicals used on crops kill bees -- the details of the problem are increasingly more complex, including what can be sprayed, where, how, and when to minimize the negative effects on bees and other pollinators while still assisting in crop production. Right now, scientists are still working on discovering the degree to which bees are affected and by what. It will still likely be a long time before solutions are uncovered and put into place. When economics come into play, an outright halt in spraying anything at all anywhere is simply impossible.
Quartz notes, "Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion."

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/scientists-discover-another-cause-bee-deaths-and-its-really-bad-news.html

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Pesticide makes bees forget the scent for food, new study finds

Pesticide makes bees forget the scent for food, new study finds
Neonicotinoids block part of brain bees use for learning, leaving them unable to make link between floral scents and nectar


Damian Carrington   
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 March 2013

Widely used pesticides have been found in new research to block a part of the brain that bees use for learning, rendering some of them unable to perform the essential task of associating scents with food. Bees exposed to two kinds of pesticide were slower to learn or completely forgot links between floral scents and nectar.
These effects could make it harder for bees to forage among flowers for food, thereby threatening their survival and reducing the pollination of crops and wild plants.
The findings add to existing research that neonicotinoid pesticides are contributing to the decline in bee populations.
It has also been revealed that a separate government field study on the impact of the pesticides on bees was seriously compromised by contamination because the chemicals are so widespread in the environment.
The government put the field study at the heart of the UK's resistance to a Europe-wide ban on the controversial pesticides earlier this month. The UK was one of nine out of 27 member states that opposed suspending some uses of the insecticides across the EU, after environment secretary Owen Paterson said, "I have asked the EC to wait for the results of our field trials, rather than rushing to a decision". On Wednesday, his department said more field research was needed.
The new findings on the effect of pesticides on bee brains showed that within 20 minutes of exposure to neonicotinoids the neurons in the major learning centre of the brain stopped firing. Christopher Connolly at the University of Dundee, who led the peer-reviewed work published in the online journal Nature Communications, said it was the first to show the pesticides had a direct impact on pollinator brain physiology.
A parallel peer-reviewed study on the behaviour of bees subjected to the same insecticides found the bees were slower to learn or completely forgot important associations between floral scent and food rewards. "Disruption in this important function has profound implications for honeybee colony survival, because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food," said Dr Geraldine Wright, at Newcastle University, who led the work.
The scientists who carried out the separate field study for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs admitted it was "not a statistically robust study" because of the contamination issues. The trial results (pdf), which have not been peer-reviewed, showed that 20 hives of bumblebees meant to act as pesticide-free controls in the experiments were significantly contaminated owing to the widespread presence of the chemicals in the environment. Neonicotinoids are near ubiquitous in modern agriculture and earn billions a year for their manufacturers. But a series of high-profile scientific studies in the last year has increasingly linked them to harmful effects in bees. Declines in bees and other pollinators, which fertilise three-quarters of the world's food crops, have been linked to habitat loss and disease as well as pesticides.
Julian Little of Bayer, which makes one of the neonicotinoids tested in the government study, said: "We welcome field studies and once again, when such studies are carried out, there does not appear to be a link between neonicotinoid seed treatment use and poor bee health."
But Professor David Goulson, at the University of Stirling, and whose study in the peer-reviewed journal Science showed an 85% loss in queens produced, said: "This study had no controls and all we can really learn from it is that bumblebee nests placed on farmland, even on farms currently using no neonicotinoids, are likely to be exposed to a cocktail of these chemicals. Ministers should certainly not be basing any decisions on this." He added that while UK ministers and industry criticised studies in which the pesticide doses were controlled, the failure of the field study showed the benefits of that approach.
Alongside the study, the government published its own assessment of a review in January by the European Food Safety Authority, which labelled three neonicotinoids an unacceptable danger to bees that feed on flowering crops, and was the basis of the proposed EC ban.
Defra's chief scientist Ian Boyd said: "Decisions on the use of neonicotinoids must be based on sound scientific evidence. Our assessment demonstrates that while we cannot rule out the possibility of neonicotinoids affecting pollinators we cannot be clear as to the extent of their impact. I therefore support the conclusions that further data based on more realistic field trials is required."
Sandra Bell of Friends of the Earth said: "Bee health is far too urgent to wait until more research has been completed – restrictions should be placed on these pesticides until bee safety can be assured." There have been previous suspensions in France, Italy, Germany and Slovenia.
• This article was amended on 28 March 2013. The subheading on the original misspelled neonicotinoids as neocotinoids.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/pesticide-bees-scent-food-neocotinoid
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EPA Slapped With Lawsuit Over Ongoing Bee Deaths

EPA Slapped With Lawsuit Over Ongoing Bee Deaths
By
Fractured Paradigm
– March 22, 2013

http://fracturedparadigm.com/2013/03/22/epa-slapped-with-lawsuit-over-ongoing-bee-deaths/

A group of beekeepers and environmentalists announced today that they are suing the Environmental Protection Agency in an effort to curb the use of insecticides they say are decimating bee populations and putting our nation’s food supply in jeopardy.
The four beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups involved in the lawsuit, including the Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety and Beyond Pesticides, say the link between neonicotinoids—a nicotine-like class of pesticides that include clothianidin and thiamethoxam—and bee die offs is crystal clear. And they claim the EPA acted outside the law when it allowed for “conditional registration” of their use. Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science are the primary manufacturers of clothianidin and thiamethoxam.
“We are taking the EPA to court for its failure to protect bees from pesticides,” Paul Towers, spokesperson for the Pesticide Action Network, tells TakePart. “Despite our best efforts to warn the agency about the problems posed by neonicotinoids, the EPA continued to ignore the clear warning signs of an ag system in trouble.”
Towers says the bee shortage for this year’s California almond crop, a story we told you about a few weeks ago, was proof enough that the EPA needs to act now, and must reconsider this class of pesticides.
Unlike older classes of pesticides, says Towers, neonicotinoids are applied before planting to coat seeds. The pesticide is then taken up through the vascular system of the plant and expressed through the pollen and nectar, which bees rely on for food. Their introduction onto farms in the mid-2000s, also coincides with more widespread bee colony collapses than had been seen before.
“These are persistent pesticides,” he says. “They remain in the soil and persist into the next generation of plants.”
This isn’t just a California problem. The finger pointing has been active across the country, including Ohio, where bees are needed to pollinate more than 70 crops, including apples, pumpkins and berries. Bee die offs there were rampant last spring. (Bayer, by the way, sponsored seminars for beekeepers in Ohio—a move that stung critics. Doh!) And the story is repeated from Illinois to the Carolinas. The Europeans are alarmed at bee population crashes as well, and tried to limit a trio of pesticides, but failed.
On Tuesday, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) called for a ban on their use, because, they say, the pesticides have moved up the food chain and are now impacting song birds.
“A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a songbird,” said Cynthia Palmer, pesticides program manager for ABC, one of the nation’s leading bird conservation organizations. “Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the oldest neonicotinoid—called imidacloprid—can fatally poison a bird. And as little as 1/10th of a neonicotinoid-coated corn seed per day during egg-laying season is all that is needed to affect reproduction.”
University of California-Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen tells TakePart that the disappearance of bees is extraordinarily complicated. Pesticides, nutrition, disease and mites can all play a role in colony collapse disorder, and that scientists simply don’t know what’s causing bees to vanish at a 30 percent rate.
“It’s a combination of all these things. I certainly wouldn’t let the neonicotinoids off the hook. They are negatively impacting honeybees and other insects that we don’t know anything about, but if the neonicotinoids were yanked from the market, I don’t anticipate seeing a rapid return to the ‘good old days’ of pre-mite 5-10 percent losses,” he says.
When you go into thriving hives versus collapsed hives, the chemical soup scientists measure is still the same, says Mussen.
“But there is something different between the two. We still haven’t determined what that is.”

Original article by Clare Leschin-Hoar on TakePart

Radiation Exposure & Protection

Published on Jun 6, 2012
Learn how to protect yourself from radiation!

John Bergman
http://www.youtube.com/user/johnbchiro/
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http://www.bergmanchiropractic.com/

Dr Bergman was propelled into Chiropractic by a severe auto accident, with 2 broken legs, fractured skull and sternum along with several organ injuries. With great need and a passion for healing and regenerating Dr Bergman began studying the body’s recovery process. Dr. Bergman obtained his degree in Doctor of Chiropractic at Cleveland Chiropractic College in Los Angeles (CCCLA), California. Dr. Bergman teaching at CCCLA: Human Anatomy, Physiology, Biomechanics, and 4 Chiropractic techniques: Full Spine Specific (Palmer Method), Thompson, Diversified, and Extremity Adjusting. As a past Instructor Dr. Bergman has an extensive knowledge of human anatomy and human physiology that few can match. Dr. Bergman’s practice has continued to grow serving hundreds of families, focusing on corrective and wellness care and is dedicated to pediatric development and adult health care. With Dr. Bergman’s unique approach and direct experience of recovery from severe injury, many successes can be achieved in even with the most challenging cases.