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European Nations' Action Against Fertilizers for Public Health and Wildlife
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European Nations’ Action Against Fertilizers & Pesticides for Public Health and Wildlife

Ban on Fertilizer Use To Protect Marine Species

Officials in Spain have banned the use of fertilizers within 1.5km of Mar Menor, one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons in the south-eastern region of Murcia, after five tons of dead fish washed up on its shores.

In August, loads of small fish and shrimp began to wash up along the beaches of the Mar Menor lagoon. Locals began complaining that the waters of the lagoon, once filled with tourists, were gloomy, green, and emitting a foul smell. In response to this, regional officials closed eight beaches.

Biologist Ángel Sallent, from conservation group Anse, said dead fish continued to wash up over a week later, although in smaller numbers. He is almost certain that the ‘five-ton figure’ calculated by the local government is highly underestimated. “We’ve done dives, and we could see that there were dead fish on the seabed. We’ll likely never be able to quantify the number of animals that have died,” the biologist added.

European Nations' Action Against Fertilizers for Public Health and Wildlife
Tons of dead fish wash up on the shores of the Mar Menor lagoon. (Credit: WWF Espana)

The Mar Menor lagoon sits next to the Campo de Cartagena, an extensive area of intensive agriculture that has expanded tenfold in the past forty years. The area stretches to about 60K hectares and has transformed the region into one of Spain’s top producers of fruits and vegetables.

For years, ecologists have cautioned that marine life in the lagoon is being threatened by decades of nitrate-laden runoffs (mainly from agriculture) that cause vast toxic algae blooms that deplete the water of oxygen. In 2016, algal blooms turned the waters of Mar Menor green and killed 85% of the marine vegetation on its seabed, and in 2019 thousands of dead fish and crustacea washed up in the same area.

On August 25, Teresa Ribera, Spain’s environment minister, accused regional officials of turning a blind eye to irregularities in the agricultural fields near Mar Menor. Ecologists who spent years calling for action were relieved about the new ban on the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers near the lagoon but stressed that it should have come sooner. “We think it’s a good step, but it comes very late,” said Sallent.

He advised that the regional and central government must take urgent action, including creating wetlands around the lagoon that could serve as “green filters” and reducing the intensive agricultural practices of the area. Failure to do so risks terrible incidents similar to that of Mar Menor’s becoming more frequent.

Workers clean the shores of the Mar Menor lagoon after tons of dead fish washed up on its shores.
Workers clean the shores of the Mar Menor lagoon after tons of dead fish washed up on its shores. (Credit: José Miguel Fernández/AFP/Getty Images)

Sallent said:

It’s unfortunate. This was a jewel, a singular site that at one point could have been a national park. But instead, in the 1970s and 1980s, it bet on aggressive urban development and later intensive agriculture that was also very aggressive. They prioritized these economic sectors, and they forgot the environment.

France is also being threatened with legal action by two NGOs for the overuse of pesticides. It’s understandable why they are demanding action, as pesticides harm wildlife (such as the fish in Murcia) and can lead to catastrophic loss of pollinators and cancer in humans.

France Forced To End Use Of Pesticides

Pollinis and Notre Affaire à Tous have issued an ultimatum to the French state for failing to implement adequate laws and regulations to tackle the biodiversity crisis. The announcement was made in Marseille, France, at the IUCN world conservation congress and will be followed by a civil disobedience rally.

According to the NGOs, the state has allowed widespread use and marketing of wildlife-harming pesticides. The NGOs are focused on eliminating the use of neonicotinoids (already banned in the EU but authorized in France under specific conditions) and glyphosate – which, when used in weedkillers, could kill insects and cause cancer in humans.

The two NGOs argue that the French state has failed its duty to protect the country’s flora and fauna by allowing the regular use of these toxic chemicals. Campaigners stress that the state must implement a rigorous and efficient pesticide registration process and re-examine marketing rules by December.

Julie Pecheur from Pollinis explained:

There is now a scientific consensus on the role played by conventional farming and the use of pesticides in biodiversity erosion. Civil society has been trying for decades to pass on this expertise to the authorities and offer solutions, in vain. The law must now intervene. The 19th century saw the birth of human rights; the 20th century saw the birth of social rights; the 21st century must be the century of the rights of nature.

Cécilia Rinaudo, the executive director of Notre Affaire à Tous, added:

It is time for the French government to be held accountable for the collapse of the living world and to respect its commitments. Like many countries, France has signed international treaties stating its ambition to tackle the catastrophic loss of wildlife. The French ministry of ecology has said it is necessary to “make the protection of biodiversity one of the priorities of major public policies.

Nevertheless, the NGOs argue, the state’s actions have been unacceptably inadequate.

Nicolas Laarman, the managing director at Pollinis, said:

Despite all the talk and despite national, European, and international laws and conventions, the French government has failed to set up a pesticide approval system that truly protects pollinators and wildlife in general.

 

The figures of the current collapse are appalling. This generalized decline in biodiversity will have dramatic consequences on the balance of life and threatens the future of the next generations.

Researchers have repeatedly shown a connection between the widespread use of pesticides on agricultural land and the loss of pollinators, which are vital to many food chains. In 2018, EU members banned neonicotinoids on crops because of their damage to bees, the most important species on earth. However, some countries have subsequently allowed them to be used in specific situations.

A protest in Paris on March 9, 2021, highlights the threat of neonicotinoids on bees.
A protest in Paris on March 9, 2021, highlights the threat of neonicotinoids on bees. (Credit: Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes)

The UK environment secretary, Michael Gove, said during the pledge announcement:

The weight of evidence now shows the risks neonicotinoids pose to our environment, particularly to the bees and other pollinators which play such a key part in our £100bn food industry, is greater than previously understood. We cannot afford to put our pollinator populations at risk. So, unless the evidence base changes again, the government will keep these restrictions in place after we have left the EU.

During the IUCN opening ceremony on September 3, Macron promised to use France’s presidency of the EU in 2022 to push for change across the continent on pesticide use. However, he does acknowledge that a complete ban would be quite a challenge but added that he was working with farmers for reform.

In addition to harming the environment, wildlife and potentially causing cancer, pesticides may also promote obesity.

Pesticides Promote Obesity

After years of prolonged court battles, on August 18, 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally announced a ban on agricultural uses of a pesticide known as chlorpyrifos. The ban, coming into effect by 2022, arrives two decades after residential uses of the chemical were forbidden due to mounting evidence of low birth weight and neurodevelopmental impairment in children.

New research led by scientists at McMaster University has found that the commonly-used chlorpyrifos may promote obesity by slowing the calorie-burning ability of specific fat cells.

Chlorpyrifos is set to be banned in the United States from next year and already banned for use on foods in Canada, but it’s still widely sprayed on fruits and vegetables in many other countries. Reducing calorie-burning, a process called diet-induced thermogenesis, causes the body to store extra calories, encouraging obesity.

The McMaster team made the discovery after analyzing 34 common pesticides and herbicides in brown fat cells and then testing the effects of chlorpyrifos in mice fed high-calorie diets. Their findings could have significant implications for global public health.

Pesticide spraying
(Credit: simazoran/Depositphotos)

Professor Gregory Steinberg, a senior author on the study, explained:

Brown fat is the metabolic furnace in our body, burning calories, unlike normal fat that is used to store them. This generates heat and prevents calories from being deposited on our bodies as normal white fat. We know brown fat is activated during cold and when we eat.

The study, published on August 27, 2021, in the journal Nature Communications, concluded that chlorpyrifos promotes food intake and suppresses the caloric-burning functions of brown fat in mice. Unfortunately, this exacerbated the development of obesity and insulin resistance in the animals.

Steinberg points out that these new findings haven’t been replicated in humans yet, but suggests that low exposure levels could hypothetically result in minimal but meaningful, decreases in brown fat calorie burning. According to Steinberg, chlorpyrifos would only need to inhibit energy use in brown fat by 40 calories per day to trigger obesity in adults, which would translate to nearly 5 lb (2.3 kg) of weight gain a year.

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