Poisons Beware

Poisons Beware

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and many other herbicides, was discussed in the EU Parliament on December 1st 2015.

Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016

A draft Motion prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committe for the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety in March 2016.

It's time to wise up! Look around, what's happening?

The practice of spraying the roads with insecticides in the summertime is potentially harmful and needs urgent review.

The Green Group of the European Parliament organized urine tests for the herbicide glyphosate on 48 volunteer MEPs. 

When the World Health Organization defined Glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”, it should have put an immediate stop to the sale and use of Glyphosate-based herbicides.

Are there alternatives to using chemical pesticides? Yes, of course.

The manufacturers have claimed that the herbicide Roundup, whose active ingredient is glyphosate, is "safe enough to drink", and many people are naive enough to believe this.

Pesticides safe? Pull the other one, it's got bells on!

From October 1st 2016, the sale of Roundup (Croatian Cidokor) and 11 other similar glyphosate-based herbicides was banned in the European Union. The ban should serve as a wake-up call to all users, supporters and promoters of pesticides.

The look of abject terror on the monkey's face is a haunting picture, the stuff of nightmares for anyone with an ounce of empathy for torture victims, whether human or animal. Animals are frontline victims of dangerous chemicals.

Just as the use of insecticides does not solve a mosquito problem, vermin are not controlled by repeated use of poisons.

A bee sting can cause a severe allergic reaction in a vulnerable person. Under current Croatian law, insects which cause allergic reactions must be subjected to an annual programme of suppression.

Our request to Croatian local and national authorities to review the insect suppression programme has produced a lamentable response so far. It's hard getting the message across, but we will keep trying.

Because we at Eco Hvar are very concerned about the shortcomings of the mosquito liquidation programme on Hvar and around Croatia, we have petitioned the Minister for Health to re-consider the methods used.

The campaign to eliminate mosquitoes through routine insect spraying is not working! And it's dangerous. We at Eco Hvar are asking for change.

Would I find myself driving home through a mist of toxic chemicals if I caught the 20:30 ferry back from Split? That was the question on 27th September 2017.

For several years, the local councils of Jelsa, Stari Grad and Hvar have routinely sprayed the streets against mosquitoes, flies and other 'flying pests'. Is this a good thing?

The programme aimed at killing mosquitoes is causing environmental disaster!

Bees are dying at a frightening rate. Humankind - unkindly - is decimating biodiversity.

Chemical poison use is out of control in much of the modern world. Safeguards exist in theory, in practice they are inadequate. At each level of responsibility, practices need to be improved. These are our suggestions for achieving vital improvements.

This is a guide to the systems governing chemical pesticide regulation, registers and laws, with an overview of some of the many problems arising from pesticide use.

The concept of exterminating people, for whatever reason, is unacceptable in civilized societies.

Results from testing a dust sample taken from a house in Svirče on Hvar on June 22nd 2021.

Testing people on Hvar Island for pesticides via hair samples is an ongoing project, conducted by Eco Hvar. These are the preliminary results from the Kudzu laboratory which tested for 60 pesticides in 2021 and 100 as from 2022.

A listing of selected pesticides which are, or have been in common use in Croatia, with the official warnings of their side-effects and the known side-effects of their active constituents.

An overview of the scientific evidence for claims that glyphosate-based herbicides are or are not safe.

Scientific evidence of the dangers surrounding chemical pesticides commonly used on Hvar and in other parts of Croatia.

CHEMICAL PESTICIDE USE AT CURRENT LEVELS IS NEITHER SAFE NOR SUSTAINABLE!

Towards the end of 2023, the European Parliament and the European Commission showed that they are not willing or able to protect European citizens from the ill-effects of chemical pesticides. So what needs to be done?

Letter sent to the Public Health authorities on 12th June 2024, following yet another scandalous example of irresponsible poison spraying against insects.

If someone filled a spray can with potentially deadly poisons and went round spraying people at random, everyone, including the police, would react to put a stop to it.

After many years of observing the practice of the Croatian national insect suppression programme, we have come to the conclusion that the time has come for the Inspectors to investigate the situation and to institute (we hope) safer methods. 

Some announcements of adulticide fogging timings and warnings. Practices around Croatia are varied and not always in keeping with the regulations.

Examples of the biocides (chemical insecticides) used for fogging actions to control adult mosquitoes, citing their active ingredients and possible adverse effects.

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Eco Environment News feeds

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    Almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found.

    Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network, found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year.

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  • Campaigners say pheasants and partridges reared ‘on industrial scale’ do not have same protections as chickens

    The government is considering a crackdown on pheasant shooting in England as part of a consultation on strict new animal welfare laws that would affect shoot organisers.

    Ministers are already considering plans for the issuing of licences for those who run game bird shoots. The proposals mean anybody associated with wildlife crime, such as the poisoning or shooting of birds of prey, would be banned from hosting shooting events.

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  • Andy Burnham has announced a crackdown, but doubts remain over authorities’ ability to take on organised crime

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    During the recent heatwaves, the smell from an illegal waste dump on Midland Road, just metres from the nursery, became so unbearable that staff had to keep the doors and windows shut and the children couldn’t play outside.

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    This year’s summer was the UK’s hottest on record, according to provisional data, and the Met Office said the season’s mean temperature was made 130 times more likely by the climate crisis.

    Record-breaking and back-to-back heatwaves have scorched much of Europe. In England, temperatures peaked at 38.1C (100.1F) at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August, and June had already been confirmed as the country’s hottest since records began in 1884. Scientists have said these heatwaves are only possible because of the climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels.

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  • As families await news of missing loved ones, the disaster is a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is creating a fast-growing threat. Plus, the town considered India’s ‘Jurassic Park’

    Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

    It has been hard not to despair while watching the ruinous floods swallow parts of Nepal, and harder, still knowing that the agony compounds each passing day for dozens of Indian families whose members remain unaccounted for.

    Social media is awash with desperate pleas, photos and details of the young and old, men and women, from Mumbai to Kolkata, posted by families searching for traces of life. The disaster unfolded when a melting glacier slammed into the valley below, unleashing a deadly cascade of rock and ice down the Bhote Kashi River, which flows from Tibet into Nepal.

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  • Head of tree collections at Kew ‘very worried about this autumn’ as hot, dry summer has caused brittleness

    High winds associated with El Niño could cause widespread mortality among tree species already weakened by a prolonged period of extreme heat and drought, experts have warned.

    This summer much of Europe has been scorched by a series of record-breaking climate crisis-induced heatwaves. The impact is notable across much of England’s countryside, where once green land has turned brown, and many trees are undergoing “early autumn” – wilting and losing their leaves early – to cope with extreme heat.

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    Households in Great Britain’s cloudiest regions could still save more than £400 a year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, research has found.

    Rising wholesale energy prices mean the potential savings from a home solar panel system have climbed in recent years, as the cost of installation has continued to fall, leading to increased demand.

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  • A fragment of temperate rainforest lies on the edge of Dartmoor, and following years of conservation work, its owners have now opened up a sustainable campsite next to this fragile ecosystem

    Mist blankets the valley as I wheel my camping gear down the small hill towards a clearing ringed by trees and shrubs. A picnic bench sits at its edge, angled towards the reason why I’m here: one of the last remaining fragments of temperate rainforest in Britain. I’m pitching my tent at Wray Valley Camping, a low-impact site on Dartmoor’s eastern edge between Lustleigh and Moretonhampstead, where I’ll spend five days on one of the site’s “nearly wild” pitches.

    Also known as Atlantic woodland, temperate rainforests depend on a rare combination of high humidity, rainfall and consistently mild coastal temperatures where the sea moderates the climate. They once stretched from the western Highlands of Scotland down to Cornwall, covering 20% of the UK, and sheltering rare and delicate lichens and plants. Today more than 95% of our temperate rainforest cover is gone, but Devon’s near-constant dampness and its exposure to the Atlantic make it one of the last strongholds for this rare habitat.

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  • El Niño is associated with weaker monsoons in India – but research suggests it can also bring more extreme rainfall

    The world is bracing for a “super” El Niño, and its effects are already being felt in India, where the monsoon has brought less rain than average but more intense downpours.

    Meteorologists predict that the current El Niño, which is developing over the Pacific, could be one of the strongest in living memory. India is likely to be heavily affected, particularly later in the monsoon, when El Niño’s influence tends to strengthen.

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  • The race to study the North Water between Canada and Greenland before it changes has led to a bold plan for an Inuit-run protected area

    Electric-blue meltwater sprays up under Terry Noah’s snowmobile as he races across sea ice extending out from Canada’s northernmost public community: Grise Fiord in Nunavut, a hamlet of 144 people closer to Murmansk in Russia than the Canadian city of Toronto. The bay’s cliffs loom higher and higher like stone icebergs as he approaches his destination across the bay.

    Noah pulls his sled carefully over a seal’s breathing hole, about the circumference of a basketball. Using a custom-made winch, he lowers a submersible instrument into the sea below the ice.

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