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Current Pesticides News Events, Discoveries and Articles

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Commonly used pesticide turns honey bees into 'picky eaters'
Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that a small dose of a commonly used crop pesticide turns honey bees into "picky eaters" and affects their ability to recruit their nestmates to otherwise good sources of food. (2012-05-24)

A new method detects traces of veterinary drugs in baby food
The quantities are very small, but in milk powder and in meat-based baby food, residues of drugs given to livestock were found. (2012-05-21)

USF study: Common fungicide wreaks havoc on freshwater ecosystems
Chlorothalonil, one of the world's most common fungicides used pervasively on food crops and golf courses, was lethal to a wide variety of freshwater organisms in a new study, University of South Florida researchers said Wednesday. (2012-05-17)

Secret soil cracks linger, despite surface sealing
Deep cracks in soil can remain open underground even after they have visibly sealed on the surface, a new study has found. (2012-05-15)

Environment key to preventing childhood disabilities
The United States government would get a better bang for its health-care buck in managing the country's most prevalent childhood disabilities if it invested more in eliminating socio-environmental risk factors than in developing medicines. (2012-05-02)

Global Prices of Pollination-dependent Products such as Coffee and Cocoa Could Continue to Rise in the Long Term
In recent years the economic value of pollination-dependent crops has substantially increased around the world. As a team of researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Technical University of Dresden and the University of Freiburg headed by the UFZ wrote in an article entitled "Spatial and temporal trends of global pollination benefit" in the open-access journal PLoS ONE the value of ecological pollination services was around 200 billion US dollars in 1993 and rose to around 350 billion US dollars in 2009. (2012-04-30)

Study explores links between smoking during pregnancy, autism
Women who smoke in pregnancy may be more likely to have a child with high-functioning autism, such as Asperger's Disorder, according to preliminary findings from a study by researchers involved in the U.S. autism surveillance program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012-04-27)

List of the top 10 toxic chemicals suspected to cause autism and learning disabilities
An editorial published today in the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives calls for increased research to identify possible environmental causes of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders in America's children and presents a list of ten target chemicals including which are considered highly likely to contribute to these conditions. (2012-04-26)

Plant perfumes woo beneficial bugs
Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered that maize crops emit chemical signals which attract growth-promoting microbes to live amongst their roots. (2012-04-25)

New Study Is First to Show That Pesticides Can Induce Morphological Changes in Vertebrate Animals, Says Pitt Researcher
The world's most popular weed killer, Roundup®, can cause amphibians to change shape, according to research published today in Ecological Applications. (2012-04-03)