Health & Fitness

Designer DNA therapeutic wipes out cancer stem cells, treats multiple myeloma in mice

Methamphetamine overdose deaths rise sharply nationwide

Methamphetamine overdose deaths surged in an eight-year period in the United States, according to a new study. The analysis revealed rapid rises across all racial and ethnic groups, but American Indians and Alaska Natives had the highest death rates overall.

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Age influences sex-related outcomes after heart attack

Approximately 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes occur every year in men and women in the US. Sex and age play a large part in who experiences a heart attack, the methods used to treat these heart attacks, and the eventual post hospital outcomes of the people who experience heart attacks.

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Breakthrough in understanding 'tummy bug' bacteria

Is Niacin a Missing Piece of the COVID Puzzle?

While vitamins C and D have garnered much attention in the fight against COVID-19, B vitamins can also play an important role, according to two recent papers — niacin (B3) in particular.

The first, "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin B in COVID-19,"^1,^2,^3,⁴ was published in the February 2021 issue of the journal Maturitas. The paper is the result of a joint collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford, United Arab Emirates University and the University of Melbourne, Australia.

While no studies using B vitamins have been performed on COVID-19 patients, the researchers stress that, based on B vitamins' effects on your immune system, immune-competence and red blood cells (which help fight infection), supplementation may be a useful adjunct to other prevention and treatment strategies. As noted by the authors:⁵

"There is a need to highlight the importance of vitamin B because it plays a pivotal role in cell functioning, energy metabolism, and proper immune function.

Vitamin B assists in proper activation of both the innate and adaptive immune responses, reduces pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, improves respiratory function, maintains endothelial integrity, prevents hypercoagulability and can reduce the length of stay in hospital.

Therefore, vitamin B status should be assessed in COVID-19 patients and vitamin B could be used as a non-pharmaceutical adjunct to current treatments …

Vitamin B not only helps to build and maintain a healthy immune system, but it could potentially prevent or reduce COVID-19 symptoms or treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. Poor nutritional status predisposes people to infections more easily; therefore, a balanced diet is necessary for immuno-competence."

B Vitamins Play Many Roles in COVID-19 Disease Process

Importantly, B vitamins can influence several COVID-19-specific disease processes, including:⁶

Viral replication and invasion
Cytokine storm induction
Adaptive immunity
Hypercoagulability

The paper goes on to detail how each of the B vitamins can help manage various COVID-19 symptoms:⁷

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) — Thiamine improves immune system function, protects cardiovascular health, inhibits inflammation and aids in healthy antibody responses. Vitamin B1 deficiency can result in an inadequate antibody response, thereby leading to more severe symptoms. There's also evidence suggesting B1 may limit hypoxia.

Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) — Riboflavin in combination with ultraviolet light has been shown to decrease the infectious titer of SARS-CoV-2 below the detectable limit in human blood, plasma and platelet products.

Vitamin B3 (niacin/nicotinamide) — Niacin is a building block of NAD and NADP, which are vital when combating inflammation.

Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) — Vitamin B5 aids in wound healing and reduces inflammation.

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxal 5′-phosphate/pyridoxine) — Pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B6, is a cofactor in several inflammatory pathways. Vitamin B6 deficiency is associated with dysregulated immune function. Inflammation increases the need for PLP, which can result in depletion.

According to the authors, in COVID-19 patients with high levels of inflammation, B6 deficiency may be a contributing factor. What's more, B6 may also play an important role in preventing the hypercoagulation seen in some COVID-19 patients.

Vitamin B9 (folate/folic acid) — Folate, the natural form of B9 found in food, is required for the synthesis of DNA and protein in your adaptive immune response.

Folic acid, the synthetic form typically found in supplements, was recently found⁸ to inhibit furin, an enzyme associated with viral infections, thereby preventing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from binding to and gaining entry into your cells. The research⁹ suggests folic acid may therefore be helpful during the early stages of COVID-19.

Another recent paper¹⁰ found folic acid has a strong and stable binding affinity against SARS-CoV-2. This too suggests it may be a suitable therapeutic against COVID-19.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) — B12 is required for healthy synthesis of red blood cells and DNA. A deficiency in B12 increases inflammation and oxidative stress by raising homocysteine levels. Your body can eliminate homocysteine naturally, provided you're getting enough B9 (folate), B6 and B12.¹¹

Hyperhomocysteinemia — a condition characterized by abnormally high levels of homocysteine — causes endothelial dysfunction, activates platelet and coagulation cascades and decreases immune responses.

B12 deficiency is also associated with certain respiratory disorders. Advancing age can diminish your body's ability to absorb B12 from food,¹² so the need for supplementation may increase as you get older. According to "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":¹³

"A recent study showed that methylcobalamin supplements have the potential to reduce COVID-19-related organ damage and symptoms. A clinical study conducted in Singapore showed that COVID-19 patients who were given vitamin B12 supplements (500 μg), vitamin D (1000 IU) and magnesium had reduced COVID-19 symptom severity and supplements significantly reduced the need for oxygen and intensive care support."

Niacin — A Missing Piece of the COVID-19 Puzzle?

The second paper,¹⁴ "Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?" (which is a preprint and has yet to undergo peer review), focuses specifically on niacin (B3), raising the question of whether this vitamin might actually be a crucial player in the COVID-19 disease process. As noted in the abstract:

"Definitive antiviral properties are evidenced for niacin, i.e., nicotinic acid (NA), as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) therapy for both disease recovery and prevention, to the level that reversal or progression of its pathology follows as an intrinsic function of NA supply.

This detailed investigation provides a thorough disentanglement of how the downstream inflammatory propagation of ensuing severe acute respiratory virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is entirely prohibited or reversed upstream out the body to expeditiously restore health with well-tolerated dynamic supplementation of sufficient NA (i.e., ~1-3 grams per day)."

As noted in this paper, a primary hallmark of COVID-19 pathology is the cytokine storm, which can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Marked elevations in proinflammatory cytokines are to blame for this chain of events, most notable of which are interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1).

If you can decrease and control these damaging cytokines, you stand a good chance of thwarting the cytokine storm and the downstream damage it causes. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) plays an important role in this, and niacin is a building block of NAD. As explained in "Be Well: A Potential Role for Vitamin D in COVID-19":¹⁵

"NAD+ is released during the early stages of inflammation and has immunomodulatory properties, known to decrease the pro-inflammatory cytokines, IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α. Recent evidence indicates that targeting IL-6 could help control the inflammatory storm in patients with COVID-19."

Aside from markedly decreasing proinflammatory cytokines, niacin has also been shown to:¹⁶

Reduce the replication of a number of viruses, including vaccinia virus, human immunodeficiency virus, enteroviruses and hepatitis B virus
Reduce neutrophil infiltration
Have anti-inflammatory effect in patients with ventilator-induced lung injury

Niacin Modulates the Bradykinin Storm

COVID-19 also triggers bradykinin storms. Bradykinin is a chemical that helps regulate your blood pressure and is controlled by your renin-angiotensin system (RAS). The bradykinin hypothesis provides a model that helps explain some of the more unusual symptoms of COVID-19, including its bizarre effects on your cardiovascular system.

Researchers have discovered SARS-CoV-2 downregulates your body's ability to degrade or break down bradykinin. The end result is a bradykinin storm, and this appears to be an important factor in many of COVID-19's lethal effects, perhaps even more so than the cytokine storms associated with the disease. As bradykinin accumulates, the more serious COVID-19 symptoms appear.

Vitamin D has a significant impact on the RAS,¹⁷ and can therefore help prevent a bradykinin storm, but niacin also plays an important role. As noted in "Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?":¹⁸

"Immediate-release NA [niacin] administration has been reported as highly effective in preventing the lung tissue damage involved in this … pathology. As a matter of fact, authors of a March, 2020, paper¹⁹ in Nature for this very reason conclude with suggestion of niacin supplementation to COVID-19 patients as a 'wise approach.'"

The paper also expounds on the role of NAD+, and why niacin is a useful strategy for boosting NAD+:²⁰

"The major effects of COVID-19 are evidenced to involve tryptophan metabolism and the kynurenine pathway towards depletions of these precursors of NAD+ …

Exclusively sufficient dosage of immediate-release NA — through its processing in the mammalian body to form NAADP [nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate, a calcium mobilizer] — leads to an inverse potential energy pump back upstream, from the core up and ultimately out the body, of the downstream ensuing propagation of such inflammatory disease that spreads into the cells.

This is made possible by the capability of NAADP to be readily formed by sufficient NA supply to induce Ca2+ [calcium] channeling back upstream out the body of built-up or ensuing inflammation, representing kinetic energy … that by electron gradient, moves downstream into the body.

Attempting to restore NAD+ with other NAD+-precursors aside from NA (e.g., nicotinamide, nicotinamide riboside, nicotinamide mononucleotide) only actually temporarily and in a sense, artificially, raises NAD+ levels, until they imminently deplete back down with further ensuing inflammation.

NA is in fact the only compound to readily produce NAADP if needed in acidic environments (as is characteristic to ensuing inflammatory disease pathology), which in turn provides a potential energy/H+ pump-out action of its inverse, downstream kinetic (heat) energy inflammation to ultimately restore NAD+ to normal, pre-inflammatory levels, as well as other inflammatorily-depleted cofactors and biochemical pathways towards a more thermodynamically homeostatic health status …

The 'niacin red flush' in fact is this thermodynamic exfoliation of ensuing disease, toxins, and (restoration of) free radical-damaged compounds being H+ (potential energy) pumped out the body.

It represents the anti-inflammatory or thermodynamic (i.e., energy transfer-like) therapy in action that only and exclusively sufficient oral intake of immediate-release NA is capable of (readily) accomplishing with potency."

Recommended Use

The paper²¹ goes deep into the biochemical aspects of how niacin works in your body, so if you're interested in that, you may want to read through it. In summary, as it pertains to COVID-19, the important thing to understand is that there appears to be a causative link between low niacin status and SARS-CoV-2 infection.

According to the authors, SARS-CoV-2's ability to invade your body is dependent on whether calcium signaling can properly proceed, which in turn is dependent on the presence of NAADP. And, as explained in the quoted section above, niacin forms NAADP in your body. NAADP-dependent calcium signaling is responsible both for the inhibition of viral entry into cells and driving the virus out of already infected cells.

And, again, the authors stress that "nothing outside of sufficiently, dynamically supplied niacin is capable of readily leading to the NAADP supply needed in these acidic environments for therapeutic action that counteracts inflammatory disease progression."

They also point out that the flushing you get from niacin is part of how the niacin drives inflammatory free radicals out of the cells. As you continue to take the supplement at a consistent, sufficiently high dose, that flushing will gradually lessen, which is a sign that your body is reaching a healthy homeostasis.

"This represents perhaps the ideal state that should be worked up to and maintained thereafter — in terms of niacin dosing — to respectively reverse out and prevent inflammation," the authors state.²²

While the flushing can be uncomfortable, the authors stress that it is "indeed safe," and actually "should be sought when needed for its anti-inflammatory properties."

Suggested Dosing

As a "health restorative therapy" for those diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, they recommend starting with a dose of 500 milligrams of immediate-release niacin, two to three times a day, ideally within the first 48 hours of symptom onset. As your flush response lessens, increase your dose to 1,000 mg, two to three times a day.²³

"For the subgroup of patients still suffering with high cytokines profiles from deep, remnant damage of previously experienced SARS-CoV-2 infection — termed the 'long-haulers' — alleviation from ailment(s) towards complete health restoration to pre-infection state from initiating and maintaining the aforementioned dosage regimen has consistently been reported to assume within two days and to incrementally follow further over the course of weeks."²⁴

Although the authors suggest you can use niacin prophylactically, using that same dose, I disagree. According to the authors:²⁵

"By readily providing sufficient NAADP, this same NA dosage regimen is capable of serving as prophylaxis, which can be interpreted as the physical/biochemical inability of sufficient progression of SARS-CoV-2 in order to enter into the body and/or thereafter induce replication, infection onset, or disease progression in a previously uninfected host."

There may be some value to the high doses in acute COVID-19 infections but I am skeptical. I am a huge fan of NAD+ augmentation and have been using it for years. My research suggests you really only need about 25 mg per day of niacin, which will not cause flushing in nearly anyone. I believe most would benefit from taking 25 mg of niacin daily, preferably in a well-balanced B complex, which would have thiamine (B1) that has also been shown to be useful in COVID-19.

Other alternatives to high-dose niacin would be nicotinamide riboside (NR) and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), which is my personal favorite. I believe that compounding these into rectal suppositories would avoid most of the methylation of the supplement and supply you with higher NAD+ tissue levels.

Another downside of high-dose niacin is that it breaks down to nicotinamide and in high doses, nicotinamide will inhibit Sirt1, which is an important longevity protein.

Personally, I believe a superior strategy to high-dose niacin in acute COVID-19 would be to use nebulized hydrogen peroxide at 0.1%. I have never seen or heard of this intervention failing in the treatment of COVID-19.

How to Improve Your Vitamin B Status

As a general rule, I recommend getting most if not all of your nutrition from real food. This will work well for most B vitamins, but not if you're using niacin therapeutically, as described above. For that, you will need to take a supplement.

That said, the list below will show you which foods contain which B vitamins, as well as provide general guidance on dosage if you're taking a supplement. If you're trying to improve your vitamin B status, also consider limiting sugar and eating more fermented foods.

The reason for this is because the entire B group vitamin series is produced within your gut, assuming you have healthy gut flora. Eating real food, including plenty of leafy greens and fermented foods, will provide your microbiome with important fiber and beneficial bacteria to help optimize your internal vitamin B production.

Nutrient	Dietary Sources	Supplement Recommendations
Vitamin B1	Pork, fish, nuts and seeds, beans, green peas, brown rice, squash, asparagus and seafood.²⁶	The recommended daily allowance for B1 is 1.2 mg/day for men and 1.1 mg/day for women.²⁷
Vitamin B2	Eggs, organ meats, lean meats, green vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli and spinach.²⁸	The RDA is 1.1 mg for adult women and 1.3 mg for men. Your body cannot absorb more than about 27 mg at a time, and some multivitamins or B-complex supplements may contain unnecessarily high amounts.²⁹
Vitamin B3	Liver, chicken, veal, peanuts, chili powder, bacon and sun-dried tomatoes have some of the highest amounts of niacin per gram.³⁰ Other niacin-rich foods include baker's yeast, paprika, espresso coffee, anchovies, spirulina, duck, shiitake mushrooms and soy sauce.³¹	The dietary reference intake established by the Food and Nutrition Board ranges from 14 to 18 mg per day for adults. Higher amounts are recommended depending on your condition. For a list of recommended dosages, see the Mayo Clinic's website.³² The dosage recommended as an anti-inflammatory, health-restorative therapy in "Sufficient Niacin Supply: The Missing Puzzle Piece to COVID-19 and Beyond?"³³ is 500 mg two to three times a day, working your way up to 1,000 mg, two to three times a day as the flushing lessens.
Vitamin B5	Beef, poultry, seafood, organ meats, eggs, milk, mushrooms, avocados, potatoes, broccoli, peanuts, sunflower seeds, chickpeas and brown rice.³⁴	The RDA is 5 mg for adults over the age of 19. Pantothenic acid in dietary supplements is often in the form of calcium pantothenate or pantethine.³⁵
Vitamin B6	Turkey, beef, chicken, wild-caught salmon, sweet potatoes, potatoes, sunflower seeds, pistachios, avocado, spinach and banana.^36,³⁷	Nutritional yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins, especially B6.³⁸ One serving (2 tablespoons) contains nearly 10 mg of vitamin B6. Not to be confused with Brewer's yeast or other active yeasts, nutritional yeast is made from an organism grown on molasses, which is then harvested and dried to deactivate the yeast. It has a pleasant cheesy flavor and can be added to a number of different dishes.
Vitamin B9	Fresh, raw, organic leafy green vegetables, especially broccoli, asparagus, spinach and turnip greens, and a wide variety of beans, especially lentils, but also pinto beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, navy and black beans.³⁹	Folic acid is a synthetic type of B vitamin used in supplements; folate is the natural form found in foods. (Think: Folate comes from foliage, edible leafy plants.) For folic acid to be of use, it must first be activated into its biologically active form (L-5-MTHF). Nearly half the population has difficulty converting folic acid into the bioactive form due to a genetic reduction in enzyme activity. For this reason, if you take a B-vitamin supplement, make sure it contains natural folate rather than synthetic folic acid. Nutritional yeast is an excellent source.⁴⁰ Research⁴¹ also shows your dietary fiber intake has an impact on your folate status. For each gram of fiber consumed, folate levels increased by nearly 2%. The researchers hypothesize that this boost in folate level is due to the fact that fiber nourishes bacteria that synthesize folate in your large intestine.
Vitamin B12	Vitamin B12 is found almost exclusively in animal tissues, including foods like beef and beef liver, lamb, snapper, venison, salmon, shrimp, scallops, poultry, eggs and dairy products. The few plant foods that are sources of B12 are actually B12 analogs that block the uptake of true B12.	Nutritional yeast is high in B12, and is highly recommended for vegetarians and vegans. One serving (2 tablespoons) provides nearly 8 mcg of natural vitamin B12.⁴² Sublingual (under-the-tongue) fine mist spray or vitamin B12 injections are also effective, as they allow the large B12 molecule to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream.

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Ethanol Plant Using Treated GMO Corn Poisons Town

Mead is a village in Saunders County, Nebraska, with a population of just 580 people.¹ Their website focuses on what they do best: small town living. “If you’re ready to escape the city, come join us in Mead, Nebraska,” their official site reads.² This close-knit farming community is also home to AltEn,³ an ethanol plant that is producing toxic byproducts that are poisoning the community.

“It’s definitely within sniffing distance. I come out here to do yard work and I can barely breathe,” Jody Weible, who lives half a mile from the plant, told a news outlet.⁴

The stench is coming from a byproduct of ethanol production called distillers grain, which is produced after the starch is removed from corn. Also known as “wet cake,” distillers grain is sold by most U.S. ethanol plants as livestock feed, but AltEn’s waste is different.

The company secured a free source of corn to make ethanol by billing itself as a “recycling” plant that accepts seeds treated with pesticides, including toxic neonicotinoids. The resulting waste is too contaminated to sell as feed for animals, so AltEn has been spreading the waste on farmland and holding the rest of it — a “smelly, lime-green mash of fermented grains” — on the grounds surrounding its plant.⁵

Pesticide Contamination ‘Off the Charts’

Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides worldwide.⁶ If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids. Even when used agriculturally, these seeds have been found to harm pollinators like bees at alarming rates.⁷

There are other concerns as well, like the fact that planting neonicotinoid seeds kills off insects that prey on slugs — prominent corn and soybean pests — thereby reducing crop yields.⁸

They’re also known to persist in the environment. When researchers screened oilseed crops in the European Union for neonicotinoids during the five-year moratorium, they found neonicotinoids in all the years it was banned in bee-attractive crops, with residue levels depending on soil type and increasing with rainfall.

They concluded that this poses a “considerable risk for nectar foraging bees” and supports “the recent extension of the moratorium to a permanent ban in all outdoor crops.”⁹ In 2018, the European Union banned the outdoor use of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam), while the United Nations has also recommended severely restricting their use.¹⁰

They’re still widely used in the U.S., however, and in Mead, where the excess waste from the treated seeds is piling up, astronomical levels of the chemicals have been detected.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney Dan Raichel told The Guardian, “Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts. If I were living in that area with those levels of neonics going into the water and the environment I would be concerned for my own health.”¹¹

In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has set an upper “safety” limit of 70 parts per billion (ppb) for neonicotinoids in food and water, while levels deemed “safe” for aquatic life are capped at 11 ppb for clothianidin and 17.5 ppb for thiamethoxam. Yet, The Guardian reported:¹²

“On the AltEn property, state environmental officials recorded levels of clothianidin at a staggering 427,000ppb in testing of one of the large hills of AltEn waste. Thiamethoxam was detected at 85,100ppb, according to testing ordered by the Nebraska department of agriculture.

In an AltEn wastewater lagoon, clothianidin was recorded at 31,000ppb and thiamethoxam at 24,000ppb. A third dangerous neonic called imidacloprid was also found in the lagoon, at 312ppb. The EPA aquatic life benchmark for imidacloprid is 0.385ppb. AltEn’s lagoon system holds approximately 175m gallons.

High levels of 10 other pesticides were also found in the plant lagoon. At least four pesticides in the corn used by AltEn, including clothianidin and thiamethoxam, are known to be ‘detrimental to humans, birds, mammals, bees, freshwater fish’ and other living creatures, state regulators noted in an October letter to AltEn.”

Sick Dogs, Dead Bees and Birds Reported

The area’s residents are already experiencing ill effects they attribute to the pesticide-laden waste. Pet dogs have become sick after ingesting waste dumped on farm fields, and dying birds have also been reported.

Nebraska’s department of agriculture eventually told AltEn to stop spreading the waste on fields, so the company piled up more of the waste on site as well as began incinerating it or storing it offsite in “biochar” bags.¹³

State regulators aren’t monitoring for contamination near AltEn’s Mead plant, but researcher Judy Wu-Smart, with the University of Nebraska’s department of entomology, believes area insects are being decimated. The university has a research farm about 1 mile from the city, where every beehive has died, and the bee deaths are associated with AltEn’s usage of pesticide-treated seeds.

She also has evidence of birds and butterflies that appear to be neurologically damaged, and found residues of neonicotinoids in plants, which she traced to waterways connecting the land to AltEn. In an interview with The Guardian, she called the findings a red flag, noting, “The bees are just a bio-indicator of something seriously going wrong.”¹⁴

AltEn Given Two Months to Clean Up Waste

Children and adults living in Mead have also reported illnesses that occurred after the ethanol plant arrived, while the stench from the waste has caused people to move and businesses to close. Schoolchildren often cannot go outside because of the smell alone, and there’s a high likelihood that local air and water are now contaminated.

The Guardian’s exposé was published January 10, 2021. At the time, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) said they had no opinion on the area’s bee deaths and did not have jurisdiction in the matter, but were reviewing AltEn’s operations and activities.

NDEE waste permits specialist Blayne Glissman also told The Guardian that AltEn officials were “hard-working people trying to make a living.”¹⁵

On January 12, 2021, News Channel Nebraska reported that NDEE cited AltEn for noncompliance of pollution rules due to waste at the plant contaminating air and water, and gave the company until March 2021 to clean up the pollution. AltEn said they’re “on schedule” and working with NDEE to do so.¹⁶ In a statement, Malia Libby, a conservation associate with Environmental America, condemned AltEn, stating they should have known better:¹⁷

“Residents of Mead, Neb., are experiencing a significant threat to their personal health and to the safety of pets, bees and wildlife in the surrounding area. And the sad reality is that this threat is both unnecessary and avoidable.

Coating corn seeds with bee-killing neonics has become common practice for seed companies, often leaving farmers with little choice but to spread these chemicals in their fields, whether the pesticides are needed or not.

And when the seeds go unused by farmers, we end up with disasters like this. AltEn should have known better. This small town in Nebraska is the latest example for why America needs to rethink how food is grown in this country.”

US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic Than It Was 25 Years Ago

From 1992 to 2014, researchers found that synthetic insecticide use shifted from mostly organophosphorus pesticides to a mix of neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. This shift, they believe, is the reason why agricultural lands are now 48 times more toxic than they were a quarter-century ago, as in 2014, neonicotinoids represented up to 99% of the land’s total toxic load.¹⁸

“Our screening analysis demonstrates an increase in pesticide toxicity loading over the past 26 years, which potentially threatens the health of honey bees and other pollinators and may contribute to declines in beneficial insect populations as well as insectivorous birds and other insect consumers,” they noted¹⁹ — concerns that have been echoed by similar studies.

One of the observed effects of neonicotinoids in bees is a weakening of the bees’ immune systems.²⁰ Forager bees may bring pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive, where it's consumed by all of the bees.

About six months later, their immune systems fail, and they end up contracting secondary infections from parasites, mites, viruses, fungi and bacteria. The chemicals have also been shown to trigger immunosuppression in the queen bee, possibly leading to an impaired ability to resist diseases.²¹

“Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants,” a study published in Nature revealed in 2015.²² Other species are also at risk. For instance, researchers found annual catches of smelt from Lake Shinji in Japan fell by 90% in the 10 years after the application of neonicotinoids to adjacent rice paddies.^23,²⁴

An exposé by The Intercept,²⁵ which obtained lobbying documents and emails, revealed an extensive playbook used by the pesticide industry to downplay the pesticides’ harms by influencing beekeepers, regulators and academia. Meanwhile, bees and other pollinators are still in decline and the pesticide industry has gotten richer:

“The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.”

Ethanol, Neonicotinoids Pose an Ecosystem-Wide Threat

Plants take up only about 5% of the neonicotinoids’ active ingredient, which leaves the rest to be widely dispersed into the environment.²⁶ Worldwide, more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction in the next few decades.²⁷ Researchers cited “compelling evidence” that agricultural intensification is the main driver of population declines in birds, small mammals and insects.

In order of importance, habitat loss due to land converted to intensive agriculture, as well as urbanization, are major problems, but the next most significant contributor is pollution, primarily that from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.²⁸ Ethanol is advertised as an environmentally friendly solution, but it’s actually part of the problem because it’s driving valuable grassland to be converted into chemical-heavy corn crops.

Between 2008 and 2013, wild bees declined 23% in the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, Great Plains and the Mississippi valley, where grain production, primarily corn for biofuel, nearly doubled during the same period.²⁹ Further, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands have been converted to corn from 2008 to 2011.³⁰

Overall, since the U.S. government began requiring ethanol in fuel in 2007, corn (and soy) crops have taken over more than 1.2 million acres of grassland.³¹ Converting more diverse grasslands into corn crops for biofuels is the opposite of what’s needed to save the environment — and creating ethanol out of excess neonicotinoid-treated seeds represents one of the worst outcomes of all.

Adding insult to injury, an investigation by the U.S. EPA even found that treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides no significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers.³² Regenerative farming, on the other hand, improves biodiversity of the soil, does not harm the environment and increases farmers' net profits, a win-win situation for all. As Environment America’s Libby said:³³

“We need to assist farmers in transitioning to healthier, sustainable agriculture practices, which can dramatically reduce the need for pesticides and remove residual chemicals from the environment.

The USDA has programs to help farmers embrace crop diversity, prairie strips, cover crops and more, but this horrible scenario in Mead reminds us that we must move faster. This can be done if Congress decides to deeply invest in sustainable farming.”

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