Agriculture

Agriculture

Germs eyed to make foods safer

Adding viruses to foods doesn’t sound appetizing, much less healthy. But it’s a stratagem being explored to knock some of the more virulent food poisoning bacteria out of the U.S. food supply. Scientists described data supporting the tactic July 18 at the Institute of Food Technologists’ annual meeting in Chicago.

Ecosystems

Honeybee death mystery deepens

Government scientists link colony collapse disorder to mix of fungal and viral infections.

Agriculture

Rural ozone can be fed by feed (as in silage)

Livestock operations take a lot of flak for polluting. Researchers are now linking ozone to livestock, at least in one of the nation's most agriculturally intense centers. And here the pollution source is not what comes out the back end of an animal but what’s destined to go in the front.

Humans

Mercury surprise: Rice can be risky

A new study out of China shows that for millions of people at risk of eating toxic amounts of mercury-laced food, fish isn't the problem. Rice is.

Plants

Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield

Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.

Earth

Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers

Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.

Agriculture

Frogs: Clues to how weed killer may feminize males

Atrazine, a widely used agricultural herbicide, not only can alter hormone levels in the developing frogs, but also perturb their physical development — and lead to an excess number of females, researchers report. Their new findings may help explain observations reported by a number of other research groups that at least in frogs, fairly low concentrations of atrazine can induce a feminization — or demasculinization.

Earth

Frogs: Weed killer creates real Mr. Moms

Several months back, a Berkeley undergraduate began witnessing distinctly odd behavior in frogs she was caring for in the lab. At about 18-months old, some frisky guys began regularly mounting tank mates, as if to copulate. Except that their chosen partner was invariably male. He had to be. Because genetically, every animal in the tank was male.

Agriculture

EPA reviews hints of weed killer’s fetal risks

The Environmental Protection Agency will be convening meetings of its Scientific Advisory Panel on pesticides throughout 2010 to probe concerns about the safety of atrazine, a weed killer on which most American corn growers rely. The first meeting of these outside experts started Tuesday. And although a large number of studies have indicated that atrazine can perturb hormones in animals and human cells — and might even pose a possible risk of cancer amongst heavily exposed people, these outcomes were not the focus of EPA’s review Tuesday. Risks to babies were.

Agriculture

How better weather models can save peanut farmers money

Better weather forecasts could help farmers avoid unnecessary pesticide spraying.

Chemistry

Pollutants: Up in flames

Forest fires have the potential to release toxic industrial and agricultural pollutants previously trapped on soil. After glomming onto smoke particles, these chemicals can hitch long-distance rides — sometimes across oceans — before they’re grounded and contaminate some new region, scientists report.

Humans

Beefy hormones: New routes of exposure

On any given day, some 750,000 U.S feedlots are beefing up between 11 million and 14 million head of cattle. The vast majority of these animals will receive muscle-building steroids — hormones they will eventually excrete into the environment. But traditional notions about where those biologically active pollutants end up may need substantial revising, several new studies find.