Pollinator Protection Campaign: Saving Honeybees!

Sometimes issues pass the point of being debatable and are simply truths to be ignored at our own peril. It's a pitiful reflection of the values of our Congress that dying for profits is policy.

You're both right, we have toxic policies creating an increasingly toxic environment and ignoring the problems to keep from interrupting the flow of profits. It's probably at a crisis point now.

Over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry into the nation's environment each year, including 72 million pounds of recognized carcinogens. Scorecard can give you a detailed report on chemicals being released from any of 20,000 industrial facilities, or a summary report for any area in the country.

Clint...Most cities have ordinances banning beehives in the city limits. Talk about stupid!

We have lots of beehives here in NYC and they sell rooftop honey at the Greenmarkets!

Thanks to you and the family members keeping bees, some of us do know how vital they are!

There are a lot of CCD theories that have been discussed by beekeepers and others here on the vine. We should probably have a group that collects the articles and collective wisdom.

There's nothing as valuable as reports from the folks who have a lifetime with their hands and hearts involved.

Mosephus....I've often wondered if one strain of honey bee (Italian, Carniolans, Russians, etc.) is more susceptible to CCD than another.

The fundamental nature of divirsity makes each one a little stronger in one area and a little more vulnerable in another. Every living thing on the planet is here from an eternity of fine tuning, their powers to tolerate a specific, local condition and defenses against those posing mortal threats.

They adapt to the environment of the moment with the power to modify their traits by surviving to produce viable offspring or perish. It's why every coal miner doesn't get Black lung or every tobacco user get cancer. It's a rich diversity and sustainable balance that protects all life forms and made Jersey Peaches the gem of the Waldorf Astoria, before the hand of the petrochemicals made Jersey's shores the standard joke for the pitts.

My feelings about the bees maladies is much the same as for the Americans who have participated in a decade long feeing trial with the gmo crops, the immune systems are failing from a spectrum of assaults. We've supported a campaign of killing for living, with toxins applied in increasing amounts.

That has a cumulative effect and in Nature the trickle down really does happen. Each form of life relies on the health of the environment supporting it and we life forms can't take much more of the spray nozzle salvation!

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when at first we do deceive...

Fluoride and National Security
The documentary trail begins at the height of WW2, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of the E.I. du Pont du Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world's first atomic bomb.

The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high-quality produce – their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell's Soup.

But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."

Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.

The account was confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest chemical consulting firms. Sadtler had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.

Although the farmers did not know it, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret documents obtained by these reporters. After the war's end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project's chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C. Hodge, worriedly wrote to his boss Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge;

"1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944."
"2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown in this area."
"3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area."
"4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area."

The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage – reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program.

Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the government, the secret documents reveal. Under the personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R.Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S Army's Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du Pont lawyers. Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:

These agencies "are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in ... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.'d to General Groves.

27 August 1945

Subject: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey
To: The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C.

"At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project."

Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General U.S.A

"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a Feb. 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy.

Why the national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.

"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity."

In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb program's ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements – not to mention the PR problem."

Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region's produce because of "high fluoride content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, Du Pont's lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits...any action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation." After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies approached the FDA's Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration."

FLUORIDE, TEETH, AND THE ATOMIC BOMB - By Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson

Maybe earth is trying to cleanse itself from the biggest pest, the dreaded homo sapien.

Nature can't match us for the speed and scope of our own destruction.

I have a few other thoughts, and they're a little off topic.

I should say that there is never too off topic a route to venture with me. Only nastiness is unwanted, but even there it's okay to have an occasional reminder of what certain folks are really about. Everything wanders in amazing directions so follow your nose is perfect! :~)

Mosephus....Like I said, I was wondering if one strain shows more losses to CCD than the others.

We do have some bee keepers here on the vine who have a better handle on that and with any luck one will show up. There's one in particular that comes to mind so I'll send an email and see if he will stop by to add his wisdom, keep your fingers crossed for an expert answer!!