Carbofuran: another bird-killing pesticide banned.
Liquid carbofuran, a pesticide used in farming, is known to kill millions of birds. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has banned this chemical for all uses.
Since the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, we've been aware of what pesticides can do to birds. When Carson wrote her famous book, raptors like the Bald Eagle and the Osprey were in serious decline because of DDT, an insecticide that contaminated the birds' food supply and made their eggs thin and delicate. DDT was banned and the birds recovered.
But pesticides have not gone away - they are still used in vast quantities to kill insect pests, and they still kill beneficial insects, fish, and birds at great cost to the ecosystem.
They spread beyond farmer's fields and leach into rivers, lakes and streams, poisoning the fish and other aquatic life there. They run off into the ocean. In turn animals that feed on contaminated terrestrial and aquatic life are poisoned. Some pesticides are lethal to birds in very small amounts.
On August 3, 2006, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned liquid Carbofuran, a pesticide that has killed millions of birds, as well as fish, mammals and other animals. The total ban of liquid Carbofuran follows a previous ban of the dry form of the chemical, even more deadly to bird life.
This progressive action, a clear choice for environment over corporate profit, provides a twinkle of hope for the future of our natural world - just a twinkle, but it's worth having. Rachel Carson would be proud.
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