GMO giants’ pesticide use threatens rare Hawaiian species
Given its fragile and unusually rich ecology, the Hawaiian island of Kauai seems ill-suited as a site for agricultural experiments that use heavy amounts of toxic chemicals. But four transnational corporations — BASF Plant Science, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer, and Syngenta — have been doing just those kinds of experiments here for about two decades, extensively spraying pesticides on their GMO test fields. As a result, the landscape on the southwest corner of the island, around the town of Waimea, has become one of the most toxic chemical environments in all of American agriculture.
This poses serious risks for the people of Kauai, as I’ve documented, but even less noticed are the hazards posed to the unique flora and fauna of the island and the coral reefs just off its shores. Each of the seven highly toxic pesticides most commonly used by the GMO giants on Kauai (alachlor, atrazine, chlorpyrifos, methomyl, metolachlor, paraquat, and permethrin) is known to be toxic to wildlife, plants, or both.
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Underground rivers of water also contaminated with the chemicals follow a similar route to the sea, finally emerging from submerged springs that bubble up through the corals. The coral reef ecosystem, which includes the colorful coral, tiny reef fish, and sea grasses, is lodged between the polluted surface water and groundwater like a waffle in a waffle iron.
Water quality tests show that the levels of chemical contamination in the river and groundwater are too low to violate drinking water standards, but are high enough to pose a hazard to aquatic life.
The amount of this pollution, while small, appears to be increasing. Water sampling results published by the U.S. Geological Survey show that the levels of atrazine, chlorpyrifos, and other pesticides in surface waters near Waimea increased nearly four-fold from 2012 to 2014.
Studies from Australia show that agricultural runoff tainted with atrazine and chlorpyrifos are harming corals and other aquatic life in the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem. No studies have been conducted to see if similar effects are occurring off Kauai.
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http://grist.org/business-technology/gmo-giants-pesticide-use-threatens-rare-hawaiian-species/