Good Neighbor Iowa is a statewide public education campaign to reduce children’s exposure to commonly-used lawn pesticides. It involves school districts, park managers, childcare centers and other community leaders who are demonstrating that it is possible and practical to manage…
By Elise Leasure, Sabine Martin and Katherine Mauss/IowaWatch and Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line Across the street and a few doors down from Meghan and Sean O’Neal’s Neola Street home in Cedar Falls, you can see a small, nondescript one-story brick…
Black Hawk County, Iowa, April 25, 2017. Water runs off of tiled farm fields, carrying nitrates and other fertilizers into a stream. The excess fertilizers feed algae blooms in the stream. The stream empties into Black Hawk Creek, which goes…
The influence of glyphosate on the microbiota and production of botulinum neurotoxin during ruminal fermentation Glyphosate triggered a shift in ruminal fluid microbiota populations production to favor botulinum neurotoxin, commonly considered one of the most poisonous proteins to ever be…
The Issue: Pesticide Drift Pesticides are designed to be applied to crops to kill pests or (in the case of herbicides) weeds. When the pesticide is applied to the wrong area, or drifts due to wind conditions, pesticide drift can…
Spray drift accidents in the news In Iowa, there were 413 reported pesticide misuse complaints, including pesticide drift spray drift, from 2010 to 2015. Most spray drift accidents don’t make the news. Here are the few incidents in recent years…
Glyphosate Glyphosate was discovered by a Swiss pharmaceutical chemist in 1950. Monsanto researchers later determined that glyphosate had herbicidal effects, and it was patented under the commercial name Roundup. It was first approved in the U.S. in 1974. Monsanto’s patent…