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Finding space for wind farms might be easier than we thought

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Towering wind turbines dot landscapes across the country, stretching hundreds of feet into the sky. But the huge structures topped with massive rotating blades only take up five percent of the land where they’ve been built, new research shows.The rest of the space can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture, according to a study published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.This means developers could fit turbines in places that are often perceived as unsuitable for a wind farm.To meet the Biden administration’s goal of weaning the electric grid off fossil fuels by 2035, the United States needs to add more wind farms. But finding places to put turbines has emerged as a major hurdle, due in part to the perception that wind farms require large amounts of land.The new study highlights that turbines and existing human development, such as agriculture, cannot only share the same area, but also that building wind farms where there are already roads and other infrastructure could help reduce impacts on the land.“Clever siting, use of existing infrastructure, multiple use of landscapes — all these things … can really contribute to solutions in areas where wind power is acceptable to the local people,” said Sarah Jordaan, the study’s principal investigator.Finding the right site for a wind farmHistorically, planning studies for wind farms have often assumed that turbines would disturb all the land at the site and leave the area unusable for anything else, said Jordaan, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at McGill University. The study’s findings provide a more accurate accounting of how much land is needed for wind farms, she added.The researchers analyzed roughly 300 wind farms with more than 15,000 turbines in total that feed a grid that provides electricity to 80 million people across 14 U.S. states and parts of Canada and Mexico. They found that a lot of the time wind farms share the landscape with farming.Wind farms that piggybacked on existing infrastructure, such as roads, disrupted less land and were about seven times more efficient than projects constructed from the ground up, according to the study. “Our results should provide stakeholders with a greater evidence base for a more informed understanding of the impacts of energy developments,” she said.Ben Hoen, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab, who was not involved in the research, said the findings emphasize the potential benefits of building turbines on shared land. One major concern about renewable energy projects, he said, has been that they could displace or disrupt farming, hurting the local economy.“This study might allow folks to take a fresh look at the ability to retain some of that economic benefit that agriculture has while still co-developing or developing wind energy at those locations,” Hoen said.Other barriers for wind energyBut experts said it remains a question whether this new data will spur greater acceptance of wind projects, which can face opposition in communities for other reasons the study didn’t take into account, such as noise.“On the ground, the trade-offs related to energy development are complex,” Jordaan said. “For wind, it includes issues like visual impacts, noise, and bird and bat mortality. How people evaluate these trade-offs is complex.”Much of the public though appears to be supportive of renewable energy projects, including wind turbines. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted last year reported that large and bipartisan majorities of Americans said they wouldn’t mind fields of solar panels and wind turbines being built in their communities.The new study comes as the country is undergoing an energy transition toward more renewable sources. In January, the Energy Information Administration forecast that wind and solar energy will lead growth in U.S. power generation for the next two years.“There’s no denying that wind and solar deployment is going to take up land,” Hoen said. “But I do think that understanding the actual impacts and taking into account some of these co-use opportunities — whether it’s roads or agriculture — are extremely important.”

This New Biden Rule Will Save Americans $2 Billion On Utility Bills

The long-awaited move lays the groundwork for a massive overhaul in the way Americans build houses.

The Biden administration has finalized a major rule change that raises the bar for real estate developers who want newly built homes to qualify for U.S. government-backed loans, laying the groundwork for a massive overhaul in the way Americans build houses. Regulators issued a final determination Thursday that the breakthrough energy codes that dramatically increased the efficiency of new homes but caused a firestorm in the construction industry met the federal government’s standards for keeping housing affordable and slashing utility bills. Meeting those codes is now set to become the baseline criteria for qualifying for federal loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which also issues loans, is likely to follow suit, but maintains a separate regulatory timeline. Federal regulators expect the codes to affect at least 140,000 new homes each year and save the U.S. $2.1 billion on energy bills compared to the $605 million the stricter standards add to total construction costs. “This long-overdue action will protect homeowners and renters from high energy costs while making a real dent in climate pollution,” Lowell Ungar, federal policy director of the watchdog American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said in a press release. “It makes no sense for the government to help people move into new homes that waste energy and can be dangerous in extreme temperatures.” An aerial view of existing homes near new homes under construction in the Chatsworth neighborhood on Sept. 8, 2023, in Los Angeles, California.Mario Tama via Getty ImagesThe Biden administration’s adoption of the codes came the same day the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the nation’s first-ever limits on power plants’ carbon emissions. Combined with new rules at the Energy Department to ease permitting on transmission lines, the regulatory package was designed to put the U.S. on track to clean up the grid, meaning the electricity powering cars and stovetops in modernized homes would emit little planet-heating pollution. The announcement also came with a new rule requiring all federally owned buildings to go electric and forgo fossil fuels in new construction. The U.S. does not set building codes on the national level. Instead, states and municipalities adopt codes written by two main third-party nonprofits, with the Washington, D.C.-based International Code Council serving as the primary author of standards for building single-family homes. Formed out of 1990s-era consolidation of disparate code-writing organizations, the ICC convened representatives from elected governments, advocacy groups and industry associations every three years to update its codebook. The nonprofit maintained democratic legitimacy over the process by allowing only government officials to vote on the final codes at the end of the convention. For years, it was a sleepy affair that involved mostly making minor tweaks and rubberstamping new codes with efficiency increases of 1% or less. When the ICC came together in 2019 to write the codes released in 2021, local governments were determined to make a serious dent in planet-heating emissions. Unable to dictate the cars on their roads or the power plants supplying their grid, these municipalities organized themselves to vote in favor of the most ambitious ICC energy codes in years, with efficiency gains of up to 14%. Industry groups balked, and challenged governments’ right to vote. Siding with gas utilities, the ICC’s appeals board ultimately decided to remove key provisions that would have required new buildings to include the circuitry for electric car chargers and appliances, saving homeowners who go electric later thousands of dollars on renovations to rewire walls. Much of the code, however, remained intact. The electoral process did not. Bucking pressure from the newly inaugurated Biden administration, the ICC went forward in early 2021 with a plan to eliminate municipalities’ voting rights altogether. Officials from elected governments could still vote on codes governing plumbing or pools. But the energy codes that dictate insulation levels and window measurements would instead fall under a new “consensus committee” process that gave industry players more power. The new procedure was plagued with problems from the start. But volunteers on the committee writing residential codes — including industry professionals — managed to negotiate a package of rules for the 2024 codebook. Advocates of stronger efficiency rules compromised on key components of the code, weakening the certain aspects in exchange for the industry supporting the inclusion of rules mandating the wiring for going electric. While the 2024 code might have loosened some insulation standards from the 2021 rulebook, the new circuitry provisions promised to hasten the Biden administration’s lagging effort to promote a shift away from internal combustion engine vehicles and gas furnaces to electric cars and heat pumps. The rules seemed more ironclad this time. President Joe Biden speaks on "how the CHIPS and Science Act and his Investing in America agenda are growing the economy and creating jobs," at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS via Getty ImagesWhen gas companies once again asked to scrap wiring rules at the end of the code-writing process last fall, the ICC’s appeals board this time sided against the fossil fuel industry, rejecting all the challenges. But last month the ICC’s board of directors defied its staff and 90% of the volunteers who helped write the code and granted the gas groups’ request. Instead of including the circuitry provisions in the widely adopted base code, the ICC relegated the rules to a bonus-menu appendix for municipalities that wanted — and had the legal right under state law — to go further. Against the advice of ICC experts, the board of directors slapped a warning note on the appendix, suggesting that using the codes could lead to legal blowback. Only a handful of states currently use codes that comply with the latest standards. President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act included over $1 billion in aid to states to help energy regulators adopt newer codes. But the update to federal loan requirements marks the most forceful step yet the administration has taken to promote stricter codes. Federal law from 2007 requires the U.S. government to consistently analyze and adopt the latest codes from the ICC within a year of the codebook’s latest update. But only one president so far has followed the statute — and only sort of. In 2015, the Obama administration raised federal standards for loans to the ICC’s 2009 codes. For builders in states like Illinois, which updates its code within a year of the ICC’s release, the Biden administration’s latest move won’t do much. But meeting the 2021 codes may soon require builders in laggard states like Idaho who want buyers with access to federal loans to leapfrog more than a decade of codes.Under that state federal statute, the Department of Energy will now be tasked with assessing whether the 2024 ICC codes improve efficiency enough to merit nationwide adoption via the criteria for U.S. housing loans. It’s unclear what outcome the process may bring. But advocates of stricter codes want the federal government to start using the 2021 code as a benchmark for more housing loans. Unlike mortgages backed by HUD or the Agriculture Department, loans issued under the Federal Housing Finance Agency do not set any specific criteria for energy codes. The same is true for mortgages the federally related Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lenders purchase. In November, campaigners began pushing for those agencies to adopt similar standards to those HUD uses. The administration signaled in December it would consider the move. Doing so would “decrease burdensome energy costs for future homeowners and renters, which in turn may help lower default risks and loan delinquency rates, and set forth a path to stabilize our shaky housing financial system,” said Jessica Garcia, senior policy analyst for climate finance at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.“Implementing up-to-date energy codes will help ease the financial strain on homeowners and renters across the country as they fight to remain housed,” Garcia said. “We are encouraged by HUD’s decision, and urge the Federal Housing Finance Agency to follow suit and swiftly adopt the latest energy efficiency codes.”Support HuffPostOur 2024 Coverage Needs YouYour Loyalty Means The World To UsAt HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your contribution of as little as $2 will go a long way.Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. 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As Bird Flu Spreads through Cows, Is Pasteurized Milk Safe to Drink?

H5N1 influenza virus particles have been detected in commercially sold milk, but it’s not clear how the virus is spreading in cattle or whether their milk could infect humans

Bird Flu Is Spreading in Cows. Here’s What That Means for MilkH5N1 influenza virus particles have been detected in commercially sold milk, but it’s not clear how the virus is spreading in cattle or whether their milk could infect humansBy Julian Nowogrodzki & Nature magazineU.S. dairy cows walk back to the barn after milking. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty ImagesThe outbreak of avian influenza in US dairy cattle shows no signs of slowing. Over the past three weeks, the number of states where cows infected with bird flu have been detected has risen from six to eight. A preprint1 posted on 16 April reported the discovery of the virus in raw milk from infected cows, and US federal authorities said on Wednesday that the virus had been found in lung tissue collected from a seemingly healthy cow.Also on Wednesday, US officials confirmed at a media briefing that genomic material from the H5N1 strain, which is causing the outbreak, had been detected in milk sold in shops.Detection of viral particles in milk sold to consumers suggests that avian flu in cows could “be more widespread than initially thought”, says food scientist Diego Diel at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. “Increased surveillance and testing in dairies should be an important part of control measures going forward.” Nature looks at the implications for human health and the future of the outbreak.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What does it mean that H5N1 is in retail milk?It’s still unclear how many milk samples the FDA has tested or where the samples were collected. The agency said that it would release more information in the coming days and weeks.After it leaves the farm and before it hits the shelves, milk is pasteurized to inactivate pathogens. To detect H5N1, the FDA used a test called quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), which picks up viral RNA. Because it detects fragments of the viral genome, the test cannot distinguish between living virus and the remnants of dead virus, says dairy scientist Nicole Martin at Cornell University.“The detection of viral RNA does not itself pose a health risk to consumers, and we expect to find this residual genetic material if the virus was there in the raw milk and was inactivated by pasteurization,” she says.The presence of viral material in commercially available milk does have broader implications, however. There are several possible explanations, says virologist Brian Wasik, also at Cornell University. It could be that the outbreak is more pervasive than farmers realized, and that milk from infected animals is entering the commercial supply. Another possibility, he says, is that “asymptomatic cows that we are not testing are shedding virus into milk”. But it’s also possible that both scenarios are true.US federal rules require milk from infected cows to be discarded, but it’s not yet clear whether cows often start shedding the virus before they look sick or produce abnormal milk. The 16 April preprint, which has not yet been peer reviewed, includes reports that milk from infected cows is thicker and more yellow than typical milk and that infected animals eat less and produce less milk than usual.Is milk with traces of H5N1 in it a threat to humans?There is no definitive evidence that pasteurization kills H5N1, but the method kills viruses that multiply in the gut, which are hardier than flu viruses, says Wasik. “Influenza virus is relatively unstable,” he says, “and is very susceptible to heat.” Pasteurization of eggs, which is done at a lower temperature than pasteurization of milk, does kill H5N1.It’s possible that pasteurization would be less effective at killing relatively high viral concentrations in milk, says Wasik. Finding out whether this is the case requires experimental data. In the absence of a definitive answer, keeping milk from infected cows out of the commercial supply is extremely important.When Nature asked when to expect more evidence on whether pasteurization kills H5N1, Janell Goodwin, public-affairs specialist at the FDA in Silver Spring, Maryland, said that the agency and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) “are working closely to collect and evaluate additional data and information specific to” H5N1.Is milk spreading bird flu among cows?USDA researchers have tested nasal swabs, tissue and milk samples of cows from affected dairy herds and have found that milk contained the highest viral concentrations. This indicates that the virus could be spreading through milk droplets.If so, milking equipment could be involved. “The teat cups of a milking machine could transfer remnants of H5N1-containing milk from one cow to the teats of the next cow being milked,” says virologist Thijs Kuiken at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. “Even if they are washed and disinfected, the levels of virus in the milk of infected cattle are so high that one could not exclude the possibility of infectious virus being transferred from cow to cow by this route.” In fact, in some equipment set-ups, workers spray down milking machines with high-pressure hoses to clean them, which would aerosolize any infected milk, says Wasik.The USDA website concurs that viral spread is “likely through mechanical means”.Is enough being done to stop the spread?The FDA announced on Wednesday that cows must test negative for bird flu before they can be moved across state lines. That might help to stem the outbreak, scientists say. Animals in the US dairy industry move around a lot, Wasik says. Calves are moved to be raised into milk cows, cows are moved when they stop producing milk and farmers sell the animals. Such movement is probably “a main driver” of the outbreak, Wasik says.Diel would like to see surveillance of bulk milk samples at farms. Wastewater testing and environmental sampling could be useful, too, Wasik says, particularly around farms near outbreaks or farms where cows have been moved. He also advocates for a quarantine or observation period of 24 or 48 hours when cattle are moved to a new farm.Such surveillance measures “could really buy us time, slow down the outbreak”, says Wasik, so researchers and agencies can “get a better handle on it. Because time is what’s of the essence.”This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 25, 2024.

Bird flu in milk is alarming — but not for the reason you think

Dairy cows at an operation in Lodi, California, in 2020. | Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images The US Department of Agriculture’s failed response to bird flu in cows, explained. Bird flu has had a busy couple of years. Since 2022, it’s ravaged the US poultry industry, as more than 90 million farmed birds — mostly egg-laying hens and turkeys — have either died from the virus or have been brutally killed in an attempt to stop the spread. Last month, confirmation that the virus — a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza known as H5N1 — had infected US dairy cows alarmed infectious disease experts, who worry that transmission to cows will allow the virus more opportunities to evolve. One dairy worker fell ill, increasing concerns about human risk levels. Now it’s in the milk supply. On Tuesday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed that genetic evidence of the virus had been found in commercially purchased milk. However, it’s unclear whether the milk contains live virus or mere fragments of the virus that were killed by pasteurization, a process that destroys harmful bacteria, but remain detectable. The FDA said it’ll soon release a nationwide survey of tested milk and that for now, the commercial milk supply remains safe, a claim that numerous independent experts have confirmed. The news that the bird flu has been found in the US milk supply may raise alarm among some consumers, and the FDA has been criticized for prematurely assuring the safety of milk without hard data. But the real problem, which has received little attention, is the tepid and opaque response from the federal agency tasked with stopping the on-farm spread of the disease: the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). What we know — and what we don’t — depends on the USDA Ever since the virus was detected on a Texas dairy farm in late March, infectious disease experts around the world have roundly criticized the USDA on multiple fronts. It took nearly a month for the agency to upload data containing genetic sequences of the virus, which scientists use to better understand its threat level. And once the sequence was uploaded, it was incomplete, lacking specifics that researchers say they needed to properly study the data. “It’s as if the USDA is intentionally trying to hide data from the world,” Rick Bright, a former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the US Department of Health and Human Services, told STAT. A Dutch virologist told STAT it should’ve taken the USDA days, not weeks, to share data and updates. Beyond the data obfuscation, there’s insufficient monitoring. The virus may have started circulating on US dairy farms months before it was detected, according to Michael Worobey, a biology professor at the University of Arizona. That suggests the need for better and more proactive pathogen monitoring on the part of the USDA. And once H5N1 was confirmed in dairy cows, the USDA didn’t require dairy farms to conduct routine testing nor report positive H5N1 tests. The USDA has even tolerated uncooperative farmers, despite the high stakes of the disease spread. “There has been a little bit of reluctance for some of the producers to allow us to gather information from their farms,” said Michael Watson, administrator of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, in a press conference on Wednesday. But, he added, “that has been improving.” This voluntary approach is a recurring theme in USDA policy; there’s even uncertainty as to whether the agency is enforcing orders for farmers to toss milk from infected cows to ensure it doesn’t wind up in the food supply, which could explain how traces of it were found in store-bought milk. Last week, the New York Times reported that North Carolina officials confirmed there were asymptomatic cows in the state, which could also explain why the virus was detected in the commercial milk supply. It also suggests more herds may be infected than previously thought. On Wednesday, a month after the first confirmation, the USDA finally issued a federal order requiring that laboratories and state veterinarians report farms with positive H5N1 tests and that lactating dairy cows must test negative for bird flu before crossing state lines (and cooperate with investigators). At a Wednesday press conference, the agency didn’t specify how the order will be enforced. Why regulation and response go hand-in-hand The USDA’s sluggish response to a rapidly moving virus may leave some foreign observers scratching their heads. But much of it can be explained by an irresolvable conflict baked into its mission. The agency, according to food industry scholars Gabriel Rosenberg and Jan Dutkiewicz, has “the oxymoronic double mandate of both promoting and regulating all of American agriculture—two disparate tasks that, when combined, effectively put the fox in charge of the henhouse.” More often than not, it’s heavy on the promotion and light on the regulation. The paradox has been at the center of its response to the bird flu’s decimation of the US poultry industry in recent years. While the USDA is developing several bird flu vaccines, it’s long been stubbornly opposed to a broad vaccination campaign due to industry fears that it’ll disrupt trade, a major source of revenue for US poultry companies, despite pleas from experts to give birds a bird flu shot. USDA has also been deferential to industry on matters of pollution, labor, political corruption, false advertising, and animal cruelty across numerous sectors. And it’s not the only agency that too often takes a hands-off approach to problems stemming from food production. The FDA has failed to stringently regulate antibiotics used in animal farming, a pressing public health threat that, in recent years, some European regulators have addressed in earnest. Agriculture is a top source of US water and air pollution, due in large part to congressional loopholes and weak enforcement on the part of the US Environmental Protection Agency. It all adds up to what food industry experts call “agricultural exceptionalism,” in which the food industry operates under a different set of regulations than the rest of the economy. The justification of such exceptionalism is that it’s necessary, given the importance of an abundant food supply. But that’s all the more reason not to give farmers and ranchers carte blanche to let disease circulate on American farms unchecked.

10 times as much of toxic pesticide could end up on your tomatoes and celery under new EPA proposal

Against the guidance of scientists, the EPA is relying on industry-backed tests to relax regulations on acephate

When you bite into a piece of celery, there’s a fair chance that it will be coated with a thin film of a toxic pesticide called acephate. The bug killer — also used on tomatoes, cranberries, Brussels sprouts and other fruits and vegetables — belongs to a class of compounds linked to autism, hyperactivity and reduced scores on intelligence tests in children. But rather than banning the pesticide, as the European Union did more than 20 years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed easing restrictions on acephate. The federal agency’s assessment lays out a plan that would allow 10 times more acephate on food than is acceptable under the current limits. The proposal was based in large part on the results of a new battery of tests that are performed on disembodied cells rather than whole lab animals. After exposing groups of cells to the pesticide, the agency found “little to no evidence” that acephate and a chemical created when it breaks down in the body harm the developing brain, according to an August 2023 EPA document. The EPA is moving ahead with the proposal despite multiple studies linking acephate to developmental problems in children and lab rats, and despite warnings from several scientific groups against using the new tests on cells to relax regulations, interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica show. To create the new tests designed to measure the impact of chemicals on the growing brain, the EPA worked with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which comprises some of the world’s wealthiest democratic countries and conducts research on economic, social and scientific issues. The OECD has warned against using the tests to conclude a chemical does not interfere with the brain’s development. "It’s exactly what we recommended against." A scientific advisory panel the EPA consulted found that, because of major limitations, the tests “may not be representative of many processes and mechanisms that could” harm the developing nervous system. California pesticide regulators have argued that the new tests are not yet reliable enough to discount results of the older animal tests. And the Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, a second group of advisers handpicked by the EPA, also warned against using results of the nonanimal tests to dismiss concerns. “It’s exactly what we recommended against,” Veena Singla, a member of the children’s committee who also teaches at Columbia University, said of the EPA’s acephate proposal. “Children’s development is exquisitely sensitive to toxicants. … It’s disappointing they’re not following the science.” The EPA’s proposal, which could be finalized later this year, marks one of the first times the agency has recommended changing its legal safety threshold largely based on nonanimal tests designed to measure a chemical’s impact on the developing brain. And in March, the EPA released a draft assessment of another pesticide in the same class, malathion, that also proposes loosening restrictions based on similar tests. The proposed relaxing of restrictions on both chemicals comes even as the Biden administration has been strengthening limits on several other environmental contaminants, including some closely related pesticides. In response to questions from ProPublica, the EPA acknowledged that it “will need to continually build scientific confidence” in these new methods but said that the introduction of the nonanimal tests to predict the danger chemicals pose to the developing brain “has not been done in haste. Rather, a methodical, step-wise approach has been implemented over the course of more than a decade.” The agency said its recent review of acephate included a thorough examination of a variety of scientific studies and that, even with its proposed changes, children and infants would still be protected. The EPA expects to start accepting public comments on the acephate proposal in the coming months before it makes a final decision. The agency anticipates soliciting comments on malathion this summer. Some environmental scientists strongly oppose loosening the restrictions on both acephate and malathion, arguing that the new tests are not reliable enough to capture all the hazards a chemical poses to the developing brain. “It will put children at an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD that we already know are linked to this class of chemicals,” said Rashmi Joglekar, a toxicologist at the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. Health and environmental scientists are concerned about more than the direct impact of having potentially greater amounts of acephate and malathion on celery and other produce. They also worry that using the new tests as a basis for allowing more pesticides on crops will set a dangerous precedent for other brain-harming chemicals. “I think the companies see this as a new way over a 10- or 20-year period to gradually lobby” the EPA “to allow higher levels of pesticides in food,” said Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist who has monitored pesticide regulation for decades. “If they can convince regulators to not pay attention to animal studies, they have a very good chance of raising the allowable exposure levels.” Industry helped fashion EPA’s testing strategy Since its founding in 1970, the EPA has relied on studies of mice, rats, guinea pigs and other species to set exposure limits for chemicals. The lab animals serve as a proxy for humans. Scientists expose them to different doses of substances and watch to see what levels cause cancer, reproductive problems, irritation to the skin and eyes, or other conditions. Some tests look specifically at chemicals’ effects on the offspring of rats exposed during pregnancy, and some of those tests focus on the development of their brains and nervous systems. But over the past decade, chemical manufacturers and animal rights advocates have argued for phasing out the tests on the grounds they are impractical and inhumane. The animal experiments are also expensive, and the pesticide industry, which by law shoulders the cost of testing its products, is among the biggest proponents of the change. The EPA has allowed the chemical industry and animal rights groups to help fashion its testing strategy. Agency officials have co-authored articles and held workshops on the use of the cell-based tests to regulate chemicals alongside representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as well as Corteva Agriscience, BASF and Syngenta Crop Protection, companies that make pesticides regulated by the EPA. The EPA said its scientists have been working to develop the nonanimal tests for decades with other government and scientific organizations, both nationally and internationally. “It is absurd to describe those scientific efforts as an apparent conflict of interest,” the agency said in a statement. The EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs has previously come under fire for its willingness to allow pesticides onto the market without required toxicity testing. In 2018, as The Intercept reported, staff members held a party to celebrate a milestone: The number of legally required tests the office had waived for pesticide companies had reached 1,000. A science adviser to the office at the time said the move spared companies more than $6 million in expenses. "It will put children at an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD that we already know are linked to this class of chemicals." While phasing out animal experiments would save money and animal lives, experiments involving collections of cells do not always accurately predict how entire organisms will respond to exposure to a toxic chemical. The new cell-based tests and computer techniques that are sometimes used with them can be reliable predictors of straightforward effects like eye or skin irritation. But they are not yet up to the task of modeling the complex, real-world learning disorders that have been linked to acephate and malathion, according to Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy organization. The new tests can show whether a chemical can kill a brain cell. And they can show if a chemical affects how a brain cell connects with other brain cells, said Sass. “But these tests can’t show that a kid is going to be able to sit through class and not go to the principal’s office,” she said. While the cell-based tests may point to certain harms, they are likely to miss others, said Sass, who likens their use to fishing with a loose net. “You only know what you caught — the big stuff,” she said. “You don’t know about all the little stuff that got through.” A 2023 study revealed the failure of the cell-based tests to detect certain problems. In it, scientists exposed brain cells to 28 chemicals known to interfere with the development of the nervous system. Although the tests were specifically designed to assess whether chemicals harm growing brains, they failed to clearly identify harm in one-third of the substances known to cause these very problems. Instead of registering as harmful, the test results on these established developmental neurotoxins were either borderline or negative. Because of these potential blind spots and other uncertainties associated with the tests, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has advised against interpreting results of the nonanimal tests as evidence that a chemical doesn’t damage the brain. Several scientific groups have recommended that the EPA do the same. A federal advisory panel of scientists assembled to advise the EPA on pesticide-related issues published a 2020 report that identified numerous limitations and gaps in the nonanimal studies, finding that they “underestimated the complexity of nervous system development.” In 2021, the Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, a group the EPA created to provide advice on how to best protect children from environmental threats, warned the agency that, “due to important limitations,” the test results “cannot be used to rule-out a specific hazard.” In comments to the EPA, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation also cautioned the agency against using the tests to conclude that a chemical doesn’t cause specific harms. The California regulators emphasized that the traditional battery of animal tests was still necessary to understand complex outcomes like the effects on children’s developing brains. “To abandon it at this time would be to abandon a critical support for health-protective decisions,” they wrote. EPA accused of double standard As much as 12 million pounds of acephate were used on soybeans, Brussels sprouts and other crops in 2019, according to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey. The federal agency estimates that up to 30% of celery, 35% of lettuce and 20% of cauliflower and peppers were grown with acephate. Malathion is used on crops such as strawberries, blueberries and asparagus. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture prohibits the use of most synthetic pesticides, including acephate and malathion, to grow and process products certified by the agency as organic.) Acephate and malathion belong to a class of chemicals called organophosphates, which U.S. farmers have used for decades because they efficiently kill aphids, fire ants and other pests. But what makes the pesticides good bug killers — their ability to interfere with signals sent between nerve cells — also makes them dangerous to people. For years, there has been a scientific consensus that children are particularly vulnerable to the harms of pesticides, a recognition that led the EPA to strengthen restrictions on them. But with both acephate and malathion, the agency is now proposing to remove that extra layer of protection. The EPA effectively banned another organophosphate pesticide, chlorpyrifos, in 2021, based in part on evidence linking it to ADHD, autism and reduced IQ in children. (In response to a lawsuit brought by a company that sells the pesticide and several agricultural groups, a court vacated the ban in December, allowing the resumed use of chlorpyrifos on certain crops, including cherries, strawberries and wheat.) While some health and farmworker groups are petitioning the EPA to ban all organophosphate pesticides, the agency is arguing that it can adequately protect children by limiting the amount farmers can use. Several studies suggest that, even at currently allowable levels, acephate may already be causing learning disabilities in children exposed to it while in the uterus or in their first years of life. In 2017, a team of University of California, Berkeley researchers, partly funded by the EPA, found that children of Californians who, while pregnant, lived within 1 kilometer of where the pesticide was applied had lower IQ scores and worse verbal comprehension on average than children of people who lived further away. Two years later, a group of UCLA scientists reported that mothers who lived near areas where acephate was used during their pregnancies had children who were at an increased risk of autism with an intellectual disability. The EPA considered this research when deciding to relax the limits on acephate use but stated that flaws and inconsistencies made these epidemiological studies “not compelling.” The agency also dismissed a rat study submitted to the EPA in 2005 in which the pups of mother rats exposed to higher levels of acephate were, on average, less likely to move than the pups of mothers exposed to lower levels. The EPA told ProPublica that “no conclusions could be drawn” from the experiment, citing the “high variability of the data” it produced. But some scientists outside the agency find that study a particularly worrisome indication of the pesticide’s potential to harm children. In its proposals to increase the allowable amount of both acephate and malathion on food, the EPA also had to look past other potentially concerning test results. Some of the cell-based tests of acephate showed borderline results for interference with brain functions, while some of the tests of malathion clearly indicated specific problems, including interference with the connections between nerve cells and the growth of certain parts of nerve cells. Several scientists interviewed by ProPublica said that such results demand further investigation. Some scientists see a double standard in the agency accepting the imperfect nonanimal tests while citing flaws in other research as reasons to dismiss it. “They’re acknowledging limitations in epidemiology while at the same time not acknowledging the even greater limitations of using a clump of cells in a petri dish to try to model what’s happening in a really complex organism,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy organization. Asked about the criticism, an EPA spokesperson wrote in an email to ProPublica that the agency “does not believe there was a double standard applied.” ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Read more about the environment