You know that Bayer-Monsanto is responsible for a worldwide contamination of people and environment with glyphosate. But did you know that Bayer is also polluting our drinking water with an alarming small and very persistent PFAS? Read the story below. And while biodiversity is collapsing Bayer is trying to convince EU politicians to loosen regulations on pesticides.

Call to Bayer Shareholders: Stop Attack on Health and Environment Regulations

Organisations from across the globe call on Bayer shareholders to end their attempts to undermine laws and regulations that protect the population and the environment. In Europe Bayer and its lobby group Croplife EU lobbied hard to take down the pesticide reduction law and advocate to weaken the pesticide law. In the US, Bayer tries to stop individuals from starting litigation when harm is done to them by a Bayer product. Thousands of American farmers and citizens have started court cases because they suffer from a form of cancer that is related to the use of the herbicide glyphosate, sold in Bayer and former Monsanto products like RoundUp. Read more here.

TFA: a Global Threat to your Drinking Water

For a long time, a small breakdown product of F-gases and PFAS pesticides flew under the radar. It is called trifluoroacetic acid, in short TFA. This tiny molecule is very soluble in water and extremely persistent. Officials do not consider it to be toxic yet, but that could change. The German authorities propose to label it possibly toxic to reproduction.

Scientists have now declared it a possible new ‘Planetary Boundary Threat’. Why? Because it is spread all over the world. Because the concentrations are increasing. Because it will not break down and will be there for many generations to come. Because it is now suspected to be toxic to reproduction. Recent research show how it accumulates in wine.

TFA is formed by decomposition of certain F-gases that are used as refrigerants. As a result it rains small quantities of TFA all over the world. This should, of course, stop immediately: these dangerous F-gases have to be substituted by safer alternatives. But if this isn’t bad enough, there is more, much more.

What Has Bayer Got to Do With It?

Recent research in Germany, the US and China has shown that the main culprits for TFA in areas with intensive agriculture are the fluorinated pesticides. They contain carbon fluorine bonds to make them more stable and work longer. They fall under the PFAS definition so they are PFAS pesticides. But most of these pesticides do break down – partially – to form the small but indestructible TFA. And which genius company has a main share in this process…?

Indeed. The chemical engineers have built a wide array of PFAS products, including pesticides. We have learned nothing from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. We have banned DDT and persistent organochlorines, only to replace them by organofluorins. Bayer’s top-selling herbicides Flufenacet and Diflufenican and fungicides like Fluopyram and Flutolanil are in many countries among the most sold PFAS pesticides. They should be banned right away. Europe has decided to ban the widely used Bayer product Flufenacet because it can disturb our hormone system. But there are still 31 other PFAS authorised in the EU and even more in the UK and US. Read More Here.

Pesticide Use is one of the Major Factors of Biodiversity Collapse

Insect populations are rapidly declining around the world. This is not only a tragic loss to the beauty of our world, but it also endangers food production. Pollination of crops and soil fertility both depend on complex biodiversity networks. Silent Spring is closing in and the main reasons are climate change, habitat loss and .... pesticides. The daily exposure to a cocktail of chemicals weakens and finally kills them. Regulations fail to protect them. If humanity is interested in a happy and healthy future, it has to act. Ban the most harmful pesticides now and change the way we produce food. See the interviews with scientists and read about PAN Europe’s work to protect insects and other arthropods, essential to restore biodiversity.

Glyphosate: Mother & Son Sue Bayer-Monsanto for Birth Defect

Thousands of people in the US have sued Bayer-Monsanto because their cancer is linked to the use of glyphosate. Now for the very first time a mother and son are suing Bayer with the claim that the birth defect was caused by glyphosate. Sabine Grataloup was one of the witnesses in the Monsanto Tribunal back in 2016. In 2018 she sued Bayer and finally a hearing took place in a French court.

Since Theo was born in 2007 with birth defects, he has undergone 55 surgeries to allow him to eat normally, though he still breathes through a hole in his throat. His parents filed a lawsuit in 2018 against Monsanto, the company that Bayer had just bought, which had been manufacturing the chemical, and six years later, they are in court.

Sabine Grataloup at the Monsanto Tribunal in 2016. Photo credit : Yome Foutographe

A compensation commission set up by the French government for children exposed to pesticides in utero recognised the link between glyphosate and Grataloup’s malformations, and since 2022 he has been receiving €1,000 a month from the fund, which is financed in part by a tax on the sale of herbicides and plant protection products.

Sabine wants to set a legal precedent and allow other victims to go to court much quicker. Justice for Theo and all other victims! Read more on the case on Justice Pesticides' website here.

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