welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing science information and issues to the general public visit our website for our program environmental health harvard school of public health dr who've received his doctorate from the school of public health and community medicine at the university of washington in seattle in one thousand nine hundred six and he was in  professor in the rollins school of public health at emory university in georgia before joining harvard in two thousand and eight dr lou's research is concerned with one of the greatest challenges in science today how toxic chemicals in our environment are affecting many species and whole ecological systems hill explained tonight how his exposure biology lab has established the link between the massive loss of honeybees over recent decades and the use of a particular class of insecticides since honeybees are essential for agriculture there's an urgent need to determine the cause of this loss known as colony collapse disorder dr assistant editor for environmental health perspectives one of the leading peer reviewed journals of environmental health and he serves on these scientific advisory panel to the u s environmental protection agency in addition to his outstanding research dr who has led service to public health beyond the lab which includes efforts to reduce the use of pesticides in urban housing he's also engaged in making technical information about toxins like insecticides understandable to non specialized we very much appreciate dr drew's leadership in both research and educating the public and it is a great pleasure to welcome him tonight welcome dr no thank you for having me in the program i'd like to get some background to start with and that is about honey bee  ecological perspective but also for human consumption for miniature asian perspective as well ok so we need them and by the way i understand that they are now hand pollinating in california because of the loss of so many honeybees so humans are out there are trying to do so of pollinating which is not very efficient and the way then the next thing is what is this colony collapse disorder many commercial beekeepers because they never witnessed such a problem during their profession as a commercial beekeepers so what happened is when the high was considered healthy and was ready to be over winters in you know anywhere you possibly think and all of sudden within a week or two the hope that the bees in that specific calmly disappear and the beekeeper has a hard researcher or experts to care too for either to check on he's hired because he said that this is a crisis i lost mournin ninety percent of the forty thousand hive they he's supposed to make a living  so the they couldn't be the sudden decimation of the beast couldn't be due to the stress of just moving around because they've been doing that for ages ok so that's that and it was rather abrupt ok and then there has been a lot of controversy about c c d and could you by any means give us a little background about the different perspectives from the environment as the health wise there are many many factors that could put pressures on the survival of honeybee highs for example there are norm passages that could take out the beehive very quickly factor alone could trigger the death of the hive but for all those causes that can kill a single hive they're all the to the same consequence or observation which is that beekeep the winter which they are not supposed to they don't even know how to do that right now is the weather when they also temperature below fifty forty degree fahrenheit be wouldn't go out because first of all there's no flowers  and also it's too cold they would just drop on the on the ground and be killed so there's a basic instinct that b will stay in the hive you in the winter before them to go our and almost a suicidal act it's an think of later ok that brings us to research about this can you tell us to start with what the at the di meola just do that that's your territory so so we try to coincide with the new practice in in terms of making genetically modified corn seed which because in the pass we use these cocoa bt corn  soil so we have been planting genetic modified corn see that the has a bt in there for many many years but we do know that once we use a pesticide it doesn't match it's a synthetic all natural it will develop four they started using the iniquity noice in those genetic engineering seats and then that we know that we grow those core enough for the recommend consumption we make different by products one of the common change of the pesticide in two thousand and five that lead to comic class disorders in this country so we use these hypothesis to cause harvard study in two thousand and twelve which we were able to demonstrate that a little bit of nearly continuing in high photos concert that we used to feed to our high will lead to calming classes order in the winter so if you look because like year massachusetts has a very long winter so the hive all come up to the top of the frame and asking for sugar because they pretty much exhaust that the store honey in that case we have to feed them etc side was not causing the problem but you let it go longer was that like one of the only studies that did that when we first published the study it was the only study that involved the whole colony are also look at the health of colony over modern part generation including the generation they're required overwinter we've done so because we understood see the often happen in the winter i sang in the summer i say or in the fall so is very intuitive for us to follow this research our experience throughout the whole almost a whole year and the other thing that i want to emphasize here is that we know so little about the tacit city of pesticide or any chemicals so we don't know whether the level at that below the lethal dosage would cause any harm actually healthy year survival and then actually quite robust by somehow monopole generations later the be in the colony die or one after another and that to me that's fascinating levels as a is that different from what they were doing to the plants well what you would find in the plants that the insects would be pollinating well it depends upon how much to in later generations the second thing there is that if you're following one generation of be correct i don't know they live a year or two years or so or something but so it's that the generation that feeds in the spring they hibernate in the winter and they are dying off in the winter so that's one generation actually maybe is quite fascinating in the way that even though those  the daughter to the seventy other they have a very different longevity so for generation that in spring and summer or early fall especially in the in the area like massachusetts we have a very distinct  happens in october those worker bees live somewhere around two hundred days i see so when you define generation you have to be clear about is in the summer a generation or t yes there's one more thing before we leave that i don't know if the studies that have typically been done before have been in c two like yours going out in the field in the hi and under natural conditions is that the case had the other studies been is that typical they do them like that or they do them in the lab before we publish the results most of the study the evolving single b choice vironment but again i would say that the number of studies still not adequate right why did they do these things in the lab which seems like it would compromise result some why only that honey bee is now like the rat or the mice they are social insects they live as one colony so we have to look especially c c constitution from my two colleagues who are very very spirited beekeeper yes so you went ahead you did this study got these spectacular results it's a very unique study it's just perfectly clear and what was the reaction the reaction was very extreme some people believe we are on the right trajectory to them of the most like corporate to this horrible disease called commie clap is order where as many people believe that however study you was fundamentally flawed to some degree that it properly make up in terms of say environmentalist farmers you have different groups how did these different groups react you have industry which can predict what they had to say but their own research people could you say something about the reactions in these groups what even a mom does the scientists beekeepers and so on the reaction also split also too many economic researcher their reactions also very split however i would say that even though people has our studies they don't want to replicate our study you world the design your study and try to come up with a different set of resolve but so far there's no other study actually able to replicate harvested how about environmental people with a more  the response is mostly positive there one more from the government to to to to face this and then to deal with this issue i have to say this though for the last three four years nearly contin insecticide that is still considered safe to use safe we pretty much exhausts the reserve of the insecticides because every insecticide that we've been using for example or can of phosphate new unproven and that's why government believe that this is a safe insecticide government warry by taking away near nicotine oil from farmers from individuals for households from public house application we left no tool to compacted the past issues and so on so they're protecting you nicotine oil because there are no plausible safer alternatives although this is as a result of a new nicotine going so it's a huge void there in that we we need to do more research unfortunately there's not many funding out there that will allow us to conduct either memo or human research so you are not able to obtain the facts you're not able to establish the facts because you can't get the money to do the research do you expect any help down the line in terms of support b s and so on so for then they can decide what they're going to do and if we can have more municipalities to be on board to look into this matter and decide whether they should either ban or limiting the use on the more restrictions on the usage than the european union are but i think that's probably the way to go and i'm very very looking forward not only to see the passage of this regulation but also to look at how have this new regulation will be in two three years right see whether really we couldn't live without the other pityingly yes well all that what is your feeling about that do you think that the same thing i say farmer were told to use pesticides even though there is no past issues even though there is no we problem they still use it yeah so we do know that when you are dumping chemicals on the organi doesn't matter is human or wheat or insect they will develop resistance it just a matter of time so what happened right now is that we are exhausting the pipeline of the pesticide that we are we hopefully we can use pesticides in the more mutual benefit way so we can preserve those pesticides when we really need it especially when we are dealing with poppy hasa crisis but talking about west nile virus as we're talking about the triple east issue is so on there's so many bird flu going around right now on the basis if we really have no pesticides that we can use to kill those passages there i think we are in serious trouble ok so you need to have something this doesn't appear to be the solution the case but in terms of other countries as for example you mentioned you had to actually publish this outside the united states because it's so hard for research or is doing this kind of stuff to publish in the united states right now what the attitude of other countries what is the situation in terms necessarily humans but we have workers all in many fields here specially in this big big agriculture and there are pictures in their press of these people being sprayed basically because they spray from above or wherever and they're told that everything's ok and you think immediately that some of these women must be pregnant but it might affect everybody do you think so is there a possibility that it affects human fetus or this is actually what i want to highlight interim give the tassie city is that yes it might be ok at this moment yeah right but you don't know what happened to this person in ten years or twenty years or this person happened to be a female issues pregnant into the fetus because we never track off those incidents ten or twenty years after that so yes it might be save in this moment something very dramatic and the reason i say that because this is exactly what happened to honey bee hive they suffer from colony collapse disorder because those high workers see their healthy environment in the summer in the fall but trying to get to control the use of pesticides and urban dwellers can you tell us a bit about that what my interests are promoting now this practice is actually what i just mention is that we need to reserve those passes for the most critical moment that we have to use them and most of them are related to public health issues but in terms of residential pass control for example there are many many ways that we can we can do to get rid of the cockroaches mosquitoes without using chemicals and those need to be promoted need to be encouraged i have to say the more and more households are getting the message right now because they understood that we use impasses where our kids play in the living room in the dining room put down lots of pesticides in the front pesticides and i think this is a very positive yes but unfortunately i have to say dog because of many reason that climate change and so on so forth we have other challenges that maybe pesticide is the only solution to do so numb pesticide practice yet first yes if it works it works if now that you think about something and i don't jump into the presence of war rather wait because we do know that if you rely on pesticides or you're addicted to resists exactly exactly just just an adaptation but very very good at it and so you've been actively working with the public to get better solutions to these kinds of problems but in the process presumably you're able to educate the public as well and another one of your gifts is that you work to try to kind of translate these complex chemicals and all of turnaround in a country that has been heavy on process food and for years since post war period and suddenly we've been through the organic phase for a while but it was a minority but now there's a tremendous interest in it in small community area farms and so on so there may be hope in that regard it's not that difficult for people to finalize to finally realize that pesticides might be the reason for the increase in these birds in the society because especially in this country we clean up the errors we claim about wars we make our life better  how come more and more people killing six yes right what's rather you say younger what's wrong with this picture well if you look back there's only one thing that we haven't dealt with yet that is the food and everybody has to eat right and if you look at what people were even ten years ago comparing today it's a dramatic difference because more people decided that i don't want to this i want to go to the local farmer's market i want to buy a my c s a i want to buy directly from the farmer who i know that they didn't use pesticides so there's a change the change is that because spontaneous because a lot of out of asian people decided i'm in in the academic setting would promote because it's a win win win situation it's a farmer is a winner if they're willing to produce healthier and organic produce the environment is a winner because there's no synthetic chemical into the environment consumer is a winner although they have to put up a little bit more money to buy organic apples but at the end they get healthier and so on so if you look at the picture and this is exactly what we should promote it and we cannot wait until government to tell us what to do right well we really appreciate your efforts on this and i definitely approach thank you for that i before we close i would like to just get a little bit of background of your own personal background how did you get into this field because when i was in the dark rock program our research is on the east side of a cascade mountain in washington state maybe organic practice is the way to go not those commission or chemical base they were carter practices so i do see the change and they have the change will continue yes i hope so and i we appreciate your great