This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article “Pesticides : un risque enfin admis pour les abeilles”. All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
In a report, EFSA judged three NNI pesticides (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam) to pose “a high risk to bees”.
This risk went through three routes of exposure:
- the emission of dust by the coatings during sowing;
- contamination by pollen and nectar;
- in the case of corn treated with thiamethoxam, exposure through “guttation” (the exudation of water droplets from the plant).
The journalist then recalls the report mentioned in the article of July 9, 2012 and the shortcomings of the risk assessment protocols it highlighted.
The risks recognized by EFSA would come as no surprise, as a group of experts reached “the same conclusions about imidacloprid” in 2003.