WHY DOES THE SCIENCE GET DONE AFTER THE FACT?

The likely answer is money. Money and politics that is. Industry that produces pesticides and herbicides do their own research and guess what: it's not always the best science. Today's Waterloo Region Record carries the following story titled "Scientists find bees that nest in soil exposed to deadly pesticides". Honey bees have been well studied due to the negative effects upon them by viruses as well as by neonicotonoid pesticides. The University of Guelph are now studying the effects of pesticides on bees that nest in the ground which encompasses more than 400 bee species in Ontario. The news is not good to date in those studies.

The past focus has been on honey bees probably due to the bee losses over many years and the accompanying honey losses. Now the University of Guelph are finding that bees which feed on the nectar and pollen as well as help pollinate squash, pumpkin, gourds and melons are being exposed in the soil to lethal concentrations of pesticides sprayed on these crops.

Self-monitoring and self-regulation in industry has been a failure environmentally across North America. The whole purpose of pollution is to externalize business waste disposal costs upon the public via the cheapest discharges possible to the natural environment. This includes air, surface water, groundwater and direct soil discharges of toxic wastes as well. Hell human beings even dump directly into the oceans when they can get away with it. Our governments are there to protect us from these bad apple and or rogue industries yet far too often governments turn a blind eye to industry transgressions for a multitude of reasons. The recent SNC-Lavallin case is but one example of a corporate body both breaking the laws (bribery of foreign governments) with impunity as well as lobbying their own government to change the rules/laws for their direct benefit (deferred prosecution/remediation agreements).