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Greetings!
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Welcome to the year 2021! Hoping you are all staying safe and well. And if you are one of our readers who contracted COVID-19, we hope that you have recovered/are recovering with few and, hopefully, no lingering impacts. While we are still challenged by this pandemic and its direct impacts on all too many of us, we can together strive for a better year with better outcomes.
In that vein, we have a timely request that can help make it a better year for Maryland's children.
 As you have heard us say over the past three years, autism, learning disabilities, neurobehavioral deficits and developmental delays, are the brain-harming impacts associated with the pesticide chlorpyrifos, along with links to autism, pediatric cancer, and asthma. Prior to the Trump administration, the EPA had concluded that this pesticide is unsafe at any detectable level.
While our Maryland General Assembly passed a bipartisan chlorpyrifos ban bill in 2020, Gov. Hogan vetoed the bill, putting in place a regulation instead. We need the power of the law--not regulations. There is a reason that legislators pass laws each year and don't just rely upon administrative regulations: regulations can be changed, challenged, and unilaterally altered by unelected administrative figures. Legislation banning pesticides leaves less room for loopholes. To protect our children, our environment, and our wildlife, join us in calling on the Maryland General Assembly to override Governor Hogan's veto, so Maryland can ban chlorpyrifos with the certainty of law!
The 2021 Maryland General Assembly (MGA) leadership will be prioritizing which of the 30 bills the Governor vetoed will be voted on for an override early in the MGA 2021 session, beginning January 13. Please just take a minute to make your voice heard this week. The sooner your legislators hear from you the better.
Tell your legislators to vote for a veto override--click NOW to send a message.
| Please help support our work to protect our babies, bees, and the Bay! |
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POLLINATOR / BEE BUZZ
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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees that monarchs are threatened with extinction, but does not yet provide the protection that monarchs need to recover. Read more.
 Widespread displacement of native plant communities by non-native plants in U.S. agriculture, agroforestry, and horticulture is a key cause of insect declines, and affecting birds. Another study, published last year, calculates agriculture is 48 times more toxic to insects than it was 25 years ago. Neonicotinoid pesticides account for 92 percent of lethal escalation. Read more.
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Scientists report that pesticide poisonings on farms around the world have risen dramatically in 30 years. Based on an evaluation of poisoning data from countries all over the world, the researchers conclude that there are about 385 million cases of acute poisonings each year. 
Maryland Pesticide Education Network thanks its 2020 Pesticides & the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Project Conference sponsors for their support of our 14th annual conference. We urge you to check out these partners, and their offerings, who support protecting Maryland's babies, bees and the Bay watershed: