Pesticide Data Visualization
A few weeks ago, I read an article on the Environmental Working Group’s 2023 Dirty Dozen list. For those who don’t know, the Dirty Dozen list consists of the top 12 types of produce that the EWG has found to have the highest levels of pesticide.
The article I read, written by Food Network, discounted the risks of consuming non-organic produce, which the EWG is adamant on informing the masses of. One point I appreciated from the author was how the constant societal pressure for people to eat organic because it’s considered safer has caused those in poor and lower classes to be even more discouraged from consuming produce, since organic is already more expensive than standard produce.
Reading through this, it made me start to wonder about pesticides and their true safety/risks. While it’s clear a lot of the media surrounding pesticides and produce is fueled by capitalism, it has not always been clear how pesticides truly impact people and our planet, with much information not becoming a part of mainstream media at all. So I decided to look at a vital part of our planet and ecosystem that we all hugely depend on: bees.
How do pesticides affect bees?
It turns out, pesticides have a large impact on bees, especially when it comes to a category of pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics). Neonicotinoids are absorbed by a plant and the surrounding soil, and work by attacking an insect’s nervous system. This makes the pesticide incredibly effective, while also unfortunately hurting our beneficial insects. In 2013, over 107,000 bees were killed after dinotefuran, a neonic, was applied to trees near a mall in Oregon.
I went down a rabbit hole gathering as much information as I could absorb, with the intention of turning the data into a visualization. I knew I definitely wanted to make data dashboards that help to compare neonic pesticides to non-neonic pesticides, to organic pesticides. This was a little trickier than I thought, because while there were a few databases I could pull information on pesticides from, many of them were limited. I ended up pulling all my data on neonic and non-neonic pesticides from the Active Pesticide Product Registration Informational Listing (APPRIL) database. I received data on organic pesticides by reaching out to OMRI for a list of organic approved pesticide products for use on crops.
After collecting my data, I went to Power BI and began building dashboards. I ended up creating three of them, featured below.
Because the data I received for organic pesticides was from a different source than the data I pulled for neonic and non-neonic pesticides, both data sets could only be compared side-by-side instead of in a stacked bar chart. That’s why in the main dashboard, the stacked bar chart only shows neonic and non-neonic pesticides.
I want to also note that the data used for neonic and non-neonic pesticides may not be a complete list. There were multiple pesticide databases that contained various amounts of data. I chose to pull from the APPRIL database because it was the only one that seemed to allow me to pull everything at once without needing to filter.
The main takeaway from these dashboards is the large difference between neonic pesticide producers and organic pesticide producers. There are less neonic pesticide brands than there are organic brands, but the number of organic products is dramatically higher than that of neonic products. Considering how prevalent neonic pesticides already are in the U.S. and how much criticism organic pesticides receive when it comes to effectiveness, ease of application, and price, it appears that organic brands must produce many different alternatives in order to compete in a market where neonic pesticides have been residing for much longer.
Just searching for organic pesticides on Google can bring up a pesticide product that is actually a neonic pesticide, so both organic pesticide vendors and consumers need to be mindful when navigating the market.
If you want to take steps to use safer pesticides, be sure to check the pesticide labels for the active ingredient(s) in the products you buy. You can also check to see if the product you’re buying is OMRI approved by looking for the OMRI label.
For more information, I recommend starting by visiting the EPA’s Pesticide Program page, as well OMRI’s website, where they have plenty information on organic pesticides. If you’re interested in reading some of the sources I came across in my research, I have linked my resources below.
Resources
NRDC. (2022, May 25). Neonicotinoids 101: The Effects on Humans and Bees. nrdc.org. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/neonicotinoids-101-effects-humans-and-bees.
Rondeau, S. et al. (2022, September 15). Quantifying exposure of bumblebee (Bombus spp.) queens to pesticide residues when hibernating in agricultural soils. sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749122009368.
Hatfield, R. G. et al. (2021, June 19). Neonicotinoid Pesticides Cause Mass Fatalities of Native Bumble Bees: A Case Study From Wilsonville, Oregon, United States. academic.oup.com. https://academic.oup.com/ee/article/50/5/1095/6305931.
Stuligross, C. et al. (2021). Past insecticide exposure reduces bee reproduction and population growth rate. pesticideimpacts.org. https://www.pesticideimpacts.org/content/past-insecticide-exposure-reduces-bee-reproduction-and-population-growth-rate.
Mayer, M. (2021, September 17). A Tale of Two Pollinators: More Evidence of Neonicotinoids’ Effect on Wild Bees. entomologytoday.org. https://entomologytoday.org/2021/09/17/tale-two-pollinators-more-evidence-neonicotinoids-effect-wild-bees/.
Xerces. (2016). Summary of Report: How Neonicotinoids Can Kill Bees. xerces.org. https://www.xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/16-023_01_XercesSoc_ExecSummary_How-Neonicotinoids-Can-Kill-Bees_web.pdf
Graham, K. K. et al. (2022, May 3). Pesticide risk to managed bees during blueberry pollination is primarily driven by off-farm exposures. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9065077/