Happy Monday! Here’s some news from the shame-on-you department: The EPA—the government agency entrusted, at least in theory, with protecting the environment—was warned by its own scientists about an insecticide used to grow corn and other crops, and it didn’t do squat about it. That same pesticide, produced by the German company Bayer, made $262 million in sales to farmers in 2009. Oh also, it’s super-toxic to honeybees.

For the last several years, scientists and environmentalists have been dismayed over what’s happening to the honeybees (short version: they’re dying), scrambling for explanations as to why. Several theories have been presented, and recently, headlines squawked about how a virus was responsible, which set off alarms in my Nancy Drewish brain.

Really? I thought. That’s curious. An environmental catastrophe that can’t be blamed on humans?

Well, according to documents leaked to Grist, the pesticide, which is banned in Germany (the country that makes the stuff), France, Slovenia and Italy, is known to be toxic to bees—on which the entire food chain relies, remember. From the report:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis.

We’ll be following the story closely. Grist called the EPA last week and an unnamed spokesperson said the hard-to-pronounce pesticide will continue to be used, and will be available for spring crops.

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