> > > But how do we know what concentration is harmful? That is a difficult > yet important question. To directly answer your question Larry, the EPA requires all sorts of testing on typical organisms and surrogates for humans (generally rats and mice) before registration for use. At that point, there has been due diligence for expected effects, but of course no certainty that unforeseen negative effects might be discovered. In the real world, there are plenty of researchers who then look for those effects, report them to the EPA, and follow up research is then done to confirm that the putative effects are real. If so, the label is changed, or the chemical's registration is withdrawn. Not a perfect system, but it works pretty well! The neonic debate would be much improved if folk had more access to the facts, and were willing to actually hunt down and thoroughly analyze and digest the research, rather than jumping to conclusions from sound bites and conjectures! I'm doing my best to do exactly that--no position or opinion, just going over the facts. Randy Oliver *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm