>
> > 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the chemical's registration is withdrawn.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

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