 Good morning everyone. This is Representative Carolyn Partridge coming to you from my home in Wyndham and this is February 4th, 2021, in the morning. And we are having a joint hearing with the House Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Committee. And today we are going to take up the topic of glyphosate, which is something every couple of years or so we have a presentation on this so that we can be informed. And I will say that a couple of my committee members unfortunately cannot be here today and they are the new people but they will be listening to the recording later. So I think what makes a lot of sense because some folks are new is that we introduce ourselves. And so I will maybe I'll go and then Amy do you want to call on your people after we've gotten through this. Yeah. Okay. So Rodney why don't you go ahead. Representative Graham represent the Orange One District which is Williamstown, Washington, Orange, Grandsburg, Sheridan, Chelsea. Thank you, Tom. I'm Tom Bach. I represent the towns of Chester and over Baltimore and North Springfield. Thanks, Tom. Terry. Terry Norris represent Benson Orwell, Shoreham and Whiting the Addison-Rudlin District. All right, Terry. John, why don't you go ahead. I'm John O'Brien. I represent Royalton and my hometown of Tundridge. Alrighty, Vicki. Good morning. I'm Representative Vicki Strong and I live in Albany and represent seven towns in Orleans, Caledonia One. Our new members are Heather Supernaut and she is from Barnard and I'm not going to remember all of her towns. And Henry Pearl who is, we can say we have a dairy farmer back in the State House represents the towns of Cabot, Danville and Peacham. I'm Carolyn Partridge. I represent the towns of Athens, Brookline, Graft and a slice of Northwest Minster, Olive Rockingham and my hometown of Wyndham. And Amy, why don't you go ahead. Good morning. I'm Amy Sheldon. I chair the House Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Committee and I represent the town of Middlebury. And I'm a little bit of a disadvantage, but I will call on my members in alphabetical order. So, Seth Bongarts. I want to see Seth. That's not here. So my disadvantage is I can't see everyone right now on my screen. Okay. Well, Seth is from Manchester and he's a new member on our committee and representative Brownell. I represent Ponyl and Wofford living in Ponyl. And that's when. Representative Dolan. Good morning. Carrie Dolan. And I represent the towns of Duxbury faced in more town, Weitzfield and Warren, and I'm from the town of Weitzfield. Representative Lefebvre. He looks a little bit. Good morning. I live in the town of Newark, which I represent. You can't hear me or not. We can hear you. We, when we, when we hear from Paul, we give him space because he's got a delay. Okay. Great. I represent towns in Orleans, Caledonia and Essex to one town in Orleans, one town in Caledonia and the other towns are in northern Essex. Altogether they represent eight towns. Thank you. Representative Morgan. Good morning. I represent Grand Isle County and West Milton. Representative Morris. Good morning, team. Christy Morris, representative from Springfield and the parts of North Springfield that Tom Bach doesn't cover. Representative Satkowitz. Good morning. I'm Larry Satkowitz and I live in Randolph and I represent also brain tree, Brookfield, Granville and Roxbury, and I will have my video up soon having some problems this morning. Thanks. And we have representative Terenzini. Yeah, the representative Tom Terenzini roll in town. That's your house natural resources and Fish and Wildlife Committee. Thank you. Excellent. So I hope you don't mind now that we're all here I said this earlier, maybe before some of you came on. I tend to be informal in terms of calling on people I don't use representative. And if you're offended by that. Just let me know and I will say representative but I sort of feel that we say the word representative so many times probably waste a whole lot of time. And we're just real people, you know. Our, our witness today our guest is a carriage a gear who is the policy director for the public health and agricultural resources management agency, or management in the agency of agriculture food and markets and so carry welcome. I don't and by the way, oh, I see Harvey's coming in. Excellent. Hi Harvey, how are you. Thank you for noticing I miss Harvey because he's our ranking member now and I was going down in alphabetical order. Well no, gave me he wasn't on he just came in and so yeah, I can't blame. No problem. Harvey do you want to say who you were you represent. I represent the towns of New Haven way bridge and report. Excellent. And a lot of a lot of the farming community down here. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yes, we're glad you're here. And john did you introduce yourself I think I missed you. No you got me. Okay, sorry. Many towns. Yeah. I like that that. Yeah, we got somebody with eight towns here. Right, but he's a single. He's a single district I think Paul one one representative in that district a lot of territory he covers. That's correct. Yeah. All right. So Carrie, thank you for joining us and giving us a presentation I think it was two years ago or last year the two years ago we had a presentation to really look at the science of glyphosate and we appreciate you being here today. So why don't you take it away. Thank you, Carolyn and and welcome the folks from the House natural resources committee. It's rare that I get to address your committee. I know how you would want it to start I don't know if I can share my screen or not if that's something Linda can allow. Sure. And make you a co host. There is co hosting can share. Okay, you may share. Yeah, and I didn't know if you wanted to sort of sort of I understand that. I think glyphosate is another topic that's come up a bit. And I don't mind telling the story of what's happened with chlorpyrifos regulation in the state it's if folks are interested. Well, why don't we, why don't we cover that as well because I believe there is a bill about that and I know we took some action on that a couple of three years ago. So that you cannot possess owned by or anything else chlorpyrifos in the state at this point but you can you can tell the story Carrie so why don't you go ahead. All right, I will I'm now trying switching between teams and zoom I haven't figured out exactly how to share my screen. Do you want to send the file to Linda and she can share it for you. She has them, but I'm. Okay well while you're figuring that out. Jim, you have your hand up. I do thank you and I'm curious is there a way to allow comments from the YouTube promoters into the meeting or is there a policy not to do that. At this point, my understanding is that there is a policy not to do that. Thank you very much. Sure. I figured it out. Good. I'll start off with a with a story if you'll allow me. Go ahead. Well I'm just, I'm hearing from folks who seem they're following us on our YouTube and I'm just going to ask Amanda if there's a way to post the live link on our webpage to the YouTube so that people who generally follow house natural could find that directly. If it's not possible right now, don't do it, but if it is that would be helpful. Thanks. Absolutely. Okay, Gary why don't you go ahead. Yeah, they should definitely have a direct link to this. Okay, should I should I wait until that's live or just continue. Well, why don't you go ahead and I don't think it should take very long for Amanda to make that happen. All right. Well, for the record, Kerry Jig air Vermont agency of our culture. The director of the public health and resource management division. We house the pesticide feed seed fertilizer regulatory programs, as well as the vector management, the mosquito programs also nursery inspection hemp ginseng. And sort of most everything on the input foot side except what comes out of the animal, or whether that's the milk or the, or the meat or manure. Those are left to other divisions in the agency. EPA has been reviewing chlorpyrifos and eliminating uses of all the organophosphates for roughly 15 years now. And in 2017 we were set to see chlorpyrifos go away nationally. And in that time, you know as as the media likes to do. We had an individual who wrote for the free press at the time I believe it was Sam Hemingway who published an article that for pure sauce was not going away fast enough. And, you know, instead of seeing chlorpyrifos disappear through the channels of check trade. We had applicators in the state read that article, go out and buy as much chlorpyrifos as they could find in Vermont. In New York and get as much as they could find. And all the stores in New Hampshire so we had, you know, one newspaper article suggesting that Vermont should do away with this product faster, which caused it to really disappear from the store shelves. And unfortunately in 2014 it was. You know we were seeing misuses for bed bugs. In representative taranzini territory or towns that was in Rutland where we had misuse of chlorpyrifos and we invited EPA to come up and help us clean those up and they were. We found it at levels that would be above any acceptable health level. In more than 20 houses, and we have EPA come and help us clean, clean that up. And in the meantime, while we were, we're aware of what was going on in and around the science. EPA were very involved with the product managers at EPA because we were having such an issue with chlorpyrifos chlorpyrifos misuse and incidental exposure from that misuse that we were working very closely with EPA at the time. And we were very, very happy that all the uses were going to go away. All the regulations changed. Those uses did not go away. And you all wrote us this letter. And basically I'll, I'll read you the letter very quickly if, if you would like and it says, as chairs of the House Committee on Ag and Forest and Senate Agriculture Committee we've heard many concerned Vermont legislative colleagues and from the constituents about the 2017 federal reversal on cancellation of the insecticide chlorpyrifos. Two bills have been introduced in the House and one in the Senate that require a ban on chlorpyrifos. This reversal is worrisome and does not appear to be based on science. EPA's own data indicated that chlorpyrifos closes a very real risk to humans, human health and the environment and its impending cancellation. Let's get the meat of this. As such we're petitioning you under the authority of 6VSA section 11103 to regulate the sale of pesticide to promote the public health safety and welfare and protect agriculture and natural resources but by denying the registration of chlorpyrifos containing products. We honored your letter. Many of you signed it. I see Tom. There are many more signatures in the House. And we honored that we were able to deny registration of chlorpyrifos using the science, the available science that EPA produced. The first state to do that, not that Vermont needs to be first all the time, but we were the first state to do that. And as such, many other states have tried to follow suit. New York had tried to eliminate chlorpyrifos using a legislative ban. When it got to the governor's office that was vetoed and they were sent back and told to use the regulatory process that exists. We've also visited all the class A dealers and golf courses in any place that would have stockpile chlorpyrifos and move that through our disposal program. So we've eliminated all the chlorpyrifos we can find. That's not saying it's complete. We still do see products that have been denied registration show up. We still see DDT and that's been out of that's been not registered since the 70s. So we'll occasionally see some show up, but we won't see any more come into the state to be offered for sale. I've heard the argument that the agency could potentially revisit the registration of chlorpyrifos. That's we don't make political decisions that was a decision based on science not likely to change. So if you're looking to ban chlorpyrifos, it will provide no additional protection to Vermont or Vermonters, but it will get a headline or two. And if you're looking for a bill that creates headlines, I doubt that is potentially one to do that. And I'll pause right there before we move on to glyphosate if there wants to be any discussion. I see Kerry's hand up. Thank you. And good morning. The other Kerry. It's good to see you and thank you for coming in today. My question is when you say it occasionally shows up. Can you describe a bit about what that process is and when you discover how you discover some of these banned or not banned but some of these listed that chemicals. Yeah, so a portion of the pesticide registration fee $5 of every pesticide that gets registered in the state and there's about 11,000 registered pesticides annually gets diverted into our disposal fund. And we contract with the waste management districts to collect waste pesticides for us under grants. So we'll pay for the disposal of those and with that grant agreement there they report to us what has been collected during either the standard hazardous waste collection or the special household hazardous waste collection days. So we do get reports and that's where we do see some of the old products show up, but it's very rare. When we first started our clean sweep program in the mid 80s, we were seeing a lot more DDT and Sylvax discontinued pesticides that folks would find in barns or sheds. We're seeing less and less of those but occasionally we will see DDT still show up through the disposal program. And I presume you there's some education or outreach to producers regarding the dangerous use of these chemicals. Yeah, so it's no it's no longer really producers that would have them it would be homeowners that it's usually when someone purchases a new home in the shed or basement is garage is not cleaned out and they'll discover old pesticides and bring them to the solid waste districts to have them disposed if it's a large if it's a farm or something we will show up and do that disposal contract that disposal ourselves. Thank you. All right Jim Jim McCullough's hand is up. Yes, I want to point out to carry that the banning process in order to even be doable must be done prior to an economic expectation by the people that are affected by the ban. Hydraulic fracturing is that example here in Vermont. We weren't hydraulic fracturing but and therefore we did not with the ban take away anybody's economic expectations. So with that a ban makes opportunity makes sense not to mention the fact that yes things can change and do over time. I want actually more importantly in the moment. To educate you just a little bit that professional decorum does not permit. Ascribing motives to people and I take personal umbrons that you're telling me and others we are headline seekers and I will of course accept an apology. Representative McCullough would you like that apology now or at the end of the presentation. At your convenience sir. Very good. Well I do apologize representative McCullough. I still assert that there would be no additional protections to Vermonters or the environment. Were we to assert a ban. Accepted. All right. Any other questions and I also want to take just a moment to to say that it was actually representative Ben Joseph. One of Leland's predecessors who really got the ball rolling on this registration that the petition that you saw scroll by which was signed by many of us. Was was really initiated by Ben and and even though the you know it had already started and we weren't using for purifas in the state other than for rare rare occasions. And under highly highly prescribed. Practices and uses he really got he really got it going. I see Terry's hand is up let's just call on Terry and then we'll move on to glyphosate. Terry. Yeah, I was just wondering from carry whether. At least from past testimony. It seems like if you banned something you're required to have a replacement for it. I was just wondering if that was still the case and what kind of a replacement would be for this drug. Yep, understood. Harry and in the organophosphate class of insecticides has largely been replaced by the synthetic pyrethroid class of insecticides as well as the neonicotinoids. The largest sort of use of chlorperaphos in the state prior to the advent of the pre treated seeds coming into the state was for furrow. It would go in the corn furrow before the seed was planted and we used to see tens of thousands of pounds of chlorperaphos being used going in those seed furrows before the seed would come into the state as treated seeds. So to to fully answer your question though and to make the rest of the committees aware. Not only do we regulate the use of pesticides, but we also are charged with providing tools. Through special registrations through emergency exemptions and the largest sort of use pattern that we're dealing with right now currently is there very few products that are actually federally registered for use in be hives. So we've gone through a bunch of special registration processes to make certain pesticides available to be keepers for use in hives. So we also we are tasked with providing tools for applicators when those tools don't exist. The latest section 18 or emergency exemption that we are working on is a product to eliminate covid from the air. So this is a product that does kill the virus in the air. We're working with EPA to get a special registration for the use of that product. All right. Thanks, Carrie. Do you want to move on to glyphosate? We have about just a little more than a half an hour left. Yeah, and this is a presentation I think most folks have seen before. If not feel and also feel free to stop me at any given point. I know by the way this carries materials or on our website and I'm or on our web page and I'm hoping that they're on natural resources page as well. So you've seen this or a version of this presented last year by Erica Cummings. She prepared the slides as well as the fact sheet and we'll go through that data as well. And I'll start with the presentation. And it is an adaptation of a presentation that was presented by the main state toxicologist. All right. Can everybody see that? I can. All right. We'll start there. Glyphosate and AMPA. AMPA is the first breakdown product of glyphosate and I'll talk more about that shortly. So what is glyphosate? Glyphosate is a nonselective herbicide. It kills both grasses and broadleaf plants. So when we talk about corn herbicides, the corn herbicides are selective. They only kill broadleaf plants. Corn is a grass. It allows grasses to grow. And the herbicides that get used on lawns for lawn care are also selective and they only control broadleaf plants. Glyphosate was first registered in 1974. It is the most widely used pesticide in the world. And in Vermont we have over 750 products containing glyphosate that are registered. And they vary from ag uses to aquatic uses. These are all different uses specified on the label as well as homeowner products. Glyphosate is the most widely available product available to homeowners as an herbicide as well. I got ahead of myself. And it is one of the most widely used and widely permitted herbicides in the state. How does it work? Glyphosate prevents plants from making certain proteins that are needed for plant growth. They stop a specific enzyme pathway. I can't say it. I can pronounce all the herbicide names for you. But I'll let a botanist pronounce that for me. The shizemic acid pathways only found in plants fungi, algae, bacteria and some other microorganism. Glyphosate must be applied actively to actively growing plants in order to work. Glyphosate binds tightly to the soil. It can persist in the soil for up to 6 months depending on soil type. It's broken down by soil bacteria, unlikely to get into groundwater because it binds so tightly to soil. And pure glyphosate is low toxicity to fish and wildlife. That's why it's got an aquatically labeled product. But some products contain glyphosate, maybe toxic because of other ingredients in them. And when we're talking about the round-up product that has an adjuvant in it, that is more toxic than the active ingredient. And that's the P-O-E-A adjuvant, which we don't find in the aquatically labeled glyphosate formulations. How is glyphosate evaluated for safety? The EPA evaluates and registers all pesticides. I can talk for an hour just on the registration process if necessary. Scientific process to evaluate risk in human health and toxicity tests. The measure of toxicity is the LD50. It's not the best necessarily way to talk about how pesticides are toxic, but it is a tool for ranking them. In the LD50 is amount of dose of chemical, which produces deaths of 50% of a population of test animals administered by a variety of methods. Usually oral or dermal inhalation is also sometimes used. I mean, it's normally expressed as milligrams of substance per kilogram of an animal's body weight. When you're talking about toxicity, less is more, so the lower the number, the more toxic it is. The less you need to cause a toxic effect. Here's no pesticide is safe. The glyphosate can be used safely if the label is followed. Glyphosate falls in the low risk category and it's relatively non-toxic to humans. And this is sort of the table that I've showed the committee before. And it has, you know, from the least toxic substances on the top down to the most toxic on the bottom. So these categories that they fall in, these are well sort of established categories that compounds fall in. And you'll all have this to look at on your own. And then, you know, this is sort of when you hear folks say that glyphosate is less toxic than table salt, they're using these LD50 numbers. But that's sort of using LD50 as a relative comparison is. So glyphosate de minimizes the risk and not necessarily in some cases. So glyphosate in food, glyphosate is used on a variety of food crops and trace amounts have been found in many products. Here's what we know about glyphosate. Here's a list of these are basically tolerances that are listed in the federal register and these are in parts per million. And it's based on a reference dose of one milligram per kilogram per day. So, Carrie, could I just interrupt you could you go back to that slide could you some way enlarge it slightly it's almost micro I am not I'm working on a laptop and I can't expand it. Yeah, um, I don't know if I am. Carolyn you'll have the sort of. Okay. But basically what it's saying is animal feed has got a 400 part per million tolerance established in the CFR. And carrots have a five. Okay. So the tolerances fall around point to parts per million. And generally we talk in parts per billion or trillion when we're talking about environmental samples. When I talk about the sort of the surface water data will will have that discussion again. I was telling me the slide shows on the web page so if you all wanted, I'm going to it right now so yep. Thank you Carrie. Yeah, and basically, based on that reference dose all I'm getting at is 143 pound person can consume 35 milligrams of glyphosate per day and expect no long term or short term effects including cancer risk. Okay, I think I saw a little flash that Carrie Carrie has your hand up. Yeah, go ahead. Carrie can revisit this I know we're short of time but interested to know about that reference dose in the past EPA has been criticized because they haven't targeted the reference dose to sensitive members of the population. So my question it would be what would those reference doses look like if we had tried to do that. So we do do that now so that was part of the food quality protection act that was passed in 93 every pesticide needed to be reevaluated in 15 years. It has gone through that process and their RFP went up, and they, they did look at children zero to six months as the most sensitive population. So, in the past, the reference dose was not based on the most sensitive population, but all of those reference doses now are because it's been 15 years since since 1993. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and then the the bit about cancer and what's been going on with regard to is is glyphosate considered to cause cancer. And so that came out from the in 2015, the International Agency for Cancer Research or IRC placed glyphosate in their group to a category. The IRC is is not the World Health Organization. IRC is a subset. It's an independent agency that makes these classifications. And it doesn't look at risk. And it doesn't it picks and chooses which studies the IRC will use. And so on the right here. So the European Food Safety Authority, European Chemical Agency, US EPA, Health Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the World Health Organization have all not changed the classification of glyphosate to that to a category. Only one of these agencies has stated that has up cancer classification for glyphosate. And here's a sort of smattering, if you will, of the of the tests used to determine by all the other countries, not the IRC, whether or not glyphosate does in fact cause cancer. And studies on the left suggest that it prevents cancer or decreases cancer. The studies on the right say it increases cancer. So it's not a yes or no or one particular study. But if you do look at the weight of evidence here for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the the verdict is still considered out by most agencies. And everything either causes or prevents cancer. And here's a slide of cancer studies of various different foods that we consume that either protect against cancer or cause cancer. And you can see, you know, we hear the news back and forth about wine, wine being great for your health or wine being not great for your health. The same is true of eggs, beef, and many other foods that we consume. So everything, so you can have studies that suggest both and the weight of evidence is usually what makes that determination. And why we talk about IRC not incorporating risk is because they don't really have to. They're looking at studies but not exposure. Yeah, this slide has sort of been put together to illustrate that. It's the banana peel in the vehicle. Both can cause accidents, both can pose a hazard. Automobile is riskier because you're much more likely to be in an automobile crash than in a banana peel accident. Banana peels pose less risk. And that's sort of the story that we're talking about when we talk about pesticides and label restrictions and personal protective equipment. Nobody says pesticides are safe, but they can in fact be used safely. This slide is in your package and what I also included is the list of what these other red dots are. So I did send to Linda Lehman or your folks to look at because it's interesting to me everything in in this one a to a and to be category. The PDF of all of these. They're either chemicals or activities. You know working the night shift is probably a carcinogen eating red meat is probably a carcinogen eating processed meat is definitely been determined to be a carcinogen. Working in a barbershop or or a beauty salon is considered carcinogenic a carcinogenic activity. And there's a lot of other chemicals in there. The ones we know about nicotine alcohol there. They're on that list and it's interesting and I just thought that it would be good for folks to have and look at. We can go through it if we have time. This is the sort of that call cost all the debate, if you will. So basically the 289 million dollar lawsuit was awarded to a groundskeeper. He was terminally ill with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He was dealt several several times plus sprayed in the face regularly. Developed cancer 18 months to 2 years after starting the position. It was a decision that was made by a jury and I would have probably sided with the defendant myself. But in this case of court cases. Don't change the science in the agricultural health study still does not support cause and effect relationship between exposure of life and say and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. And this is a link to the to last year's interim decision to re-register glyphosate. EPA can still still considers it not likely to be a carcinogenic to humans. According to the label to prevent. Label changes just that label changes that were proposed are further spray drift management herbicide resistance non-target organism advisory statement and label consistency measures. Those were the changes that were made to the label. And this is one that I will let you all look at for yourself because I'd like to sort of entertain some questions. This is the one that we see. Posted on the Internet. All the time makes a half gallon of vinegar a couple salt and some dish soap. And this is just using that LD 50 again in the comparative toxicities of using that versus using glyphosate. Well, you're calling that up. Carrie has her hand up. Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. And I really appreciate this is the beginning of an important conversation. And we know that state government is about protecting public health and safety. And we're constantly looking at the question of risk. And although I think it's helpful to put that in context. It's also, I think, important to acknowledge that the actions we take as government in the legislature with in partnership with, I think with with folks across the state is how to reduce that risk. And although you, you raise, I think, somewhat in, in jest, the risks associated with eating meat, you know, there's a whole suite of questions that could come up from just that question. Which isn't really helpful when we try to think about how to reduce the risks that are opposed to by the use of harmful chemicals. And I only want to flag that in this, in this presentation, because it's a serious topic and something that we really need to be focusing on about working on reducing that risk of exposure. The other thing I wrestle with just as a commentary is that, you know, when the burden is placed on EPA and not the chemical industry and in determining the toxicity and the risks to the public. There's quite a bit of burden on public resources. And, and typically EPA is has their arms tied, you know, they, we know about PFAS, for example, and it's taken has been on the market since the 1950s and we're only now. We only regulate five out of the 8000 that have been produced for the marketplace so I just want to flag that as a challenge for us, because we, we are trying to, to address public health and safety here, buying down that risk. And I know how do we address it particularly associated with the use of chemicals in our in the marketplace. That's a great segue. Thank you for the setup. And yes, I agree. So the list of probable and possible carcinogens is somewhat injustice and partly because I don't. I don't know what a lot of the chemicals on that list are and I would implore you to go ahead and check it out for yourself. And look at those right. Relative rankings of different products. And that said, in evaluating risk, two things. Over the years, the Office of Pesticide Programs through PREA, which is the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act, is Office of Pesticide Program is a lot has a lot more funding than any of the other programs, whether it be Tosca, the Clean Water Act or Rickra. So those resources are, there's a pathway to get them to EPA through the through PREA and PREA has been reauthorized by Congress for four consecutive times and I can talk further about the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act. But I just also wanted to point out you're tying it back to risk and when our probe we have a very robust pesticide monitoring program in the state and with the adoption of GMO technology and well and cover cropping. We did see more glyphosate use get reported in the state. So we began to monitor for glyphosate and AMPA, its breakdown product in 2006. So this is the list of samples we've taken and analyzed for glyphosate in both surface and groundwater from 2006 to 2020. We've, as of earlier this last month, about a month ago, January 5th or this spreadsheet was updated. And in that time we've taken 784 samples both surface and groundwater that we've analyzed for both AMPA and glyphosate. And our detection level for them is 10 parts per billion. So you'll see the levels that you can eat are in the part per million range. The levels that are, that have no impact in the environment. Drinking a drinking water level for glyphosate would be 700 parts per million. We're looking down at 10 parts per billion. So in order of magnitude lower. I do believe there is a proposed study from USGS and they're proposing to go down even lower than our detection limit. But at a level of 10 parts per billion we don't see glyphosate in surface or groundwater or its primary breakdown product AMPA. So that's the conversation about risk. We currently don't see it leave where it's used in Vermont. And I wanted to leave some time for a conversation about, you know, glyphosate use and why we're seeing more. And that's basically because of the adoption of conservation practices to keep phosphorus all the way. I think we're up to about 40,000 acres of our corn ground. We plant nearly 100,000 acres of corn and 40,000 acres are now in either conservation tillage practices, either using cover crops. No till or low till practices, which have done a tremendous job of keeping phosphorus out of the lake. And that said, those practices do require the use of glyphosate. And I'm probably going to stop sharing my screen now. And this is the, this is the American Cancer Society and it lists the things that are known carcinogens. Aflatox is something we look for in grain samples fairly regularly. We look for all the known carcinogens and it has the, it has all, all three of the top categories that products that are unclassified are not on this list. All right. Thank you, Carrie. I'm wondering, Amy has her hand up. Go ahead, Amy. And I guess I just say, since the conversation started out with comments on headlines in the last 24 hours, there's been an announcement that bear has a settlement fund set up for addressing cancer and it's, and glyphosates relationship to it. So that's just a note for the group. But I also just, our committee's been spending a fair amount of time assessing and understanding the current state of our environment and we've recently learned about widespread and dramatic declines in all insects. And that's starting to have a noticeable impact on birds. And I guess I would like you to comment on remind me because I haven't, I don't remember I know we've done something with neonicotinoids but the relationship between glyphosate use and neonicotinoids and I'm wondering if you're monitoring for neonicotinoids and if you could just remind me of where we're at with that and comment. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So to tie glyphosate use and neonicotinoid use I guess would be tying them back to the sort of conservation tillage practices and I don't have personal confirmation. You should probably talk to some of the extension folks but the argument that I have heard is that no till low till conservation tillage practices create more of a harborage for the insects that they're trying to control with the neonicotinoid seed treatments. But in the in the neo in the pollinator protection bill that passed two sessions ago, we did make all neonicotinoid products restricted use. So we took the neonicotinoid products out of the hands of the homeowners. So you need to be a certified applicator in order to use neonics. We also created the authority in the agency to create best management practices around the use of neonicotinoid seed treatments. So there is authority to regulate treated articles. And in that time we have been monitoring to see if these products and I can share with you the results of all of our monitoring for for neonics but that's really outside. I don't think I can do it in six minutes. That's a spreadsheet a statewide spreadsheet we can look at and we do work with the DC when they collect their storm water samples. I don't know if you've ever had testimony from Pete Stangle, but he runs a program that went after it rains he goes out and samples lakes and tributaries to Lake Champlain to end while he's out. Doing those assessments he's collecting samples to for our lab to monitor for pesticides to see what's coming off the landscape during rain events and one of the state looks really good where we do see trouble is. Well, Jewett Brooke Jewett Brooke is an already impaired watershed and there's been a tremendous amount of money spent as of in the last few years to sort of improve agronomic practices up there but that watershed still is impacted or impaired and that is an area where of concern for us. Sorry, can I answer your question I ran a little bit. Yeah. You got to some of it I guess I'm wondering what status of the BMPs is then for the new mix. We have I've got an employee who's working with folks at UVM extension to draft those BMPs. They're in draft form. I can share with your committee what we have so far. And what is the timeline timeline for getting them out. I can share that and then Amy, I'll have someone from my staff follow up with you. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Carrie. John has his hand up John O'Brien. Go ahead, John. Thank you, Carolyn. Carrie, I had a question I guess it's is glyphosate the the Coca Cola of herbicides and in that is it proprietary to Monsanto bear or or is it the sort of thing where that compound you know they're generic knockoffs that are used in other parts of the world or are the the sort of activity in the tort world now. Is that seen as an opportunity for other big chemical companies to come up with the next the next thing to replace glyphosate. Everybody is always looking for the next thing. Lord toxicity more effective, but glyphosate is off patent other producers can manufacture it. And we do see bear Monsanto still makes the round up. But we do see other products that are that contain glyphosate that are not bear Monsanto products. Every chemical manufacturer now pretty much has a glyphosate product. Thanks, Carrie. It's John. We have about two minutes left. I'm wondering if there are any last questions. Maybe we could take one if someone had one. All right, Jim, go ahead. So then I'm not. I don't know if Terry, Carrie can answer this in two minutes, but perhaps he would do it in an email to the two committees. I'm carry talk about GBH is and the the effects of of mixtures with glyphosate and and the inherent dangers or increased actual harm that glyphosate is it able to do with these GBH is in GBH is you're talking about glyphosate based herbicides. I indeed I am. Yeah. Okay. And we're talking about adjuvants or or you're talking about tank mixes with other herbicides through the first. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm not that deep into the science only to know that often mixtures actually change the character of the the individual parts. You could respond to both perhaps in your email. Yeah. All right. Very good. Very good. I can say representative McCullis when when our right away applicators whether that's the guard rail applicators or the train, the folks that treat the train tracks come in with a permit. I'm going to cover more modes of action glyphosate covers one mode of action if you will. And the applicators like like to use or having a tank mix, a bunch of products that cover multiple modes of action so they don't get herbicide resistance. I'm not going to address that. But I think you're also talking about the synergistic effects of the adjuvants, whether they're oils or waxes or surfactants. Okay. I'll address that. Thank you. All right. And Carrie's hand is up and it's 10 o'clock but let you carry you go ahead and we'll just get this in. And then I'll give instructions to the committees as to what they're supposed to do for the next section of, you know, our meetings. Very brief and if Carrie could get back to us that would be great. Interested to know when you mentioned that it appears that some of the potential contamination or runoff containing pesticides is coming from a homeowner use very interested to know whether there's appropriate labeling so homeowners are aware of the particular chemicals concern and the dangers associated with that in particular is what chair Sheldon had mentioned to the impacts to our our insects and and the wildlife and biodiversity of the state. I guess I don't completely understand the question and what I was saying is in that pollinator protection bill that passed two sessions ago. We did require it did require all neonicotinoid insecticides to be labeled as restricted use with and if a product is restricted use in the state you have to be a certified applicator through our agency in order to be able to purchase that product. So we have eliminated homeowners ability to use neonicotinoid insecticides that said there was a study in California. Probably almost 8 years ago now that was finding homeowner uses of synthetic pyrethroids in particular by Fenthrin ending up in sediments of small streams. So the risk mitigation efforts that took place is there are many different new label restrictions that said where and when those products could be used and sort of it modified the use in such a way that exterior or building applications were no longer allowed in that sort of mitigated the risk to benthic macro invertebrates that we were seeing from synthetic pyrethroids and that's another story. We had asked our we were finding that by Fenthrin or synthetic pyrethroids in sediments down in Manchester in the Baton kill and we'd asked some of the tree homeowner sort of ornamental tree folks to stop using those products and essentially they all switch to the neonics. So we do see a spike in our neonicotinoid use in our at around 2011 when we asked them to stop using those products. So, you know, you always got to be careful what what you do when you're changing up the toolbox. Well, thanks. We've we've run out of time. Essentially, I'll take this moment to thank Kerry and to also say as a public service announcement that we did we did pass a bill that bans the use of neonicotinoid products for household use in the state of Vermont. I'm aware as I represent a district that is next to New Hampshire that they can come in, but we don't want them being used here in the state for household use. So I want that to be really clear for folks who might be watching this YouTube. And so, Kerry, thank you so much. What I'm going to read Linda's chat to me, which says we're going to leave YouTube for the break, so that the nine to 10 meeting is just the subject and will resources can put it on their webpage. We'll go back on to YouTube at 1015 with the same meeting people won't have to sign in again and I'm assuming that's just for house agriculture and forestry. Okay, so Amy, I noticed you unmuted yourself. Would you like to say something. Yes, I just wanted to say thank you Carolyn for bringing us together on this and let House natural resources know we're we're on for 1030 in in our own committee room. Amy, thank you so much for for coming on today really appreciate it. Me too. Thanks. All right. Okay everybody so house egg thank you guys house egg stick with this will take a break. Shut off your, your video and your enemies me.