Want crabs for Christmas? Quit using pesticides
Crabs were so expensive this year that our traditional family crab feast may be a thing of the past. It’s not surprising, as the supply of crabs is the lowest in 30 years, down 60% just since 2019, according to the scientists who study them. Articles in the Capitol Gazette, the Bay Journal, the Carroll County Times and The Baltimore Sun describe the huge drop in the population of crabs and the harvest restrictions that are supposed to help conserve the breeding stock. With so few crabs, it is no wonder that the price has gone up dramatically. What is killing the crabs and keeping them from reproducing?
Maybe one cause is the same thing that is killing bees and other beneficial insects, even songbirds — chemical poisons. Toxins like neonicotinoids and organophosphates, chemical tongue-twisters lumped under the rubric of “pesticides,” kill everything, not only the problem insects they are supposed to control. They are even more deadly to “aquatic invertebrates,” like crabs, than they are to insects. Levels so low they are almost impossible to measure, parts per trillion, harm crabs. I’ve read a number of scientific papers online about chlorpyrifos toxicity, which I found by Googling “chlorpyrifos toxicity blue crabs.”
In a nutshell, “chlorpyrifos is considered very highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates.” That’s the conclusion of a 179-page summary from the Office of Pesticide Programs in Washington, D.C. Crab larvae are the most sensitive stage, then molting crab juveniles, showing damaging effects at .035 micrograms per liter (that’s parts per billion), or 35 parts per trillion. Levels that show no adverse effects are lower than 1 ppt. That’s like a single drop in twenty Olympic-sized swimming pools! If I had $1 million and shared one trillionth of it with you, you would get 1/10,000th of a cent. Don’t spend it all in one place!
These chemicals harm people too. Chlorpyrifos, chemically based on nerve gas, is so toxic it never should have been sold in the first place, but it sure kills bugs and makes a lot of money for the manufacturers that produce it. It also causes brain damage in children, along with cancer, kidney disease, immune system problems and a host of other diseases. It has even been implicated as a cause of autism, and these poisons are used everywhere.
Two years ago, the Maryland legislature wisely passed a ban on all uses of chlorpyrifos in Maryland. Hooray, finally, after decades of study and negotiations! Then Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill. He said that the Maryland Department of Agriculture would ban it with a regulation, so the law is not necessary.
The MDA regulation canceled all uses of chlorpyrifos on Dec. 31, 2021, but MDA has hidden the regulation deep in its website, making little effort to notify sellers, users or the public that it exists. No letters to users, no news releases that the ban has taken effect, no enforcement advisory on its website. A secret ban is no ban at all. Governor Hogan has chosen to put the profits of chemical companies above the health of Marylanders.
Please, Governor Hogan, don’t make us wait until next year for the legislature to pass the bill again. Tell all Marylanders, businesses, municipalities and farms that it is now illegal to use chlorpyrifos in Maryland. In the words of David Deboy’s song, “I want crabs for Christmas!”