Pollinators are suffering declines worldwide, and pesticides are thought to be the main driver of their decline. In this context, a lot of research effort has been put into understanding and regulating the active ingredients in pesticides. Nevertheless, the additional components in pesticide formulations are often overlooked and understudied.

Bumblebee on a flower.

To make up for this oversight, a new PoshBee research article, called Co‐formulant in a commercial fungicide product causes lethal and sub‐lethal effects in bumble bees, tested an acute oral dose of the fungicide product Amistar, and equivalent doses of each individual co‐formulant in order to measure the toxicity of the formulation and identify the ingredient responsible. The researchers found that one of the co-formulants, alcohol ethoxylates, caused a range of damage to bumble bee health. In fact, exposure to it caused 30% mortality and a range of sublethal effects, such as gut damage.

These results suggest that the impacts of pesticide formulations need to be further considered in regulations and that co-formulants can be even more toxic than active ingredients themselves.

Read the full article here.