EPA Quietly Delays Reviews for Bee-Harming Pesticides

The EPA is pushing its deadline for reviewing a set of insecticides linked to declining bee populations to next year.

Environmental assessments for neonicotinoid pesticides won’t be completed until 2019. The Environmental Protection Agency quietly posted the change on its pesticides webpage without comment. The assessments, which would provide the scientific basis for further restricting neonicotinoids, were previously set to be released this year.

The delay, which comes a day after Canada’s environmental agency proposed to ban outdoor uses of neonicotinoids, means that bee and aquatic organsims “would have to continue to endure ...