It lit up the night sky. First responders were scrambled but there was much confusion as to the cause of the event. An investigation was demanded. Some described a massive explosion that erupted in the dark night without warning; the blast felt far away while some claimed to have seen a red fire ball making a fast approach towards the plant. Regardless, at 10:25pm on a Thursday night, August 28th to be exact, a tank at the Bayer Crop Science plant in Institute West Virginia exploded.

“The thing that blew up was the least dangerous of the stuff that’s in there,” Mike Dorsey said – chief of homeland security and emergency response for the state of West Virginia.

What else is in the tank, you may be asking. Frightening stuff, actually. At a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India back in 1984, thousands of people were killed due to the outbreak of a chemical known as methyl isocyanate, or MIC. The plant that exploded in West Virginia produces that same chemical – but luckily, that wasn’t the section of the plant that got destroyed. Instead, a pesticide known as methomyl was being produced in that part of the plant. Methomyl is used in the production of a more potent pesticide, Larvin, an insecticide thiodicarb to be exact. What does Larvin do? Well, it is designed to mess with the induction signals of the nervous systems of insects.

Meanwhile, in Germany, there is a pending lawsuit regarding a cover-up of the effects the product Larvin has over its environment. The damage, the suit claims, is wide-ranging and may be responsible for the drastic reduction in bee population in Europe. The company that is being sued? Bayer Crop Science and an arm of the US government that’s sole duty is to protect the US citizen and the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency.

Apparently, Bayer Crop Science conducted their own tests showing their product to have minimal side effects and the EPA rubber stamped its approval. Despite the fact that an incentive is in place for Bayer Crop Science to get the product out to protect its bottom line.

The reason why this is important is because bees are pollinators – their job is not only to supply food for their own colonies, but help spread the seeds of nature and its plant life around its environment. They are the natural stewards of plant life, and this has a drastic effect on our environment and more importantly, our agriculture.

In fact, this is a very strange series of events that could prove to be at best coincidence, and at worst synchronous. While conducting an interview and updating the listeners of Coast to Coast AM about the dwindling honey bee populations, host George Noory broke the news to researcher Linda Moulton Howe about the explosion at the plant – which she had only moments before identified the company involved in the German law suit (Bayer Crop Science).

That law suit was submitted August 13, 2008. The explosion was August 28th, 2008. If there is a pending law suit demanding the data be shown about the true effects of this pesticide – designed to interfere with the nervous system of insects – then the destruction of part of the plant would be an interesting correlation into the situation. Not to mention, the estimate is that the pesticide products for Bayer earn them about $1 billion dollars annually.

Obviously, more investigation is needed here, but this is an interesting story of which the effects truly span the globe.

Further Reading

Honey Bees Not Healthy in US or UK

NRDC Sues EPA for Honey Bee Lab Data

911 Operator Involvement in Blast at Plant