OTNP July 2026

Good morning friends, Romans, countrymen. I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him.
A great example of side effects.
A chemical that doesn’t drastically affect one animal can have lethal side effects in another animal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis

https://www.foodandwine.com/forever-chemicals-pfas-children-bone-density-study-11963513
In 2026 Researchers led by the University of North Carolina reported their study of children followed from birth through age 12. Those exposed to higher PFOA were found with lower bone density, with girls appearing more vulnerable than boys. (Experts recommend reducing exposure.) You think?! Sheesh.

California department of pesticide regulation along with the Federal epa has just approved more PFAS chemicals to be used as pesticides. Lovely. So when our endangered vertebrate animals are exposed to these new pesticides in our forests (Mother Jones) what do you think will happen? Will it affect their bones as well? Do you think that the chemical companies care and now will start testing for whether this could happen to endangered animals?

My Microbiology PhD thesis was on DNA damage and repair.
I Love biology!
And while I rarely got the best grades in my chemistry classes …
Doing the best I could gave me a perspective on the chemicals we are spraying around and how they interact with biology

😀And so I started a little business PuraVidaAquatic doing outside sources of water non-chemically and became an a bit of a nut about pesticides

I was talking to a friend about all my perceived horrors of pesticides and started rambling on about the idea that maybe we could generate non-chemical zones where pesticide use was prohibited and they asked how about our national parks?

The National Parks would be great!
Benefits:
Not growing food :. Farm lobby wouldn’t be against us.
The animals certainly wouldn’t be against us.
most people I know wouldn’t be against it.
What could go wrong.

I wrote to Sequoia Everglades and Yosemite asking for their pesticide use.
And again…
And again…
Do you know the expressions:
Willful ignorance.
Strategic stupidity.
Delay Delay Delay and deny.
I could talk for an hour

One of the things I did while waiting for Federal non-answers was to continually search for assistance. I wrote to Audubon, the Sierra Club, and World Wildlife Fund and the Center For Biological Diversity. Hoping for interest in also requesting information from the national parks. And the Center For Biological Diversity responded with have you checked out our FOIA search page.
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/foia-search/search

What an awesome site. I found documents that confirmed that the national parks were permitting/ or authorizing/ large amounts of pesticides on their leased land.

10 tons in practically the first document I found in a very limited data set.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Pesticide Use Proposal Date: 02/28/2014
PUP Number: R8-11-81660-002

10 tons to a leased orchard. Permitted for an area that was supposed to be restricted due to endangered animals and fish.
Violating their own regulations.
A specific reference to the PUP database

Two and a half years later the national parks refuse to give me current information about pesticide use in the Parks and refuse to give me any PUP records

But it’s not just the pesticides themselves

There are:
A) Sticker spreaders adjuvants are sort of like toxic honey that then sticks to the leaves better. So an animal hunting food or love gets much more toxic material sticking to its fur and feet.

B) Forever chemicals: As little as 3 years ago; close to a dozen PFAS’s were also listed “inert” by the EPA.

C) Antimicrobials (antibiotics) that destroyed the soil food web.

When an endangered animal gets this toxic honey or forever chemicals on its fur.

It can’t take a shower.
It must
Lick it off.
Our endangered animals cannot:
1 Hire their own lawyers to sue Monsanto.
2 Request public documents.
3 Go to a doctor for IBS or Parkinson’s, or non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL)
4 They can’t give talks to educate the public.

I was growing frustrated at the lack of cooperation from the national park service.
And then the Mother Jones article came out. Mother Jones YouTube Summary.

The Mother Jones article is about the glyphosate use in California forests and while I am somewhat concerned about glyphosate there are actually far worse pesticides being used. As well as the chemicals I mentioned above.

The Mother Jones article
Nate Halverson
May+June 2026 Issue
was limited to CA State lands.
266,000 pounds of pure glyphosate in 2023, the latest year for which data was available—is nearly five times what it was two decades ago

I have the public cdpr 2023 files for forestry for 2023.

2023[]Annual[]Statewide[]Pesticide[]Use[]California

Total 22,338 application records

Commodity Forest, Timber

45 Diff chemicals:Total
648,068lb or 324 Tons Active ingredients

lbs	#Products	Type	acres Treated
229665.4	9	Adjuvant	201,646.52
10364.9	1	Antimicrobial	41,185.35
1469.45	1	Emulsifier	5,258.57
1759.18	2	Fungicide	42,015.25
265835.72	3	Glyphosate	102,158.72
131258.59	17	Herbicide	201,151.38
386.26	2	Insecticide	3,656.91
16.2	1	pheromone	50
43.64	1	preservative	2428.41
3.84	1	Strychnine 1,	483.4
1316.97	1	Surfactant 1,	946.87

This table presents CDPR data for 2023

analysis of 17 forestry herbicides 12 are problematic
9 that have long halflives are used on more than a sq mi
5 have fluorines 3 are PFAS (forevercides)
1 has a halflife of over 2yrs
1 causes liver toxicity and anemia in genetically sensitive individuals
1 causes endocrine disruption thyroid, estrogen/androgen interference and neurological effects
1 includes high toxicity to non-target aquatic plants/algae/duckweed (runoff risk)

What to do?
Some mental things
and some physical things.

Mentally we need to stop swallowing the chemical companies PR campaigns so much

Particularly integrated pest Management. IPM for the pesticide industry is directly analogous to the NRA for the gun industry
They both claim to advocate responsible behavior but we wouldn’t be promoting the NRA in our public schools. Or in our national parks. When you see IPM stop and think what are they really selling

Physically we need to promote the idea of Chemical Free Zones.

We need to keep PFOA and PFAS containing products as well as any chemical that does not break down normally in the environment out of our wilderness areas.

Ask the CDPR:
https://cdprca.nextrequest.com/users/sign_inFor the half-life determination for the 1,000+ current registered and approved active ingredients

We desperately need
#ChemFreeZones
Especially around our schools!

Please ask our environmental organizations to provide basic information on what pesticides the national parks are spraying.
https://chng.it/9Dj4vKwbK5
https://www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/just-three-easy-steps/

For past OTNP (#_OTNP on X) issues.
https://www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/past-ourtoxicnationalparks-posts/

But you may want to start here. www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/why-i-started-this/

If you have received this as a forward and would like to continue receiving it please email me “vidaaquatic@gmail.com”
And if you would like to donate as little as $5 to the cause, you can Zelle it to vidaaquatic@gmail.com. thank you very much.
Bob

http://www.puravidaaquatic.com/