The Thin End

A federal court has ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos because it is harmful to human health.   This is good news for the environment as much as it is for human safety. From peregrine falcons to European starlings Just as peregrine falcons help alert us to the harmful effects of organochlorine pesticides,  European starlings alert us to the harmful effects of organophosphates.   The studies of these birds demonstrate the harmful effects on wildlife. In 1973 I was a student of Zoology at Manchester University.   For my very first assignment, my tutor gave me the name of a species,  the peregrine falcon,  Falco perigranus, and a set of dates, and asked me to do some research in the library and write a short report. During the 1940s and 1950s, Derrick Ratcliff of the British Nature Conservancy noted a sharp decline in peregrine falcons across Europe. Soon after this observation correlations between eggs...