> Environmental and Health Concerns > Herbicides and Pesticides

Pesticides on Your Plate
by author Michael Downey

Pesticides are recognized as a global threat to humans and the environment. Chemical industries release thousands of compounds annually, most with no testing of their health impacts. Are they dangerous to your health? What can you do? Are you part of the problem?

The world’s annual application of pesticides is more than 4.1 billion pounds. And that’s just the quantity of active ingredients in the pesticides. The cost is $57 billion a year. But the true human and environmental cost is incalculable.

The effect on pests is obvious: They die. Forgotten is the effect on other life forms, on future crops grown in that saturated soil and on human health.

The average Canadian’s body is likely to contain at least 500 synthetic chemicals, with the highest amount being DDE, a breakdown product of DDT–although its manufacture has been banned here for decades. Hence, the term, persistent organic pollutants–POPs–a deadly group of pesticides and other chemicals such as flame retardants, stain repellants and so on.

And pesticides don’t just affect humans. In North America, there are now liver tumour epizootics–the wildlife equivalent of epidemics–in 16 fish species in at least 25 different fresh-and salt-water locations. Some Great Lakes fish are hatching with both male and female sex organs. Or none at all.

Pesticides and other POPs tend to be more soluble in fat than in water, so once they are eaten, say by a minnow snapping up a pesticide-contaminated bit of plankton, they are stored in fat. The minnow carries nearly all the POPs it has ever encountered. A larger fish accumulates the POPs from all the minnows it eats. And so on. Whatever eats the biggest fish–an eagle, polar bear, seal or your child–gets a POP dose hundreds of thousands of times more concentrated than the water in which that fish swam.

It’s no wonder Great Lakes eagles have trouble reproducing. Or that North Sea seals with high body loads of chemicals have compromised immune systems and can’t fight common infections. Or that female polar bears are found with male reproductive organs, rendering them sterile. Or that breast milk in India and Zimbabwe gives babies six times the acceptable daily intake of DDE.

Powerful pesticides–eaten or inhaled–alter our DNA, the code for reproducing our cells. Alter the DNA and you create cells that are essentially different from the original. That difference is often called cancer. This cancer link is established.

The medical journal, The Lancet, reports that people with high blood levels of pesticides are far more likely to develop genetic mutations linked with cancer. In the age group 35 to 64, cancer is the number one killer in Canada.

But pesticides may also cause attention deficit disorder, mental and behavioural problems and untold autoimmune disorders. No one can deny a potential link between these many chemicals and virtually any ailment you care to imagine. We just don’t know.

And when the risk is unknown–like a foggy road ahead–what should you do? Slow down, even stop? Or put the accelerator to the floor? Without government intervention, agriculture has chosen the "full speed ahead" approach. We’re paying for it with human and animal lives. We’re allowing our government to facilitate murder. We are, simultaneously, accomplices and victims.

More than 50,000 synthetic organic chemicals are in use; most have never been tested for their health impacts, environmental lifetimes and tendencies to bio-accumulate. Roughly a thousand new chemicals enter production annually. The barn door has been open far too long. What can you do today?

Twenty-five percent of all pesticides sold around the world are used to grow cotton. Say no to chemicals and say yes to organic cotton. Lawn spraying is a huge part of the problem in urban areas. Lobby for a ban.

Organic farmers utilize many techniques to control pests without resorting to synthetic pesticides–techniques you can use at home to cultivate food and plants free of harmful chemicals. For example, crop rotation can reduce insect and disease damage and is especially effective with soil diseases.

Living in Toronto, freelance health writer Michael Downey finds it difficult to avoid the daily chemical assault, including pesticides--frequently airborne. He eats organic when he can, enjoys all critters and maintains a healthy diet. Of course, less late-night writing and a little more sleep would help.

Source: alive #244, February 2003