IT’S BLUE SMOKE AND PESTICIDE TIME!
What are you talking about? I feel fine.
Spring is finally here and with it comes the never ending bedlam of gas burning engines of all kinds and the ubiquitous scourge of pesticides. This is a good time to remind everyone that pesticides are dangerous for all living creatures including your pets and children. Here’s a brief summary from a chapter in my book(s) which will eventually be published along with material that I researched on GMOs since they often time go hand in hand with conventional agriculture.
As you can see from the graph, as industrial agriculture grew the rise of deadly disease also increased dramatically. Some of this is due to mineral depletion, which Dr Linus Pauling claimed to be at the heart of all diseases. Some of the blowback comes from the use of pesticides, especially Roundup. Right now 5 pounds of Roundup is used for every American in the nation. Yep, five pounds per person!
You’ve heard the saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? Well, I don’t know who made that one up but in this orbit whatever doesn’t outright drop you like a stone, renders you ill, sterile, and cancerous. There are 83 pages of information that I have researched on the dangers of GMOs and pesticides. I could drown you in all of this bad news but I’ll keep this one short knowing that there is way more to discuss. It will make for a good book some day. Here’s some of the highlights. Keep in mind that since I am cutting and pasting various parts of my chapter the footnotes will not be orderly and maybe a bit confusing. Each footnoted section will have the footnotes right after that part.
GLOBAL AND US TOTALS FOR 2001
Adding all herbicides, insecticides and fungicides together according to the EPA’s website, the world and US amount of pesticide active ingredient at user level for 2000-2001 is 5.4 billion pounds and 1.2 billion pounds respectively.[1] That’s over a billion pounds of pesticides per year just in the US. That’s over three pounds per person per year. Randall Fitzgerald puts it at five, pounds per person per year. Three pounds, five pounds, who cares, it’s academic, and 14 years later (2015) we certainly are using more. At those doses you are going to be sick either way. This translates into about $12 billion per year in a $40 billion per year world market for 2007.[2]
[1] (http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/pestsales/01pestsales/usage2001.htm) 09/28/2013
[2] (http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2011/sales-usage06-07.html) 09/29/2013
THE AAP WARNING
In late 2012 Big Pharma’s godchild, the super conservative American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a statement on the dangers of pesticides in the pediatric population entitled Pesticide Exposure in Children: COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH Pediatrics; originally published online November 26, 2012 (DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-2757):[1]
Children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity. Acute poisoning risks are clear, and understanding of chronic health implications from both acute and chronic exposure are emerging. Epidemiologic evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers, decreased cognitive function, and behavioral problems. Related animal toxicology studies provide supportive biological plausibility for these findings. [Emphasis mine]
In this bold policy statement, they added:
For many children, diet may be the most influential source [for pesticide exposure], as illustrated by an intervention study that placed children on an organic diet (produced without pesticide) and observed drastic and immediate decrease in urinary excretion of pesticide metabolites. [Emphasis mine]
That’s the AAP talking, the ultra-conservative AAP. If they finally decided to inform parents of the risks, then those risks are clear and unambiguous. It’s also proof that Monsanto does not donate money to the AAP. Other sources include pesticide spray drift, agricultural work, occupational farm worker exposure, and urban pest control.
[1] () 12/15/2012
AUTISM CONNECTION
Quoted directly from the above AAP publication the authors had this to say:
Prospective contemporary birth cohort studies in the United States link early-life exposure to
organophosphate insecticides with reductions in IQ and abnormal behaviors associated with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and autism.[1] [Emphasis mine]
A SHOPPING LIST OF DISEASES
There currently is a shopping list of diseases which pesticides have been associated with. From the Beyond Pesticides Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database (2010) which tracks diseases and other health issues linked to real world pesticide exposure at (www.beyondpesticides.org) they are:
- Alzheimer’s disease at publication, the database lists 4 studies linking pesticides to Alzheimer’s disease
- Asthma at publication, the database lists 41 studies linking pesticides to asthma.
- Birth and fetal defects at publication, the database lists 19 studies linking pesticides to fetal and birth defects.
- Cancers at publication, the database lists 260 studies linking pesticides to various forms of cancer
- Brain 30 studies linking pesticides to brain cancer.
- Breast 11 studies.
- Leukemia 40 studies
- Lymphoma 46 studies
- Prostate 23 studies
- Soft tissue sarcoma 7 studies
- Other cancers 105 studies linking pesticides to other types of cancers.
- Developmental and learning disorders 26 studies total.
- ADHD 8 studies plus others
- Autism 5 studies plus others
- Parkinson’s Disease 65 studies.
- Most recently a large meta-analysis involving a total of 104 previous studies/3,087 citations fulfilled inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. They looked at exposure to weed, fungus, rodent or bug killers, and solvents and the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Studies that evaluated the proximity of exposure, such as country living, work occupation and well water drinking were also included. The research found that exposure to bug or weed killers and solvents increased the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 33 to 80 percent. In controlled studies, exposure to the weed killer paraquat or the fungicides maneb and mancozeb was associated with two times the risk of developing the disease.[2]
“…our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases.” [3]
- Diabetes 6 studies
- Reproductive health at publication, the database lists 22 studies linking pesticides to reproductive health effects. These include decreased fertility in both males and females, antiandrogenic (demasculinizing) effects, increased rates of miscarriage, altered sex ratios and altered maturity.
LOWERS TESTOSTERONE LEVELS IN MEN
The journal Epidemiology published a study in 2006 showing that there is an inverse relationship between pesticides and male testosterone levels. High levels of urinary metabolites of some pesticides correlate directly with low testosterone levels in male subjects.
[1] IBID
[2] (http://www.aan.com/PressRoom/home/PressRelease/1185) 10/05/2013
[3] Gianni Pezzoli and Emanuele Cereda Exposure to pesticides or solvents and risk of Parkinson disease Neurology May 28, 2013 80:2035-2041
Lastly, I know that many of you are huge dog lovers as I am. So it’s very important to understand that pesticides do nothing for anyone except cause disease and death. I remember reading an article on dogs, and how they lived with us a hundred years ago before processed junk food and pesticide overuse. He remarked that the average dog lived many more years than they do now. Most dogs die prematurely and they usually die of cancer. It’s almost a law of physics now. I’m not in the least bit surprised. Soon our kids will be dying much sooner. Brain cancer and leukemia are at nearly epidemic proportions in children. Much of it having to do with the use of home pesticides. Same with breast cancer. One of my overwhelming reasons for writing on preventive medicine is to inform people that things need to change. We are nearly at a tipping point now, awash in toxic agricultural poisons.
CANCER AND DOGS
In a 2004 study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association showed a nearly 5 times greater rate of developing a cancer in your dog if you use a lawn pesticide application.
Try to convince your obtunded, ignorant, pesticide-loving neighbor to think for once that if pesticides kill bugs they also kill or cripple us bigger bugs. Remember too that, unlike what Monsanto tries to convince us of, there is no pesticide that grows grass. To grow grass and flowers we need healthy soil not dangerous chemicals.
Cheers!
PS. Be sure to check out my other sites: www.adaptiveTCM, www.medicalmarijuana.co.uk.
Category: Pesticides, PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
