Hundreds of millions of pounds of herbicide and pesticides are used on farms every class . A surprising amount of residue from those herbicides and pesticides end up in your food .
Just after sunrise , men dressed in red from read/write head to toe move through the bailiwick , brood over little flora , giving each a burst of solution from the wands connected to their backpacks . As the morning temperatures rise , it becomes unbearably spicy inside their oversized lawsuit and boots . The men sweat extravagantly , the masks of their respirators mist under their labored respiration . But the masks have to stay on - inhaling the chemical substance vapor could be virulent . Their chemical - resistant baseball mitt are bulky , too big for their hands , but they dare not take them off either , as the toxicant can be absorbed through the skin . One by one the untested plants experience their discourse - hundreds of thousands of works across C of acres , killing the pests that may or may not be shroud there .
This is n’t a conniption from a science fabrication film – it ’s how most fruits and vegetable are grown in the United States . Each twelvemonth , about 857 million pounds ofpesticidesandherbicidesare let loose on U.S. farms to ascertain dirt ball , weed , and fungus – 80 percent of the full U.S. stemma of pesticide . There are more than one thousand single factor cross-file for use as pesticides and more than 16,000 products marketed as such , using various combinations of the registered poisons .
Almost 95% of applied pesticides are wasted
Of the more than 800 million pounds of pesticide apply , roughly 95 % never reach their target pest , foul soil and air , percolate into groundwater , or running off into stream , lake , rivers , and ocean . term “ pesticide impulsion ” , the unintended consequences include the sodding prostration of biologic ecosystem in the fields where they ’re used , taint of boozing water , intoxication of wildlife and marine life-time and ecological upset in waterway .
“ Scientists [ for the US Geological Service ] have been work to determine why so many male smallmouth black bass bass in the Potomac River basin have immature female egg cells in their testes ( known as testicular oocyte or “ TO ” ) .
A high relative incidence … occurs … where farming is most intense and where human population denseness is high-pitched . The cracking preponderance of this shape of [ TO ] occurs in the spring , just before and during the spawning time of year . [ TO ] … has been associated with known or suspect internal secretion disrupting chemical compound in effluent and in overspill from farming military operation . These compounds can let in estrogen from birth control pills and internal secretion replacements , pesticide and fertilizers used on crops , and hormones from livestock operations . ”–US Geological Service , February , 2008
A small percentage of pesticides remain on the food you buy
Of the five percent of the pesticide that in reality acts on the fruit or vegetable to which it is applied , a diminished percent remains on the food that you bring home from the supermarket . That small percentage combined with other little percentages can become a toxic cocktail in your physical structure . The Environmental Protection Agency regulates the use of pesticide and periodically re - measure their use to determine if they pose a substantial risk to human wellness or the environment . EPA has establishedtolerances(maximum legally permissible levels ) for each pesticide , which defines the amount of pesticide residue an item of food can legally gestate to your table .
The price of living at the top of the food chain
Each year , the US Department of Agriculture conducts the Pesticide Data Program , which monitors the amount of rest in random samples of produce . This is where the non - profit Environmental Working Group pulls the data for its famous “ soiled Dozen ” listing every year . In their 2011Dirty XII , EWG United States Department of State that apple , celery , strawberry , andpeachescontain very meaning pesticide residual , while from the same report , the USDA finds no produce exceeding their minimum thresholds . Whose statistics should we consider ?
“ Environmental exposure to pesticides can take place through the wasting disease of pesticide‐contaminated body of water , consumption of pesticide residual in food , intake of airborne drift , photograph to pesticides applied in the home , school or community , or from photo to improperly chuck out hazardous waste .
Because the alchemy of pesticide is highly various , they are adequate to of do a wide range of inauspicious wellness effects … include acute and inveterate trauma to the anxious arrangement , lung damage , wound to the procreative organs , dysfunction of the resistant and ductless gland systems , birth defects , and Crab ; these effect can manifest as sapiently toxic effects , retard effects , or chronic effects … . multiple pesticides may have an additive or even synergistic effect . ”
Pesticide remainder is not only found on fruits and vegetables , but in fish , domestic fowl , beef , porc , even a mother ’s breast milk . Since pesticide are used to grow just about anything that stock graze on , the residue in the forage ( plant leaves and shank ) is salt away in their fatty tissue . Pesticide drift and runoff into watercourse is devour by aquatic life and stored in the fatty tissues of Pisces . As world are at the top of the food chain , we devour the chemical substance residues stored in all of them . This physical process of amplification is called Bioaccumulation .
In a PBS Report in 2001 , reporterBill Moyershad his blood and urine tested by the Mount Sinai School Of Medicine in New York . What they found was startling:84 trenchant chemicals , including the pesticide DDT , which has been banned in the U.S. since 1972 . The EPA banned DDT because it was demonstrate to interfere with the reproductive systems of fish and birds and eradicate the populations of certain species .
Why the EPA is hamstrung on pesticides
When the EPA evaluates a new chemical for agricultural use , if evaluated at all , it studies the contiguous , observable burden that chemical may have on human health . It can not test for the toxic effects of that chemical when draw by the soundbox and combined with other chemicals . As each person in the universe is expose to vastly different combinations of chemical , prognosticate interactions is virtually impossible . Typically , it ’s only after decades of use and a black example of environmental or human poisoning that a ban is enacted .
“ At [ a compactness of 0.1 parts per billion ] Atrazine ( an endocrine disruptor pesticide banned in Europe but still one of the most widely used elsewhere ) castrates grownup male frogs and has irreversible issue on the reproductive content of larval amphibian . The upshot on amphibian hormonal systems warn of similar effects in humans and may explain associations between scummy fertility and generative Cancer in humans .
“ Humans apportion coarse biological mechanism with other species which take us vulnerable to the same substances . ”
Pesticides are a persistent and consistent scourge in our environs . The only way to reduce the chemical substance cocktail in your butterball tissues is to avoid touch with pesticide - treat foods , product , plants , and anything in your day - to - day surroundings which may have been treated .
If you ’re not inclined to grow your own food in an organic garden , then frequent the organic aisle in your supermarket . But do n’t be gull by the “ all natural ” label that some maker are slapping on their product . That is strictly a marketing gimmick mean to blur the line between constituent and conventional food . The only foods that can lawfully use the word “ organic ” on their recording label are those grown according to guidelines establish by the US Department Of Agriculture .
( Thanks to Kim Leval @Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticidesfor the extra inquiry .
