Turning the Tide on Pesticide Contamination
Water is the most basic building block of life. Clean water is essential for human health, wildlife, and a balanced environment. Yet, water is being polluted at unprecedented rates, with pesticides, industrial chemicals, nutrients, metals, and other contaminants. Studies of major rivers and streams find that 90% of fish, 100% of surface water samples, and 33% of major aquifers contain one or more pesticides at detectable levels. As a result of pesticide contamination of streams, rivers, lakes, and underground water supplies, drinking water is also widely contaminated. While individual precautionary measures provide a short term solution, with a crisis in safety looming, steps can and must be taken to curtail pesticide use and adopt alternative practices and products to protect the nation's waterways.
According to Beyond Pesticides’ Eating with a Conscience database, over 50 pesticides are known surface or groundwater contaminants, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
According to USGS, 56 percent of streams sampled had one or more pesticides in water that exceeded at least one aquatic-life federal standard. Many of these pesticides are also linked to a range of human and environmental health effects including cancer, birth defects, neurological and reproductive health impacts.
It is therefore essential that these pesticide contaminants are not invading our waterways and drinking water. Unfortunately, improper oversight and lax enforcement mean that many of these pesticides do in fact continue to contaminate our environment.
Protecting Water Quality with Organic Practices
Read Organic Land Management and the Protection of Water Quality, a fully cited fact sheet by Beyond Pesticides, or download our shorter, bi-fold brochure version for more in depth information on how organic practices can protect water quality.
Reduces/Eliminates Pesticide Runoff
Organic agriculture, and its production of organic food, supports a system that grows, handles and certifies food that rejects hazardous synthetic chemicals. It is the only food production system that is subject to independent public review and oversight, assuring consumers that toxic, synthetic pesticides do not contaminate surface and ground waters. In fact, organic farming reduces or eliminates water pollution and helps conserve water and soil on the farm. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), several countries in Europe compel or subsidize organic farmers to use organic techniques specifically to combat water pollution problems.
- Human health effects, including low birth weights, breast cancer, and low sperm counts are linked to herbicide-contaminated water;
- Frogs exhibit hermaphrodism when exposed to legally allowable levels of the herbicide atrazine in waterways;
- Dozens of pesticides and their degradation products contaminate waterways and escape regulatory oversight;
- Runoff from urban lawn pesticides contaminates local watersheds and stresses municipal water treatment; and,
- Children are not adequately protected by federal limits of pesticides in water.
Reduces Nutrient Runoff
Organic standards stipulates that soil fertility and crop nutrients can be managed through tillage and other cultivation practices such as crop rotation, which preserves and maintains the fertility of the soil so that synthetic inputs become unnecessary. Organic therefore eliminates the need and use of synthetic nitrogen/phosphorus-based fertilizers, thereby significantly reducing the threats nitrogen and phosphorus runoff has on aquatic ecosystems and reduces the prevalence of algal blooms and eutrophication.
Prohibits the Use of Sewage Sludge/Biosolids
Organic does not allow the use of sewage sludge which is often contaminated with a host of chemicals including heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and pesticides, which can all re-enter the aquatic environment once the sludge is recycled on land. Read Beyond Pesticides' article on Biosolids from the Fall 2012 Pesticides and You for more information.