The great PAN has released a new report with all the recent hard science on pesticides and the damage they are doing to our children. Pesticides disrupt our hormonal system, and can thereby adversely effect multiple areas of our body. Increases in early puberty, diabetes, obesity, asthma and ADHD are now conclusively tied to pesticides found in our food.
It is extremely important that this report be read and responded to forcefully. More than one billion pounds of unnecessary chemical pesticides and herbicides were sprayed on our food last year. Modern pesticides are a very recent addition to the number one human concern- Food. There is a good reason that food comes first in the triumvirate “food, clothing, shelter”. It is the single most important part of our lives. Food connects everything. Without food there is nothing. With bad food there is illness. They are poisoning our children.
“The more than 1 billion pounds of pesticides used annually nationwide have contributed to an array of health problems in youth, including autism, cancer, birth defects, early puberty, obesity, diabetes and asthma, the Pesticide Action Network North America, an environmental group in Oakland, said in a report released Tuesday, based on dozens of recent scientific studies that have tied chemicals to children’s health, and their report sought to bring collective meaning to those findings.
“One of the things that is also really clear from science is that children are just much more vulnerable to pesticide exposure,” said co-author Kristin Schafer, senior policy strategist at Pesticide Action Network North America.
“In terms of how their bodies work and defense mechanisms work, how much (pesticides) they’re taking in pound for pound, they’re eating more, drinking more, breathing more than an adult, and are much more susceptible to harms that pesticides can pose.”
If we band together as parents and demand that NYC stop feeding pesticide-laden food to our children we can greatly help to alter this terrible course of agriculture. Organic or near-organic agriculture can feed a world population of 9 billion people. Go to schoolfood.info, download the pdf of a letter to Mayor Bloomberg demanding that he begin studying how to phase out poisonous food from NYC public schools. Look for notification from meetup.com for our upcoming strategy meeting at Jefferson Market Library.
Please forward this message to someone else. Please get the report for yourself from Pesticide Action Network (PAN). Give them a donation. And remember that we were told that GMOs would lessen pesticide use- they have increased it. Some form of GMOs have a bug-killing ingredient inserted into every cell of the plant. It is called Sweet Corn, it is made by Monsanto, and it will not be labelled. Support proposition 37 in California. Watch this video with Dave Mathews and Bill MAher and Danny Devito about proposition 37. Why isn’t Whole Foods contributing to the campaign? PLEASE WATCH Genetic Roulette- it is free again for this week, thanks to a donation from Nutiva. Critical information on GMOs- their history, the junk science supporting them, their toxicity, and the corruption in government that keeps them subsidized and unlabeled. Watch here now!
From the PAN report:
Children today are sicker than they were a generation ago. From childhood cancers to autism, birth defects and asthma, a wide range of childhood diseases and disorders are on the rise. Our assessment of the latest science leaves little room for doubt: pesticides are one key driver of this sobering trend.
As the recent President’s Cancer Panel reports, we have been “grossly underestimating” the contribution of envi- ronmental contamination to disease, and the policies meant to protect us have fallen far short. Nearly 20 years ago, scientists at the National Research Council called for swift action to protect young and growing bodies from pesticides.1 Yet today, U.S. children continue to be exposed to pesticides that are known to be harmful in places they live, learn and play.
This report reviews dozens of recent studies that exam- ine the impact of pesticides on children’s health. Our analysis reveals the following:
• Compelling evidence now links pesticide exposures with harms to the structure and functioning of the brain and nervous system. Neurotoxic pesticides are clearly implicated as contributors to the rising rates of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, autism, widespread declines in IQ and other measures of cognitive function.
• Pesticide exposure contributes to a number of increasingly common health outcomes for children, including cancer, birth defects and early puberty. Evidence of links to certain childhood cancers is particularly strong.
• Emerging science suggests that pesticides may be important contributors to the current epidemic of childhood asthma, obesity and diabetes.
• Extremely low levels of pesticide exposure can cause significant health harms, particularly during pregnancy and early childhood.
PAGE 20 of the report:
Food consumed by school-age children can also contain pesticide residues. Researchers examining the diets of urban children found that 14 percent of the foods sampled con- tained at least one organophosphate pesticide. In total, 11 dif- ferent organophosphates and three pyrethroids were found.143 USDA residue sampling of produce commonly eaten by children—such as carrots, apples and peaches—found metabolites of dozens of different pesticides in each of these foods over the course of their testing (26 found in carrots, 42 in apples and 62 in peaches).*
Pesticides directly measured in children’s bodies also tell a story about the importance of dietary exposure. Researchers compared levels of organophosphate metabolites in the urine of children who were eating organic fruit, vegetables and juice with children eating conventionally farmed produce. They found that those with more organic diets had metabolite levels six times lower than those with conventional diets.144 Other studies show that when families switched to organic fruits and vegetables, metabolites of the insecticides chlorpyri- fos and malathion fell quickly to undetectable levels.