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Traditional Farming’s reliance on
pesticide is a deadly choice for consumers. Scientists say, first and foremost,
to seek out organic foods, fruits and vegetables.
One
of the nation’s hottest public debates has its origin in the food industry. The
issue of human side effects from pesticide residue on conventionally grown
produce is being debated from congressional committees in Washington
to family dinner tables across America.
A beneficial side effect of this issue is the science of the health benefits of
organic agriculture to environmental health, that is, to soil, water, air and
ecosystems has been extensively studied, documented and compiled. However, science-based
knowledge regarding the benefits of organic agriculture and organically grown
products to human health is in its embryonic stages
Enter The
Organic Center which opened in 2002 as an independent affiliate of the Organic
Trade Association. The mission of the Massachusetts based Organic Center is to share science-based
organic produce benefits for human health with the public to promote awareness
and usage of organic products. A secondary mission is to help farms convert from
conventional agriculture to organic methods.
Organic
Authority spoke with The Organic Center’s chief scientist Charles Benbrook. Benbrook
has had a solid career in agriculture. He worked for the executive office during
the Carter administration, ran a congressional committee and worked for the academy
of sciences running the Board on Agriculture. Benbrook’s work focused on food
safety, pesticide use, resource conservation, water quality and the impact of conventional
agriculture on all of them. In retrospect, Benbrook’s career seems to have been
heavily dominated by pesticide study and pesticide restitution.
According
to Benbrook, a look at the history of pesticides explains a lot. “The organic
phosphates or OP class of pesticides were first developed by the NAZIS in Germany
for chemical warfare during World War Two. They were developed as poisons to
kill people, chemical warfare agents. Some of them were used in the gas
chambers during the holocaust,” Benbrook said. “The scientists that developed
them inadvertently discovered their insecticidal ability when insects in the
lab that were exposed to them would die. So that’s how they got interested in
their utility after the war.”
This
concern over the use of pesticides and they’re effect on humans rose over 30 years
ago, when a U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service marine biologist Rachel Carson issued a warning in her book Silent Spring in which she
outlined the dangers of synthetic chemicals particularly pesticides. "They
have immense power," wrote Carson,
"not merely to poison, but to enter into the most vital processes of the
body and change them in often deadly ways."
A growing
number of scientists including Benbrook believe that the dangers Carson predicted in Silent
Spring are here. Far from the farm, in the cold waters of the Puget Sound bordering
Washington State
and British Columbia
live the Orcas, better known as Killer Whales. With a natural life span longer
than any mammals other than humans, 90 years on average, a large number of
second generation Orca calves are not living past seven years. Scientists cite
a toxic load containing pesticides as causing the premature deaths of orca
calves. Farms pesticides runoff into the
Puget Sound.
In the Great Lakes, many aquatic birds are born sterile or with
male and female sexual organs. For humans, the consequences are equally dire. Children
with mothers who were exposed to toxic chemicals while their babies were in
vitro have developed neurological problems and reproductive deformities. The fertility
of men worldwide has dropped dramatically.
Benbrook
recalls when research first began on pesticides and their harmful effects. “Our
scientists documented the effects of pesticides on alligators. In 1980, a pesticide spill in Lake Apopka, Florida
resulted in second generation alligators
born with both male and female sex organs. It really began to raise questions
in the scientific community. Might the low levels of pesticides and exposure in
foods be causing the same types of developmental problems in human babies?” Benbrook
said, “That was really what I recognize as the start of pesticide’s harmful
human effects research.”
Benbrook
explained that pesticide exposure is greatest at the top of the food chain with
the predators. Benbrook also mentioned that humans reign at the top of the food
chain right alongside the world’s top predators.
“Any of
your top predators will have the maximum exposure to pesticides. This occurs because
of a process called bioaccumulation. Bioaccumulation means that the concentration
of toxins in the environment tends to be increased in the tissues of carnivores
at each level of the food chain as the size and complexity of the mammals’
increases,” Benbrook said. “The higher levels suffer from the toxins of all the
lower levels that they’ve consumed.”
So much for
being the top of the food chain.
According
to Benbrook, the actual impact of pesticides on the human body depends entirely
on the pesticide’s chemical makeup and its toxicological properties. “Science
has shown that exposure to even very low levels of several pesticides can
disrupt the formation of the egg, damage the sperm and cause mutations in the
sperm in ways that when the child is conceived, there are some genetic problems
built into the coupling of the sperm and the egg,” Benbrook said. “A child with
pesticides in their genetic makeup, this child faces problems later in life
because their immune system, their neurological systems and in some cases their
reproductive systems don’t develop in a fully healthy way. We know that the incidence
of these developmental problems is increasing, in particular, those involving
the reproductive system and neurological development. This is one of the things
no doubt behind the big increase in ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder and also, autism. These behavioral problems in a lot of kids today are
likely to reach back, for some of the kids, to what their parents ate and what
they were fed as young children.”
In order
for consumers to safeguard their health and that of their families, Benbrook addresses
the issue of pesticide residue on consumer produce head on. “First and foremost,
seek out organic foods, fruits and vegetables. Initially, parents need to
understand that the most vulnerable periods for a child happen before they are
even conceived. What a mother and father consume and what they are exposed to
in the months before conception can have a very important impact on the outcome
of a pregnancy,” Benbrook said. “Its really important for parents to make a conscious
commitment to as clean a lifestyle as possible in the year before they become
pregnant to limit the chances that their bodies will contain toxins that affect
the sperm and the egg and could trigger a genetic problem in the child. That’s
really the most important thing parents can do to get their children off to a
good start.”
Generally,
Benbrook suggests that parents encourage schools, daycare centers and care
providers, all the people and places that play a role in a child’s upbringing
to serve them clean organic food and avoid foods that are high in added salt,
sugar and fats.
For those
interested in growing organic produce, a major issue with pesticides revolves
around how long they stay in the soil after the last spraying. “Depending on
the pesticide use, some residues from pesticides can remain in the soil for a long
while. For example, insecticide applications from the 1970s’ and 80s’ would
probably still be detectable in the soil at low levels. This happens because pesticides
have a half life, similar to radiation,” Benbrook said. “What this means is
that years after a pesticide application only half of it will be gone. They
have one half life in soil; a different half life in water and another different
half life in plant tissues. The half life of chlorinated hydrocarbons like DDT
in the soil is 20 or 30 years. What this means is that 30 years after it’s
sprayed on the crops and soil only half of it is gone. Sixty years after
application, three quarters of it will be gone.
The op’s, organic phosphates, have a much shorter half life in soil,
plants and water. That was one of their big advantages compared to the
chlorohydrocarbons but the ops’ are also much more toxic.”
The US has
excelled at increasing the quantity of food harvested just as we succeeded in
building the largest SUV. But have we improved the quality of our lives, our food?”
Benbrook concluded, “I don’t think so.”
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