Winter Maladies: Natural Approaches
June Russell's Health Facts
Pesticides Facts
In 1939 there were 32 pesticide products registered in the U.S.; in 1993 there were
22,000. More than one billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in the U.S., primarily herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Those who do not use pesticides are still at risk from exposure to drift (movement of pesticides away from the site of application). There is abundant scientific evidence of the risks toxic pesticides pose to human health. More worrisome from a public health perspective, are chronic health effects such as cancer, infertility, birth defects, miscarriage, and negative effects on the brain and nervous system. There are studies that implicate pesticide exposure as a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease. Manufacturer’s assurances that pesticides are safe have been proven time and again to be incorrect.
(“Designer Poisons: How to Protect Your Health and Home from Toxic Pesticides,” a 1995 book by Marion Moses, M. D., considered an authority on pesticides)
The claim is that pesticides have relatively low-risk, and people think these
pesticides are harmless when actually they kill many insects and animals, and can seriously affect humans because they decrease the enzyme that is essential for normal nervous system functioning. Spraying does not really help reduce the incidence of human disease because the insects build up resistance to pesticides and quickly rebound.
(“Know your enemy before fighting back with pesticides,” Marlene Condon, nature writer and photographer, The Daily Progress newspaper, Charlottesville, Virginia, April 24, 2001)
According to federally funded nutrition surveys, pesticides have shown up in blood, breast milk, urine, and fat tissue samples of a cross-section of Americans. Glyphosate
(Roundup) is found in weed killers and may cause cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nerve, and respiratory damage.
(“Special Report: What you need to know about pest control,” Natural Health magazine, May/June 2001)
No pesticide product is free from risk or threat to human health. Pesticides pose risks to human health and the environment, with special risks to children. It is recognized that pesticides cause adverse health effects in humans such as cancer, neurological disruption, birth defects, genetic alteration, reproductive harm, immune system dysfunction, endocrine disruption, and acute poisoning.
(“Preferring the Least Harmful Way,” Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, #684, Jan. 2000)
The pesticide MCPA, used as an ingredient in some lawn pesticides, has been found to damage a part of the brain known as the “blood brain barrier,” (Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 1982), which is the brain’s primary defense system. This defense system works to keep toxic substances out of the brain cell and is literally protecting all of us from developing immediate neurological illness. The blood brain barrier has been found to be defective more often in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and some psychiatric disorders
(British Journal of Psychiatry, 1982, (www.chem-tox.com - 2002)
The Lancet (2000) reports that a government-sponsored study in Holland involving over 1,000 non-demented adults aged 50 - 80, those frequently exposed to pesticides were almost 5 times more likely than those not so exposed to have adverse mental changes. They had poor memory (slowness in recalling names and remembering numbers) and slowness of thinking (finding appropriate words), changes much worse than similar changes in people not exposed to pesticides. Although it was characterized as “mild,” it was significant and consistent among the people who used pesticides. In contrast, people who were exposed to organic solvents, metallic dust or metallic fumes had no measurable impairment.
(“Pesticides’ Effects On The Mind,” Health Gazette newsletter, Oct. 2000)
Persistent pesticides break down slowly and stay in the environment for a long time. Some are accumulative and will build up in the bodies of animals, including man. Pesticides move in the environment and they can travel with particles through erosion, evaporation, and move on air currents and sometimes persist as residues on crops and other plants. Do your part to keep pesticides out of the water and food chain by using cultural methods, reducing pesticide use, and following application, storage and disposal recommendations. High temperatures can cause pesticides to become volatile and damage plants you are trying to protect. Do not apply pesticides when temperatures are unusually low because they will become toxic much longer. Bees can be killed if they are active when the pesticide is applied. Landfills have specific days when they accept hazardous wastes, including pesticides. There are alternatives - Integrated Pest Management, which uses cultural methods combined - with pesticides as a last resort.
(“Pesticides are not the only insect killers,” Debbie Dillon, who is an agent with the Virginia Cooperative Extension in Albemarle County, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, July 17, 1997)
Pesticides are designed to kill or injure living organisms, often by damaging their nervous systems. Toxic to almost all insects, they can also harm mammals, including people. Research has linked in varying degrees of human exposure to chemical pesticides with an increase in miscarriage, birth defects, infertility, Parkinson’s disease, and some types of cancer, and I suspect that pesticide exposure may play a role in the development of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), multiple sclerosis, and multiple sensitivity as well. Children are at an added risk because they are lower to the ground, tend to put things in their mouth, and their bodies are still growing.
(“Self-Healing newsletter, Andrew Weil, M.D., July 2001)
Common pesticides used in homes and lawns are now being shown in medical research to accelerate aging of the immune and nervous system, resulting in serious health problems years after exposure. Chemical companies do their own testing and submit the results to the EPA for review. Agricultural and consumer use pesticides are not currently required to be tested for subtle neurological effects (e.g. memory, depression, behavior) - child learning disorders - pregnancy developmental studies and immune system effects (e.g. lower white blood counts - increased infection rates and autoimmunity). A human DNA molecule contains over 30,000 genes. Over 4,000 genes remain active at this moment, controlling all aspects of health from the brain to the immune system. When these genes are weakened or damaged by chemical exposures, health problems surface.
(www.chem-tox.com with material compiled by Wayne Sinclair, M.D., Allergy, Asthma & Immunology - 2002)
Over 20% of pesticides currently registered in the U.S. are linked to cancer, birth defects, developmental harm or nerve damage. Over half of the food on our grocery shelves contains genetically engineered ingredients that have not been adequately tested for impacts on human health. Pesticides have been proven unsafe and counterproductive in the long run. Pests develop resistance to pesticides - while their natural predators get wiped out. We support more natural pest control methods.
In California - the leading agricultural state in the U.S. - use of cancer-causing pesticides increased 121% between 1991 and 1999. We face a powerful, politically influential pesticide industry with a single goal - to expand its multibillion-dollar business. For example, in 2000, Monsanto sold more than $2.6 billion worth of Roundup around the world. The entire planet is being used as the corporations’ laboratory! (Pesticide Action Network, PANNA, May 2002) These chemicals tend to accumulate in fatty tissue, and one recent study found that they have shown up in the breast milk of women who live in the Arctic. These chemicals also appear in virtually all food products in a typical American diet.
(Pesticide Action Network -PANNA, 2002)
Sweden launched a progressive risk reduction program in 1986 and, over 15 years, has succeeded in cutting pesticide use by 68%. The Swedish National Chemicals Inspectorate estimated a reduction in health risks of 77% during those 15 years.
(“Reduced Pesticides Accompanied by Reduced Health Risks” - “Pesticides in Swedish Agriculture 1986-2000,” Pesticide News #54, Dec. 2001, in Rachel Carson Council News (# no. 92), Winter 2001/2002)
Essential to the understanding of pesticide action is the dual nature of the chemicals’ toxicities. They have their intended effects on non-target life forms - for example: herbicides intended to kill weeds can damage tomato plants, insecticides intended to kill mosquitoes can decimate bee populations, etc. Since pesticides are released regularly into the environment, and because many (although classified as hazardous waste by the regulatory agencies) tend to be regarded as safe, and chemical pesticides have a killing function as well as other toxic traits, they represent a recurring, insidious, and insufficiently explored threat.
Pesticides effects on the ecosystem are not fully revealed by EPA-mandated tests. The real tests occur in the environment where exposures to many different species to combinations of pesticides and other contaminants take place.
(“Out of Control,” Pesticides Adrift, Rachel Carson Council, Inc., Oct. 2000)
Since pesticides cause primarily CNS (central nervous system: the brain and spinal cord) and other neurological symptoms, it is not surprising that pesticides are one of the main causes or contributors to the emergence of chemical sensitivity. They are the perpetrators of the perfect crime, as they are ubiquitous and generally odorless. They can cause insidious or delayed, yet progressive symptoms even weeks after an exposure, once the threshold for an individual’s tolerance is finally exceeded (Gershon 1961). If the pesticides’ innate toxicity (having been specifically designed as metabolic interrupters and neurotoxins, initially for chemical warfare) were not enough, many of the secondary metabolites (breakdown products) are even more toxic than the parent compounds.
Recall that if the body cannot handle a chemical, sometimes it shifts to a chemical pathway that actually creates a carcinogen or another dangerous chemical. Some of these are toxic enough to damage the system, sometimes permanently, and in many cases the damage continues to progress, even though there is no further exposure. But worst of all, by their very nature as toxic and highly reactive compounds, pesticides are unstable enough to make finding any identifiable metabolites nearly impossible. Hence, as stated, they make the perfect
crime.
(Booklet: “Chemical Sensitivities,” Sherry Rogers, M.D., recognized expert in Environmental Illnesses, 1995) Dr. Rogers calls us, the general public, the ”Self-Poisoners,” and warns us that we are exposing ourselves to a massive chemical assault that can wreck our health.
An hour’s exposure to a commonly used crop pesticide could render your immune system defenseless. This is a disturbing finding of a new laboratory study presented today at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Orlando, Fla. The research, conducted at Tennessee State University, found an ingredient commonly found in a fungicide used to protect potato, pecan and sugar beet crops and in a pesticide used to control Colorado beetles, that could cause irreversible damage to human killer cells - - the immune system’s first line of defense against cancer and viruses.
The cells that were exposed to the chemical Triphenyltin (TPT), were rendered almost helpless within hours after exposure, says chemistry professor Margaret Whelan, Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tenn., who oversaw the research (also contributing was Jacqueline Moline, M.D., associate professor of occupational and environmental medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City). Even after the immune cells were removed from the TPT and left to rest in a clean environment for 6 days, they couldn’t recover from the chemical assault, she adds. “In fact, the cells grew weaker after 6 days and were less able to fight cancer cells than they were an hour or two after the initial exposure.” After one hour, Whelan says the immune cells lost 50% to 60% of their tumor-fighting power. By the time 6 days had passed, their strength deteriorated further, down to 84%. The immune cells couldn’t destroy any leukemia cells, and the damage appeared to be permanent.
(“Pesticide Chemical Leaves Immune System Helpless, Lab study shows crop chemical dehabilitates human killer cells,” HealthScout.com/healthcentral - April 2002)
Manufacturers frequently withhold information about the ingredients in their product, using the claim that it is a trade secret, and even in the case of pesticides, where governments maintain closer oversight, it is impossible to obtain coherent data on the production of specific pesticides - the government figures available in the U.S. and elsewhere are limited and disjointed at best. (p. 136)
A study in Minnesota found several strong signs of a link between pesticide exposure and birth defects in that state’s farming regions and specifically implicated several endocrine-disrupting compounds including the herbicide 2,4-D in higher rates of abnormalities such as urogenital defects. The study found that children conceived in the spring, when herbicides are routinely applied, are at particular risk of birth defects. The researchers noted that birth defects occur at a much higher rate in the male offspring of those who apply pesticides than in the general population. Birth defects in the children of pesticide applicators in heavy-use areas increased at an additional one per hundred - a rate ten thousand times higher than the federal threshold for cancer effects. With cancer effects, a frequency of one per million prompts regulation. (p. 256)
Agent Orange was the mixture that contained the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the latter a chemical easily contaminated with dioxin during its manufacture. (p. 114) Veterans learned that Agent Orange had been contaminated with dioxin. (p. 114) Today the U.S. uses thirty times more synthetic pesticides than in 1945. In this same period, the killing power per pound of the chemicals used by 900,000 farms and 69 million households has increased tenfold. Pesticide use in the U.S. alone amounts to 2.2 billion pounds a year, roughly 8.8 pounds per capita. 35% of the food consumed in the U.S. has detectable pesticide residues, and the analytical methods used by the U.S. detect only one-third of the more than 600 pesticides in use. (p. 138)
Five billion pounds of pesticides alone are spread far and wide not only on agricultural fields but also in parks, schools, restaurants, supermarkets, homes and gardens. Few if any safety data exist for many of these chemicals, and the safety data that do exist are typically limited to whether the chemical causes cancer or gross birth defects. Possible effects on the endocrine system or transgenerational effects are rarely, if ever, examined. The suggestion is that humans may be exposed to far more hormone-disrupting chemicals than previously believed (such as plastic products), and that a combination of small amounts of hormone-disrupting chemicals showed pronounced proliferation even when there was no significant harm when exposed to each one separately. (p. 139/140)
Most of us carry several hundred persistent chemicals in our body, including many that have been identified at hormone disrupters, and we carry them at concentration several thousand times higher than the natural levels of free estrogen. (141)
The dose of toxins reaching the womb depends not only on what the mother takes in during pregnancy but on the persistent contaminants accumulated in the body fat up to that point in her lifetime. Women transfer this chemical store built up over decades to their children during gestation and during breast-feeding. (p. 212) We must limit what children are exposed to as they grow up and keep the toxic burden that women accumulate in their lifetimes prior to pregnancy as low as possible. Our day by day choices as consumers will have dramatic effects on exposure; know your water, choose your food intelligently, avoid unnecessary uses and exposure - never assume a pesticide is safe. (Chapter 12 - Defending Ourselves)
The casual use of pesticides around homes and gardens for frivolous, cosmetic purposes is risky and irresponsible. In the U.S., greater quantities of pesticides are applied per acre in the suburbs than on agricultural land, much of it to support the national obsession with green, weed-free lawns. Studies have found higher rates of cancer in children and dogs living in households that use pesticides in the home and garden. Make your own lawn pesticide-free and encourage your neighbors to do so, and if they persist in their use of pesticides, insist that they post their lawns at the time of treatment and keep your children and pets away. Lawn care services sometimes tell their customers that the pesticides used are “EPA approved.” The EPA has never screened most of the pesticides now on the market for hormone-disrupting activity, and the U.S. EPA registration is no measure of safety. In fact, chemical agencies register with the EPA precisely because a product is potentially harmful, and labeling reduces the legal liability of the manufacturer in lawsuits brought on by people who have been harmed by using the pesticide. Pesticides should only be used in genuine emergencies.
It is important to keep in mind that most pesticides are mixtures of active and “inert” ingredients, and some compounds used as inerts are recognized as endocrine disrupters. The pesticide labeling law unfortunately does not require manufacturers to list inert ingredients, and “trade secrets” allow them to avoid disclosure to customers, so you cannot tell by looking at a product label whether a pesticide contains an endocrine-disrupting ingredient. Golf course managers are reported to use four times more pesticide per acre than farmers do on food crops. (Chapter 12 - Defending Ourselves)
The burden of proof should be shifted to the chemical manufacturers; the current system assumes that chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. This is wrong - the burden of proof should work the other way. This presumption of innocence has time and again made people sick and damaged ecosystems (p. 219).
(From the book “Stolen Future” by Colborn, Dumanoski and Myers, 1997)
High in pesticides: strawberries (the most), U.S. cherries and apples, Mexican cantaloupes, Chilean grapes, blackberries, pears and raspberries and other fruit. Fresh foods that were the least contaminated included cauliflower, sweet potatoes, onions, corn, peas, carrots, and avocados. If funds are limited, buy organic strawberries and other fruits, and buy commercial vegetables from the less contaminated group. Another consideration regarding organic foods is that many health foods stock organic produce, but they spray pesticides inside the facility; pesticides migrate, negating the benefit.
(from the book, “Chemical Sensitivities,” Pamela Reed Gibson, M.D., 2000) (p. 80/81)
Not only are pesticides the number two cause of household poisonings in the U.S., but their use dramatically adds to our toxic load. Pesticides are stored in the fatty tissues of the body and are therefore able to accumulate to very high levels.
(Consumer advocate Debra Lynn Dadd, in her book “Home Safe Home: Protecting Yourself and Your Family from Everyday Toxics and Harmful Household Products, 1997)
According to William Rea, M.D., author of Chemical Sensitivities, modern technology put astronauts into space, but ironically, this very accomplishment called other so-called “advances” into question. Viewing the earth from space revealed that our blue planet, on closer inspection, was environmentally polluted. Dr. Rea wrote that the factors that influence the onset of chemical sensitivity are a total body toxic load and the nutritional state. Although some chemical exposure is the result of criminal negligence, more often it is because the public mistakenly believes that whatever is marketed has been proven safe. You can boost your immune system with proper supplementation, but beware because heavily advertised vitamins are full of artificial fillers, colorings, and preservatives. Doris Rapp, M.D., environmental specialist, recommends a program of cleansing and rebuilding the body in order to strengthen the immune system, remove toxicity, balance emotions and increase energy.
(“Multiple Chemical Sensitivity,” www.alternativemedicine.com - April 2002)
The organophosphate class of chemicals, which are the most commonly used pesticide and termiticide, can induce slow onset (pesticide induced) neuropathies, including Guillian-Barre syndrome. A high proportion of these patients exposed to these chemicals develop chemical sensitivities. The Apollo astronauts viewed the extent of the pollution when viewing the earth from space and stated, “man has fouled his nest and this must be corrected.” As the number of dangerous pollutants
continues to multiply, so do reports of the numbers of people sensitive to these contaminants. Cindy Duehring (in Environmental Access Research Network in an article called, “Screening for Nervous System Damage From Chemical Exposure”)
wrote that the most dangerous illusion that our society has brought forth, is the false
belief that the chemical ingredients in our everyday home and office consumer products have been tested for health effects.
(“Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, What It Is, What It Is Not, And How It Is Manifested,” presented at the concurrent session of the 1995 conference of the Association on Higher Education and Disability. Presented by Sheila Bastien, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist)
Many Americans ingest carcinogens in their drinking water. Every growing season, a portion of the millions of pounds of pesticides applied to crops wash off into waterways or seep deep into soil and end up in drinking water. A 1990 Environmental Protection Agency survey found that 10.4% of community water system wells and 4.2% of rural domestic wells contain one or more pesticides. Pesticides are generally not removed by the standard water treatment technologies used by most water companies.
(“Cancer and the Environment,” psrus.org - Physicians for Social Responsibility, April 2002)
Disturbing were the facts from two studies of indoor air contaminants conducted during the late 1980s in Jacksonville, Fla., and Springfield, Mass. In those places investigators found that indoor air contained at least five (but typically 10 or more) times higher concentrations of pesticides than outside air - and those residues included insecticides approved only for outdoor use. Such poisons can be tracked in on people’s shoes, or may seep through the soil as a gas into homes. In addition, people sometimes apply inappropriate pesticides directly to indoor surfaces, unaware that they are causing their own high exposures. And even the most enlightened homeowners are often ignorant of past applications of dangerous chemicals. Pesticides that break down within days outdoors may last for years in carpets, where they are protected from the degradation caused by sunlight and bacteria.
DDT was outlawed in 1972 because of its toxicity but researchers from the Southwest Research Institute found that 90 of the 362 Midwestern homes they examined in 1992 and 1993 had DDT in the carpets, and in half the households surveyed, the concentrations of seven toxic organic chemicals which cause cancer in animals (and thought to induce cancer in humans) were above the levels that would trigger a formal risk assessment for residual soil at a Superfund site.
The pesticides and volatile organic compounds found indoors cause perhaps 3,000 cases of cancer a year in the U.S., making these substances just as threatening to
nonsmokers as radon or secondhand tobacco smoke (“Everyday Exposure to Toxic Pollutants,” Scientific American, by Wayne Ott, and John W. Roberts, both of whom have long studied environmental threats to health) Ott served 30 years in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), managing research on air pollution, toxic substances and human exposure. He now does research at Stanford University. John Roberts helped to develop the service samplers used by the EPA to measure pollutants in carpet dust. In 1982 he founded Engineering Plus, a small firm in Seattle specializing in assessing and controlling exposure to dangerous pollutants in the home. He works frequently with the master home environmentalist program in Seattle to help reduce the exposure of families to indoor pollutants.
(www.sciam.com - 1998)
Of all the products listed, pesticides and cleaning products containing glycol ethers are of greatest concern. Pesticides are also of greatest concern because they have been documented in many cases to cause neurological and organ damage, and many people may be exposed to them without knowing it. This is especially troubling now that odor-masking agents are being added to pesticides, so the telltale odor of recent pesticide applications is no longer a reliable warning. Products containing glycol ethers are of concern because they are common to many cleaning products - glycol ethers have been shown to be far more damaging to the central nervous system than previously believed.
All public places are cleaned with surface cleaning agents, and often fragrances are used to deodorize or scent the air. Many public places are also frequently treated with pesticides. One study found high levels of pesticide chlorpyrifos in carpeting and other furnishings, including children’s toys, more than 10 years after the last time the product was used in the home!
Another complication is that an individual may be exposed to a pesticide and another irritating product at the same time. Pesticides have a tendency to alter how the liver, the primary organ for decontaminating the body, processes chemicals in the bloodstream. When this decontamination process is altered, then environmental chemicals that have made their way into the bloodstream may not be removed quickly enough to avoid some sort of toxic effect.
(“Make the Connection: Health & Environment,” www.herc.org - 2001)
Exposure to chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, were found to suffer twice the risk of what’s known as Lou Gehrig’s disease than those who never encounter these chemicals (American Journal of Epidemiology). This disease is called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that destroys the nerves that control muscles - there is no known cure.
(“Lou Gehrig’s Disease Linked to Pesticides and Fertilizer, Nutrition News, Energy Times, Sept. 1997)
The average American eats about 14 pounds of additives each year. Recent estimates suggest that each year there are 3,000,000 severe pesticide poisonings with 220,000 deaths worldwide. Pesticide-related illnesses in the U.S. are estimated to occur as many as 300,000 times a year.
(Pamphlet “Enjoy Vibrant Health in a Toxic World,” Dr. Paul Stangil, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2001)
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