Decades after Silent Spring, pesticides remain a menace

[nosmokes]

original-Grist Magazine

*Chemically Dependent*
Decades after Silent Spring, pesticides remain a menace -- especially to farmworkers
By Tom Philpott
18 Oct 2006
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her landmark Silent Spring, which documented the ravages of agricultural pesticides, particularly DDT, on wildlife. The book inspired wide outrage and helped spark the modern environmental movement. It eventually led to a (now-controversial) ban on DDT. But since then, use of other pesticides has boomed.


According to a USDA report, between 1964 and 1982, pesticide use in the U.S. jumped by a factor of almost three, peaking at nearly 600 million pounds annually. The USDA is shockingly casual about releasing current pesticide statistics. The freshest data I can find show pesticide use hovering at 500 million pounds in 2002 -- more than double the 1964 level.

This annual avalanche of toxins onto our crops and soils has been accompanied by mounting evidence of their ill effects on public health -- particularly that of farmers and farmworkers. The latest entry: a study from Canada showing that women who had worked on farms were nearly three times as likely as other women to develop breast cancer.

The Agricultural Health Study, a joint venture of several public-health agencies, has revealed direct links between chemical-intensive farming and both prostate cancer and retinal degeneration. A link has also been established between pesticide use and Parkinson's disease.
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complete article including links to other sourceshere

[KT2000]

1. Health care crisis

One of the reasons we have a health care crisis is that too many people are sick!

I find it so ironic that to get a drug, I need to get a note from my doctor and go to a pharmacist who counsels me in proper usage and includes warning labels all over the bottle. But my neighbor is entitled to gas me with toxic chemicals on a daily basis.

Most of these chemicals are inadequately tested, are not proven safe, are declared safe on the assumption that the one exposure in a lifetime of no other exposures. Ridiculous.

Our exposure to these chemicals is based on obsurd criteria that just does not exist in real life. We are all being played for fools.