Pesticide Blog – Dispatches from The Chemical Edge

It’s important to remember - and I need to remind myself every day - that though there are many bleak stories out there, there are also a lot of good ones. Today, I want to share a few of these and suggest, too, that if you’re looking for ways to bring about major reductions in … Continue reading Hey Kids, Try This At Home! (Good News In Pesticide Restriction) →

Create Your Own Campaign

Want to Ban Pesticides in your hometown? The Ecologist says this: “Achieving this will require communities to get active. The common feature behind all of the pesticide-free towns and villages that exist today is that they are the result of community action. Each local authority has only taken the step in response to pressure from its citizens.”

Getting involved or creating a campaign can be one of the most satisfying things a person can do – especially when the need is so strong and the rewards so high. In 2015 Pesticide Free UK launched a campaign that helps communities to build their own campaign. It can provide you with a step-by-step guide – useful for other countries too – to get a campaign started. Find that information, plus lots more reporting on international efforts, here.

Just How Bad Are Pesticides For You?

In 2004 and again in 2012, the Ontario College of Family Physicians did major literature reviews and came to conclusions that accelerated the movement across Canada to ban all cosmetic use of pesticides and then, to increase calls for reduction in agricultural settings too. You can read a summary of the 2012 study below, and you can download these studies here and here (pdf). Here are the principal findings of the review:

“Many of the studies reviewed by the Ontario College [of Family Physicians] show positive associations between pesticide exposure, across a wide age range, and deficits in child neurodevelopment, child and adult respiratory symptoms, and adverse reproductive outcomes. Some of these outcomes include:

Neurodevelopment

Children are experiencing various neurodevelopmental problems, starting as newborns and continuing throughout childhood, that are associated with prenatal pesticide exposure.

In newborns, signs of exposure include abnormal reflexes, deficits in attentiveness to stimuli and irritability.ⁱ

Children up to age three show consistent reductions in the Mental Development Index, part of a scale used to assess development in young children.ⁱⁱ

In older children, attention problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and reduced overall IQ are more common in children who had higher levels of pesticide exposure during their mother’s pregnancy. This can result in reduced school performance, increased behavioural problems, and reduced earnings in adulthood.ⁱⁱⁱ

Respiratory

There is evidence that exposure to pesticides is associated with the development of respiratory symptoms and some lung diseases.

In children, the findings point to an association between asthma and pesticide exposure, specifically maternal exposure during pregnancy.^iv

Large studies of male and female farm employees show increased risk of asthma and identify specific pesticides (including 2,4-D and glyphosate) and several insecticides that are most associated with this risk.^v

In adults, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is also associated with occupational exposure to pesticides.^vi

Reproductive

Pesticide exposure in utero has been associated with lower birth weight.^vii

Lower birth weight can be predictive of long-term problems later in life, such as diabetes and heart disease.^vii

One study from New York City found a significant increase in the birth weights of infants born after a household ban on two insecticides frequently used indoors.^ix This helps illustrate the possible health benefit of pesticide bans within a few years of implementation.

Children and pesticides

Children are particularly vulnerable to pesticides.
Physiologically they are less well equipped than adults to withstand pesticide exposure.
Their skin is more permeable so the chemicals pass through more easily.
They take in more air, water and food relative to their body weight and
Their systems for dealing with toxins are less well-developed and so less able to prevent damage.
Children live lower to the ground, and hence are at greater risk: crawling or playing in areas treated with pesticides, or putting contaminated objects in their mouths makes them more prone to exposure.
In spite of these well-known risks, pesticides are used in areas where children spend a lot of their time like parks, playgrounds and even schools.

Pesticides are a frequent, often devastating, culprit in chemical sensitivity

And – P.S. – it is well known among chemical sensitivity experts that pesticides are a major contributor to the development and deterioration of that condition. It may well be that a significant part of the discrepancy in statistics of prevalence of chemical sensitivity between Canada and the U.S. is down to the widespread ban on pesticides in most Canadian municipalities.