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Round Up the Chemicals – For Our Children’s Sake
When I was pregnant with my second son, born in 1998, I was living out in the country in a small house next to my parents’ bigger house. My son was born in late August, and all through that third trimester I spent a lot of time outside.
"Allowing Monsanto, Dow and the other agricultural chemical companies to continue to profit from poisoning our land and our food supply is absolutely unconscionable," writes Browdy de Hernandez. (Photo: commondreams.org)
In those years, my mother had the habit of having her pebble driveway sprayed with Round-up a few times during the summer to keep the grass and weeds at bay. Since the pebbles came right up by the front door of our little house, the Round-up was there too. I complained to her that it was toxic, bad for our pets, not to mention us, but it took many years for her to pay enough attention to this issue to rate health more highly than a neat appearance for the driveway.
I was thinking about this today as I read the news that finally, at long last, the medical research establishment is beginning to go public in announcing the link between the use of Round-up, skyrocketing rates of autism among children, and colony collapse disorder among bees.
My mother will remember that when my second son was born, we began to worry about him when, by his second and third month of life, he was still not making eye contact, and not returning a smile. He was a sweet, calm baby who slept and ate well, and loved to be cuddled…but unlike his older brother, who was laughing and smiling in his first month, he had a curious detachment about him that was unsettling.
Just like everyone knows someone with cancer, everyone knows someone who has had the hardship of bringing up an autistic child. It’s a heartbreaker, and in those early months with my second son I was truly frightened that I might be in for that kind of ride with him.
And then, just like that, he started to smile, make eye contact, and all was well.
Could it be that his development was delayed because of the local spraying of Round-up during the last months of my pregnancy with him?
Recent research suggests that this is quite possible indeed.
It’s common knowledge that the Monsantos and Dows of the world use their immense fortune to suppress negative research when at all possible.
But at this point, with our bee population in serious crisis and the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) telling us that 1 in 88 children is now diagnosed with autism (a figure that does not include all the many, many children who are diagnosed “on the spectrum” with some form of mental impairment), it is impossible for the corporate honchos to keep the lid on this story any longer.
It is an international scandal, bigger even than the Big Tobacco scandals of a generation ago, because in this case there is no way that a defense team could argue that it is a child’s choice to expose herself to toxic chemicals.
France, Germany, Italy and other European countries have already taken steps to ban these harmful pesticides and herbicides. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, finally acting under extreme pressure from concerned citizens, is in the process of “reconsidering” its approval for “Poncho,” one of the most dangerous pesticides, proven to have a negative impact on bees.
Dr. Brian Moench, President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists this week had the courage to defy Big Ag and describe—I believe for the first time—the missing link between bee colony collapse disorder, human autism, and widespread toxic chemical use in agriculture.
In an article published Monday on Common Dreams, Dr. Moench wrote: “The brain of insects is the intended target of these insecticides. They disrupt the bees homing behavior and their ability to return to the hive, kind of like “bee autism.” But insects are different than humans, right? Human and insect nerve cells share the same basic biologic infrastructure. Chemicals that interrupt electrical impulses in insect nerves will do the same to humans. But humans are much bigger than insects and the doses to humans are miniscule, right?
“During critical first trimester development a human is no bigger than an insect so there is every reason to believe that pesticides could wreak havoc with the developing brain of a human embryo. But human embryos aren’t out in corn fields being sprayed with insecticides, are they? A recent study showed that every human tested had the world’s best selling pesticide, Roundup, detectable in their urine at concentrations between five and twenty times the level considered safe for drinking water.”
Just down the road from the house where I lived while pregnant with my second son are fields of corn that are maintained by a local farmer. It’s nowhere near the scale of agriculture in the Midwest or California, but still, if the wind was blowing while they were spraying the herbicides and pesticides in the spring, or while they were harvesting the corn in the fall, we would certainly be inhaling a toxic brew that undoubtedly found its way into our well water.
And that’s beside the voluntary Round-up spraying of the driveway, and the fact that in those days I was not aware enough to be making a strong effort to buy organic fruits and vegetables, and avoid commercial meat.
So all in all I must consider myself and my family very lucky to have so far avoided autism or cancer.
This should not be left to luck. Allowing Monsanto, Dow and the other agricultural chemical companies to continue to profit from poisoning our land and our food supply is absolutely unconscionable.
It’s even worse than allowing the cigarette industry to advertise to young people, which we no longer permit.
The bees are the canaries in the gold mine, and they’re dropping fast.
Are we going to delay until the statistics tell us that 1 in 50 children in the U.S. are born autistic?
This is a national and international outrage that must be addressed now.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllThe list of problems we should solve for our children's sake is long, overwhelming, guilt-inducing and just turns people off. This is how they have continued poisoning us for over 50 years now. Rachel Carson created a temporary blip in public sentiment that has been overcome resulting in the empty legacy of Earth Day. Every day should be Earth Day. Every time we designate a special day, week or month to a good cause, it has become a testimony to how little is actually done. Same goes for our War on Drugs, Poverty, Terror etc. Petitions are signed, given lip service and ignored. Doing the right thing doesn't seem to be reason enough anymore.
The energy-extracting industries, war industry, and industrial polluters all count on campaign financing to keep the lawmakers quiet. Their efforts are backed up by ALEC and its high-paid Public Relations Ph.Ds who dominate media with purposely evasive, when not elaborately twisted messaging... and much of the time the public is left in the dark. The new favorite meme is that "the science is unproven," or still under study/research, ad nauseum.
For THREE years I've reminded C.D. readers how the Presumption of Innocence works to protect a community of trespassers. The more chemicals these reprobate industries toss into our air, water and soil... the harder it becomes to establish unreasonable doubt where legal culpability is concerned.
Meanwhile, the PR machine goes to work on the Tea Party mentality to convince them that government is bad, and that ANY government intervention (in this case by protecting public health through long-overdue regulations) is a threat to business and therefore sure to reduce jobs (in a time when the economy is hurting).
So long as big money funds ALEC and big money owns the mainstream media, any truth that gets out will likely be as tainted as the crops we ingest. These sociopaths who ONLY regard profit as a goal worth pursuing treat human welfare like a lottery. Who will get the winning number in the form of the next child with Autism? The next 6 year old with Leukemia?
Our nation demonstrates a sick homage to Mammon (For profit-only interests) and Mars (the make-war state), and the lack of interest in human health is a byproduct of the false gods the elites worship... while guiding millions towards these altars of false sacrifice.
Republican from Oregon and owner of bi-coastal media Greg walden wants the EPA to back off so the orchardists in the Columbia river gorge can spray more chemicals for a better profit margin. He obviously thinks their profits are worth more than the birds and bees and fish in the Columbia river. Everything in the gorge runs off back to the river. Those pesky tree hugging liberals don't want our crop spraying planes to dust their houses, damn them, and who needs bees, won't these orchards pollinate themselves, we can buy more bees!
Good points by Siouxrose and RCallaghan. There were two things that I thought of while reading this disturbing article that I felt I had to share. The first was that there was no mention of the high sterility rate linked to men and women in North America these days despite numerous acdemic studies taht have shown an large increase in the sterility of male adults (it is harder to study females for sterility) that are directly linked to Big Ag. The second thing I thought of his that Bif Ag learned a valuable lesson since Upton Sinclair released his damning expose of the meat industry in Chicago at the turn of the last century which resulted in a 50% reduction in meat consumption in the US the following year. The point is if the truth reaches the general public, the results can be substantial. However Corporate America has learned how to parry such accusations today with aplomb and the result is that we live in ignorant times. Whether its the reasons we go to war, the benefits of GM foods or the necessity for John Q Public to take another one on the chin for 'America', most people don't have the luxury of a modern day Upton Sinclair reaching them.
Good post back at you, S.C. As to the sterility rate, it's probably Mother Nature's way of gently reducing population numbers. In studies with rats, if the population numbers go up too high, murder, homosexuality, and other means emerge to bring the levels down. Yeah, with rats, too!
Telling people how these wrongs affect them personally - that's the most effective strategy, I've always found.
Why are there so many gender-confused young people? Hormone-disrupting pesticides and other toxins in our food and water which act on the fetus so the poor little critter doesn't get the proper dose of estrogen or testosterone at exactly the right time.
We've known for years that male babies are being born with tiny penises (too much estrogen-mimicking chemical exposure in utero) and being mistaken for and raised as girls.
Too much estrogen-like exposure in girl babies leads to endometriosis, that is, uterine tissue scattered throughout the abdominal cavity, swelling and bleeding each month at menstruation.
Some little boys are being born with holes in their small penises so the urine drips out - it's common enough to have a name - hypospadias. Also from hormone-disrupting chemicals.
I'm not sure what it will take, but I do know that informing the populace with op-eds and hand-outs on the street do work towards getting people aware of the problem, and suggesting actions they can take is even better.
One important action is to NOT use herbicides/pesticides on stupid lawns or anywhere on their property or in the house. There are clean methods to rid ourselves of all unwanted plants or critters. (Google for clean alternatives to pesticides.)
We need to reach a viable mass of the populace who are angry about these outrages, and who will speak out against our continued poisoning - especially because it's only for little green pieces of paper for Wall Street..
Clean earth: I'd heard of genital anomalies in frogs and amphibians, but nothing in the league of what you've posted. Are there any links to substantiate these findings? I'd think the "700 Club" would be up in arms on this matter! It's fascinating that the anti-abortion crowd might be galvanized to fight for EPA regulations, given their homage of the sacred fetus and what it's up against in today's chemical warfare settings.
There is some research along these lines, but not surprisingly, there's little funding to determine outcomes from endocrine disruptors.
I've done some research and writing, and work with a group that did a study among sons exposed to DES in utero, finding a number of sexual developmental issues.
See: http://www.antijen.org/transadvocate/id18.html, and in particular, "The Presence of Gender Dysphoria, Transsexualism, and Disorders of Sexual Differentiation in Males Prenatally Exposed to Diethylstilbestrol: Initial Evidence from a 5-Year Study," which is linked on the same page. My thesis, which examines evidence suggesting transsexualism is an unacknowledged endpoint of in utero EDC exposure, is also linked there. This line of evidence is also discussed in Deborah Rudacille's book The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights. http://www.amazon.com/Riddle-Gender-Science-Activism-Transgender/dp/0375421629
More recent research has shown sexual developmental changes related to phthalates, specifically what is known as anogenital distance. Similar changes were observed in animal experiments, so they had a good idea what they were looking for. See: Decrease in Anogenital Distance among Male Infants with Prenatal Phthalate Exposure, available at: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.8100
There was a paper published maybe a decade ago that tried to make an estimate of the fraction of the US population that could be considered intersex, and came up with a grand total of about 2%. See http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency for some figures. Of course, this implies that the frequency is constant, but if these sorts of outcomes can be induced by endocrine disruptors (and there is good evidence in support of such a thesis), then the rate is increasing, not staying constant.
BPA is tied to the early onset of Puberty which is now trending towards 10 years old for females.
Aspartame we have known was a TOXIN when it first intorduced iand initially rejected by the FDA . When a number of hi-profile political types learned its rejection would devalue their stock holdings a person friendlier to Chemical Industry was appointed to heads the FDA. He left almost as soon as it approved to work for the firm that held its patent.
This all happned 30+ years ago and it STILL used today. I can only wonder if an anger towards the chemical industry can EVER gain the traction needed to start reining those bastards in. (espeically with that media control of what information IS released to the public)
Thanks for bringing up BPA. Also, there are millions of assorted chemical combinations that may very well cause harm. It would take forever to test all the possibilities. Far too many people fixate too much on only herbicides, insecticides, and gm technology. We ingest thousands of chemicals through skin exposure and into our lungs. Some people are so crazy as to rub chemicals on their underarms so they don't stink. Go ahead, pretend there's nothing harmful in there. Especially if you live in the city, make sure you always wear a high quality canister-type air mask. You can not be too careful. Oh, and by the way, many republicans want to get rid of the EPA. But, golly gee, there's no difference between republicans and democrats, is there?
Cleanearth:
I’ve always been a fan of Helen Caldicott’s method of organic weed control: Hands and knees – the windfall being exercise for your health.
In my previous neighborhood, I was fortunate to back onto a river as well as several conservation areas with an abundance of green spaces that surrounded the community. Lawn maintenance was mostly contracted out as was weed control. Myself along with one other, refused to use herbicides of any kind; thus, we invoked “multiculturalism” in the literal sense for our lawns and it was amazing to see the diversity of wild flowers and plants that grows when you let things go wild. The butterflies in my yard were plentiful especially in the late summer along with a wide variety of birds which is in stark contrast to where I'm presently living. Here, the municipality sprays our green spaces with herbicides to control mosquitoes and West Nile Virus. Kind of reminded me of the multiple choice exams at school that had more that one correct answers but chose the one that would give you the mark. Some of our environmental solutions are so simple that it's hard to equate their efficacy only in terms of the bottom line.
I truly believed from the nineties and onward we would be reaping the fruits of a green revolution with new modes of thinking and environmentally sustainable products with our Earth Mother in mind; it was a real let down when in reality it went in its linear opposite.
But some here ( GR) insist Roundup increases crop yields thus profits! Whats a few dead bees and babies born with Autism when there MONEY to be made?
I think MOST people here are aware that these links to Roundup and other such chemicals have been known for years. I have read studies and claims of its harm to the environment for decades. My cousins that farm in North Albeerta have refused to use it because of its toxicity..
People like to pretend that the studies "Not conclusive" because their own greed gets in the way. Look to any person posting here advocating nuclear power, the use of pesticides and herbicdies, the claim there no man caused Global warming, that DU Munitions are harmless and chances are 99 out of 100 they are personally PROFITING off the same. They are not "Men of science" or "dispassionate obeservers trying to calm the hysteria in pursuit of the truth". They are pofiteers.
Watch for 20 years of claims that "The science not conclusive".
Isn't there good money to be made in treating autism? There must be a host of lobbies protecting that turf (properly RU sprayed turf at that).
Good point. Sounds like the birth of a whole new industry and social movement. Lotteries and marathons for the cure and the like. Check out Pink Ribbon Inc..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2035599/
While there is no shortage of historic accounts of corporate irresponsibility comments such as "common knowledge" and "quite possible indeed" hardly establish an irrefutable connection. This squishy science and unlikely to convince anyone not already there. You can do better.
More and more average W. Europeans are demanding that their governments protect them from both the worst pesticides and from GMO's.
Most EU nations, plus the EU executive authority itself, have therefore found it politically viable to adopt legal regs that require independent or government-conducted safety testing of obvious or suspected toxins, plus adoption of regs which specifically prohibit regulatory agencies from relying exclusively on industry-conducted safety testing for the legal setting of exposure standards.
For now, there's no similarly. broad based demand by average US citizens for their federal government to tighten either health effects testing procedures or exposure regs. In fact, most EPA PEL standards for pesticides in the US are still based on health-effects data submitted to government from industry lab tests alone. In other words, unlike in Europe, the US pesticide industry still basically regulates itself RE matters of human and environmental health -- with the US government's official blessing.
One thing that urban people in the US can do, and are beginning to do in the face of this faux regulatory madness, is to act locally to get their municipal governing bodies to establish local PEL's (permissible exposure limits) based on EU PEL's and on supporting EU-vetted health data; and to, at minimum, demand public warning-signage notifications for all private and public outdoor applications of all EPA-registered pesticides/herbicides/insecticides/rodenticides, etc.
EPA product registration, BTW, does not confer any 'safety approval' whatsoever.
It took me and my fellow activists about four years to get at least a mandatory warning sign ordinance passed in my urban area, and we were fought every step of the way by big industry lawyers and industry bought-off scientists coming to town to testify against the proposed law--- the corporate reps all the while making political alliances with our local chamber of commerce Randians and with more than few, local nutcase Libertarian "theorists."
In the course of the public debate in my locale (an urban area of about 120,000 people in a western state), my fellow city folk also got educated about how dangerous many pesticides really are (via the more-objective EU data), plus how corrupt the US EPA testing and regulatory protocols really are.
Our next step is to push for a local ordinance on PEL's, based on the same peer-reviewed, internationally-accredited health data that the Europeans are using, and which we used to get the warning sign ordinance passed and sustained in court..
So far, every court action (local, state district and federal district) mounted against my city's local Pesticide Warning-sign ordinance-- by Dow, Monsanto and other big corporate guns plus the local 'free-market' extremists-- has been dismissed on either Constitutional and/or Evidentiary grounds, and we activists expect that any local PEL ordinance we now get adopted in addition, stands a good chance of being upheld for the same reasons as the warning ordinance has been..
These are still only tiny local steps taken against huge national and international industries and their locally hypnotized defenders, I know.. But steps like these are spreading successfully elsewhere in the US, bit by bit.
Check out, among others, the websites of: 'Our Toxic Times' and 'Beyond Pesticides' for more info about what average local people can do in this connection.
Good posts by everyone...I finally have gotten around to re-reading Silent Spring after many years,and it is a chilling foretelling of what is slowly deforming and killing us today. The issue of early- onset puberty particularly disturbs me, as does the loss of bees by the score. Don't listen to the lies of Monsanto or Dow! They are slick propagandists and their "Round-Up" poison has wreaked havoc on our food supply.
"It’s common knowledge that the Monsantos and Dows of the world use their immense fortune to suppress negative research when at all possible"
They aren't using immense fortunes. Immense fortunes is a phrase that lends legitimacy to their rackets, for even the peasant rakes in an immense fortune relative to that of an ant's. And the peasant would have to let the monster korporation keep its immense fortune so that the peasant may keep his.
Instead of immense fortunes, the monsters are using the LIBERAL AGENDA to suppress negative research. It is the liberal agenda which was concocted and implemented to create the potential for "immense fortunes", and to contaminate most forms of good with "extra baggage", to confuse and enslave the people, thereby making it far easier for elites to siphon the people's energy, to build... "immense fortunes" for themselves.
We the people are connecting cause and effect as part of our connecting all that is good into the great sphere of good, and all that is bad into the great sphere of bad, and keeping good/bad disconnected as common sense would have it. We are THRILLED with our newfound enlightenment, and the grand implications - they're mind-boggling.
Immense fortunes never committed a crime. Liberals, human beings with confused priorities, the top tier with mega-egos run amok, are the criminals, who committed the crime of plotting to confuse the people, to enslave the people to klass hierarchy, power hierarchy, the great poverty/privilege gradient that makes the liberal ego salivate like pavlov's dog, for the "immense fortune". Konservatives are their evil twins, as they need mates in the big scheme, to reproduce, both needed, neither standing alone. Do the math, and you'll see for yourself.
But the people are warming up to the idea today that when they butt the liberal establishment aside, they can have it all, universal enlightenment, solidarity, equity, and justice. And the people are reaching for their nirvana, now. Solutions to all problems in one holistic sphere of good.