It has long been known that agricultural poisons, pesticides and herbicides, are also poisons for man. Farmers who use them get sick of more cancer and neurological diseases as well the peasants’ children get sick more, with cancer and congenital malformations. Neurological disorders include Parkinson’s diseasemainly responsible for the herbicide Paraquat, the herbicide Maneb, the insecticide Rotenone and organochlorines, neuropsychiatric disorders and organophosphorus polyneuropathy, nerve gas convulsions, studied for chemical warfare and today used as insecticides, herbicides and pesticides.
Exposure to pesticides and herbicides
There is a suspicion that exposure to pesticides impairs children’s brain development. Prenatal or childhood exposure is strongly suspected to be a cause of autism. A large study conducted in California compared 2961 people diagnosed with autism and 35,370 controls (i.e. healthy people of the same sex and age) in relation to the quantities of 11 pesticides spread over the two kilometers of surface around the residence of the pregnant mother and in the first years of the child’s life. All pesticides were found to be suspect, but a particularly strong correlation was found for exposure to glyphosate and avermectin. Maternal exposure to pesticides for agricultural work has also been associated with an increased risk, on the order of 30 percent, of urogenital malformations in sons (hypospadias).
The risks
Farmers exposed to pesticides get more cancersespecially non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, myeloma and prostate cancer, but also ovarian, kidney and bladder tumors, soft tissue sarcomas, leukemia and brain tumors (the latter also in children of exposed farmers). The cancers that increase the most in farmers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, have been associated with herbicides (phenoxyacids and glyphosate) and organochlorinated and organophosphorus insecticides. Until a few years ago we didn’t know how much the small traces of pesticides that remain on the foods we eat damage our health. In the early 1990s, when we recruited 500,000 people for the EPIC project, very few people ate organic, and it didn’t make much sense to include organic questions in food questionnaires.
The organic
Today, however, studies can be done, because organic has grown a lot and about 10-20 percent of people eat mostly organic. The first study, conducted in France, recruited 100,000 people via the web who periodically compile a diary of what they ate during the day, also noting the brand of the products and whether they were organic or not. After 4 years the results were sensational: 25% less cancer in those who eat organic, but for non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, the cancers that increase most in people who are occupationally exposed to pesticides, the protection is 84 percent. A second study, conducted in the United States on workers in the health sector (137,000 women and 23,000 men), used statistics from the Department of Agriculture on the pesticide content of various vegetables and fruits in various years and in various seasons to classify food questionnaires of the participants according to the number of portions consumed of presumably highly contaminated fruit and vegetables and the number of portions of presumably slightly contaminated fruit and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables
Overall, fruit consumption was protective, but not the consumption of contaminated fruit. On the other hand, with the increase in the consumption of non- or slightly contaminated fruit and vegetables, total mortality is reduced by 36 percent (for 4 or more portions a day), cardiovascular mortality by 30 per cent, cancer by 19 per cent, respiratory diseases by 38 per cent, other causes of death by 44 per cent. In short, pesticides deprive us of the benefit of fruit and vegetables for our health. It’s time to change and return to agriculture that respects the earth and man. And don’t listen to the deniers, to the mystifiers who still maintain the fable that without pesticides the world could not be fed, and to the defeatists who say that it is impossible to change, that even organic products are contaminated (certainly possible, but very much less than the conventional), which is food for the rich, for snobs.
Costs
Organic certainly costs more than conventional food, but if we avoid processed foods, ready-to-eat foods, and buy foods to cook (wholemeal cereals and flours, legumes, seasonal and local fruit and vegetables, oil, coffee … and occasionally an animal food) the cost is modest. I did an experiment by buying only food to cook for 15 days in the shop belonging to a well-known organic chain which is located on my doorstep in the center of Milan, a city where prices are certainly not cheap. Taking into account the cost of the food I already had at home, I bought products for breakfast, lunch, dinner and some snacks and I spent 5 euros a day. Let’s go back to the kitchen and eat real food, without poisons. We cook for our children! Let us not leave them at the mercy of industrial agriculture and an unscrupulous food industry!