January 09, 2004

By: Jane Quinn
Website: http://www.1st-in-mosquito-control.com

Contaminated without consent: New findings – pesticide poisoning of people

A leading cancer expert claims that pesticides are the top environmental suspect for increases in the disease. Speaking at last week’s PAN conference, Prof Belpomme said that ’while previously tobacco was thought to account for a third of malignancies we have concluded it causes no more than 15 per cent: Other environmental factors are at work.’

At next Wednesday’s Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture, Sandra Steingraber, an international expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health, will say:  ‘When our environment is contaminated with toxic chemicals, so too are we. The simple biological truth of toxic trespass raises human rights questions of the most fundamental sort.’

Everyone now has a cocktail of poisonous chemicals in their bodies. A test has revealed 20 pesticides and other contaminants in the body tissue of six volunteers from PAN UK. The laboratory described residue levels in five of the six of those tested as ‘significant’, ‘well above background’ or ‘above background’.

There is also new alarm about a very commonly used herbicide, Roundup (glyphosate). Speaking last week at the PAN conference, expert endocrinologist, Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini presented a new study showing that the product Roundup (in formulation) is more toxic than glyphosate alone. He says: ’Roundup has some hormonal perturbating (disrupting) effects. These … could account for sperm decline, increase in sexual malformations, and an increase in cancers.

In her lecture, Sandra Steingraber will raise the questions:  “Who benefits from the ongoing dependencies of our industrial and agricultural systems on chemicals with suspected links to cancer, birth defects, and brain damage?  Who pays the price?  What are the responsibilities of governments to prevent harm and compel the transformation toward a non-toxic economy?  And what are our responsibilities as individual citizens.

PAN UK is running a right to know campaign to ensure people know what pesticides are being used and when. They want the government to make it mandatory for pesticide users to give the public advance warning, and put up signs in fields near houses and where there are rights of way. They also want food labelling to show which pesticides were used in its production.

Also see: making your own garlic mosquito pesticides

Author Notes:

Jane Quinn contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.1st-in-mosquito-control.com.  Find mosquito control products, repellent sprays, traps, netting and other alternative measures for protection.