We must get rid of pesticides in the food supply: exposure to these deadly chemicals can cause cancer, birth defects, and neurological damage - effect of parathion and other pesticides

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1993 by Al Meyerhoff

JOSE CAMPOS MARTINEZ never really had a chance. He had been wearing a "space suit"--goggles, gloves, boots, and a breathing apparatus. Yet, when working in the fields of California in 1991, exposure to a minute amount of the pesticide parathion brought nearly instantaneous paralysis. His brother put him in the back of a pickup truck and rushed him to the county fire station. However, Martinez went into convulsions and died on the way, leaving a widow and eight-month-old daughter.

Martinez's death is no aberration. The hazards of parathion, initially developed by the Nazis as a chemical warfare agent during World War II, repeatedly have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which found that "under the most stringent protected conditions, and during use when in accordance with label directions, little or no margin of safety exists." During the years that the EPA kept records, 560 people were reported poisoned by parathion; 461 were hospitalized and 99 died. Yet, typical of the failure of the Federal pesticide regulatory regime, this powerful neurotoxin remains on the market 50 years after it was developed.

Americans are told that pesticides are safe. So each year more than 2,000,000 pounds of these poisons are added to the environment. If put in 100-pound sacks and laid end to end, they would encircle the planet. Where do they go?

* The EPA estimates that one out of every 10 public drinking water wells in the U.S. contains pesticides, as well as more than 440,000 rural private wells. At a minimum, over 1,300,000 people drink water contaminated with one or more of these dangerous chemicals.

* Pesticides have been found in thousands of lakes, rivers, and waterways throughout the nation. Agriculture is the number-one source of surface water pollution in the U.S.

* According to the Food and Drug Administration's national market basket survey, at least 38% of the food supply contains pesticide residues. This probably underestimates the actual amount because routine laboratory tests can detect fewer than one-half of the pesticides applied to food. Many items sampled had more than one pesticide; some as many as 12.

* The bugs are winning. When Silent Spring was published in 1962, sounding the alarm about pesticides, 137 species of insects were resistant to these chemicals. Now, it is closer to 500 species.

In June, 1993, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its long-awaited report on the health hazards posed to infants and young children from exposure to pesticides in the food supply. The Academy stated that "[M] any pesticides are harmful to the environment and are known or suspected to be toxic to humans. They can produce a wide range of adverse effects on human health that include acute neurologic toxicity, cancer, reproductive dysfunction, and possible dysfunction of the immune and endocrine systems." It also found that "pesticide residues are widespread in the U.S. diet. They are consumed regularly by most Americans, including infants and children."

Among the NAS's critical findings, existing pesticide policies do not protect the young adequately, instead treating kids as "little adults." Unique dietary patterns are ignored, although they result in far greater exposure to multiple pesticides in food, by body weight, than occur in the adult population. The NAS expressed particular concern over children's dietary exposure to neurotoxins--pesticides like parathion.

Worries over pesticides and their special risks to children are well-founded. Experimental tests in lab animals have found the young to be more vulnerable than adults to the toxic effects of many chemicals simply because their bodies still are developing. Children tend to retain a greater portion of a given dose of certain toxins than adults and are not as capable of detoxifying them in their bodies. They are at greater risk from neurotoxins since the nervous system in an infant or young child has not developed fully yet. Finally, there is a greater risk of developing cancer if exposure to carcinogens begins during infancy, rather than later in life. This is because youngsters are believed to be more susceptible to carcinogenesis since cells are dividing rapidly during childhood, and the cancer process occurs at the cellular level, through mutations.

At the same time that knowledge has increased over the adverse health effects of pesticides, especially those posed to kids, their use in the U.S. has soared dramatically. In 30 years, conventional pesticide use has doubled from 500,000,000 to more than 1,000,000,000 pounds annually, representing one-third of the world market. Total pesticide use in 1991 (including wood preservants and disinfectants) exceeded 2,000,000,000 pounds. More than 900,000 farms and 70,000,000 households make use of pesticides. During the Reagan Administration, the head of the EPA's Pesticide Division said: "Pesticides dwarf the other environmental risks the Agency deals with. Toxic waste dumps may affect a few thousand people who live around them. But virtually everyone is exposed to pesticides."