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• "Pesticides pose special concerns to children because of their high metabolisms and low body weights. More than 1 million children between the ages of 1 and 5 ingest at least 15 pesticides every day from fruits and vegetables. More than 600,000 of these children eat a dose of organophosphate insecticides that the federal government considers unsafe, and 61,000 eat doses that exceed benchmark levels by a factor of 10 or more."
  Source: Food for Thought: The Case for Reforming Farm Programs to Preserve the Environment and Help Family Farmers, Ranchers and Foresters, pages 12-13, www.environmentaldefense.org/pubs/Reports. Original source: Environmental Working Group, "Overexposed: Organophosphate Insecticides in Children’s Food," 1998, pp. 1-3.
• "Our children are born with a deposit of pesticides and other foreign chemicals in their bodies, caused by a shift of maternal pesticide ‘body burden’ through the placenta; after birth, children ‘inherit’ further load through breastfeeding. Pesticides have a cumulative multigenerational destructive impact on human health, especially behavior. Pesticides are a serious threat to the physical, emotional and mental development of children and future generations," according to a report from the Environmental Illness Society of Canada. Presented to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, the report called for a moratorium on pesticide use for cosmetic purposes. It noted: "Once released into the environment, the spread of pesticides cannot be controlled. Radioactively traced pesticides sprayed over in the United Kingdom were detected five to seven days later in the southern USA. Traces of insecticides used in tropical areas were detected in Arctic trees. Global air currents, hurricanes, etc., can transport pesticides and other chemicals even to the other hemisphere." Als "Pesticides and other pollutants can interfere with proper sexual differentiation; they can also cause other birth defects and multigenerational health problems, such as allergies, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity and cancer in the individual, that individual’s offspring, and subsequent generations." In addition: "A Canadian-USA study detected pesticides in the amniotic fluid in one-third of human pregnancies."
  Source: Pesticides: Their Multigenerational Cumulative Destructive Impact on Health, Especially on the Physical, Emotional and Mental Development of Children and of Future Generations—Canadian Government Responsibilities and Opportunities, February 2000, Environmental Illness Society of Canada, www.eisc.ca/pesticide_moratorium.html.
• A National Cancer Institute researcher who matched pesticide data and medical records in 10 California agricultural counties reported that pregnant women living within nine miles of farms where pesticides are sprayed on fields may have increased risk of losing an unborn baby to birth defects.
  Source: National Coalition against the Misuse of Pesticides Technical Report newsletter, April 2001.
• "Exposure to pesticides can cause a range of ill effects in humans, from relatively mild effects such as headaches, fatigue, and nausea, to more serious effects such as cancer and neurological disorders. In 1999, EPA estimated that nationwide there were at least 10,000 to 20,000 physician-diagnosed pesticide illnesses and injuries per year in farm work. Environmental effects are evident in the findings of the U.S. Geological Survey, which reported in 1999 that more than 90 percent of water and fish samples from streams and about 50 percent of all sampled wells contained one or more pesticides. The concern about pesticides in water is especially acute in agricultural areas, where most pesticides are used."
  Source: Agricultural Pesticides: Management Improvements Needed to Further Promote Integrated Pest Management, General Accounting Office [GAO-01-815, Page 4, August 2001].
• A study, financed by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council, has concluded that the combination of soil erosion, pollution and inadequate diet is affecting the intelligence of millions of people in the developing world, with effects ranging from severe intellectual disabilities to "sub-clinical decline" in whole populations. The report notes that Green Revolution crops produce several times as much grain as the traditional varieties they replaced, thus dramatically increasing food supplies. However, unlike their predecessors, the new crops fail to take up minerals such as iron and zinc from the soil.
  Source: The Environmental Threat to Human Intelligence, by Christopher Williams, a study funded by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council in its Global Environmental Change Programme, April 24, 2000
• U.S. consumers can experience up to 70 daily exposures to residues from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) through their diets, according to a report from the Pesticide Action Network North America. The use of POPs is not allowed in organic agriculture. The top ten POP-contaminated food items, in alphabetical order, are butter, cantaloupe, cucumbers/pickles, meatloaf, peanuts, popcorn, radishes, spinach, summer squash, and winter squash. The two most pervasive POPs in food are dieldrin and DDE. Source: Nowhere to Hide: Persistent Toxic Chemicals in the U.S. Food Supply, Pesticide Action Network North America, 2000, www.panna.org.
• A study to assess preschool children’s organophosphorus pesticide exposure in the Seattle Metropolitan area made an interesting discovery: the only child whose urine contained no measurable pesticide metabolites lives in a family that buys exclusively organic produce and does not use any pesticides at home. In the study conducted by the University of Washington Department of Environmental Health, urine samples were collected from 96 children during the spring and fall. In the study, 83 children had at least one measurable dialkylphosphate (DAP) metabolite in the spring sampling, while 88 had at least one measurable DAP metabolite in the fall sampling. Only 1 child—the one whose parents bought exclusively organic produce--had no metabolites in both samples. Children living in households with a garden had significantly higher diethyl DAP concentrations than those without a garden, and those where garden pesticide use was reported had significantly higher diethyl and dimethyl DAP levels. In fact, there was an association between reported residential pesticide use and elevated DAP metabolite concentrations.
  Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 109, No. 3, March 2001 (pp. 299-303, C. Lu, D.E. Knutson, J. Fisker-Andersen, and R.A. Fenske, "Biological Monitoring Survey of Organophosphorus Pesticide Exposure among Preschool Children in the Seattle Metropolitan area").
• A National Academy of Sciences study suggested that one out of four developmental and behavioral problems in children may be linked to genetic and environmental factors, including exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides.
  Source: Scientific Frontiers in Developmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, 2000.
• "Government tests show that red raspberries, strawberries, apples, and peaches grown in the United States and cantaloupe from Mexico are the foods most contaminated with pesticides. The fruits least contaminated with pesticides were watermelon, bananas, kiwi, pineapple, and domestically grown cantaloupe. The least contaminated vegetables include corn, onions and peas. Organic is the safest choice of all."
  Source: Environmental Working Group press release, Feb. 25, 1999, concerning "How ‘Bout Them Apples? Pesticides in Children’s Food Ten Years After Alar."

Organic Trade Association, July 2002.

 

Why Children May be Especially Sensitive to Pesticides

Babies and children are especially sensitive to health risks posed by pesticides for several reasons:

• their internal organs are still developing and maturing,

• in relation to their body weight, infants and children eat and drink more than adults, possibly increasing their exposure to pesticides in food and water.

• certain behaviors--such as playing on floors or lawns or putting objects in their mouths--increase a child's exposure to pesticides used in clothing, homes and yards.

Pesticides may harm a developing child by blocking the absorption of important food nutrients necessary for normal healthy growth. Another way pesticides may cause harm is if a child's excretory system is not fully developed, the body may not fully remove pesticides. Also, there are "critical periods" in human development when exposure to a toxin can permanently alter the way an individual's biological system operates.

Birth Defects Higher in Babies Born to Families
Living near Farming Areas using Pesticides

SOURCE:  Environmental Health Perspectives
Volume 111(9):1259-1264, July, 2003

Babies born to families living near wheat growing agricultural areas using chemical pesticides have been found to have a 65% greater risk of having birth defects related to the circulatory/respiratory system.  The pesticide category believed to be the culprit is known as chlorophenoxy herbicides that contain the chemical 2,4-D.   Chlorophenoxy herbicides are used to kill a variety of weeds and are also commonly used by city and county maintenance departments for grass and weed control along roads, canals etc.  Other conclusions of the study found there was over a 100% increase in respiratory/circulatory birth defects in babies if heart malformations were excluded.  When looking at musculoskeletal/intergumental anomalies for both sexes in the high-wheat growing counties, there was a 50% increased risk of these types of defects.  Infant deaths for male babies (from congenital anomalies related to the birth defects) was over 2.5 times higher than normal.  Scientists also found that infants conceived from April-June (the time of primary pesticide application) had a 75% increased risk of being diagnosed with birth defects - compared to birth defect rates for conception during other times of the year. 

In conclusion, the scientists stated - "These results are especially of concern because of widespread use of chlorphenoxy herbicides."

Dina M. Schreinemachers
National Health and Environmental effects Research Laboratory
Office of Research and Development
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina