Doris J. Rapp, M.D.
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 A study was conducted on 32 Chinese men working in a pesticide factory who had been exposed to organophos-phates, such as the herbicide, parathion. These workers showed excessive sperm abnormalities and decreased testosterone.181
Farmers and pesticide sprayers similarly have been reported to have impaired sperm.102a,b
The basic challenge again is to determine if large or miniscule amounts of pesticides or chemicals can be harmful or dangerous to adults or unborn infants. (See Chapter I. |
| One study showed that farmers exposed to the herbicide 2,4-D had sperm that were less active, less able to swim, more deformed and fewer in number than non-exposed farmers.2711,1,47
• Another study showed 2,4-D, in the most minute concentrations can pass into a female during intercourse and go directly into the fertilized egg.125,147 This means from the moment of fertilization, it is possible for a chemical that can damage the brain, nervous, immune, endocrine and reproductive systems to be present. Should we be worried? |
| Developmental Toxicity of a Commercial herbicide Mixture in Mice: I. Effects on Embryo Implantation and Litter Size," Environmental Health Perspectives, November 2002: 110 (11).
97 Ashford, N. and C. Miller, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes. 1998. Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY. S52.50.
98 Williams, Rose Marie, "Dioxin, The Universal Toxin," Part 1. Townsend Letter, April 2001, pp. 158-60.
99 Rachel's Environment and Health Biweekly, "Here We Go Again," September 14, 2000 (708).
100 Biology of the Neonate, November 2000: 78, 269-276. |
| In addition, the herbicide 2,4-D was found in the urine of 20% of the children, even though it is extremely short lived in the body. This implies that one in five children had been exposed to this pesticide shortly before their urine was collected for analysis.73a'b
• Another study found 92% of 89 school children had traces of chlorpyrifos (Dursban®) in their uririe.8'lla,b'59'61'91'93""c
• One study in Arizona found 100% of 40 children had detectable levels of chlorpyrifos (Dursban®) in their urine. |
| There is evidence that hand-spraying of the herbicide car-baryl not only triples the farmer's blood levels of this chemical, but their spouses and children double their urine excretion of this chemical.165'167 This suggests that farm family members are possibly contaminated not only when they are outside but also from the inside because of open windows and doors.176a'b (See Chapter 1 for more details on carbaryl.)
Residents near organophosphate sprayed fields have evidence of changes in their blood, as well as symptoms that required visits to an infirmary. |
Earl L. Mindell, RPh, PhD with Virginia Hopkins, MA
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| The Doctor's Guide to Vitamin B6 (Rodale Press, 1984), other causes of vitamin B6 depletion include the chemical hydrazine, found in rocket and jet fuel and cigarette smoke; isoni-azid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis; hydralazine, a prescription drug used to treat high blood pressure; the antidepressant phenelzine; the herbicide maleic hydrazide; the deadly chemical pollutants PCBs; and possibly rancid unsaturated vegetable oils.
Once carpal tunnel gets established in the nerves of the wrist, it is very difficult to treat. |
Marion Nestle
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 Roundup generates billions of dollars in annual sales, and Monsanto benefits twice; it sells the herbicide and the seeds for the crops that resist it. The company's studies show that Roundup Ready soybeans survive when doused with the chemical, and are as nutritious when fed to rats as conventional soybeans.35 Whether the use of Roundup is environmentally beneficial is, of course, a debatable issue. |
Dr. Cass Ingram
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 Herbicide poisoning (see Pesticide/herbicide poisoning) Herpes (see Cold sores, Genital herpes, Shingles)
High blood pressure attack
High blood pressure, known medically as hypertension, is a common disease, but only in Westernized countries. Diet is a major factor in the cause of this disease. In other words, what an individual eats and drinks is directly related to creating high blood pressure. While the role of diet is immense, the primary cause is a mere beverage: alcohol. In my clinic fully 40% of all high blood pressure patients were social, or, more rarely, heavy drinkers. |
Earth RightH. Patricia Hynes
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| Herbicide used to control broadleaf weeds in agriculture, used on forests, range, pastures, and aquatic environments.
.01 herbicide, canceled in 1984.
.005 Insecticide used on cotton, corn, grain.
.005 Fuel (leaking tanks), solvents commonly used in manufacture of industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, paints, and plastics.
.005 Common in cleaning agents and industrial wastes from manufacture of coolants.
.075 Used in insecticides, moth balls, and air deodorizers.
.005 Used in manufacture of insecticides.
.007 Used in manufacture of plastics, dyes, perfumes, paints, and SOCs. |
| Insecticide used on fruit trees, vegetables.
. 1 herbicide used to control broadleaf weeds in agriculture, used on forests, range, pastures, and aquatic environments.
.01 herbicide, canceled in 1984.
.005 Insecticide used on cotton, corn, grain.
.005 Fuel (leaking tanks), solvents commonly used in manufacture of industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, paints, and plastics.
.005 Common in cleaning agents and industrial wastes from manufacture of coolants.
.075 Used in insecticides, moth balls, and air deodorizers.
.005 Used in manufacture of insecticides.
. |
Walter Last
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 Paraquat, a common herbicide, and maneb, a common fungicide, did not affect mice that were exposed to either one of them. However, when the chemicals were used together, dopamine neurons (brain cells needed to regulate voluntary muscle movements) began to die at low exposure levels or at only a fraction of what is normally regarded as toxic. Ongoing exposure leads to progressive neurotoxicity. There are many combinations of low-level toxic residues in our food and water, and no one knows what health effects they can produce. However, one can speculate. |
Earth RightH. Patricia Hynes
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| As farmers eliminate the easy-to-kill weeds with an herbicide, more dif-ficult-to-control weeds are becoming prevalent, causing an upward spiral in herbicide use.
GROUNDWATER_
For decades, on the advice of chemical companies, farmers thought that pesticides would bind to the soil or break down into harmless chemicals. Either way, the thinking ran, they would not migrate from the location where they were applied. |
Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton
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 A chemical that is toxic to plants and is commonly used as a weed killer. hormones Natural substances that act as internal messengers in our bodies. They are released from one part of our bodies and then carried around in the body fluids to another part, which they then stimulate. hypertension Persistently high blood pressure. Currently accepted threshold levels are 140 for systolic and 90 for diastolic pressure. inflammatory bowel disease Diseases that cause irritation and ulcers in the intestinal tract. Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common inflammatory bowel diseases. |
Earth RightH. Patricia Hynes
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| As farmers eliminate the easy-to-kill weeds with an herbicide, more dif-ficult-to-control weeds are becoming prevalent, causing an upward spiral in herbicide use.
GROUNDWATER_
For decades, on the advice of chemical companies, farmers thought that pesticides would bind to the soil or break down into harmless chemicals. Either way, the thinking ran, they would not migrate from the location where they were applied. |
Earl L. Mindell, RPh, PhD with Virginia Hopkins, MA
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| Don't take it for granted that just because you buy a pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, cleaning solvent, paint, or other chemical from the hardware store it's safe. The industries that use these substances are largely unregulated. There are literally thousands of these products on the shelves that have never been tested for safety. |
Doris J. Rapp, M.D.
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| D and 2,4,5-T are two herbicide chemicals that continue to be used on lawns and by many farmers in the United States. These chemicals also have been implicated in the increased incidence of cancer, especially lymphoma tumors. (See Chapter 6.) In Calgary, Canada they are no longer allowed to use this spray in the city because it is believed that this chemical can cause genetic changes and abnormalities, as well as cancer in mammals." In addition, it is thought to be toxic for the unborn child and it can damage the liver and kidney, as well as the immune and central nervous systems. |
Marion Nestle
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| EPA officials revealed the consequences of the regulatory gap, however, when they explained that monitoring of herbicide resistance is not a federal responsibility: "It is the developer of the product that has the interest in assuring that resistance does not build up."29 These early reports on environmental risks were based on single studies and needed further confirmation, but others soon followed. For example, preliminary studies showed that bees and other beneficial insects die when exposed to the Bt toxin, but certain harmful moths and tobacco budworms resist it. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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 Roundup, which is Monsanto's brand name for glyphosate, is the world's best-selling herbicide. Its patent was due to expire in 2000. To prevent a
* Roundup Ready® and Roundup® are a registered trademarks of Monsanto Company. huge loss in market share, Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready crops. Now when farmers buy the GM seeds, they sign a contract requiring them to use only Monsanto's brand, or one of their licensees.
In 1996, Monsanto scientists published a feeding study that purported to test their soybeans' effect on rats, catfish, chicken, and cows. |
D. Lindsey Berkson
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 The principal banned use of the herbicide at the girl's school, but her symptoms continued when she competed at other places that used the herbicide. She went on to college, kept competing, and continued to experience breakthrough bleeding. One of her teammates reported vaginal bleeding after meets at golf courses (which are kept lush and green through heavy pesticide use).
Women's Health Conditions
There are a number of women's health conditions that we know are related to hormones and, therefore, by extension, are possibly related to hormone-disrupting chemicals in the body. Dr. |
Peter Pringle
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 The company's canola plant had an alien gene that made it resistant to Monsanto's popular herbicide Roundup.
Unknown to Schmeiser, private investigators working for Monsanto's seed police had taken seed samples from his 1998 canola crop, had them analyzed, and reported to the company's St. Louis headquarters that more than 90 percent of Schmeiser s crop consisted of Monsanto's Roundup Ready canola seeds. In the company's book, Schmeiser looked suspiciously like another seed thief. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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| In Missouri, plants dropped their cotton bolls; others died on contact with the herbicide they were supposedly engineered to tolerate. In Texas, up to 50 percent of the Bt cotton failed to provide the predicted level of insecticide and "numerous farmers had problems with germination, uneven growth, lower yield and other problems."4
• Scientists who genetically modified yeast to increase its fermentation were shocked to discover that it also increased levels of a naturally occurring toxin by 40 to 200 times. |
| About 75 percent of these crops are engineered to withstand otherwise deadly applications of an herbicide, 17 percent produce their own insecticide, and 8 percent are engineered to do both. There are also hundreds of foods produced with genetically engineered cooking agents, food additives, and enzymes, as well as varieties of GM squash and papaya. And there are dairy products from cows injected with a GM bovine growth hormone. All these are sold without labels identifying them as GMOs.
The regulations in the U.S. are so lax, there are no required pre-market safety tests. |
| Canola plants in Canada, for example, ended up with foreign genes from two different companies, each conferring tolerance to its own brand of herbicide.
Stacked genes and their proteins may interact in dangerous ways. Traditional pesticides illustrate this principle. When they are mixed with other pesticides or chemicals, their strength can be multiplied. "Compounds that enhance the activity of pesticides are not uncommon. |
| The gene, derived from bacteria, allowed the soy plant to survive high concentrations of Monsanto's herbicide called Roundup. To the company's surprise, they discovered that there were two additional gene fragments that had been inserted into the soy DNA accidentally.
According to Sue Mayer, director of the independent research group Genewatch, "These results demonstrate that genetic modification is a clumsy process, not precise as is often claimed. There is no control over how many genes, in what order, or where they are inserted. |
The Life Extension Editorial Staff
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 Paraquat (a common herbicide) and Maneb (a common fungicide) did not affect mice that were exposed to either one of them. However, when both chemicals were combined, the dopamine neurons started to die at rather low exposure levels—at only a fraction of the levels normally regarded as toxic. Ongoing exposure led to progressive neurotoxicity. There are countless combinations of low-level toxic residues in our food and water. The possible effects to our health produced by these low-level toxic residues are unknown. |
Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
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 Fortunately, the manufacturing division that was to make this herbicide closed down before it went to market. Chemically it is related to the dangerous herbicide Paraquat, which has been shown to kill cells by producing enormous amounts of free radicals, which consume all of the cell's antioxidants. MPP+ forms far fewer free radicals.
What makes the MPTP story interesting is that there are many compounds found in nature that have a similar chemical structure. The part of the MPTP molecule that appears to be necessary for producing Parkinson's disease is also found in many plants. |
D. Lindsey Berkson
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| Only meats and poultry labeled Certified Organic are guaranteed to be pesticide, herbicide, and drug free.
Free-range—In the best case, free-range means the animals are allowed to roam on ground that has never been sprayed with chemicals and they are monitored from birth to make sure they have no chemical residues. Whereas organic farms may have 500 chickens to an acre, "free range" in some commercial lots may refer to an open pen of 50,000 birds in the same building with access to barren fenced yards. Too many birds in one space will fight, so they are debeaked. |
Sandra Steingraber
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 The hoe was fast on its way to becoming obsolete.
The graphical picture of pesticide use in the United States closely resembles the graphs of synthetic chemical production: a long, gentle rise between 1850 and 1945 and then, like the side of a mesa rising from the desert, the lines shoot up. Insecticide use begins ascending first; herbicide use closely follows. The line for fungicide use rises more gradually. |
| For example, there is one maximum contaminant level for the herbicide atrazine (3 parts per billion) and another for the dry-cleaning fluid perchloroethylene (5 parts per billion). The maximum contaminant level for PCBs is 0.5 parts per billion, while those for the banned pesticide chlordane and the PVC feedstock vinyl chloride each stand at 2 parts per billion. The legal limit for the phthalate plasticizer DEFfP is 6 parts per billion.
As with food tolerances, these numbers have been arrived at through a compromise between public safety and economics. |
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