The Need for Change
Pesticides are unique chemicals specially designed to kill living things. They’re used generally to kill the things we don’t want—pests—including insects, molds, fungi, weedy plants, rodents, bacteria, and viruses. Unfortunately, pesticides are indiscriminate and seep into our soil, water, food, and bodies. There are many things we don’t know about how our use of and exposure to pesticides affects living systems. What we do know is that many pesticides cause cancer, interfere with healthy reproduction, are especially damaging to children, and have devastating effects on salmon and other living things. Enormous quantities—hundreds of millions of pounds—of these poisons are used every year on our food, parks, and lawns. In Washington state alone, over 37 million pounds of pesticides are used each year on cropland.
Cancer
Nearly half of the most commonly used pesticides are proven to be carcinogenic, or cancer-causing. The EPA is currently classifying which pesticides are carcinogenic, and so far has evaluated about 250 of the more than 800 that are in use. Of the 26 most widely used pesticides in the U.S., 12 are classified as carcinogens by the EPA. Over 380 million pounds of these 12 cancer-causing pesticides are intentionally applied to our environment every year in the U.S.
Reproduction
Seventeen of the 26 most commonly used pesticides in the U.S.—about 600 million pounds per year—cause negative effects on reproduction in men and women. In men, they cause sperm abnormalities, reduce sperm production, disrupt male hormones, and damage reproductive organs. This can lead to prematurity, birth defects, and decreased fertility. In women, overexposure to these pesticides causes decreased pregnancy, miscarriages, increased rates of infant mortality, and low birth weights.
Children
Pound for pound, children not only have higher exposure to pesticides than adults do, but also are more vulnerable—their developing systems are more susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of pesticides. Pesticides have been linked to child leukemia, brain cancer, and brain disorders. In its 1993 report “Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children,” the National Research Council found that over 143,000 two-year olds in the U.S. consume organophosphates (a class of neurotoxic pesticides) in amounts above the EPA’s acceptable level, and that many consume ten times as much.
Salmon
Widespread pesticide contamination of the Pacific Northwest’s lakes, rivers, and streams is a major threat to salmon. The myriad effects of pesticides on the complex ecosystem required for healthy salmon are both direct and subtle: pesticides affect salmon’s ability to reproduce, reduce their food supply, and even kill them directly.
How did we get in this mess?
1. Pesticides don’t solve pest problems. While pesticides are often very effective at killing pests, they do not solve pest problems—they don’t address the conditions that attract pests and enable them to thrive. Consequently, pesticides must continue to be used in an ever-cyclical effort to reduce pest populations. But since many pests have short life cycles, they are highly adaptable, often requiring more applications and kinds of pesticides to “manage” the problem. If pesticides really solved pest problems, we wouldn’t need the 4.5 billion pounds of more than 800 different pesticides used in the U.S. each year.
2. Pesticide regulation is full of loopholes. The U.S. EPA has the legal authority to regulate pesticides so that they “will not generally cause unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.” And, while newer federal law established higher standards for hazardous chemicals used on food, many pesticides in use today have not been retested under these newer standards. Plus, testing protocols completely ignore effects of multiple pesticides, and many tests are never performed due to “conditional” waivers. And still, many of the pesticides tested and registered under the newer standards (since 1997) are shown by the EPA to cause cancer, birth defects, genetic damage, and a variety of other ills.
3. Conflicts of interest abound. Pesticide manufacturers are in the business of selling chemical products, and have no incentive to provide solutions to pest problems. Monsanto and Syngenta, the two giants in the industry, each made more than a billion dollars in profit in 2000 just from the sale of pesticides and related products. Executives are compensated not by their companies’ ability to eliminate the conditions that allow pests to thrive, but by increasing revenue and profit from product sales, which is generally achieved by increasing volume. The more pesticides needed, the better. Worse, U.S. pesticide law—and its agent, the EPA—stipulates that the manufacturers themselves perform (or pay for) the testing used to regulate their own products.
What about fertilizers?
Fertilizers help things grow - what’s sinister about that? Until July 1997, when the Seattle Times broke the story, no one but those in the fertilizer and a handful of other polluting industries knew. What the story turned up was that steel, paper, and other pollution-intensive industries were incorporating toxic waste in fertilizer and spreading it on croplands to avoid the cost of hazardous waste disposal. The result is that heavy metals—lead, cadmium, mercury—and other toxins like arsenic and dioxins have been building up in our food, soil, and waterways for decades because of this common practice.
What broke the story was that after absorbing tens of thousands of pounds of fertilizer over the years, the soil and water in Quincy, Washington, was so overburdened with toxins that crops were failing and livestock were dying. Local farmers and citizens wanted to know what was going on. Immense public outcry convinced Washington State to pass a law curbing the problem (as have Oregon and California), but the legislation is weak and long-term damage to soil and waterways has not been adequately addressed. For details, see the authoritative Washington Toxics Coalition website on this issue.