French farmers speaking out about illnesses caused by pesticides

Farmers in France are winning court cases on illnesses caused by the use of pesticides. Long a taboo subject within the farming community, they are speaking increasingly openly about this potentially lethal pollution, says Claire Le Nestour.
Read article at euractiv.com

Chile stands up against Monsanto

"On March 21, the Chilean Transparency Council stood with its citizenry against Monsanto and other global seed corporations to protect Chileans' right to know about genetically engineered (GE) crops. The Council's decision ensures that farmers, beekeepers and rural residents can find out exactly where GE crops are planted — basic information that is critically important as they seek to protect their farms, apiaries and families from toxic pesticide drift and contamination by pollen from GE plants."
Read article on the Pesticide Action Network North America website

EU food is still heavily contaminated with dangerous pesticides.

The 2009 EU report on pesticide residues, published today by EFSA, shows food on the European market is still heavily contaminated with cocktails of pesticides. The percentage of EU food in shops and markets with multiple residues remains at a high level of 25.1%, meaning only a slight improvement in the last 5 years of reporting. The highest reported number of pesticide residues in one food item remains at 26: One sample analysed in the Netherlands (raisins from Turkey) with 26 different pesticides!
Read press release at pan-europe.info

The Gates Foundation prioritises GM development projects

The Gates Foundation prioritises GM development projects and promotes fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid seeds to small African farmers through bodies such as African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and projects like Harvest Plus that benefit big business rather than promoting proven, low-cost solutions to tackling hunger by sustainable farming.

"As the world population reaches 7 billion GM Freeze says in a new report published today that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s policy on agricultural development to tackle hunger is “swimming against a tide of informed opinion”. The report reveals the Gates Foundation has allocated over 40% of its committed research expenditure from 2005 to 2011 on projects involving risky “silver bullet” GM technology."
Read news release at GM Freeze.

Asian rice output at risk from overuse of pesticides

The unbridled manufacture and use of pesticides in Asia is raising the spectre of "pest storms" devastating the region's rice farms and threatening food security, scientists have warned.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

Government should recommend organic foods

The Organic Trade Association (OTA) is calling on the US Government to revise national dietary guidelines to encourage people seeking to minimize their exposure to toxic chemicals to choose organic. The call comes just weeks after a report from the influential President’s Cancer Panel said that eating foods grown without pesticides was one practical way to reduce environmental cancer risk. The report added that exposure to antibiotics and growth hormones could be similarly “minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications.”
Read article in Natural Products magazine (UK)

Pesticides linked to bee decline, say environmental groups

Government and retailers are under pressure to impose a ban on sale of pesticides linked to bee population decline following new research which groups call a 'growing body of evidence'
Environmental groups including the Soil Association and Buglife are making a renewed call for an end to the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, which are among the most commonly used pesticides worldwide, after a new study linked them to a decline in bee in bee populations.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)

High Pesticide Levels in NZ Fruit and Vegetables

The levels of pesticide residue present in New Zealand fruit and vegetables, shown in a recently released study, are the worst ever, say pro-organic food lobby groups.
Read article in the New Zealand Herald (New Zealand)

Non-organic produce that is highest in pesticides

If you're eating non-organic celery today, you may be ingesting 67 pesticides with it, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group.
Read article and watch video at cnn.com

If you are concerned about the use of pesticides and about their negative impact on health and the environment

If you are concerned about the use of pesticides and about their negative impact on health and the environment, then you may be interested in this Soil Association webpage.

Pity about the'unacceptable' levels of pesticides in supermarket fruit and veg...

Pity about the'unacceptable' levels of pesticides in supermarket fruit and veg... See Telegraph report. - And a pity the Food Standards Agency, with its divided loyalties, seeks to downplay this:

Extracts from the article: "The Food Standards Agency insisted the illegal levels did not necessarily mean that the food was unsafe to eat, and pointed out that the overall levels of pesticides in food had fallen over the last year. In 2007 1.8 per cent of food had illegal levels; 2008 it had fallen to 1.2 per cent." "Emma Hockridge, policy co-ordinator at the Soil Association, said: "Unbelievably we learn yet again that pesticides are turning up in fruit and vegetables supplied to schoolchildren. Yet again the government tells us this is nothing to be worried about.

"Yet we know that children’s exposure and susceptibility to pesticides is likely to be higher as per body weight they ingest more food and drink than adults and their bodies' ability to process and excrete any such residues is different to that of adults."

I reckon organic fruit and veg must be safer, though of course, it also costs more.

“Growing evidence” of a link between pesticides and Parkinson’s.

The Telegraph reports that using pesticides in your job increases your risk of developing Parkinson's. Thus gardeners and farmers are three times as likely to get this illness.

Two common pesticides when combined may increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease

Read article at environmentalhealthnews.org (USA)

Some toxic pesticides banned in Europe

Sharp restrictions on the use of pesticides, passed by the European Parliament on Tuesday 13 January, will see the use of a number of highly toxic chemicals within pesticides banned and pesticide use severely reduced.
Read article at euobserver.com

As a result of Georgina Downs' campaign, people in the countryside at risk from crop sprays must be given better protection, the High Court has ruled.

Crop sprays a risk to health, rules High Court
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"the Government has been ordered to "rethink" its policies on pesticides so that human health is given more priority.

The ruling by Mr Justice Collins is a landmark victory for Georgina Downs who launched a one-woman campaign after her own health was damaged by crop spraying.

She argued that the Government had ignored evidence that agricultural chemicals damaged the health of people who - like herself - lived close to crop fields.

In his ruling the judge said Miss Downs had produced "strong" evidence to back her case and granted her application for a judicial review.

He said the Government had failed to meet its obligations under EU law to protect rural residents and communities from the possible harmful exposure to pesticides.

Miss Downs, whose home near Chichester, West Sussex, borders crop fields, launched her independent UK Pesticides Campaign in 2001.

Last month her campaigning against the unrestricted use of pesticides earned her a Woman of the Year award.

She had claimed that the Government based its decisions on an assumption that people suffered only occasional and short-term exposure.

Miss Downs said the Government had failed to address countryside residents such as herself, "who are repeatedly exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other chemicals throughout every year, and in many cases, like mine, for decades".

She told the court that she had collected evidence that agricultural chemicals caused a variety of health problems including cancer, Parkinson's disease, ME and asthma.

And she claimed that under current rules local people were not even entitled to a warning about what was being sprayed near their homes and gardens."

High levels of melamine, the chemical in the China milk scandal, have been discovered in Hong Kong in eggs from the mainland.

China milk scandal spreads to eggs
Article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"The authorities on the island said that the eggs contained twice the legal limit of melamine, an industrial chemical which made over 50,000 infants ill and killed four when it was discovered in powdered baby milk over the summer.

Melamine, which is more commonly found in plastics, was added by unscrupulous traders to "bulk up" milk and make it appear richer in protein.

However, the chemical triggers the formation of kidney stones."

"Hong Kong has started testing meat and vegetables coming from the mainland. One theory is that the chickens may have eaten feed contaminated with the chemical.

It has also emerged that cyromazine, a derivative of melamine, is widely used in pesticides and animal feed. This could have been absorbed and pass upwards through the food chain.

"As we have found melamine in eggs, we shall also test chicken meat and we shall also look at offal, for example chicken kidneys and pig kidneys," said Mr Chow."

"In Japan, a major food producer announced a recall of 2.7 million pizzas and packs of sausages after it discovered three times the government limit of cyanide in its water supply. Itoham Foods put advertisements in national newspapers apologising for the contamination. Last Friday, the country's largest maker of instant noodles, Nissin, recalled its Cup Noodle line after a woman was taken ill with insecticide poisoning."

Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths

I have copied the following item from The Dr. Rath Health Foundation Newsletter

Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths
The Soil Association has urged the government to ban pesticides linked to honeybee deaths around the world. The chemicals are widely used in UK agriculture but have been banned as a precaution in four other European countries. Last week the Italian government issued an immediate suspension after it accepted that the pesticides were implicated in killing honeybees, joining France, Germany and Slovenia.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Germany suspended sales of the pesticides in May of this year after 700 beekeepers along the Rhine reported that two-thirds of their bees had died following the application of clothianidin. In France, imidacloprid has been banned on sunflowers since 1999 and as a sweetcorn treatment since 2003, after a third of honeybees were wiped out. Imidacloprid and clothianidin are produced by a division of the chemical manufacturer Bayer.

Children exposed to pesticide in womb twice as likely to be overweight, refuting idea of sole personal responsibility. (Geoffrey Lean, IoS)

Pollution can make you fat, study claims
Report by Geoffrey Lean in the Independent on Sunday

Extracts:

"Pollution can make children fat, startling new research shows. A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that exposure to a range of common chemicals before birth sets up a baby to grow up stout, thus helping to drive the worldwide obesity epidemic.

The results of the study, just published – the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with one of the developing world's greatest and fastest-growing health crises – carry huge potential implications for public policy around the globe. They undermine recent strictures from the Conservative leader, David Cameron, that blame solely the obese for their own condition.

A quarter of all British adults and a fifth of children are obese – four times as many as 30 years ago. And so are at least 300 million people worldwide. The main explanation is that they are consuming more calories than they burn. But there is growing evidence that diet and lack of exercise, though critical, cannot alone explain the rapid growth of the epidemic."

"Experiments have shown that many chemicals fed to pregnant animals cause their offspring to grow up obese. These include organotins, long employed in antifouling paints on ships and now widely found in fish; bisphenol A (BPA), used in baby bottles and to line cans of food, among countless other applications; and phthalates, found in cosmetics, shampoos, plastics to wrap food, and in a host of other everyday products.

These pollutants – dubbed "obesogens" as a result of these findings – are so ubiquitous that almost everyone now has them in their bodies. Ninety-five per cent of Americans excrete BPA in their urine; 90 per cent of babies have been found to be exposed to phthalates in the womb; and every umbilical cord analysed in the new Spanish study was found to contain organchlorine pesticides such as HCB."

"Dr Pete Myers, one of the world's leading experts on obesogens, told The Independent on Sunday last night: "This is very important. It is the first good study of the effects on the foetus. Its conclusions are not surprising, given what we know from the animal experiments, but it firmly links such chemicals to the biggest challenge facing public health today.""

I think we can probably trust the actual findings of the study because it is unlikely that it was funded by the pharmaceutical industry. (It is wise never to trust research funded by Big Pharma.) - What we need always to be sceptical about are the conclusions drawn from research, because these conclusions are often based on false premises/assumptions/beliefs/prejudices/self-interest.

There are a number of false assumptions in this report, the main one being contained in this statement: "Everyone agrees that people gain weight by taking in more calories in their food than they burn off through everyday activities and exercise." - The truth is that the calorie explanation of weight gain is untrue. -

OBESITY IS CAUSED BY FLUID RETENTION/SODIUM RETENTION/SALT SENSITIVITY, NOT BY EXCESS CALORIES OR BY INSUFFICIENT EXERCISE. And fluid retention frequently leads to FAT RETENTION.

Fluid retention has a number of contributory causes, to which we should perhaps now add foetal exposure to pollutants. - The good news is that whatever the contributory causes of any individual's obesity, there is a fast, safe, sure way to reduce/prevent it, namely AVOID SALT AND SALTY FOOD AND AVOID PRESCRIPTION DRUGS UNLESS THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND TAKE THEM IN THE LOWEST EFFECTIVE DOSE AND FOR THE SHORTEST PERIOD OF TIME NECESSARY.

The main causes of salt sensitivity are

1) prescription drugs, mainly steroids, HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications,

anti-psychotics and antidepressants,

but also including many painkillers

2) eating salt and salty food in childhood

3) dieting, i.e. eating insufficient food

4) high levels of oestrogen and eating salty food during pregnancy

5) high levels of oestrogen and other drug residues in our drinking water supply

6) depletion of the body's calcium, magnesium and potassium levels, and vitamin D deficiency

7) eating insufficent fruit and vegetables

The first three are the most important in terms of the numbers of people harmed and the severity of the harm.

Obesity is on the increase mainly because doctors are recklessly prescribing more and more drugs, often in recklessly high doses and constantly give obese people the catastrophically harmful advice to "just eat less and exercise more". - This advice does not reduce obesity; it usually increases obesity because it further weakens the walls of the blood vessels, thus leading to greater fluid retention and malnutrition.

There is further and fuller information on my website. If you need more explanation I can be contacted from my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

See advice for pregnant mothers

Many conventional wines are "systematically contaminated with pesticides"

Many leading brand wines on sale in the European Union are "systematically contaminated with pesticide residues, concludes a new report published by Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe. PAN Europe, together with NGOs from Austria, France and Germany, recently carried out an investigation of 40 different wines purchased inside the EU - including some premium wines from world famous vineyards. 100% of conventional wines in the analysis were found to contain pesticides, with one bottle containing 10 different pesticides. On average each wine sample contained over four pesticides. Of the 24 different pesticide contaminants found in the samples tested, five are classified as being carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic or endocrine disrupting by the European Union.
Read article on the Natural Products Online website (UK)

There is strong evidence that exposure to pesticides significantly increases the risk of Parkinson's disease, experts believe.

Link between Parkinson's Disease and Pesticides
There is strong evidence that exposure to pesticides significantly increases the risk of Parkinson's disease, experts believe. It comes as another study, published in the BMC Neurology journal, has made the link to the neurological disease. The US researchers found those exposed to pesticides had a 1.6 times higher risk after studying 600 people.
Read article at BBC News (UK)