Household pesticides and the danger of Endochrine Disrupting Chemicals
CHOICE Sustainable Consumption Project Officer Kate Norris reports on one of the interesting fringe meetings held prior to the Congress:
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals are chemicals that can mimic or block the human endocrine functions of metabolism, growth and development, and tissue function.
According to research presented by Dr Michael Hansen from Consumers Union (USA), EDCs have been linked to a range of health problems including leukemia, other cancers and attention deficit disorder. [View presentation]
Exposure to EDCs could come from pesticides used in food production, but the speakers in this session concentrated on exposure to pyrethroids and organophosphates from household insecticides e.g permethrin and chorpyrifos in products such as cockroach poisons and termite treatments. Dr Hansen told the audience that chlorpyrifos was banned for US household use in 2001.
Dr Eunsook Moon from Consumers Korea presented results from a household insecticide survey conducted across 12 countries. A key finding was that convenience and price of insecticides often override safety concerns. [View presentation]
Other speakers and discussion at the fringe meeting suggested that consumer groups have a role in:
- lobbying for clearer labeling of all ingredients and stronger warnings, so consumers could avoid or more safely use household insecticides;
- calling for compliance with the internationally accepted UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s code of conduct on the distribution and use of pesticides; and
- providing consumers with realistic information on effective non-chemical alternatives for pest control.
Further presentations were given by Bharath Jairaj, Connie Lau and Premila Kumar – all are available at the CI Congress area on slideshare.net.
How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth……
There are about 50 to 60 million insect species on earth – we have named only about 1 million and there are only about 1 thousand pest species – already over 50% of these thousand pests are already resistant to our volatile, dangerous, synthetic pesticide POISONS. We accidentally lose about 25,000 to 100,000 species of insects, plants and animals every year due to “man’s footprint”. But, after poisoning the entire world and contaminating every living thing for over 60 years with these dangerous and ineffective pesticide POISONS we have not even controlled much less eliminated even one pest species and every year we use/misuse more and more pesticide POISONS to try to “keep up”! Even with all of this expensive and unnecessary pollution – we lose more and more crops and lives to these thousand pests every year.
We are losing the war against these thousand pests mainly because we insist on using only synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers There has been a severe “knowledge drought” – a worldwide decline in agricultural R&D, especially in production research and safe, more effective pest control since the advent of synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers. Today we are like lemmings running to the sea insisting that is the “right way”. The greatest challenge facing humanity this century is the necessity for us to double our global food production with less land, less water, less nutrients, less science, frequent droughts, more and more contamination and ever-increasing pest damage.
National Poison Prevention Week, March 18-24,2007 was created to highlight the dangers of poisoning and how to prevent it. One study shows that about 70,000 children in the USA were involved in common household pesticide-related (acute) poisonings or exposures in 2004. At least two peer-reviewed studies have described associations between autism rates and pesticides (D’Amelio et al 2005; Roberts EM et al 2007 in EHP). It is estimated that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year just in the United States – No one is checking chronic contamination.
In order to try to help “stem the tide”, I have just finished re-writing my IPM encyclopedia entitled: THE BEST CONTROL II, that contains over 2,800 safe and far more effective alternatives to pesticide POISONS.
There is simply no need to POISON yourself or your family or to have any pest problems.
We agree with Stephen that too many children and adults have suffered the effects of indoor pesticide pest control. We have developed a pesticide free pest control product that has been studied by a US University and proven effective on mice, rats and roaches.
We are working hard to get our product to be used in the IPM programs in schools and public buildings, as well as, homes, as a safe alternative to indoor pesticides.