Pesticides Cause Special Problems For Children

Pesticides can be found in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. They are found in our soil and even in our breast milk. These pesticides are the only toxic substances released intentionally into our environment to kill living things: to kill weeds (herbicides), insects (insecticides), fungus (fungicides), rodents (rodenticides), and others. They are used almost everywhere — not only in agricultural fields, but also in homes, parks, schools, buildings, forests, and roads.

Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, which reveals the horrifying impacts of pesticides like DDT, scientists are continually discovering new and disturbing ways that pesticides threaten our environment and our health. We now know that:

Pesticides Are Hazardous To Human Health causing reproductive and developmental effects, cancer, kidney and liver damage, endocrine disruption, etc. Exposure mainly occurs through the skin, inhalation, orally, or through the eyes.

Pesticides Cause Special Problems For Children whose bodies and developing organs are particularly vulnerable. Children take in pesticides in the womb, at home and daycare, and on schools and playgrounds. Using MRI technology, researchers found that even low levels exposure to the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos in utero caused irreversible brain damage.

"Children Ages 6-11 Nationwide Have Significantly Higher Levels Of Pesticide Residues In Their Bodies Than All Other Age Categories"

Pesticides Are Particularly Dangerous For Farmers And Farmworkers.

People and families working on and living near industrial farms are some of the most at-risk populations. And they are some of the least protected workers.

Pesticides Can Contaminate Our Food, Harm Pollinators, And Threaten Our Ecosystems.

Pesticides, especially a group of pesticides called neonicitinoids (or neonics), are killing the pollinators we depend on to support our food systems: bees, butterflies, bats, hummingbirds, moths, other insects, and even lizards and small mammals.

The steps we can take to curb the risk to some extent;

1- Kitchen Gardening

2- Reduce use of synthetic chemicals at least in our home, lawns and schools.

3- Increase use of organics

Source: toxicsaction.org