Pesticides are dangerous to human health

Pesticide drifts and dumps are becoming commonplace in conventionally farmed systems. It’s as if farmers believe that they cannot produce crops without using pesticides, chemical fertilizers, soil additives and chemical herbicides. What happened? Chemical farming has only existed for the last 50 or 60 years. I do understand that it is very hard to farm large plots of land organically and with proper management it can be done.

Chemical farming is dangerous for everyone. When crop sprayers fly over a property the farmers or the family of the farmers (for farms that are on family property) need to go inside because the amount of pesticides that are sprayed are dangerous to reproductive, cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine and excretory system health. Once these chemical pesticides, fertilizers, additives, herbicides, fungicides and more are sprayed, one would think that their harmful effects stop there, but they do not. These dangerous chemicals run off of the plants and the land when it rains or when the soil or the crops are watered and infiltrate our water systems. Science shows that there is a higher concentration of pesticides in breast milk and the tissue cells of babies than there ever has been in the history of the world (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2569122/).

Chemical ag is harmful enough for fully grown adults and is even more dangerous for children as their immune systems and bodily systems cannot handle these dangerous materials (https://earthjustice.org/healthy-communities/toxic-chemicals/most-dangerous). Also when pesticides are sprayed by hand, you are required to wear a special suit that looks somewhat like a biohazard suit. You aren’t asked to wear this suit because infectious diseases are in the air, you are asked wear this suit because pesticides concentrations that are at the level that you are spraying them at are dangerous to your health.

I can go on and on about this and about the dangerous effects of pesticides and here’s the crux: we must end the reliance on chemical agriculture to preserve our planet, our water and human health. I know that large scale farms feed a lot of people and are the source of livelihood for a lot of people and organic farming is the way to go. Large scale farms can be transitioned to organic farms and we can be smarter and plant flowers and crops that attract beneficial bugs to kill the harmful bugs that farmers currently kill by spraying chemicals. You can transition your farm or garden away from pesticides and to an organic system.