Ban organophosphate pesticides to protect children's health, experts say
theguardian.comAnd what about safety to farmers?
I've used phosmet, an organophosphate insecticide, and I don't like to use it. You can know it's around in the warehouse, still in the original sealed packages, just by smelling it. A feeling of dry mouth and eyes usually follows.
And it's not because it's a dangerous substance - most pesticides with very few exceptions are dangerous - but because it is very hard to handle.
Phosmet is usually sold as a fine powder, and as it is the case of most soluble powders, it disperses in air easily. I always ask for liquid insecticides, but these are not always available.
Masks are not particularly useful: cotton masks are of little to no use, filters are compromised by facial hair[1] and air supply masks are crazy expensive.
If farmers respect the required safety intervals, harm to consumers is considerably minimized. The main hazard comes to people that come in contact with larger concentrations of pesticides: manufacturers, sellers and farmers.
Now I just open the package carefully underwater, if the sprayer is full enough and the package is to be completely emptied. This minimizes dispersion considerably.
[1] http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/463742O/facial-hair-and-r...
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/rmpp_6t...
EPA has this little chapter on organophosphates. Seems like this class of pesticides is well known to be toxic to humans.
I think there will be a time in the future when we'll look back and think how crazy people were in 2018 pumping all kinds of known toxins into the environment. It will probably be the same incredulity we have when we look at people using radium toothpaste in 1920 or the mad hatters working with mercury the whole day and going crazy.
I always wonder if there's a mindset of, "use it as long as we can get away with it."
We will need to significantly change our laws to fix this.
It's more like "use it until there's another product that we can sell at equal or higher profit. Then get those old organophosphates (now cheap) banned by backing critical research that was previously blocked."
Uhm, the idea behind of "use it as long as we can get away with it" is not the lack of laws but the lack of enforcement. No new law is going to change that.
Or in 2050, wondering why in 2018, mercury amalgam (Hg is an established neurotoxin) was still in significant use (except in Norway, Sweden and Denmark) as a dental filler.
Oh woah.
My mother has a lot of those and they keep crumbling and she has to have them changed. She swallowed a few of them. She also suffer from neurological diseases and fibromyalgia.
That those are in fact made of mercury is blowing my mind right now.
I'll advise her to get her mercury levels checked out.
Other people appear to be down-voting you, so I'll comment instead: The standard defense is that the mercury is locked in place inside the amalgam, and does not migrate. I've never looked at the evidence either way.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010024/
Quoting:
> The debate over the safety and efficacy of amalgam has raged since time immemorial. In recent times, it has reached such a feverish pitch that it seems to drown out all sounds of reason. Amalgam has served the dental profession for more than 165 years. Incidents of true allergy to mercury have been rare and attempts to link its usage with diseases like multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease have not been significantly proven, although there may be some association between amalgam restorations and oral lichenoid lesions.
> Marshall, in his review on dental amalgam, summed it up appropriately: “if some reported values of Hg release are extrapolated to clinical life times, the entire restoration could lose its Hg in short time. For example, a 500 mg amalgam restoration contains approximately 200–250 mg of Hg, and the entire quantity of Hg would be lost in 10,000 days if the Hg was released at the rate of 25 ?g/day. This estimate of release is of the order of magnitude reported in some studies of vapour release”.
In theory. But grinding teeth, chewing, or even brushing can cause flakes to break away. The biggest risk is actually during installation of the amalgam, particularly for dental professionals.
The real crux of the issue is that there are safer effective alternatives. So even if we call the risk "low," it is a needless risk. It only a matter of "when" not "if" these filings are against safety regulations.
Also drinking hot liquids can release small amounts of mercury vapor.
They used to mix the mercury and metals on their bare hands back in the early 20th century before placing it in the tooth.
I remember in Germany there were lots of studies that showed mercury leaking out. Dentists fought for quite a while but I don't think they are in use anymore. I got my amalgam fillings taken out in the 90s and replaced with plastic and ceramic.
They also observed that we pee pretty much all the mercury we ingest, but that methyl-mercury is the one we absorb, accumulate, and that is highly toxic.
Removing the filling seems like a great way to inhale more of the stuff. How do they prevent that from happening?
I had one removed about 7 years ago. The dentist fitted a dam to avoid fragments being ingested and to minimise vapor inhalation, and (if I recall correctly) he advised me to breathe as gently as possible during the crucial stage of removal.
> Dentists fought for quite a while but I don't think they are in use anymore.
The anti-dentites won.
I think the dentists are still in use :-)
The dentists fight it because the science mostly says they’re harmless. Trust me, there’s plenty of money to be made removing the old fillings (which actually is the most dangerous time for mercury contamination) and replacing them with composites. Dentists are incentivized to do so. They just don’t want to cause unneeded hysteria.
As a person who has struggled to afford dental care over other life expenses I would strongly believe that the Mercury only stays in place in optimal conditions. I had a chipped tooth which I didn't treat right away which lead to the tooth decaying. Then it cracked in half. There was a filling that was split in half during this. It was a month later before I could afford work on the tooth. I don't know if that filling had Mercury or not but if it did, my mouth was definitely exposed to it.
That's the defense against removing amalgam that has already been introduced, it's safer locked away than trying to drill it out and risking high level exposure.
In my experience the mercury amalgam fillings tend to crumble and plop out in pieces after a few years. Maybe not the entire filling, but enough to where they'll have to declare a do-over, drill and augment/replace with more mercury amalgam.
Not to mention CFL bulbs. It's really great when something as mundane as a lightbulb breaking turns into a veritable hazmat situation.[0] The risk/reward ratio there boggles the mind, especially given the fact LED bulbs exist.
That stuff must be really super cheap, as the price difference between it and the alternatives is insane.
edit: internet searching about on this apparently shows that the price difference should not be that much??? Two different dentists want me to pay about $250+ more per tooth for non-amalgam fillings. Madness!
That is an insane price. Here in Germany I last paid 70 Euros on top of what insurance pays for (which is the very basics - and yes, they pay for amalgam fillings) for a composite fillings. Which one exactly I don't know but it was what I already had, and I never had a problem including with durability. When I still paid full - I switched from private insurance (I pay everything and get reimbursed) back into the semi-public system a few years ago (they pay directly to the dentist or doctor) - it was not much more though. Even the special procedure to remove the last few amalgam fillings including refilling were just some 3xx Euros for three teeth. That dentist is located in a big Bavarian city in the middle of the city in its most expensive shopping street, and yet prices are very sane (I saw and paid them in full for years since overall my costs were well below the high yearly deductible I had chosen for my private insurance).
Agreed.
Sorry for the downvotes. I received chelation therapy after years and years of very strange accumulating issues that some day crossed a threshold where they could no longer be ignored. I had actually not seen that coming and called myself healthy, the human brain is extraordinarily capable of ignoring obvious problems. When I was forced to acknowledge that not all was well my world fell apart. Long story short, I found the problem after some searching. Mercury was high both in hair and in urine - I was lucky. Normally chronic exposure is next to impossible to show via such tests. After chelation mostly with DMPS, later also lots of DMSA I achieved miracles. For exanple, a double-sized right thyroid with a nodule became normal and the nodule disappeared. That condition had been there for at least 25 years (first diagnosis). It disappeared within a few weeks, after the 4th or 5th DMPS treatment the tissues surrounding that area were very active, I knew there was something going on. So I went to the endocrinologist again who did the ultra-sound twice because he did not believe it. That is just a single example of many, from psoriasis (gone) to warts on the feet (gone), eye problems (gone), never-ending colds (for months!) that had gotten worse and worse over time, and a long list of other problems.
How do I know it was the amalgam fillings? Because that was my only exposure, and because it turned out my jaw bones were very damaged - exactly were there had been amalgam fillings. It was discovered not by x-ray, several OPGs never showed anything. But when I was to get an injection into the buccal mucosa the needle went right into the bone (that's really not supposed to happen, you can't penetrate bone with a small needle used for a mucosa injection). The doctor checked and this happened in all the places where I had had amalgam fillings. He then injected DMPS in those places. A year later, and after the jaw bones had been very active (but in a positive way) the needle didn't go in anywhere any more. To this day there is (decreasing) activity in my jaw bones, and I still take chelators that have an effect right there (jaw bone).
But please, go ahead and downvote anyone who says something about amalgam fillings. I actually have a background in medical topics, from anatomy, physiology to (of course) bio chemistry, and I read quite a few studies. The lead situation was so bad that politicians actually went to action to do something about it, worldwide. Mercury is far more toxic than lead (and, according to some LD study I once found on PubMed, together about a thousand times more toxic than either lead or mercury alone). Yes, pieces of amalgam are not the problem, they go right through. And as others have said, insertion and even more so removal - with a drill creating heat which creates vapor (no matter how much you cool with water, by then the vapor already exists) - are the worst parts. I had had a few fillings removed while I was a student. Only recently, two decades later, did I connect the dots, why back then I had a huge "almost asthma" allergy almost overnight, as well as huge problems finding sleep, strange thoughts, and big problems with some joints that didn't seem to have any observable reason. The removal was without protection, the removal of the last fillings a few years ago, when I hoped I had found the problem (I did not know, amalgam removal and chelation was an experiment because I could not find anything else, and boy was I proven correct), was with good protective measures that I think worked (I didn't get worse then I already was at the time).
Here is something to consider: What happened when I started DMPS chelation was something that according to doctors doing that kind of treatment is not uncommon, so much so that I was told that might happen before it happened. The initial values went down quickly and linearly - but after a few DMPS treatments my symptoms suddenly jumped. Turned out that the amount of excreted mercury had also jumped (tripled). From then on my body became "active". All kinds of crazy stuff happened, for a long time (it's still not quite over in the jaw area). It seems that the body is overwhelmed at some point and is no longer able to excrete everything. Maybe the spikes of insertion and/or removal of amalgam fillings contribute, too much at once. After the first year I took chelators because it still helped, but it was no longer necessary for excretion, my body had become pretty active. Maybe somebody whose body can deal with the spikes, or who never experiences them, has less trouble continuously getting rid of the mercury that is released from the fillings.
Sooo many questions, and I made soooo many interesting observations. Too bad it's impossible to talk about it, even anonymously on the Internet, because for some reason this topic raises the emotions of sooo many people. That the subject is present on so many websites of the esoteric kind is because it's next to impossible to talk about it in normal circles. My insurance always paid every little thing, even the most stupid and ridiculous and useless stuff - but when I finally send them a bill that mentioned "mercury" and "DMPS" (chelator) they suddenly refused. IT was a trigger word. They had paid for dozens of doctors (that one year when everything escalated, I went to many doctors with the many issues I had, from gastroenterologist to psychologist), now, the one thing that actually worked, and which was very cheap(!), they refused. It's insane. Same here - somebody mentions the trigger words (mercury, amalgam), the comment is voted down immediately. By whom actually? Are there so many prominent toxicologists reading this?
I don't think so. Even a normal MD would not know much about it. I've actually seen this: When I go to a talk from a doctor specialized in lung disease and someone in the audience asks about something not the lung the doctor is very careful not to say anything, because it's not their specialty. Strange, everybody (including non-doctors) has a strong opinion when it comes to the subject of chronic mercury poisoning through amalgam fillings.
People spend a lot of time talking about what happens to humans when exposed to organophosphates. Humans aren’t even meant to be the target of these chemicals. What about the long term consequences to the environment that is actually the intended target? How much are we losing by applying these chemicals year after year after year.
Organophosphates are like the primary insecticide used worldwide. How do you replace it? I don't see anywhere where they propose an alternative.
I mean, its sorta why GMOs exist. To reduce the need of pesticides that are sprayed on farms. I've always considered GMOs to be the lesser evil when compared to standard pesticide usage.
Not all produce have a insect-resistant type however. So pesticides are still needed to protect certain plants.
I do not agree with the current bout of GMO scaremongering, but I think your first sentence is off the mark. I heard from the friends on the biotech side (and sorry, do not have a citation) that many current GMO cultures are engineered specifically for high pesticide tolerance so farms can pump in pesticides to kill all other flora and fauna without killing specific crops.
So, GMO good (or allows for significant benefits), current products kind-of pretty bad. My 2c.
Yes this is common now. For example Monsanto has Roundup Ready GMO crops & Roundup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
The crops are designed to withstand Roundup, while weeds are not, so farmers can use Roundup to control weeds with crops that would normally be killed by the herbicide.
Roundup (glyphosate) ready is baby stuff compared to the newer stuff that is resistant to 2,4d/Dicamba. Mostly because the weeds have outsmarted the glyphosate.
Drift from 2,4d will wipe out plants (like your garden, or my vineyard, or like, endangered native plants) many kilometres away.
That is the problem with GMO. It is a useless word.
It is important to know what is done and where the GMO is used: In some container or open air or open water.
> high pesticide tolerance so farms can pump in pesticides
(I'm sort of in biotech.) This is one way to look at it. But I'm pretty sure one of the mechanisms that allow the plants to survive being covered in certain pesticides also allows them to effectively decontaminate / degrade the pesticide.
A plant engineered to express an enzyme capable of degrading organophosphates [0] could allow for both the plant to be protected from exposure to the toxin & even after harvesting still express low levels of the enzyme which should clean the plant.
That's the idea at least... From experience, it's not nearly that simple. E.g., the degradation products are also somewhat toxic.
Is there a regulation to how much pesticides they can spray into foods?
If this is the case then non GMOs sounds more appealing.
No, mainstream popular production GMOs have precisely the opposite purpose. They're there to be be selectively resistant to bucketloads of herbicides while everything around them dies.
Living next door to this and trying to grow things that aren't corn or soy is "fun", let me tell you.
There are several different approaches to GMO crops. One, like you say, is the herbicide-ready crop. Another is the insecticidal crop, like Bt-Corn, that produces insecticides that kill common pests, and works in the way that the other poster suggests. Yet a third is to impart nutritional characteristics to a crop that weren't there before, like vitamin-A-producing rice. Of course, there are also the usual goals of higher yield, drought resistance, reduced waste, ease of harvesting and regularity of product. The hybridization and selective breeding processes have done the majority of work in those areas and are not considered GMO by most activists, but they are nonetheless modified.
it's almost like someone at Monsanto thought this approach might allow them to sell 5000 times more chemicals too. pretty lucky cooincidence they got there after all that science happened to show them that this is the most effective approach to solve world hunger (how is that going btw?)
Nearly all GMO plants out there are engineered to resist some kind of poison (herbicide or pesticide) so people can spray more of it.
The one rare GMO plant engineered to require less poison spraying nearly always does that by producing the poison itself, and having it in large amounts on every tissue. I wouldn't want to eat that stuff pretending that it's an improvement, thank you.
There exist some odd research GMO that resist bugs or require less herbicides due to some effect that does not involve producing poison. I haven't heard of any that left the lab, but I imagine it's possible there is some commercial crop of something like that somewhere.
"I mean, its sorta why GMOs exist. To reduce the need of pesticides that are sprayed on farms. "
When you look at Roundup, GMOs are designed to resist pesticide, not the actual pest.
> I've always considered GMOs to be the lesser evil when compared to standard pesticide usage.
Breeding poisonous crops has its own obvious disadvantages. Is it better to spray poison on your food that can be washed off, or is it better for the food to be naturally suffused with poison?
Equating GMOs and "poison" is intellectually dishonest
I'm not equating GMOs and poison. I'm equating pesticides and poison. A plant that doesn't need pesticides is just a plant that produces them internally.
And in fact, the effort to breed naturally pest-resistant crops keeps running into the problem that pest-resistant crops are also human-resistant. It's all the same thing from the plant's perspective.
Sorry, I think I misread/misunderstood your original post or inferred something from it that wasn't there. Often I get frustrated with the extreme anti-GMO crowd, and likely let that emotion cloud my response to you.
How does it work in practice though? Monsanto's RoundUp hasn't been getting rave reviews lately ...
That's a pr problem, not a science problem. But you bring up a good point, even if you come up with the perfect technical solution, if people are suspicious, or there are bad actors out there with pseudoscience products to sell, you can get dumpstered for no good reason. The fact that we're struggling to maintain herd immunity in certain population segments tells you how hard it can be to defend good solutions in the face of irrational paranoia.
Why are you conflating RoundUp (NOT even a pesticide) with all GMOs? Attacking GMO technology because of one company's misuse is like attacking electricity because of the electric chair.
We're talking about replacing pesticides. Monsanto is in the business of selling herbicides and pesticides, so of course they're not going to use the tech to neuter their profits. If anything they are benefiting from the negative press and comments like your own as it discourage the public from supporting the necessary government research. I doubt this will come from private corporations as the profit motive just isn't there.
RoundUp is a pesticide. Glyphosate. A herbicide.
Maybe you mean "RoundUp Ready?"
The actual real world of GMO, the stuff that is actually marketed and sold -- it's like 90% about herbicide resistance, nothing else.
RoundUp is the trade name for glyphosate, which is an herbicide, not a pesticide. RoundUp Ready is the trade name for glyphosate-resistant strains of crops. RoundUp and RoundUp Ready are both copyrights of Monsanto.
Herbicides are pesticides.
Insecticides are also pesticides.
I have my Ontario sprayer's license in my wallet. I had to take a day long course on this topic to get it. Own a hobby farm.
Thanks.
Thanks for the correction - that's been a long term misconception of mine, apparently. I thought pesticides as a term excluded herbicides (basically catch all term for insecticides, rodenticides). Seriously, I appreciate that very much.
Herbicides are technically a class of pesticides
I'm not conflating. I'm providing an example of a GMO that's still requires a pesticide. I'd like a counterexample of a GMO that actually REDUCES/ELIMINATES pesticide usage, as the parent claimed that GMOs do.
In theory, GMOs don't need pesticides. I'm asking about practice. Most other comments support my skepticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize
> Bt corn is a variant of maize that has been genetically altered to express one or more proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis[8] including Delta endotoxins. The protein is poisonous to certain insect pests. Spores of the bacillus are widely used in organic gardening[9], although GM corn is not considered organic. The European corn borer causes about a billion dollars in damage to corn crops each year.[10]
> In 2018 a study found that Bt-corn protected nearby fields of non-Bt corn and nearby vegetable crops, reducing the use of pesticides on those crops. Data from 1976-1996 (before Bt corn was widespread) was compared to data after it was adopted (1996-2016). They examined levels of the European corn borer and corn earworm. Their larvae eat a variety of crops, including peppers and green beans. Between 1992 and 2016, the amount of insecticide applied to New Jersey pepper fields decreased by 85 percent. Another factor was the introduction of more effective pesticides that were applied less often.[18]
Herbicides are pesticides. You’re probably thinking of insecticides..
They could be replaced, but the question becomes which one would be better (or worse). Additionally there are other ways to tackle this problem. Ensure usage is not allowed near residential areas, give warning or make sure everyone dusts only on particular dates. Lots of ways to solve this. Banning things that sound bad won't help. We'll end up banning everything. The concerns are valid, raising awareness is always good, but a solid plan is needed before we change the way we do agriculture.
Organic farmers don’t use them
"Organic" Farmers aren't very well defined unfortunately. They do use pesticides, but "organic" ones. The overriding pattern is that "Organic" farmers use stuff that is all natural. (for some... fuzzy... definition of all natural)
But we all know that Rattlesnake venom is 100% organic and all natural. So I'm personally not sure if the distinction between "synthetic" and "organic" is very appropriate. Nature can certainly mass-produce poisons that can be detrimental to humans.
The Pesticide problem is rather simple: we want to spray a poison onto our plants that kills insects, but doesn't harm humans (or the plants). Whether you use an "organic" pesticide or "synthetic" one, the fact remains that you are consistently spraying poisons. And these poisons haven't been very well tested for long-term low-level exposure levels. Be it organic or synthetic.
Slightly tangential, but regarding the definition of "natural," I personally prefer to think in terms of concentrates. The chemicals in question exist in nature in many cases, or at least there is a similar naturally occurring compound. The main thing that I think makes a useful distinction is the concentration level. Like other drugs, the danger is in the dose, and the extreme levels of potency we can get with a little chemistry is what makes them "natural" or "synthetic" in my opinion (regardless of their actual origin). I'm more cautious accepting highly concentrated substances than I am accepting the same thing diluted with the thousands of other naturally occurring substances that accompany it "in the wild."
Pesticides in organic farming are also highly concentrated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Pesticides), which would make them synthetic per your definition. Which is fine, but it means that from your perspective organic farming is non-existent.
Yes, that's absolutely correct, and is actually part of the point I was attempting to make. I grow vegetables and fruits at small-farm scale (1-3 acres in production generally) in a way that I'd call organic if the term wasn't already taken - I don't spray anything at all, and use no concentrates for fertility or weed control. This has the predictable effect of reducing my overall yield in the short term, but I've found that I can still produce well as long as I'm careful to choose crops that are adapted to my region and use high biodiversity insectary plantings and trap crops for pest management. Weeding is done mechanically (usually with a hoe or a wheel hoe, occasionally with the walk-behind tractor for large areas).
I know many organic farmers who follow practices similar to mine as well. The organic name is really more of an indicator of intent for a lot of people - you can get away with a lot of things and still be certified, but most of the growers I know actually do make a strong effort to find another way. So, the organic label does actually carry some weight with me despite the fact that it can be abused.
Organic farmers don’t use organophosphates
There is a big difference between organic and conventional pesticides.
They are different, but not necessarily less toxic to the environment.
Rotenone is a powerful insecticide that was used to control insects (LD50: 132 mg/kg). Despite the high toxicity of Rotenone to aquatic life and some links to Parkinson disease the compound is still allowed in organic farming as it is a naturally occurring compound
Yes, there are things allowed in certified organic agriculture that are poisonous and harmful. That’s a whole separate discussion. I could go on forever about the organic program here in the US, and the standards board being a small group of individuals that mostly represent big-ag at this point (more than half of the board members), and all of the exceptions and rule changes they’ve made to the program.
My point was that organic farmers don’t use organophosphates, which was a response to “Organophosphates are like the primary insecticide used worldwide. How do you replace it? I don't see anywhere where they propose an alternative.”
and forbid GMO (at least in France).
USDA Organic program also excludes GMOs.
sounds like an interesting way to create jobs, since alternatives probably won't produce as much yield, thus requiring more farms/farmers.
Distributed farming. If you grow all your food in one area, guess where the insects are going to go...
Farming is distributed over large areas of land called "fields", or when you have a lot of these over an even bigger area, "Ohio".
The monoculture status quo certainly takes some of the blame. In a balanced ecosystem, no one pest can gain a foothold because the ecosystem supports natural predators, and the foodsource is spread out enough that the pest population won't reach a critical mass.
You don't replace it. Instead, we need to adjust our thinking when it comes to growing food.
So you mean, grow much less of it, and at greater cost? You know what else presents a risk of "reduced IQs, memory and attention deficits"? Malnutrition, the world's most potent inhibitor of intelligence.
Just a note, the world runs no risk of malnutrition even if we produce less food with cleaner forms of production. The world already produces more than enough for everyone. The problem is distribution, not production.
Essentially, yes. The "green revolution" is an illusion and its effects cannot be sustained. We need to gradually back down to a place where humans can grow enough food for themselves without also poisoning themselves and without exhausting soil fertility.
Or, having children. Natalism -- the positive and negative values constructed around having vs. not having children, the pressure put upon women to reproduce until they biologically can't anymore in most (really all) countries -- as a social reality is almost never thought about, much less discussed as potentially 'adjustable'.
I think the journalism results from this:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
If so, it appears to be neither original research nor a systematic review. I think it's worth being sceptical (especially given the wording of the Guardian article).
If you live in a developed country where people aren't repeatedly killing themselves through acute exposure the relevant section of the link above appears to be:
"The US EPA concluded in 2016 that the existing epidemiologic literature provided “sufficient evidence that there are neurodevelopmental effects occurring at chlorpyrifos exposure levels below that required to cause acetylcholinesterase inhibition” [11]. Such chronic, low-level exposures are often overlooked or dismissed as benign because neither the pregnant woman nor the fetus shows clinically visible signs or symptoms. Furthermore, the developmental deficits do not manifest until months or years later. Indeed, the scientific consensus is that AChE inhibition is uninformative with regard to neurodevelopmental effects in children and that the toxic effects from chronic, low-level exposure occur at concentrations too low to inhibit cholinesterase [1,9]. The evidence thus indicates that OP pesticides can interfere with brain development at levels previously thought to be safe or inconsequential."
The following paragraphs rely on this conclusion or speculate. I think it's worth reviewing those references, which I have not yet done. They are:
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2015-0653-... https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfx266 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2013.09.003
PLOS One is also extremely lax when it comes to peer review. They've gotten into trouble for publishing spurious articles using unscientific methodology before because of their lack of quality control.
They might as well be ArXiv. Except I don't think ArXiv charges $1500 an article.
> However, 200,000 people still die each year from pesticide poisonings, according to UN estimates, about 99% of them in the developing world. A further 110,000 suicides using pesticides take place each year.
So roughly 35% of deaths from pesticides are suicides.
On the other hand in 2012, 64% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides.
I wonder if you could get from that some kind of safety estimate, of how easy it is to die from a thing accidentally in realtion of how easy it is to die intentionally.... Probably not.
The autism link appears very dubious and casts doubt on everything else - it doesn't map to organophosphate usage in the timeline and frankly it shows heavy signs of being genetic. Not to mention if the effects are that strong organic fanatics should show significant differences in performance - but that doesn't seem to be the case. While I doubt that even the still used organophosphates are healthy to be exposed to this has smells of poor science.
As someone with a son diagnosed officially by a professional, myself & older brother believe we are both on the spectrum but not as much as my son. He is verbal, but has quirks commonly called stimming. He hums a lot and will flap his arms when being visually or audibly stimulated.
My brother & I have read up on it quite a bit, and think that it's a combo of genetics triggered by environmental sources. There is a similar gene that is related to ADD, Bi-polar & Schizophrenia. Which we all have the first 2 of the 3.
My father, & his father were both mechanics, with my father's brother who showed the most signs of being possible autistic as well.
It does appear to skip around. I've a younger son also who was born way early in my life at 19. He doesn't show much signs of it. My younger brother doesn't either nor younger half sister.
It's a strong correleation for me personally that it's definitely genetic but seems to vary on some triggering factor in gestation or the tech environment of today's constant barrage of stimulation. The rise in diagnosis correlates to mass farming also on large scales. But also correlation doesn't mean causation.
I'd agree it's genetic, but with multifaceted triggers which is like cancer that could cause or trigger either.
I've also considered it's just our evolutionary path to a more tech geared world. I would be curious to see the rates of autism in 3rd world or outside untainted tribes.
Some reading, - https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2018/suspect-mole...
The funny thing is that it may have also been an advantage of sorts in hunter gatherer days - as in actually able to survive alone in the wilderness without plenty of prepared tools which is actually a very hard task long term. Bands of people cooperating boost it ensure survival. Given what I know of sensory capabilities in addition to things like lost autistic children in the woods being extra hard to find - while not being prepared to survive.
Given that it is on a spectrum and a slow learning process of coping occurs underdiagnosis is likely - especially among women and girls.
I suspect the case in Silicon valley is a higher degree of traits converging and the social masking being less imbued in addition to concentration. Although if pollution was a provoking factor it would.
Tech is a pretty good setting although people with autism and they may thrive there I think it is way too fast for evolutionary impacts short of massive selective pressure - like the Black Death or pretreatment endemic malaria.
It would help if they could explain why there aren't more autism clusters[1] in California's central valley if they want to make a stronger case. In the central valley you have 10x the exposure to organophosphate pesticides given the agricultural activity. So an a per-capita basis I would expect that to show up in the clusters.
[1] https://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/newsroom/Maps/autism_cluster.h...
Anyone know of a QUALY-based analysis of the costs and benefits of using these fertilizers?
The headline is quite hard to argue with ("think of the children!") but it would be interesting to know how much it would cost to use alternatives, and how much harm is being done by the current level of use.
You reference the logical fallacy of "think of the children", but in this case it doesn't really seem like a logical fallacy, if we are literally poisoning the children.
For comparative example, lead abatement is not a fallacious "think of the children" argument- actual children are routinely poisoned by lead.
In the case of lead poisoning, it's widely believed to have been the cause of a significant and measurable increase in homicide rates in the second half of last century. There's a lot of data supporting that hypothesis, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis has:
> between 1992 and 2002 the phase-out of lead from gasoline in the U.S. "was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime".
In the case of organophosphates, I am open to the idea that that there could be a big win by changing regulations. But without knowing the magnitude of the harm and cost, we really have no basis for prioritization. For example perhaps the time and money we'd spend changing these laws in the US would be better spent on removing lead to prevent even more poisoning of children. Or perhaps we should stop what we're doing and redirect all of our resources to removing organophosphates. Depending on even the order of magnitude of the effect, I hope you'd accept that different magnitudes of responses would be warranted.
> in this case it doesn't really seem like a logical fallacy, if we are literally poisoning the children.
This is precisely the "think of the children" fallacy. The fallacy doesn't refer to claiming children will be harmed when in reality they won't; that would be a factual error, not a logical fallacy. (And to be clear, I'm not making the claim that children won't be harmed by this family of chemicals). The fallacy refers to making an emotional argument based imagery of harm to children, instead of making a logical argument.
Would diatomaceous earth be a cost effective replacement?
There are different grades of quality in diatomaceous earth, some are safer, other not so. Is a "fosil stone", so is not unlimited. Diatom skeletons are tiny silica boxes, and breathing silica dust regularly leads to silicose. Would also change the soil structure and increase the damage in the machines needed for harvest.
In the other hand spiders and bats are the perfect insecticide without any bad side effect for plants. Its numbers would increase filling the gap, at least partially.
silicose -> silicosis
It's not patentable...
And probably the physical nature of the powder makes it fundamentally different.
Organophosphates are well past patentability. You'd be hard pressed to introduce a new one that outperforms the old. They're used because they're off patent and cheap to acquire.
Since this is a nerve disrupting chemical, could this lead to higher rates of alzheimer's and dementia? Any studies that looks at the correlation?
The strongest association with AD and PD is obesity. Now, in itself obesity is often the results of lifestyle habits. So, is one of those habits the culprit? Or is does more body fat leads to more bio-accumulated toxins?
Let's "kill 2 birds with one stone" and also fight the obesity crisis by having children pick weeds. Call it a "Synergy class between botany science and physical education".
Edit: The suggestion that children learn a basic trade, while getting exercise, and providing economic benefit, seems very unpopular. Please suggest a better solution for these problems - maybe you think adults would benefit more from this?
I upvoted... Because I hope this was a joke with tounge planted firmly in cheek.
Perhaps the children could feed off the insects they pick from the plants. /s
Maybe we could train the insects to raise the children for us too!