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dimanche 7 septembre 2014

Chemicals In Your Food Are Causing Cancer

By Cliff Walsh


The U.S. agricultural market and chemical industry sells just under a billion pounds of insecticides and herbicides each year. The government allows this to happen despite knowing that farmers and those that apply pesticides, as well as factory workers at pesticide plants get cancer at significantly higher rates than those that do not work on farms or in chemical plants. Very little effort has been made, to date, by the government in order to get to the bottom of this crisis. Pesticides can also be found in our water.

Farmers use insecticides and herbicides to rid crops of bugs, harmful plants, germs, and smaller animals. Is it hard to believe that the same pesticides that can kill bugs, small animals, and bacteria can also kill cells in the human body? Studies have shown that these chemicals can change our DNA, which can unleash the spread of carcinogenic cells.

What's more, these pesticides often remain in our bodies for years, due to the fact that the majority of them are fat soluble. I can attest to this as I remember vividly suffering from headaches for about two weeks when I cut pesticides out of my diet and began eating a vegan diet of mainly organic fruits and vegetables.

There has been a tremendous amount of private research done over the years, which consistently shows the evidence that pesticides can cause cancer. In one study, over 50,000 U.S. farm workers were assessed for skin cancer. The results showed that the more time workers spent spraying certain chemicals, the higher the rate of cancer was. The group that was spent the most time spraying pesticides were more than 2.5x more likely to have skin cancer than those in the lowest group.

The diverse landscape of Argentina can be helpful in illustrating the connection between cancer and pesticides. Their Ministry of Health completed a study that showed a strong connection between the two. Areas of low pesticide use had low cancer rates while the opposite was true in high application areas. This is a useful report for U.S. citizens to understand as Argentina's agricultural industry is very similar to ours with respect to the usage of both pesticides and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

Pesticide usage has been linked to a wide range of cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma as well as cancer of the breast, brain, lungs, and prostate.

I put little faith in the claims made by these chemical companies when they say their products don't harm us and that they are doing a public service by boosting food output. Without these pesticides, according to pesticide industry execs, we would all be starving right now. I find that hard to believe, particularly when remembering that a variety of previous industry products have been removed from the shelves because they were deemed carcinogenic, like DDT and PCBs.

Eat organic fruits and vegetables, at least those without hard shells or thick protective skins. While I don't recommend it, if you stick with foods doused with pesticides, wash and/or peel the skin. I also suggest you get a water filter for your drinking water.




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