Majia here: Our current agricultural production regime is not sustainable because of its heavy reliance on carbon based fuel and pesticides and because of its deleterious effects including: soil depletion, water contamination, and adverse health effects.
Unfortunately, children are the canaries in this agricultural coal mine. Their afflictions should mobilize us to act now to create a safe and sustainable agricultural production system.
As these articles demonstrate, the current system is destroying the environment and us:
The Problem Is Clear: The Water Is Filthy by P. L. Brown (2012, Nov 13)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/tainted-water-in-california-farmworker-communities.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121114
[Excerpted] Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water. It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap. An estimated 20 percent of small public water systems in Tulare County are unable to meet safe nitrate levels, according to a United Nations representative....Here in Tulare County, one of the country’s leading dairy producers, where animal waste lagoons penetrate the air and soil, most residents rely on groundwater as the source for drinking water. A study by the University of California, Davis, this year estimated that 254,000 people in the Tulare Basin and Salinas Valley, prime agricultural regions with about 2.6 million residents, were at risk for nitrate contamination of their drinking water. Nitrates have been linked to thyroid disease and make infants susceptible to “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal condition that interferes with the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.
In California, Agriculture Takes Center Stage
in Pollution Debate
By Juliet Eilperin Washington
Post Staff Writer Monday, September 26, 2005; A01[Excerpted[ RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- On a clear day, San Joaquin looks like a bucolic farming community, complete with almond groves, cornfields and orange trees. But most of the time the valley -- trapped between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges, with two major highways running north to south through it -- is smoggy, filled with air that has fostered widespread respiratory disease.
Fifteen percent of the region's children have asthma, a rate three times the national average. Fresno -- the valley's biggest city -- has the third-highest rate of asthma in the country, and the San Joaquin Valley rivals Los Angeles and Houston for the dubious title of worst air quality in the nation. On bad air days, some schools hoist a red flag so parents can keep their children indoors; on good days, they raise a green flag.
In the Washington area, farms account for more than 30 percent of the pollutants that cause "dead zones" in the Chesapeake Bay -- where algae blooms deplete the oxygen, and fish and crabs cannot breathe. Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania have all tried to make farmers reduce the amount of fertilizer and manure washing off their fields. But environmentalists say their efforts, including pollution caps on some large farms, are not enough.
Pesticide-Induced Diseases: Learning/Developmental Disorders http://www.beyondpesticides.org/health/learningdevelopmental.php
[Excerpted] Roughly one in six children in the U.S. has one or more developmental disabilities, ranging from a learning disability to a serious behavioral or emotional disorder. Scientists believe that the amount of toxic chemicals in the environment that cause developmental and neurological damage are contributing to the rise of physical and mental effects being found in children. Studies show children’s developing organs create “early windows of great vulnerability” during which exposure to pesticides can cause great damage. In the U.S., requirements for testing pesticides and other chemicals for potential developmental and learning disorders are minimal.Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (from Beyond Pesticides)
- Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure and Attention in Young Mexican-American Children
OP exposure, as measured by maternal urinary dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites during pregnancy, was non-significantly associated with maternal report of attention problems and ADHD at age 3½, but were significantly related at age 5. Some outcomes exhibited interaction by sex with associations found only among boys.
[Marks AR, Harley K, Bradman A, Kogut K, Barr DB, et al. 2010 Environ Health Perspect. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002056] - Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder and Urinary Metabolites of Organophosphate Pesticides
Study's findings support the hypothesis that organophosphate exposure, at levels common among US children, may contribute to ADHD prevalence.
[Bouchard, M. et al. 2010. Pediatrics (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-3058)] - Long-term
sex selective hormonal and behavior alterations in mice exposed to low
doses of chlorpyrifos in utero
Exposure to low levels of the organophosphate insecticide chorpyrifos during pregnancy can impair learning, change brain function and alter thyroid levels of offspring into adulthood for tested mice, especially females.
[Haviland, Butz, Porter. 2009. Reprod Toxicol, doi:10.1016/j.reprotox.2009.10.008] - Impact
of environmental chemicals on the thyroid hormone function in pituitary rat
GH3 cells
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are widespread in the environment and suspected to interfere with the function of thyroid hormones (THs). Study showed that EDCs have the potential to exert TH disruption increasing the risk or a negative impact on fetal brain development, resulting in cognitive dysfunctions.
[Ghisari M, Bonefeld-Jorgensen EC. 2005. Mol Cell Endocrinol;244(1-2):31-41] - Neurodevelopment
and endocrine disruption.
Article explores the possibility that contaminants contribute to the increasing prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and associated neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems in developed countries. It discusses the exquisite sensitivity of the embryo and fetus to thyroid disturbance and provide evidence of human in utero exposure to contaminants that can interfere with the thyroid.
[Colborn T. 2004. Environ Health Perspect;112(9):944-9] - Birth
defects, season of conception, and sex of children born to pesticide applicators
living in the Red River Valley of Minnesota, USA.
A 2002 peer-reviewed study finds children born to parents exposed to glyphosate (Roundup®) show a higher incidence of attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.
[Garry, V.F. et al. 2002. Environ. Health Persp. 110 (Suppl. 3):441-449]
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