You have pesticides in your body. But an organic diet can reduce them by 70%

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/pesticide-danger-organic-food-roundup-study

 

 

 Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé
Tue 11 Aug 2020 10.03 EDT 

 

Never before have we sprayed so much of a chemical on our food, on our yards, on our children’s playgrounds. So it’s no surprise that Roundup – the world’s most widely used weedkiller – shows up in our bodies. What is perhaps surprising is how easy it is to get it out. A new peer-reviewed study, co-authored by one of us, studied pesticide levels in four American families for six days on a non-organic diet and six days on a completely organic diet. Switching to an organic diet decreased levels of Roundup’s toxic main ingredient, glyphosate, by 70% in just six days.

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Glyphosate was flagged as a potential carcinogen as far back as 1983 by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), yet use of the chemical has grown exponentially since, with the chemical giant Monsanto – purchased by Bayer in 2018 – dominating the market. Numerous reports have covered the internal company documents showing how Monsanto’s influence over the EPA succeeded in suppressing health concerns.

In fact, rather than restricting the use of glyphosate, the EPA has raised the legal threshold for residues on some foods up to 300-fold above levels deemed safe in the 1990s. And unlike with other commonly used pesticides, the government has turned a blind eye for decades when it comes to monitoring glyphosate – failing to test for it on food and in our bodies.

The agency’s slipshod regulation has led to a dramatic increase in exposure. Research shows that the percentage of the US population with detectable levels of glyphosate in their bodies increased from 12% in the mid-1970s to 70% by 2014.

The new study paints an even more concerning picture. Researchers found glyphosate in every participant, including children as young as four.

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While food residues often fall within levels that regulators consider safe, even government scientists have made it clear that US regulations have not kept pace with the latest science. For one, they ignore the compounding effects of our daily exposures to a toxic soup of pesticides and other industrial chemicals. Nor do they reflect that we can have higher risks at different times in our lives and in different conditions: a developing fetus, for instance, is particularly vulnerable to toxic exposures, as are children and the immunocompromised. Instead, US regulators set one “safe” level for all of us. New research also shows that chemicals called “endocrine disruptors” can increase risk of cancers, learning disabilities, birth defects, obesity, diabetes and reproductive disorders, even at incredibly small levels. (Think the equivalent of one drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.)

Research has linked glyphosate to high rates of kidney disease in farming communities and to shortened pregnancy in a cohort of women in the midwest. Animal studies and bioassays link it to endocrine disruption, DNA damage, decreased sperm function, disruption of the gut microbiome and fatty liver disease.

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in the US, despite ever-growing demand for organic food, the government continues to favor the profits of the pesticide industry over our health, spending billions of our taxpayer dollars to prop up pesticide-intensive farming while organic programs and research are woefully underfunded.

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