Experts Want To Ban Organophosphate Pesticides To Protect Children's Health (theguardian.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Evidence that an entire class of pesticides threatens the health of children and pregnant women is now so arresting that the substances should be banned, an expert panel of toxicologists has said. Exposure to organophosphates (OPs) increases the risk of reduced IQs, memory and attention deficits, and autism for prenatal children, according to the paper, published in Plos Medicine. More than 10,000 tonnes of OP pesticides are sprayed in 24 European countries each year and usage is higher in the US, where the Trump administration is appealing against a federal court ban on chlorpyrifos, one of the most popular agricultural insecticides.
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, the paper's lead author and director of the UC Davis environmental health sciences centre, said: "We have compelling evidence from dozens of human studies that exposures of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides put children and fetuses at risk for developmental problems that may last a lifetime. By law, the EPA cannot ignore such clear findings: It's time for a ban not just on chlorpyrifos, but all organophosphate pesticides." Bruce Lanphear, one of the paper's co-authors, said: "We found no evidence of a safe level of organophosphate pesticide exposure for children. Well before birth, organophosphate pesticides are disrupting the brain in its earliest stages, putting them on track for difficulties in learning, memory and attention, effects which may not appear until they reach school-age. Government officials around the world need to listen to science, not chemical lobbyists."
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, the paper's lead author and director of the UC Davis environmental health sciences centre, said: "We have compelling evidence from dozens of human studies that exposures of pregnant women to very low levels of organophosphate pesticides put children and fetuses at risk for developmental problems that may last a lifetime. By law, the EPA cannot ignore such clear findings: It's time for a ban not just on chlorpyrifos, but all organophosphate pesticides." Bruce Lanphear, one of the paper's co-authors, said: "We found no evidence of a safe level of organophosphate pesticide exposure for children. Well before birth, organophosphate pesticides are disrupting the brain in its earliest stages, putting them on track for difficulties in learning, memory and attention, effects which may not appear until they reach school-age. Government officials around the world need to listen to science, not chemical lobbyists."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Good job, (probably paid) troll.
This isn't about politics. It's about science.
Make America Great Again is right - by banning a class of substances that appear to be about as safe for people (neurologically speaking) as lead. Would you have said 60 years ago, "Those pesky scientists will make up any lie to hurt the GOP. This lead fearmongering is clearly a lie. #MAGA"?
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Probably.
Why do you think lead paint was banned in America in the 1970s instead of 60 years earlier as it happened in other developed countries? Why do you think TEL has been used in the first place?
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Exactly. And there are far too many people who prioritise corporate profits before public health. Either because they are paid shills or because they are free market fundamentalists and suffer from the Stockholm syndrome.
Nonsense (Score:1)
What is needed is more CFC to open up the atmosphere so more of the pollution can get out. When it all gets out then more Co2 to close the atmosphere. Repeat as needed. And this is how we republicans fight fire - WITH SCIENCE!
Show me the numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
What is the magnitude of risk here? Is it an observable epidemiological effect like lead in petroleum, and iodine deficiency?
Or is it more like the recent hysteria over glyphosate?
And why should it be totally banned instead of just kept away from pregnant women? I don't believe there is any residual pesticide in fresh food when regulations are followed.
I rubbed this stuff (malathion) into my kids heads to kill headlice when they were little. They still get strait As. Would not have dreamed of using it on a
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just because we all grew up riding around in the back of a pickup truck doesn't mean it was safe.
The anecdote is just to express scepticism and call for real evidence.
When seat-belts were introduced, there was overwhelming evidence very quickly. They have saved millions of lives.
Banning motorbikes would probably be a lot more effective than banning pesticides. And we'd miss them less.
Re: Show me the numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
The anecdote is just to express scepticism and call for real evidence.
Can you give me the citations that prove that the evidence is not real? Well, Ask any ye shall recieve.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
http://depts.washington.edu/op... [washington.edu]
These are just a few of many available citations. Your challenge is to refute them since you appear to know that these reports are not real.
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Sorry, let me try to be clearer.
There is not question that these pesticides can be harmful. And that rural workers in some places are being exposed to excessive amounts.
The question is whether an outright ban is better than enforcing existing safer regulations for rural workers.
And how does the harm compare to the benefits, vs the harm and benefits of alternative methods of pest control. These need to be quantified.
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Sorry, let me try to be clearer.
There is not question that these pesticides can be harmful. And that rural workers in some places are being exposed to excessive amounts.
Not just workers. It is people who live near the farms where they are spraying the organophosphtes. Excessive is interesting, as this exposure is via drift, not more direct contact.
Re: Show me the numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though, just because we all grew up riding around in the back of a pickup truck doesn't mean it was safe.
Doesn't mean it needs to be banned, either.
Organophosphates (unlike roundup) actually are quite dangerous. It doesn't take a huge ammount to instantly kill you, and repeated exposure to lower doses definitely can lead to health problems. That doesn't mean they're a risk for the consumer, though; only for the agriculutrual workers who come into contact with the stuff. Better safety protocols during aplication/handling may be all that's really needed, as suggested by the fact that (as per the article) 99%
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Re: Show me the numbers (Score:2)
If the extra cost isn't a barrier for you, buying organic produce is a rational cost/quality calculation.
Organic is a useless label which tells you absolutely nothing about the quality. While it does tell you that an arbitrary list of pesticides weren't used, it tells you absolutely nothing about which pesticides WERE used. As such it's very far removed from being a rational individual choice, let alone a practical solution on a global level.
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Organic = more dangerous pesticides = irrational (Score:2)
Like anything else, pesticides are developed and impeoved over time. New types of pesticides are more effective per gram, meaning less pesticide is needed. They are also more targeted to the problematic insects, and therefore safer for mammals.
"Organic" means they use the older, more dangerous pesticides, which are used in far greater amounts. An extract from Deadly Nightshade is one example of an organic pesticide. Another popular organic pesticide is produced by a deadly fungus - toxic to humans as well
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My point is not that organic farming is inherently better, but that in order to successfully keep organic produce on the market the quality of what sits on the shelf must be higher than what's next t
Re: Show me the numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAChemist, but I remember once being told that organophosphates are from the same chemical family as modern "a drop will kill 100 people" nerve gasses.
Anything that toxic deserves to be treated with respect, even if it's only designed to kill bugs. So, if there's evidence that it is affecting children's brain development, we should be looking very hard at it, and banning is definitely on the table. Seems a lot more likely that organophosphates are a problem than, say, vaccines.
But, I grew up with _Silent Spring_, Agent Orange , Vietnam, leaded gas and Bhopal. So my trust level for pronouncements that organophosphates are "safe when used as directed" is a bit low. And I'm not convinced that produce gets or can be washed enough to remove all traces of them.
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Yes, of course it is toxic.
The question is if and how commercial use causes harm that exceeds the benefits, compared to alternatives.
There certainly does not appear to be harm to the general public in developed countries.
It may differ in countries where directions and regulations are not followed as well.
And there is a question of harm to agricultural workers in the Unites States, where many are employed illegally in 3rd world conditions.
Is the solution really a complete ban?
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As for the "experts" in this article, when they try to blame autism on organophosphates that's a pretty big red flag. When they further say things like "We found no evidence of a safe level of organophosphate pesticide exposure for children" that pretty much confirms that they're not to be taken seriously. They then go on to tell you to "buy organic" and "wash your food", the latter of which is probably the only truly rational suggestion in the entire article.
Look, I agree more information than just that referenced in TFA is needed to come to a conclusion. But seriously the EU and US have already banned more than 75% of this class of compounds, so they're not just whistling in the wind on their "bad effects". If it turns out that even residual exposure such as residues on fruit can have effects on developing fetuses, we may finally h
It's not just these guys linking autism/pesticides (Score:2)
I've seen unrelated news stories that have found correlations to being close to agricultural fields and rates of autism. Those news reports didn't go into a lot of detail, but evidence does seem to be mounting about a connection between autism and pesticides. It's not just these guys making isolated claims.
As is usual, the evidence is going to have to be weighed, critiqued, and the cost/benefits of a ban also considered.
--PeterM
Risk evaluation (Score:3)
Seriously though, just because we all grew up riding around in the back of a pickup truck doesn't mean it was safe.
Doesn't mean it needs to be banned, either.
So you are arguing in effect that people shouldn't be required to wear seat belts either? Because that's the same argument. Sometimes we need to ban behaviors that are needlessly dangerous because sometimes people don't know better and/or are bad at evaluating risk. A certain percentage of them are going to die unnecessarily and that measurably affects the rest of society in tangible ways. When others have to pay for first responders to scrape you off the highway because you wanted to do something idioti
Re: Risk evaluation (Score:2)
So you are arguing in effect that people shouldn't be required to wear seat belts either?
It very much depends on the people, and the circumstances. If you're driving your family around on public roads, yeah, obviously you should use your seatbelts. In other circumstances seatbelts are not required and may hamper your ability to function. I've worked in several fields where seatbelts were routinely ignored, for good reasons.
Same goes with these pesticides. Banning them for residential use? Sure, probabl
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Re:Show me the numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the magnitude of risk here? Is it an observable epidemiological effect like lead in petroleum, and iodine deficiency? Or is it more like the recent hysteria over glyphosate?
I've read the data, the numbers are significant and show increasing harm by closer distance to the spraying sites, and coinciding across the locations.
Observable evidence doesn't mean much, as when people showed concern about tetra ethyl lead in gasoline, an industry exec "proved" it was perfectly safe by washing his hands in gasoline. This was years before the inadvertent experiment where demographics showed that men living near highways were poisoned with lead, leading to violent tendencies.
And there are still people who whine about banning DDT, lead in gasoline, elimination of Paris Green (arsenic source) from pesticides, and removing arsenic from wallpaper, and dosing children with huge amounts of X-rays in bogus shoe fitting devices.
The companies hold great sway in these matters.
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Heck, if the recent discoveries of the effects on glyphosate on insects bears out, that one may be worse than anything you listed.
I know it isn't popular among the inertia crowd, but they might do a little reading on just how often we poisoned a lot of our citizens. And when I say we, I don't mean just Americans.
Usually what it takes is for the inertia crowd to start keeling over. And about all these endocrine disrupters and estrogen mimics, it will happen.
I'm an inherent skeptic, but the evidence is pretty compelling.
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Usually what it takes is for the inertia crowd to start keeling over. And about all these endocrine disrupters and estrogen mimics, it will happen.
Well, that's one way to stop all this nonsense about converting algae into some "sustainable" food source. Only partly kidding there. Something has to stop the population growth, and personally I'd prefer a voluntary approach. Algae as meat, catastrophic epidemics and world population affecting disasters are not on my bucket list.
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Usually what it takes is for the inertia crowd to start keeling over. And about all these endocrine disrupters and estrogen mimics, it will happen.
Well, that's one way to stop all this nonsense about converting algae into some "sustainable" food source. Only partly kidding there. Something has to stop the population growth, and personally I'd prefer a voluntary approach. Algae as meat, catastrophic epidemics and world population affecting disasters are not on my bucket list.
Ugh - I had once written a small piece regarding how humans could triple or quadruple our population in response to someone saying that there was plenty of land to hold people. Noting that a lot of that land is hardly habitable, and that if humanity covered all the arable land, we couldn't grow crops, his idea wouldn't work.
In it's place, we would have a massivly urban environment with perhaps the Japanese capsule hotel becoming the way all but the wealthiest live, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and s
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It's observable for farm workers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
So the solution seems to be to not allow women to work on farms.
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The misuse and over-use of pesticides is common in China and other third world countries. It is hard to enforce rules in rural China, but education is improving.
The footnote for the Dutch study was interesting, but comes down to "the reasons merit further study."
It is acceptable to ban particular organophosphates when safer ones are available, even though the magnitude of the risk is not known.
But to ban a whole class of pesticides, without a clear alternative, needs greater evidence that significant harm
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Ahh, but it screwed you up to the point that you can't spell "straight"....;-p
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Ahh, but it screwed you up to the point that you can't spell "straight"....;-p
It happens all time: I say the words in my head, and my hands type homonyms. Often hear/here their/they're . :-)
A lot of people do it. Would be interesting to see if correlated to any environmental exposure
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> strait As
Suspicious spelling.
Damn those homonyms. I need a smarter spellchecker. :)
In my defence, I was using an American idiom, not my native language
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Malathion is one of the safest organophoshate pesticides as most people have an enzyme that breaks it down. Others are not so safe. Remember this class of chemicals was invented to kill people, quickly, and directly works on the nerves by screwing with the chemical that turns off nerve impulses.
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Easier to feed your kids biologically grown produce under Trump than to keep them away from the propaganda causing an exponential growth in the number of kids identifying as cross gender under the left.
Organophosphates won't make their dicks fall off.
Other info (Score:4, Interesting)
Quote: As of 2008, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF and others had filed 532 patents for 'climate-related genes,' touting the imminent arrival of a new generation of seeds engineered to withstand heat and drought."
Answer to question on Yahoo: [yahoo.com] "Organophosphates KILL everything. Good bugs as well as bad. Most growers of any crops are now using something called. I.P.M., integrated pest management."
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Most growers of any crops are now using something called. I.P.M., integrated pest management."
It depends on how you define "most growers". Most crops are grown without IPM, because the big ag cartel doesn't use it. In fact, they prohibit the growing of any other plants around the fields, because they supposedly attract animals which shit on the produce and cause outbreaks which lead to recalls. Of course, what actually causes that is when they don't provide enough toilets, and pickers have to shit between the rows.
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The part you quoted doesn't really make any sense. Like most Yahoo Answers! responses I question the intelligence of the person who posted it.
OPs have their place in IPM. IPM just means you rotate chemical classes to keep things from building up immunity to something. True, OPs basically kill everything, so do OCs (not that
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OPs have their place in IPM. IPM just means you rotate chemical classes to keep things from building up immunity to something.
What? No it doesn't. IPM means you plant trap crops, and plants which attract beneficial insects. It means you directly manage plants and not just crops, e.g. removing infected individuals. Maybe you should let people who have actually used IPM talk about it, eh?
Nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody knows that autism and such things are a result of vaccination!
And they dare call themselves scientists, phu!
Slap a "don't use near pregnant women or kids" (Score:1)
Besides, it's not like these are only bad for kids or pregnancy. If I'm not mistaken, the bulk of organophosphate pesticides are just as effective as killing humans as they are insects. Hence the practice of being careful when using them.
VX is an Organophosphate (Score:2)
We've known for decades that organophosphates are very dangerous. This is why they developed neonicotinoids that are much safer. It's to bad that so called environmentalists would rather attack the safer alternatives simply because they want to blame the companies that make them for all evil in the world. Organics are more dangerous and less effective requiring greater use and higher costs.
Acute toxicity to humans is not the only risk (Score:4, Insightful)
We've known for decades that organophosphates are very dangerous. This is why they developed neonicotinoids that are much safer.
There is evidence that neonicotinoids hurt pollinators [wikipedia.org]. Just because a few drops applied directly to a person don't result in a trip to the morgue doesn't mean they are "safer". Sometimes the indirect consequences are worse than the direct ones. No pollinators = no food and last I checked famine was pretty dangerous to humans.
Re: Acute toxicity to humans is not the only risk (Score:2)
Last time I checked more that 60% of crops required no polinizers and there is no real evidence that neonicotinoids harm any when used properly.
Malaria (Score:2)
Kids dying of all natural Malaria, delivered by all natural insects!