Brain Damaging Pesticides in Food

When I was a child, my motherīs instructions in cleaning vegetables were to discard the outer leaves and wash the rest thoroughly. For vegetables that could be scraped, such as carrots or potatoes, she said to wash them well before scraping them. Fruit should be washed before it was cut, peeled, or eaten. My mother was ahead of her time. Even back then, she worried about the safety of food.

Today, pesticides and fertilizers are more potent than ever. They have to be to battle the ever-adapting bugs. My daughterīs friend discovered this while she was working on her doctorate in entomology (insects) at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She spent long hours in the vegetable fields, especially the celery fields, monitoring the success of pesticides that were sprayed on the crops to combat insects. She tried to protect herself from the danger of absorbing pesticides into her skin by wearing gloves and boots. Since vegetables donīt wear gloves or boots, the vegetables absorbed dangerous amounts of pesticides.

The health toll of toxic pesticides and fertilizers on people is alarming. In Washington State, where I once lived, farmers had a high rate of cancer that researchers believed could be traced to the lethal pesticides and fertilizers sprayed on the crops. The June 2006 issue of Movement Disorder reported a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic that revealed pesticide exposure increased the incidence of Parkinsonīs disease in men.

Environmental Health Perspectives reported that American toddlers eating mostly organic foods have only one-sixth the pesticide residues in their urine of children eating non-organic foods. Preschool children in Seattle, Washington, were monitored to assess their exposure to pesticides in the diet. The children who ate conventionally grown, or non-organic, foods had six times the level of pesticides in their urine than children who ate organic foods. The eating of organic food lowered the childrenīs exposure to toxic pesticides from above the recognized safety levels to below.

Malignancies in children linked to pesticides include leukemia, non- Hodgkinīs lymphoma, and cancers of the brain. The risk of cancer for children is greater than the risk for adults, suggesting that children may be particularly sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of pesticides. Doctors Philip J. Landrigan and Herbert L. Needleman, authors of Raising Children Toxic Free, estimate that 80 to 90 percent of childhood cancer is caused by exposure to carcinogens in the environment. Safe levels of pesticides are usually established for adults, not children. A childīs body is smaller, as is the liver, so the body is not as well equipped to handle toxins in the food or in the environment.

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that toxic pesticide ingestion by nursing mothers has resulted in breast-fed infants consuming unacceptable levels of poisonous substances that can cause childhood cancers. This is all the more reason for young women of childbearing age to eat organic.

It is never too early to begin cancer prevention for your children. Start with organic foods. The absence of toxic pesticides and fertilizers in organic food, along with the additional antioxidants and immune boosters present in organic food, will enable the childīs immune system to help fight childhood cancers.

The USDA lists green peppers, celery, and green beans as highest in pesticide absorption for vegetables. Strawberries, peaches, and apples rate the highest in pesticide absorption for fruits by the USDA. For these foods switch to organic. Your childīs health depends on it.

A breast cancer survivor with liver problems, Sandy Powers turned to organic foods to heal her liver and fight cancer recurrence. She shares her research, her amazing results, and her recipes packed with antioxidants and immune boosters in her book, "Organic for Health."

http://www.organicforhealthsite.com sdepour@comcast.net