Free Republic

Prominent farmworker activist and organizer Dolores Huerta joined several other speakers at a public meeting in Watsonville Saturday to raise awareness about the dangers of agricultural pesticide use on farmworkers, children, consumers and residents throughout Santa Cruz County. Childhood cancer rates in the county are more than 38% above the nationwide childhood cancer rate of 16.3%. This makes the cancer rate for children up to age 14 the second highest of all California counties, according to Dr. Ann López, the director of the Center for Farmworker Families. The meeting was organized by the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA)....

Noway is Trump talking about what I think he’s talking about? ✈️⚠️

On Jan. 24, 2017, PBS aired a two-hour special on Rachel Carson, the mother of the environmental movement. Although the program crossed the line from biography to hagiography, in Carson’s case, the unbridled praise was well deserved – with one exception. Rachel Carson was an American hero. In the early 1960s, she was the first to warn that a pesticide called DDT could accumulate in the environment, the first to show that it could harm fish, birds, and other wildlife, the first to warn that its overuse would render it ineffective, and the first to predict that more natural means...

Researchers have identified 22 pesticides consistently associated with the incidence of prostate cancer in the United States, with four of the pesticides also linked with prostate cancer mortality. To assess county-level associations of 295 pesticides with prostate cancer across counties in the United States, investigators conducted an environment-wide association study, using a lag period between exposure and prostate cancer incidence of 10–18 years to account for the slow-growing nature of most prostate cancers. The years 1997–2001 were assessed for pesticide use and 2011–2015 for prostate cancer outcomes. Similarly, 2002–2006 were analyzed for pesticide use and 2016–2020 for outcomes. Among the...

By getting governments to over-regulate farming, elite oligarchs like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab aim to take control over food production in the name of sustainability. Besides ‘degrowth’ and ‘net zero,’ one other dangerous buzz phrase being bandied about by proponents of the Great Reset is “nature-positive food systems.” The stated goal of moving to new food systems is to reduce nitrogen emissions, livestock production, and meat consumption. This is to be achieved by consuming plant-based products, lab-grown foods, and insects (as a source of protein). The moot question, however, is whether such a change is at all necessary? The...

Scientists in Colombia say they have developed a novel food supplement that protects bees' brains from pesticides, keeping the insects safe from neurological damage caused by agricultural chemicals. Bees, as pollinators, are considered essential for the preservation of natural ecosystems and food production. The plant-based supplement developed at Colombia's private Rosario University in Bogota, in partnership with the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona and Colombian Universidad Javeriana, allows bees to cope with neurotoxins commonly used in agriculture and avoid having their motor system and memory harmed by the chemicals.

Popular produce from blueberries to potatoes poses a 'very high risk' of unhealthy pesticides linked to cancer and diabetes, a new report has revealed. Nonprofit Consumer Reports analyzed seven years of Department of Agriculture data to identify the fruit and vegetables with the most pesticides that pose the most 'unacceptable health risks'. They found pesticides posed a 'significant risk' in a shocking 20 percent of the 59 common fruits and vegetables they studied. Blueberries, potatoes and bell peppers were deemed very high risk while green beans, kale and watermelon were high risk - meaning pregnant women and children should limit...

Researchers have identified 10 pesticides that significantly damaged neurons implicated in the development of Parkinson's disease. While environmental factors such as pesticide exposure have long been linked to Parkinson's, it has been harder to pinpoint which pesticides may raise risk for the neurodegenerative disorder. Just in California, there are nearly 14,000 pesticide products with over 1,000 active ingredients registered for use. Through a novel pairing of epidemiology and toxicity screening researchers were able to identify 10 pesticides that were directly toxic to dopaminergic neurons. The neurons play a key role in voluntary movement, and the death of these neurons is...

GARDENERS have been warned that their habit could leave them at an increased risk of heart disease. Medics found that pollutants in the soil could have a 'detrimental effect on the cardiovascular system'. The results of the analysis pushed experts to recommend that people wear a face mask, if they are in close contact with the soil. Experts at the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany said pollution of air, water and soil is responsible for at least nine million deaths each year. They highlighted that more than 60 per cent of pollution-related deaths are due to heart issues such as...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s executive arm on Wednesday proposed setting legally binding targets to reduce the use of chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030 and a ban on all pesticide use in areas such public parks, playgrounds and schools. The European Commission said the current rules limiting the use of pesticides were too weak and have not been applied consistently across the EU. A study by the group Pesticide Action Network Europe last month said the contamination of fruit and vegetables produced in the European Union with the most toxic pesticides has substantially increased over the past decade....

908 Devices, manufacturer of purpose-built handheld and desktop devices for chemical and biomolecular analysis, and the United States Forest Service (USFS) are collaborating on a research effort to extend the capabilities of the MX908 handheld device for rapid detection of toxic pesticides used in illegal marijuana grows on federal lands. Drug traffickers plant marijuana in remote areas on U.S. federal lands, mainly in the Pacific Southwest, and use toxic and illegal pesticides to accelerate crop growth. USFS personnel currently have no safe and reliable method to conduct pesticide testing at the site of these illegal marijuana grows. They often must...

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Thursday afternoon scaling back an Obama-era regulation farmers and energy producers claimed saddled them with unnecessary burdens. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rule change in Las Vegas, effectively hemming in a regulation restricting the use of fertilizers and pesticides. President Donald Trump promised to repeal his predecessor’s “Waters of the United States” policy when he was running in 2016. Rolling back WOTUS saves landowners, farmers and businesses from being forced to hire “teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” Wheeler told reporters at a meeting of the...

“We’ve got to get deeper than just these superficial fixes, as important as they are..." “We don’t have a healthcare system in the United States, we have a sickness care system in the United States. We just wait ’til somebody gets sick and then we talk about who’s going to pay for the treatment and how they’re going to be treated. What we need to talk about why so many Americans have unnecessary chronic illnesses, so many more compared to other countries. And that gets back not just into Big Pharma, not just health insurance companies, it has to do...

Kale, that popular green of the health conscious, has joined the ignoble list of 12 fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residues, according to the Environmental Working Group. The last time kale was on the list was in 2009 when it was ranked eighth. Strawberries and spinach took the top two spots again this year, respectively, followed by kale. Since 2004, the group -- a nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental organization -- has annually ranked pesticide contamination in popular fruits and vegetables for its Shopper's Guide, noting those with the highest and lowest concentration of pesticides after being washed or peeled....

Azure Farm, a Certified Organic farm in Central Oregon, is under threat from the local county government who wants to spray Azure's Certified Organic farm with herbicides like Roundup (Glyphosate). Here's what you can do to help. Contact Sherman County court via email at lhernandez@co.sherman.or.us or call Lauren at 541-565-3416 and express your concern. See azurestandard.com/healthy-living/info/azure-farm-moro/ for more details. Video explaining legal action being taken against the 18 year certified organic farm in Oregon... http://vimeo.com/216920516

Media stories about topics such as GMOs and pesticides may convince some consumers that it's not safe to eat certain fruits and vegetables Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help lower calorie intake, reduce risks for heart disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and protect against certain cancers. With all these benefits, why do some consumers choose to avoid produce? Approximately three-quarters of people in the US don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it’s seeking nearly $5 million in fines against a unit of the Swiss chemical giant Syngenta for the company’s alleged violations of pesticide regulations in Hawaii. The violations allegedly occurred on Jan. 20 at Syngenta Seeds’ crop research farm on Kauai where workers entered a field recently sprayed with a restricted insecticide. The EPA said 10 workers were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Syngenta failed to tell the workers to avoid the fields, and then allowed them to enter the fields without protective gear, the agency said. Further, the EPA said...

It’s Springtime in BaghdadNadia Mahadeed, Arab News War Correspondent BAGHDAD, 28 April 2003 — The blooming flowers and tall palm trees in the thousands of nurseries along the roads of Baghdad are competing for the attention of residents and visitors, away from the sights of destruction. They are indications of the new life that is about to begin for the Baghdadis and Iraqis in general. Abu Adnan, who runs a nursery in Al-Azamiyah in northern Baghdad, talks about his love for the profession his father and grandfather have practiced before him. “We don’t only sell flowers but we are also...

Pollution, pesticides and fast food is killing our children, with new government statistics revealing that the number of youngsters diagnosed with cancer has risen by 40% over the past 16 years. Analysis compiled by researchers from the charity Children with Cancer UK found new cases of cancer in young people rose by 1,300 every year since statistics were last compiled in 1998. The charity found this is most evident in colon cancer, which has increased by 200%, and thyroid cancer, which has seen its cases doubled during the 18 years since the last report was released. […] Alasdair Philips, science...

A new study finds that a commonly used insecticide kills much of the sperm created by male drone honey bees, one reason why the bees are dwindling. The class of insecticide called neonicotinoids didn’t kill the drones. But bees that ate treated pollen produced 39 percent less live sperm than those that didn’t, according to a controlled experiment by Swiss researchers published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It essentially acted as an accidental contraceptive on the drones, whose main job is to mate with the queen — but not one that prevented complete reproduction, just...