Americans
Have High Levels Of Pesticides In Their Body
May
11, 2004
SAN
FRANCISCO -- Many
U.S. residents carry unhealthy levels of pesticides in their bodies, with
children, women and Mexican Americans disproportionately exposed to the toxic
chemicals, according to a study released Tuesday. The
Pesticide Action Network analyzed data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in a study of more than 2,648 people tested for levels of
34 pesticides, the environmental group said. The
PAN study -- called "Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and
Corporate Accountability" -- found that a large percentage of people who
had their blood and urine tested carried pesticides above levels considered safe
by government health and environmental agencies. "The
pesticide body burden data represents a failure of our approach to how we
protect people from toxic pesticides," said Kristin Schafer, the study's
lead author and PAN's program coordinator. "We really hope that it will
help us move toward a different system of how we control pests in agriculture
and all other areas." San
Francisco-based PAN, which advocates for alternatives to pesticide use for pest
control, found that the average person in the study carried 13 of the 23
pesticides they evaluated. Many of the pesticides have been linked to
infertility, birth defects, cancer and other serious health ailments, said
Margaret Reeves, a senior scientist at PAN. "A
growing body of research suggests that even at very low levels, the combination
of these chemicals can be harmful to our health," Reeves said. The
PAN study found that children between 6 and 11 years old were exposed to the
nerve-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos at four times the level deemed acceptable
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Chlorpyrifos is designed to kill
insects by disrupting the nervous system. "It
does appear to have some validity," said Francis B. Suhre, of the EPA.
"The crux of the matter is what does it all mean and is it reflecting past
effects as opposed to current. At first blush, it requires further
screening." The
study said one company -- Dow Chemical Corp. -- was responsible for 80 percent
of the chlorpyrifos in Americans' bodies. The figure was derived from the amount
of the chemical in the bodies of the people tested and a "conservative
estimate of Dow's market share," said Skip Spitzer, a program coordinator
for PAN and one of the study's authors. Dow
spokesman Garry Hamlin confirmed the company is the largest manufacturer of the
pesticide in the country, but said the pesticide leaves the body quickly without
doing harm. He said the CDC has noted that the measurement of an environmental
chemical in a person's blood or urine does not mean that the chemical causes
disease. "Chlorpyrifos
is widely used, and studies by the Centers for Disease Control suggest that
people are exposed to chlorpyrifos at very tiny levels. ... When people are
exposed, the product breaks down readily and is eliminated from the body in a
matter of days," he said. The
report said that women carry "significantly" higher levels of three
pesticides called organochlorines known to reduce birth weight and disrupt brain
development in infants. PAN's
analysis also found that Mexican Americans carried higher levels of chemicals
linked to the insecticides lindane, DDT and methyl parthion than other ethnic
groups. The
PAN study didn't reveal why certain groups were more exposed to certain
chemicals because the CDC data didn't include information about where the test
subjects lived or what kinds of jobs they held. People are thought to ingest
pesticides through air, water and food. CDC
spokeswoman Stephanie Creel said the center would not comment on the findings
because it did not participate in the analysis. PAN
researchers believe pesticide makers should be held responsible for the
"pesticide body burden" and its financial and health impacts. "There's
a case to be made that the primary responsibility for these pesticides in our
bodies lies with the folks that manufacture and market them," Schafer said.
The
study recommends that Congress investigate corporate responsibility for
pesticide contamination, an EPA ban on using hazardous pesticides, and requiring
manufacturers to demonstrate that a pesticide doesn't harm human health before
using it. |