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Organic Quick Facts

Want a quick, fact-based sampling of why organic is healthier for people and the planet? Click on the following links for concise information.

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Are children more vulnerable to pesticides?

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recently issued its final draft of revised cancer assessment guidelines. This draft updates guidelines developed in 1986, based on new scientific understanding of how cancer is caused and the effects of cancer-causing substances on different groups, such as children. When finalized, the new guidelines will apply to pesticides and other chemicals that may be released into the environment. Government analysis on which the new standards are based shows the following:

•  Children accumulate half of their lifetime cancer risk by age two.

•  On average, children up to age two are 10 times more vulnerable to cancer-causing chemicals than adults.

•  Some cancer-causing substances are up to 65 times more potent for infants than adults.

•  Children from age 2 to 15 are 3 times more vulnerable to carcinogens than adults.

•  Children are exposed to more cancer-causing substances because pound for pound, they eat more food and breathe more air than adults do.

•  Children's bodies can't process or get rid of toxins as easily as adults.

•  Children's organ's continue to grow for years after birth and are easily damaged by chemicals in their food and in their environment.

•  Early exposures give cancers time to develop. Cancers are not caused by one event or one chemical; they grow over time. Over the years, new exposures may trigger cancers in cells damaged during childhood.

Source:
CHEC (Children's Health Environmental Coalition)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

What are pesticides?

•  The term "pesticide" is presently used to describe a very broad range of agents designed to kill undesireable forms of life—pests.

•  Pesticides include agents for killing insects (insecticides), mites (miticides), weeds (herbicides), fungi (fungicides), and rodents (rodenticides).

•  Fumigants are another class of chemical pesticide used to kill a variety of pests in the soil (to kill disease-causing organisms) or in confined spaces, such as grain elevators and other food storage facilities.

How does organic farming save money...and the environment?

•  The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) estimates that cutting agricultural pollution could eliminate the need for at least $15 billion worth of additional advanced water treatment facilities.

•  Water utilities in Germany now pay farmers to switch to organic operations, because it costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies.

See the full article at http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/001209.aspx

Source:
Worldwatch Institute
1776 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-452-1999
Fax: 202-296-7365

What are the links between pesticides and dietary fats?

•  Breast cancer has been linked to exposure to organochlorine pesticides. A DDT metabolite called DDE was found to be the most prevalent pesticide detected in breast biopsies. In women with breast cancer, DDT and DDE levels were especially elevated.

•  In Israel, after a reduction in allowable levels of DDT and related pesticides in dairy products, breast cancer deaths in younger women dropped by 30 percent.

•  A high-fat diet has been accepted as one of the major causes of breast cancer in women. Some researchers stress that the presence of carcinogenic pesticides, which concentrate in animal fats and are known to cause breast cancer, is the reason a high-fat diet increases the risk of breast cancer.

Source: Epstein, S.S. The Politics of Cancer Revisited East Ridge Press, 1998.

How are kids exposed to pesticides?

•  A study conducted by the Department of Public Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington measured pesticide exposure of pre-school children in Seattle, Washington. Twenty-four-hour urine samples were collected from 18 children with organic diets and 21 children with conventional diets.

The study found that metabolite concentrations indicating organophosphorus (OP) pesticide exposure were approximately six times higher for children with conventional diets than for children with organic diets.

Diet, not environmental exposure, appears to have been the primary pathway for OP pesticide exposure for the children in this study. Results suggest that consumption of organic fruits, vegetables, and juices can reduce children's exposure levels from above to below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's current guidelines, thereby shifting exposures from a range of uncertain risk to a range of negligible risk.

Source: "Organophosphorus pesticide exposure of urban and suburban pre-school children with organic and conventional diets" Cynthia L. Curl, Richard A. Fenske, and Kai Elgethun, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Can pesticide exposure occur before birth?

•  Almost all pesticides and other pollutants cross the placenta, the natural protective shield for the fetus.

•  Pesticides and other pollutants have been detected in amniotic fluid and body tissues of human fetuses even during the early stages of prenatal life.

•  Exposure to pesticides causes many health problems, including the risk of miscarriage.

•  The fetus is particularly susceptible to impacts of pesticides and other pollutants because:
its cells divide rapidly;
its blood brain barrier is more permeable; and its detoxification enzymes are not yet developed

Sources:
Nuriminen, T., "Maternal Pesticide Exposure and Pregnancy Outcome," J Occup Environ Med 37:8, 935-940 (1995).
Jensen, A.A. "Transfer of Chemical Contaminants in Human Milk." In: Jensen, A.A. and Slorach SA (eds).
Chemical Contaminants in Human Milk. Boca Raton: CRC Press, pp: 9-19 (1991).
Office of Technology Assessment, (OTA) of the US Congress, Neurotoxicity: Identifying and Controlling Poisons of the Nervous System (1990).

Do pesticides damage the ozone layer?

•  Methyl bromide, a pesticide used to sterilize soil and kill insects in grain, is a major threat to the ozone shield, as documented in a report by the United Nations.

•  Each bromine molecule in the stratosphere destroys 30 to 120 times more ozone than does the comparable chlorine. Thus methyl bromide, which is released at levels comparable to CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), is more potent in destroying the ozone than CFCs.

•  It is expected that: ozone depletion may finally eliminate most life in polar areas; and ozone depletion will have a suppressing effect on the immune system of human beings.

Sources:
"Stratospheric Ozone Depletion," United Nations Environment Program Report (1991).
Ozone Science, 255,952 (1992).

What are some of the true costs of conventional agriculture?

The price of organic food reflects, more or less, the full cost of making it. The price of chemically grown food does not. Among the costs not incorporated into the bar codes that beep their way through the check-out lane:

  •  fertilizer-contaminated groundwater
  •  insecticide-contaminated fish
  •  herbicide-contaminated rain
  •  dead honeybees
  •  poisoned wildlife
  •  deformed frogs
  •  eroded soil
  •  toxic algal blooms
  •  ozone depletion
  •  antibiotic resistance

These are what economists call "externalities"—the costs of an activity that are borne by others. The bad thing about externalities is that they lead to market outcomes that are costly to society, even though the products themselves are privately profitable.

Cornell University professor David Pimental has estimated that the externalities of conventionally grown food cost more than $10 billion a year. This includes:

  •  costs of lost work caused by poisonings of farm workers
  •  medical treatments for pesticide-induced cancers
  •  maintenance of complex regulatory systems to monitor pesticide residues in everything from applesauce to lake sediments

Source: "The Ecology of Pizza (or Why Organic Food is a Bargain),"
prepared for the Organic Trade Association by ecologist Sandra Steingraber, September 2003.

 

To learn more about organic farming,visit our Organic 101 section. For more questions and answers about Earthbound Farm Products, visit our Frequently Asked Questions and our Quality and Food Safety pages.