Are There Pesticides Present in Your Child's Urine?
by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY 
on 03.24.08
In case parents in your neck of the woods don’t have enough to sit and talk about, a new study indicates that children today often have the family of pesticides known as organophosphates present in their urine and saliva in high concentrations.
Of course the obvious question is, How did they get there? And the answer is through a diet consisting of conventionally grown foods. Fortunately, Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study and a professor at Emory University can shed some positive light on what happens when you switch your child to all organic foods.
Lu points out that when you switch your child to only organically-grown food the presence of pesticides is eliminated from their bodily fluids within 8-36 hours. An amazing feat indeed…
And although the study involved just 21 children ages 3-11, the transformation is apparently one that is extremely rapid. As Lu says, “Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets.”
And people say buying organic is "too expensive"...
See also: Great Copy Machine Epidemic Strikes Schools Across America
Via:: Eco-ChildsPlay
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Wow! That leads me to wonder why...if they can make the case for such a clear link showing these pesticides in our children's bodies after eating conventional produce...then why oh why cannot they not make a case to ban these pesticides altogether?
This doesn't surprise me at all. When my nephew comes to visit, I feed him only organic food; that's what I eat.
His mother thinks I'm a nut and "earthy", but I believe you are what you eat..... and I'm organic. Glad to find out I'm right.
Organic may not look better but it definately tastes better too.
Certainly, if given a choice, I believe most people will choose organic food over covnentional food.
And definitely hope that the price of orangic food would come down to a level that is affordable to most people.
Very interesting point on organophosphates. Here in Northern California, the USDA assisted by the California Dept of Food & Agriculture, starting this summer and fall, are plannnig to do widespread aerial spraying of plastic coated pesticides throughout heavily populated areas (including San Francisco and all the Bay Areas) to combat the apple moth.
Although the government has said this is a natural pheromone, the truth is that it is a synthetic pheromone and most of the ingredients are level III carcinogens coated in PLASTIC. This spray is designed to stay in the air for an extended period and is a timed-release pesticide -- and they're planning on repeated monthly spraying for 3-5 years, potentially longer. These plastic coated particles can get lodged in our lungs and the immediate and long-term health effects are scary.
These moths have been in our area at least 30 years and there is no proof of any damage to crops - there are already 50 other moths here in the same moth family which are controlled naturally by birds, spiders, earwigs and other natural predators. There also has been no evidence that the spray even works to kill the moth they're targeting. There is lots of evidence that it's harmful to the people breathing it, especially children, pregnant women and the elderly and disabled.
In Australia and New Zealand, where the moth originated, they controlled the moth by banning organophosphate-based pesticides and the natural predators took over and did their job of controlling the moth. If only we could over-come vested interests to do something similar here.
Check out LBAMspray.org for more info on this particular controversy.
Jenn,
To answer your question, making a case to ban the chemicals would require showing that the levels detected in people (children) is harmful in some way.
That in turn would either require some sort of government funding for studies or would in the future require a system that demanded company sponsored studies similar to drugs before new pesticides are approved.
On a positive note, the quick clearing time would at least seem to indicate that these substances do not bio-accumulate, unlike mercury for instance.
I am curious, in the context of media coverage such as the Treehugger post... what does "in high concentrations" mean. That would seem to be a loaded, yet meaningless, statement without further explanation. Some chemicals can have deleterious effects at concentrations hundreds of times lower than others. In this context what is "high"... parts per trillion, parts per million, parts per thousand... and whatever it is, why is that "high" compared to what would have been considered "low". Or have these chemicals been shown to be so harmful to people that anything other than zero would be unacceptable. It would seem that is a rather obvious omission in the coverage of this new study.
I'm certainly no expert in the area of nutrition, but I find myself thinking that if the pesticides are in the urine, isn't that a good thing? I mean, the whole point is to get rid of stuff your body doesn't like. My question would be how much of the pesticides are actually absorbed into the body without being passed. The fact that the pesticides make it into the urine seems to argue in favor of the fact that they are not harming the body significantly... at least without further details.
@Paul... good point... but... not good enough :)
If you've got any kind of poisons coming out of your piss... that's not a good thing. Even if 1% of the toxic stuff was sucked up into your system... that's a bad 1%.
Would be an interesting study though !
"To answer your question, making a case to ban the chemicals would require showing that the levels detected in people (children) is harmful in some way."
Regardless of the harmful nature, I can't understand, in our lawsuit happy world, why someone wouldn't sue them for not properly including a warning label. If I buy an apple, I expect to get just an apple, not a heaping portion of pesticide.
I recall, back in 1988/89 when the chemical alar (sp) was banned from use in apple orchards on the early blossoms, as it was found to be systemic and was later appearing in the apple itself. How were they able to establish that this was going to be harmful to humans...is it the same process for all agricultural chemicals? As for me, I try to buy organic whenever possible, and affordable- but I am weak when it comes to strawberries and other delicious produce that is forbiddingly high $ when bought in the organic section.
I saw a study that showed children had higher levels of toxins in there sytems than their parents.