More Than 90% of Americans Have Pesticides or Their Byproducts in Their Bodies

Since pesticide monitoring began about three decades ago, scientists have learned that even low doses of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals can harm children and that exposure to chemical mixtures, particularly during critical windows of neurodevelopment, may carry serious health risks that take years to emerge. State regulators calculate risk based on averages of exposures to single pesticides over several months, even though growers can spray more than 100,000 pounds of fumigants like 1,3-D and chloropicrin in a single week. Last year California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation measured the highest levels of 1,3-D the agency ever recorded, at a high school in Shafter, a small Central Valley town, where 83 percent of the population is Hispanic and 25 percent live below the poverty line.

Source: www.thenation.com