Pesticides

Home to vast fields of sugar beets, potatoes, wheat, sunflowers, and flax (to name a few), the Red River Valley, lush and fruitful, supplies the world with food and fuel.
This abundance comes at a cost. Minnesota ranks third in the nation in pesticide use.

Pesticides, when applied carefully, increase crop yield and save the farmer’s investment. Because of the high cost of pesticides (chemicals that kill both weeds and bugs) farmers will probably agree that limited targeted applications are more desirable than blanketed applications.

The Red River Valley is one of the major wheat, sugar beet, and potato-growing regions of the United States.

Conventional farming practices for these crops include the application of pesticides. Minnesota has more than 18,000 certified private pesticide applicators. They use restricted-use pesticides (RUPs) to control insect and weed pests. In Polk County alone, there are 596 RUP certified applicators.

Farmers are only a small piece of the pie. A survey conducted by the Environmental Resource Council reveals that in the Red River Valley, only 8% of the respondents personally apply pesticides to farm crops. Respondents are more likely to use pesticides on their lawns (37%), gardens (25%), and fruit trees (10%).

Exposure to pesticides happens in many ways: through ingestion of food and water, inhalation via aerial crop and mosquito truck spraying, absorption through the skin, from contaminated cloths, floors, toys, and doorknobs.

Children of farmers are at greater risk of exposure when the home and farm are not separated, or when the pesticide applicator brings hazardous materials into the home on their clothes, hands, boots, and tools. Pesticide applicator training and certification is an important step in reducing exposures, but doesn’t eliminate the risk.

The long-term Agricultural Health Study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, investigates the effects of environmental, occupational, dietary, and genetic factors on the health of the agricultural population.

Over 89,000 individuals participate in this study. Overall cancer rates in the study population are lower than expected (probably due to a healthier lifestyle—less smoking and more physical activity).

However, certain cancers, like prostate and ovarian cancer, are higher than expected. Also, farmers who applied pesticides for more than 30 years have a 50% higher chance of reporting the rare farmer’s lung disease. Individuals who use certain pesticides (paraquet, EPTC, parathion, malathion, and chlorpyrifos) are more likely to wheeze.

Recent research that included the Red River Valley showed death rates from birth defects among male infants born in “high wheat producing” counties are more than twice as high as in “low wheat producing” counties. Residents of the Red River Valley express both concern and lack of information about pesticide exposure. Over 50% of respondents from the Environmental Resource Council’s survey believe that pesticide exposure may cause birth defects and cancers.

When asked about the relationship between pesticides and health, 70% indicated that “most of us do not know the level of risk.”

Because of their fast rate of growth, pregnant women and children are at the greatest risk for pesticide exposure problems. Some of these problems are indeed physical; while others are more subtle, involving social, emotional, and intellectual development.

Dr. Elizabeth Guillette of the University of Florida, in her comparison of children from two Mexican farming communities (one that used conventional techniques and one that used organic techniques), found that pesticide exposure in children can lead to learning deficits, decreased memory, and slower fertility development.

Discussion about pesticide effects on human health often centers around how high doses make pesticides poisonous. Guillette concludes exposure and subsequent effects have more to do with timing and individual variability. Low doses can have effects that have not been predicted by high dose studies.

With so many people using pesticides, especially private individuals who use them to grow green, weed- and bug-free lawns and gardens, and with enough compelling evidence about the potential effects in children (whose bodies concentrate chemicals more than adults’), how can we use less of these life-altering chemicals?

On September 20 a reception and forum about the use of pesticides in our communities will take place at the Downtown Fargo Atomic Coffee from 3-5 p.m. Come view photographs taken by women from three Red River Valley communities. The photographs reveal where pesticides are found in our community.

The women involved poignantly express their concerns and offer their solutions to reducing pesticide exposure in children and throughout the community.