Poisoning Our Future: Children and Pesticides

Pesticide Action Network Asia & the Pacific i ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Meriel Watts is the coordinator of PAN Aotearoa New Zealand, a member of PAN AP’s Steering Council, PAN AP’s Senior Science Advisor, and co-Chairperson of PAN AP’s Pesticide Task Force. She has a degree in Agricultural Science and doctorate in pesticide policy. She actively advocates for non-chemical alternatives and the elimination or control of highly hazardous pesticides in the Rotterdam and Stockhom Conventions as well as SAICM. She has authored numerous books including Pesticides & Breast Cancer: A Wake Up Call, Pesticides: Sowing Poison, Growing Hunger, Reaping Sorrow, Ethical Pesticide Policy: Beyond RIsk Assessment, and various pesticide monographs and factsheets including the latest on chlorpyrifos. She grows her own organic farm off Waiheke Island, New Zealand. Copyright © Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, 2013. All rights reserved. Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP) holds the rights to this publication. The publication may be cited in part as long as PAN AP is properly acknowledged as the source and PAN AP is furnished with copies of the final work where the quotation or citation appears. This publication is supported in part by the Swedish Chemicals Agency (KemI) but the ideas and opinions expressed herein are solely by PAN AP. Writer: Meriel Watts, PhD Editorial and Production Supervision: Erwin Navarro Editorial Adviser: Sarojeni Rengam Reviewer: Romeo Quijano, PhD Copy Editors: Patrick Limcaco and Erwin Navarro Layout and Design: Ideas For Good Cover artwork and illustrations: Karissa Villa/i4g Introduction 1 Exposure 7 2.1 Inhaling and ingesting more ........ 7 2.2 Born pre-polluted ........................ 8 2.3 Contaminated breast milk ............ 12 2.4 Residues of pesticides in food ...... 15 2.5 Health treatments ........................ 16 2.6 Contamination of the home and school environment ..................... 17 Urban Children ........................ 17 Rural Children ......................... 18 2.7 Schools ....................................... 23 2.8 Accidental ingestion ................... 23 2.9 Working children ........................ 25 Asia ........................................ 26 Latin America .......................... 26 Africa ..................................... 28 Conclusion ............................. 30 Regulatory and policy Conclusion 115 failure 99 5.1 Applying the precautionary principle to protect children ........ 101 5.2 Pesticide registration ................... 103 5.3 Government policies .................... 108 List of Tables Table 1. Pre-polluting pesticides ....................................................................... 10-11 Table 2. Pesticides found in breast milk .............................................................. 13 Table 3. Pesticides reported to have caused acute poisoning in children in Nicaragua 28 Table 4. Some child poisonings in Latin America 2010-11 ....................................… 29 Table 5. Pesticides for which immunotoxic effects have been documented in the scientific literature ................................................................................… 39 Table 6. Endocrine disrupting pesticides ............................................................... 42-43 Table 7. Some acute symptoms of pesticide poisoning ..........................................… 51 Table 8. Types of child cancers associated with different exposure scenarios ………… 81 Table 9. Pesticides linked to cancers and exposures ....................................….......... 83 Children’s special Effects of pesticides vulnerability 33 on children 51 3.1 Greater absorption and tissue 4.1 Acute poisoning .......................... 51 permeability ................................ 34 4.2 Birth defects and congenital 3.2 Vulnerability in metabolism conditions ................................... 52 and excretion .............................. 35 General parental exposure ....... 53 3.3 Developmental vulnerability: Exposure during critical critical windows .......................... 36 periods .................................... 54 A closer look at endocrine Specific pesticides ................... 54 disruptors ................................ 40 Parental body burden .............. 56 3.4 More time to develop chronic Endosulfan in India ................. 57 diseases ...................................... 44 Other congenital conditions .... 58 3.5 Future generations–epigenetic 4.3 Other birth outcomes .................. 58 effects ......................................... 45 Stillbirths, neonatal death ....... 58 3.6 Mulitple and cumulative risks....... 46 Sex Ratio ................................. 59 Foetal growth, birth weight, pre-term birth .......................... 59 4.4 Neurodevelopmental and behavioural effects ...................... 62 Genetic–environment interaction ............................... 63 Environmental chemicals ......... 64 Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) ....................... 66 Autism ..................................... 68 Intellectual Development ........ 69 Adult onset neurological Recommendations 121 disease .................................... 72 Chlorpyrifos damage to foetus causing neurodevelopmental effects ..................................... 74 Other organophosphates ......... 76 Other Pesticides ...................... 77 Summary ................................. 79 4.5 Cancer ......................................... 80 Types of pesticides implicated 82 Cancer in later Life ................... 82 4.6 Obesity, diabetes and metabolic disease ........................................ 84 Pesticides implicated in obesity, diabetes and metabolic disease 85 4.7 Immune function, allergies, asthma ........................................ 88 Glossary .................................. 124 4.8 Reproductive ............................... 91 Girls ......................................... References ............................. 129 92 Boys ......................................... 95 Credits .................................... 156 Index ............................... ....... 157 If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children. ~ MahatMa Gandhi Introduction “What matters is that our children’s bodies have become garbage cans! Everyday, I cry because of those diseases simply caused by the environment. More people have died because of chemicals than during World War II. Those who don’t want to see any cause for concern in our studies will have to answer for their serious dishonesty.” | Giles-Eric Seralini 2013 1 There are many factors that determine the health and well being of children– genetic, nutritional, social, economic, cultural, and environmental. All are important and all interact with each other in ways barely understood at times. This book is about one very important facet of that complex mix–the effects of pesticide exposures on children. A number of writers (e.g. Muncke 2009) have drawn attention to the pattern of worsening human health shadowing the increase in chemical use in everyday life and chemical pollution of the environment since the wide‑ spread introduction of industrial chemicals and industrialised agriculture post-World War I. There has been a growing awareness of the potential impact of these synthetic chemicals on child health over the last two decades. In part that has arisen from the observations of the worsening burden of child disease including infectious diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, as well as behavioural and developmental problems. In 2010, Dr Gina Solomon,2 gave the following evidence to a US Senate hearing about protecting children from environmental threats: Some childhood diseases and abnormal conditions are on the rise. For example, childhood leukaemia and brain tumours—the two most common childhood cancers—have increased by more than 20% since 1975. Asthma approximately doubled in prevalence between 1980 and 1995 and has stayed at the elevated rate. Certain birth defects of the penis and testes, such 1 Professor and research scientist in molecular biology at the University of Caen. On GMOs and Roundup. Interview by Maryvonne Ollivry, Paris Match. 17 January 2013. http://gmoseralini.org/ the-price-of-truth/ 2 Director of the National Resources Defense Council, Associate Director, Pediatric Environmen- tal Health Specialty Unit, and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. 1 as cryptorchidism (undescended testes), have increased 200% between 1970 and 1993. And, of course, there is autism, the diagnosis of which has increased by more than ten-fold in the last 15 years.3 | Solomon 2010 Observations such as these have stimulated a growing concern about children’s exposure to toxic chemicals, and this in turn has fuelled an intense round of scientific investigation that has unravelled some startling information about just how vulnerable a child, and especially the developing foetus in its mother womb, is to exposures of even very low levels of chemicals, especially those that affect the immune, endocrine and neurological systems. Alongside this has emerged an understanding that what ails adults can often be traced back to the womb – that the exposure of the unborn foetus leads to chronic and debilitating conditions in the old-aged, termed the foetal origins of disease, or developmental origins of adult disease. A seminal publication

Load more