Health News Update: Are Pesticides the New Tobacco?
Hello friends:
As you might guess from the title, pesticides have the unfortunate side effect of creating cancers of several types as well as other health problems. Here is what the medical news reveals:
“Pesticides have transformed modern agriculture by boosting production yields and helping alleviate food insecurity amid rapid global population growth. However, from a public health perspective, exposure to pesticides has been linked to numerous harmful effects, including neurologic disorders like Parkinson's disease, weakened immune function, and an increased risk for cancer.
Pesticide exposure has been associated with cancers such as colorectal cancer, lung cancer, leukemia (in children and adults), lymphoma, and pancreatic cancer. But these studies primarily have focused on specific groups of individuals with known exposure to certain pesticides or cancer types, thus offering a limited perspective.”
“The researchers also estimated the additional cancer risk related to smoking, using the same model. They found that pesticides contributed to a higher risk for cancer than smoking in several cases.
The most significant difference was observed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, where pesticides were linked to 154.1% more cases than smoking. For all cancers combined, as well as bladder cancer and leukemia, the increases were moderate: 18.7%, 19.3%, and 21.0%, respectively.”
Bottom Line:
The best solution is to avoid contaminated food as much as possible. There are convincing studies showing that by switching to organically produced foods you can lower your pesticide burden relatively quickly and substantially…within weeks the amount found in your body will be incredibly lessened.
It may not be feasible to consume only organic, so it is a good practice to use the Environmental Working Group’s guides called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15. The dirty dozen are foods that are so contaminated that they should only be consumed if they are organic. The Clean 15 are foods that may be commercially grown yet have little to no pesticide contamination and therefore do not have to be purchased in the organic form. Here are two links to that valuable health preserving information, and at that first link, you can click to view vital information about food and the second link to get a free digital copy of the 2024 Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists:
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php
