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

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

#71

Post by pdonis »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67
pagnol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it been proven beyond doubt that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food without the use of pesticides?

There are lots of examples of intensive farming in e.g. greenhouses and vertical farms that don't involve pesticides. That's in addition to loads of traditional farmers converting to organic farming and managing decent yields as well. So plenty of proof that it can be done and that it is being done. Whether it scales is more a technical challenge than a scientific question IMHO. The real problem in farming is not cos…

> The real problem in farming is not cost but the fact that there are a lot of middlemen taking all the profits.

No, that's not the problem. The problem (if you view it as a problem) is that food is now produced very far away from where it is consumed, which means that the process of getting the food to the people who are eating it is now much more complicated and requires much more work. When you buy food at the supermarket, you are not just paying the people who farmed it; you are paying the people who got it all the way from the farm to the supermarket, which, these days, could well be a trip halfway around the world. There are indeed plenty of middlemen in this process, but they are adding value since food on a farm hundreds or thousands of miles from the consumer is no good to the consumer.

(This is not to say that there isn't corruption in the food distribution process; there certainly is. I mentioned government issues in another post in this thread.)

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

#72

Post by hinkley »

stillbourne wrote: post #3

Sola dosis facit venenum. It's not about that its there, its about how much there is. My guess is not enough to warrant the effort it took to write this article.

Have you forgotten the PBA studies already? Microdoses of some compounds can interrupt signaling in the endocrine system. We don’t know which yet, but we know the phenomenon exists.

A cautious person would assume that lack of proof (or more accurately, lack of information proving or disproving) doesn’t mean lack of harm.

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

#73

Post by tracker1 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67
pagnol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it been proven beyond doubt that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food without the use of pesticides?

There are lots of examples of intensive farming in e.g. greenhouses and vertical farms that don't involve pesticides. That's in addition to loads of traditional farmers converting to organic farming and managing decent yields as well. So plenty of proof that it can be done and that it is being done. Whether it scales is more a technical challenge than a scientific question IMHO. The real problem in farming is not cos…

Most organic farming still involves some pesticides, they're just organic (and sometimes more toxic).

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

#74

Post by pdonis »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #58
pagnol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it been proven beyond doubt that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food without the use of pesticides?

We may be able to support our current population without pesticides (I don't know, I'm not really that immersed in the economics of it), but not without backsliding on the advances we've made against global poverty.

I think this is too pessimistic. If governments would stop messing around with subsidizing certain crops at the expense of others (not to mention so many third world governments cashing in on aid without any of it even getting to their people at all), food prices could be considerably cheaper than they are, even with pesticide-free farming methods. The main reasons for poverty today are political, not technical.

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

#75

Post by jdietrich »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #41
fencepost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when you're effectively an apex predator - you eat the things that eat the things with contamination and much of it gets concentrated into you, particularly the things that bioaccumulate over time. Outside of pesticides but similar, that's why it's important to limit things like tuna consumption particularly from larger species that can build to high mercury levels.

IIRC, there has never been a case of mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood recorded in any American medical journal. These larger species you mention could exist outside of that sphere.

Define "normal consumption". Some bodybuilders and strength athletes eat large quantities of tuna as a low-fat source of protein; a non-trivial proportion of dieters rely on fish as their main source of protein. These may be unusually high levels of consumption, but they aren't edge cases and aren't prima facie stupid if you're unaware of the risk of mercury toxicity.

A lot of smart, health-conscious people end up with dangerously high levels of mercury precisely because they believe that seafood is a healthy option and aren't aware of the risk of mercury exposure.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12676623/

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

#76

Post by stillbourne »

KidComputer wrote: post #17
stillbourne wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let us thank the anthropomorphic deity that science has a discipline called Chemistry with a subdiscipline called Toxicology where we don't have to guess about these things. All hail the LD50 and likewise the LC50 so that we no longer have to engage in blatant chemophobia.

Yeah neither of those metrics are by which we measure the effects of carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

I am sorry I didn't include the every caveat to the massive body of Toxicology/Carcinogenicity in my anecdotal witticism designed to be a snide dismissal of an idiot response to a stupid article.

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

#77

Post by jdietrich »

gabbygab wrote: post #48
cesnja wrote: post #14

The article doesn't mention meat and dairy as a source of surprisingly high levels pesticides and their byproducts. [1] https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/does-meat...

What does that matter? If we get it from directly from plants we eat or indirectly through meat, you are still getting pesticides.

>What does that matter?

It's actionable information. If you're worried about ingesting pesticides, you might believe that eating fewer vegetables and more meat would be a safer option. The simple fact of bioaccumulation means that this would be the wrong approach.

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

#78

Post by idontpost »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #41
fencepost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when you're effectively an apex predator - you eat the things that eat the things with contamination and much of it gets concentrated into you, particularly the things that bioaccumulate over time. Outside of pesticides but similar, that's why it's important to limit things like tuna consumption particularly from larger species that can build to high mercury levels.

IIRC, there has never been a case of mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood recorded in any American medical journal. These larger species you mention could exist outside of that sphere.

Literally on the first page of google results for "mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4721310/ Cites dozens of studies of cases of adverse effects from mercury from seafood.

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

#79

Post by korethr »

Okay, this Environmental Working Group found traces of pesticides on produce. That's not terribly unexpected, given how most produce is, well, produced. What this article annoyingly neglects to mention, is the _numbers_ attached to those traces of pesticides. Where there large amounts of trace chemicals, such that the levels exceed the EPA's recommended safe exposure levels? Were they so high that dangerous levels of bio-accumulation were likely? Absent numbers, it's difficult to tell if the people mentioned in the article are justified in feeling very worried, if it's a bunch of hand-wringing about nothing of significance, or somewhere between.

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

#80

Post by jdietrich »

devmunchies wrote: post #7

Is it possible to grow enough food in your backyard to live off of (plus chickens as a yard waste disposal) if you also work full time? I can't even eat at a restaurant without knowing if they use organic produce.

>Is it possible to grow enough food in your backyard to live off of (plus chickens as a yard waste disposal) if you also work full time?

No. I'd advise against trying unless you know what you're doing - the land around your home might be perfectly safe to live on, but it may well be dangerous to grow food in. Large areas of the San Francisco Bay area have horrendously toxic soil as a legacy of the semiconductor industry; the average gardener isn't equipped to test their soil for contaminants.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-...

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