All the pesticide talk ,here's a link to news article

This was written in a national news paper 12 years ago and updated several months ago. PEI has wide spread agriculture and there are a lot of chemicals used province wide on a weekly basis during the summer. It's a pretty sensitive topic in this area but I figured it would be safe to share it here. It's a very long but interesting read.
Pesticides are killing our kids

This article, while alarming, still hasn?t got the cold hard evidence needed to prove beyond a doubt that the rash of cancer is due to the application of chemicals on the potato fields.
This being said, unless for some reason, and it would have to be a extremely good reason, why would anyone choose to voluntarily choose to live , or continue to live in close proximity to these potato fields? Why take the chance and risk the health of your children and your self?
I always figure that if I can smell herbicide that is being applied to a field, then I am too close, and I am being sprayed just like the bugs and weeds.
I am sure this question will ruffle some feathers, but , if sprays are a necessary part of crop production, and they spear to be, then why do the governmental bodies continue to allow folks to reside in rural areas where the residents would be put at risk of exposure to the contamination of air, and ground water by the application of herbicides and pesticides. I assume that to to not allow people to live in rural areas because of this risk , would be to admit that perhaps exposure to these crop treatments is not totally benign.

My dad who lived (in good health) well into his 90's and died at 99 years and 9 months said he worked around asbestos for years, never bothered him. Everyone's tolerance is different. What if glycosphate was banned... can you imagine going back to those days?

It's a very sensitive issue here. Most of the public admire farmers and how hard we work and others view us as the devil. If you took all agriculture off of PEI the rural communities would almost all become ghost towns and it would have quite an impact on the cities as well.

Real easy answer on why those elected officials and the Gov't bureaucrats do what they do in one word Lobbyists.The lobbyists up on K street in DC are there spending millions of dollars$ every year to wine and dine (some might say Bribe) the politicians and the bureaucrats to do what they want done and for the gov't to 'see' things their way.Big companies like Monsanto have multi million$ dollar budgets to get what they want from gov't officials.Anyone that thinks the gov't regulators look at about anything with an unbiased eye don't have a clue what really goes on or is kidding themselves.Big Gov't begets Big Corruption.I'm sure your country works the same way.

So are you saying it just depends who is going to suffer?

And the real irony here is most the potatoes go into making french fries in saturated fat.

I've been a professional pesticide applicator for 34 years. I have applied mostly herbicides, a few insecticides. I have been covered in glyphosate many many times, as well as other herbicides. Save rubbing some 2,4-D in my eye one day, I have never had one ill affect from a pesticide. I personally know hundreds of applicators, and they are as healthy as anyone else. I do not personally know anyone who has gotten cancer from a pesticide. I have personally worked with chemical company people for decades. I do not know any one of them who believes the products they sell are harmful in any way if used according to the label. I have personally worked with people at EPA, and found them to be competent and caring. I work with state university extension people who to a person believe the products are safe if used correctly.
It is very disappointing to see people toss aside volumes of research and testing to accuse glyphosate of harming people.
If pesticides were actually a health hazard, it should be a simple matter to do a study of people like me and many YTers and see if in fact we are less healthy than our non-applicator peers.
This type of study was done 20 years ago and found that pest control technicians had lower cancer rates in every category except one.
If we lose glyphosate it will be a disaster.

Good point. I think frying FF in fat tastes better than frying them in Roundup.

If glyphosate was banned what would people use to kill the weeds growing in their gravel driveway?

No chemicals, what would people use to kill dandelions in their yards, crabgrass?

Maybe the fat will draw out some of the chemicals in the potato.

From the looks of some cooks; eating foods cooked in hot oil may be the safest.

After reading some of the replies below, I think we all have to realize that conclusions that result from modern scientific studies are not based on the study of single individuals or smaller groups of individuals. I know an older fellow who is 88 and has smoked pretty much non-stop since he was in his early teens and he looks good, goes for a walk every day, and you'd have a hard time believing he was a smoker. And there are likely lots of these kinds of individuals around who defy the odds. But let's not start arguing that the scientific studies that show smoking to be harmful are bogus because of these other examples.

Same applies to the argument with pesticides. Surely we have to discount the "conspiracy theories" that so many of us seem hung up on every time somebody tells us that something is not good for us. I would say that we here at YT are definitely more suspicious of anything being said that disagrees with our thoughts on an issue, no matter what the source of the opinion.

For the most part , Canada just accept US standards for chemical use, and do not do independent studies or testing

I rather doubt it's just one thing, one compound. I imagine it's a combination of tiny amounts of pesticides, insecticides, flavor enhancers, coloring, preservatives, etc. in overly processed foods combined with medicines, drugs, a sedentary life and genetic pre-disposition to disease/allergy/illness that causes whatever we see today. If anything, I think it's our lifestyles that endanger us, not the boogeyman of the moment, be it Round Up, Fluoride, DDT, asbestos, lead, etc.

Yea I can imagine it actually I don't have to I lived it,we grew corn,oats and wheat without using any chemicals.Surely farmers today haven't gotten so lazy or dumbed down they couldn't raise grain without chemicals I have more faith in their ability to adapt.I can tell you people in my area would not put up with a situation like the original poster described.

No but no one wants to talk about it around here

I guess the real lesson here is there needs to be more studies done to better determine what really is safe and what isn't instead of people pointing the fingers at the farmers and farmers pointing the fingers at the public.

Go back to dumping their used motor oil on the grass and weeds in the driveway. We all know that would be better.

People will always want things that just are not possible. Free gold and other types of fantasy stuff. You have people so entrenched in their view point, so hard, they will never believe anything that is different. I can tell you we do not use herbicides without thinking about why and if we should. The one big driving thing is cost of production. The difference from making it and not is a few percentage points. So if your going to make it your going to make hard decisions.

Then on a more personal level. We live in the middle of where we use these herbicides. It is ourselves and our children/families that would be effected first. It would be our water that would be effected first. So would any thinking person really think we would risk all of that if we really thought that thee was any risk at all!!!!

We have one of the most educated populations in the history of man BUTTTTT it is so narrow they have little common sense. Look at the poles that asked about organic and other modern farming practices. They are all worded as a neutral cost/effect question. Example: Would you buy organic over non organic food. Simple question. It does not ask if your will to pay more for the organic. The questions are all stacked to have the people think there is no consequence to stop doing a practice.

Also this debate has been taken over by a mainly affluent population that want to impose their view on the world. Europe and the US are affluent when compared to the majority of the world. This is devastating to many poor populations in the world. An example is plants and food production practices. I personally know a professor that has worked his entire life on improving plants to grow in Dry African areas. He is not using GMO anything. His plants are banned in the majority of the African countries because they have a blanket ban in place. This ban was pushed by the EU in order for those countries to get aid from the EU. The biggest one is he has a yam that grow on less water than the current ones grown in that area. He was asked if his plant was genetically different than those currently grown. He of coarse answered that it was because it is to use less water. They never asked him how it was done. He did it the way it has been done for centuries by selective breeding. Took him over 25 years to do it. Instead his plants where label as genetically modified and banned. He appealed this several times and was told his GMO plants would never be approved. HE and his entire department dropped all plant research that is related to food production. So there is a behind the scenes problem this anti-everything but organic is causing.

I am sicken by how polarizing this is becoming. Fact mean nothing. It is all feelings. The stakes are high too. Both ways if either side is really totally wrong then the lives of many will be effected. What Traditional Farmer and many seem to not think about is that we can not have much of a production loss and still feed the people currently living. The population is 4 times larger than it was the last time that this country farmed in a mostly organic manner. Plus over 25% of the population lived on farms at that time too. Labor has been replaced by equipment to a point but still it would require massive increases in farm labor to go totally organic world wide.

I think the answer lays in the middle. I never have been one to think we should drench chemicals on every thing. At the same time limited amounts and timely application have greatly reduce the amounts and toxicity of what is sued today. I also know total organic will not work either in its current form. I do not have all the answers in anyway. I also do know a lot more than the organic crowd would give any of us non organic farms credit for.

Sounds good. What do I do with old antifreeze?

I have tried to stay out of this pesticide hype that is the latest new media blitz, but here are just a few things to think about. Any idea what chemicals are in your carpet? What about your upholstery? Know what goes into vinyl? Plastics? Here is a good one, Styrofoam cups? Paint? Fabric? Cleaners? Animal feed? Our food? There are many more out there to think about, but I'll add one more laundry detergent. Let me give you a breakdown on laundry detergent, CH2O, H2SO4, H2O2, NAOH, NH3, & last HCN, that's right Hydrogen Cyanide. So,we have a lot of things to worry about, if that's what you want to do.

The difference is not many people eat carpet,paint,fabric and laundry detergent unless doing the Tide Pod Challenge on UTUBE.

The problem with studies is they have to be funded by someone. Manipulation of wording can drastically change the results of any study to promote whatever outcome is desired. I doubt the truth will ever be known. I am an organic farmer but I cannot say who is correct. What makes this country great is people having the option to farm the way they prefer.

JD Seller ...... and here I thought all this time you were just another crazy JD guy ..... ha! One of the best (if not THE best) reply I've ever read here on YT. You obviously know how things work. Well done .....

So if you guys are so worried about feeding the world why do you have your corn grower lobbyists up on K street in DC fighting to keep and increase the ethanol mandate?Personally I'm a lot more worried about the health and well being of my fellow Americans than the Chinese being able to feed their slave labor with our cheap grain to fuel their factories that send back their cheap
products to bankrupt US companies.The US Farmer/Chinese Industrial Complex alliance is an Unholy one at best.
Also there are a wide assortment of food crops that are far better suited to actually feed people rather than fatten livestock,For example all sorts of beans like Pinto beans,Navy beans etc are high
in food value,easy to grow,easy to prepare to eat as well as being very nutritious.If you folks were really worried about feeding people you'd be pushing those instead of soybeans and corn.

Can't fix stupid.....

How many children are drinking from a plastic container (soft drink, tea, sports drink, milk) made from a conglomerate of toxic chemicals that the fluid was stored in for months at a time?


What is very strange is the the fact even if the chemicals are somehow causing cancer - how does that effect these suburban children? I doubt they are playing in freshly sprayed fields. If its entering the water table it hardly matters because children drink so little water - and the water they do drink comes from plants that have processed the water so clean that its purity is of a level only dreamed of a few decades ago (unless they live in Flint Michigan). If the cancer cases were coming from farm families drinking raw well water the Dr's suspicions may carry weight - but the typical resident of the town of 14,000 people is far removed from the potato fields in the rural areas.

How many are eating the leaves of a sprayed potato plant from a few miles away?

People eventually eat the potatoes along with the chemical residue in them.

But that wouldn't explain the claimed cancer concentration at Prince Edward Island.

Isn't there something like this with Golden Rice? Plain white rice doesn't have several necessary nutrients. The one that is really needed is niacin, the vitamin A. Makes the rice turn yellow. All done with lots of careful lab and field work. You bet GMO. They are going bonkers about the GMO part. Total asses.

I've seen it all too,I was spraying a grain field with an open tractor last summer next to a power station when the crew was there. They all dropped what they were doing and sent a supervisor out that tore a strip off me because I didn't call first

GMO accomplishes in a single generation what would take several decades through "traditional" cross breeding of plants. Both are altering the genetics of the plants - but the Luddites of society fear modern scientific methods - usually with main stream media leading the charge.

Sure is happening though isn't it? And the heavy pesticide use is the most obvious difference between there and other places.

Well said JD Seller

I couldn't agree more JD. The problem is convincing the public that we do what we do out of necessity to provide the consumer with the safest healthiest and most delicious product we can without being labeled greedy ruthless murders. My Dad hated hearing all the comments about farmers. Too many people looking over the fence think because we might have a new piece of equipment than we're getting over paid. I remember one guy was blaming a farmer for spraying his grain as the reason his wife had a miscarriage. The grain was sprayed than she lost their child. We're an easy outnumbered target.

I agree whole Hartley, but you are never going to change folks like Traditional Farmers thinking. They think we can feed the world the old way, just not going to happen.

Is it really happening?


My grandmother died in 1941 from a "nervous" condition. From what my aunts say most likely it was ovarian cancer - but the ability of a doctor country doctor whose most high tech equipment was a stethoscope to diagnose was a bit limited - how many other people died with similar questionable diagnosis?


Couple with the fact that people are living in ever increasing unhealthy life styles yet living longer with fewer accidents, wars and widespread outbreaks of life threatening illnesses it doesn't surprise me other illnesses are moving to the fore front. Used to be a fat man died of a heart attack in his 30s or 40s, now with modern medicine and the ingestion of lots of unnatural chemicals he can live to his 60s or 70s with the same unhealthy life style. Doctors all the time now say that being overweight and sedentary leads to cancer - give a person another 20 30 years of the that unhealthy living and does it surprise you that something else comes out of the woodwork to kill him?

How could they tend to thousands of acres of corn and beans without chemicals? I used to cultivate those and it took all day to do a relatively small field. Now a spray rig will cover 80 acres in the time it took to do a couple of rounds with a cultivator. And the cultivator sure didn't eradicate all the weeds.

I've stayed out of these discussions for years, they get out of control and the discussion is no longer enjoyable, raises the attention of the moderators and causes in-fighting amongst many here.

When I was real young, in the late 1960's, my father had spray applied some kind of pesticide to get rid of flies in the barn we converted to a stable. Place was well kept, but the insects were a problem from what I gather.

I do not know what it was, the chemical that is. I was in contact with it on the wood, it almost KILLED me. I was hospitalized and had to fight for my life. I'm sure it was a lot less regulated, more toxic and who knows what else 50 years ago.

If anyone thinks any of this stuff is good for people, I disagree. I don't condemn farmers or others for conventional/modern farming practices, but hope someday, this is no longer an issue. Weed killer, pesticides etc, bother me a whole lot more than chemical fertilizer, none of which I ever need to use in my gardens. On a small scale, it seems you have a lot more mobility to avoid using these kinds of products. Mass producing food for a mega population, if there was a solution for that kind of scale of farming, it would be happening. Unfortunately, it's the dilemma we face and fighting and arguing about it does nothing to contribute towards a solution, it just pits good people against each other and that is not what farmers are about, at least where I come from.

Carpet fibers are in the air of every room with carpet, they land on food and are in the air they breath, of course people are more exposed to synthetic carpet fibers then thry are to a billionth of a percent of Roundup in processed cereal?

Drive a car in a garage shut it off close the door; start a car in winter and open the door as you put it in reverse, and people are exposed to many times the concentration of fumes that are not good for us, compared to a billionth of a percent of Roundup in their processed cereal.

If we are concerned about exposure to unnatural things, should we have a balanced, equal, healthy valuation to look at the relative dangers we are around?

Or, should we just harp on one topic, only one danger, over and over and over to the exclusion of all else and assume that we need zero tolerance on that one issue period?



There used to be talk and studies about the effects of cell phone transmitters a few millimeters from your brain or groin; but people love their technology too much nothing ever came of it, no one cared.

Cigarettes seem to be proven to be pretty harmful over the long haul, I believe 20% of the country still uses them quite happily?

Several decades ago a fella came up from Tennessee to visit me, he was very much on a anti pesticide kick, he wanted to get away from it all. While he was visiting me, he pulled out his tobacco pouch and a paper and rolled his own cig and lit it up. Little while later his wife mentioned well he does use Roundup up and down the driveway and around the buildings and such. But all the rest oft he 2 hours, it was how bad chemicals were for us and we should stop using them.

The message gets really confusing when you say carpet fibers don't get in the food, or someone says chemicals are bad for us while puffing a cig.

It seems there is a lot more emotion and belief and a desire to control others, than there is any real issue that is being followed?

And so I'm left to become a disbeliever in anything being said.

I do believe in moderation, and being happy, and enjoying life.

Paul

I have no desire to feed folks across the world like the Chinese who use our cheap food to fuel their military and factories to send cheap made products back here.You
think that is good?

Anyone remember furidan (so?) and chinch bugs in milo, remember my father getting sick after application. Between semesters at college worked at a grain elevator fumigating rail cars of wheat wearing coveralls, rubber gloves and respirator in 95+ heat, one whiff of fumigant about knocked me off hopper car.

I am not sure everyone is having a kniption about the "intended " use of Glyphosate which was soley to kill weeds. What I have a problem with is the use of glyphosate to spray directly on a forming seed head for human consumption and for the sole reason of harvest convenience. Yes, I'm talking about spraying a perfectly clean of weeds , wheat field. Thousands of cares of it. And then calling it "gluten intolerance". Monsanto has fed the farmers a bill of BS and increased their sales of glyphosate by at least 30% or more. How many of you would want it sprayed directly on your potatoes , tomatoes or anything else you eat? Monsanto has been playing with "words" to buy off the farmer. Gluten Alergy" is one thing, it is naturally occuring just like a peanut allergy in many people. What we are seeing in huge numbers never before seen is "gluten intolerance" and it's incidence has gone up in the last 15 yrs in identical numbers as the gallons of glyphosate sold. This is a substantiated fact. No reason for it at all. Perfectly clean wheat fields. Why not go back to using glyphosate for it's intended use which is weed control, and stop spraying it directly on the seeds that feed the world. Harvest convenience is the only reason to do this...earlier harvest and not waiting for a few 'green " areas...wow..that must have just devastated farmers for years having to wait for it to ripen naturally! I grew up on and around the farm and love farming and farmers. Believing Monsanto is like going into the Chevy dealer and asking him what's the best car to buy. Someone give me a "ligit" reason for spraying poison directly on a perfectly weed free field of headed out wheat. You didn't do it until Monsanto "said" you could. Round-up has been out for over 38 yrs....why did this practice only start about 10-15 yrs ago? The farmer is a pawn in Monsanto's quest to increase sales . If I'm all wrong on this then by all means someone tell me as I would sure love to hear the positive side to this practice.

(quoted from post at 14:52:45 08/17/18) I've stayed out of these discussions for years, they get out of control and the discussion is no longer enjoyable, raises the attention of the moderators and causes in-fighting amongst many here.

When I was real young, in the late 1960's, my father had spray applied some kind of pesticide to get rid of flies in the barn we converted to a stable. Place was well kept, but the insects were a problem from what I gather.

I do not know what it was, the chemical that is. I was in contact with it on the wood, it almost KILLED me. I was hospitalized and had to fight for my life. I'm sure it was a lot less regulated, more toxic and who knows what else 50 years ago.

If anyone thinks any of this stuff is good for people, I disagree. I don't condemn farmers or others for conventional/modern farming practices, but hope someday, this is no longer an issue. Weed killer, pesticides etc, bother me a whole lot more than chemical fertilizer, none of which I ever need to use in my gardens. On a small scale, it seems you have a lot more mobility to avoid using these kinds of products. Mass producing food for a mega population, if there was a solution for that kind of scale of farming, it would be happening. Unfortunately, it's the dilemma we face and fighting and arguing about it does nothing to contribute towards a solution, it just pits good people against each other and that is not what farmers are about, at least where I come from.

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YOU had a hyper sensitivity to whatever chemical it was. I have a near fatal allergy to Penicillin. You and I are both outliers in the grand scheme of things, just as people that can't even be in the room with peanut butter are. I don't endorse the wholesale over dosing on chemicals that they us in rats in labs, but wise use isn't always bad.