Dursban(TM). Lorsban(TM). Chlorpyrifos. Whatever trade name you want to call it, the evidence against it is overwhelming. It’s a chemical made by Dow that is widely used by Washington State apple growers. And that is just ONE of many toxic substances used to grow apples. Growers use a whole chemical cocktail of nasty things in conventional apple growing.
Sometimes you can’t directly see the effects of chemicals. Kind of like smoking. You can’t actually see the cancer that smoking can cause. Or a lot like sun burns. You may not be able to readily feel the cancer cells growing. This is called a latent danger. Humans are terrible judges of latent danger, because they are not available to our senses of sight, sound, smell, or taste.
That gives a lot of ignorant people excuses. “Well spraying chemicals on apples is fine. I don’t see any problems. I’m fine.”
When I hear that I have to wonder… Do you have X-ray powers? Are you a human microscope? Or are you a great substitute for an MRI machine?
Let’s take a look at some of the proof, both scientific and legal, that chlorpyrifos is bad, and hence the conventionally grown apple is also bad.
Proof 1: Here is a study on the effects of chlorpyrifos Chickens titled “Patho-biochemical studies on hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity on exposure to chlorpyrifos and imidacloprid in layer chickens”
. It outlines the hepotoxicity of the chemical on these animals. There are 1,000,000 milligrams in a kilogram. It took only 55mg/kg to mess up these test chickens to the point they started drooling and convulsing, and OH YEAH…. DYING.
Proof 2: The EPA banned chlorpyrifos (trade names Lorsban and Dursban) for household use in the year 2000. This should be a simple concept to understand: our own US government does not want this stuff in our homes.
Proof 3: As of the writing of this blog post, the EPA is currently about to revoke ALL chlorpyrifos tolerances for in our food. That pretty much means farmers will have to cease using it. If the government thinks its that bad, do we want this stuff used in or around our food? No way! More than 80,000 people have urged the EPA to ban it.
Proof 4: Lawsuits We don’t have to look very hard here to find lots of big lawsuits regarding chlorpyrifos. The EPA was sued to ban this stuff. The State of California just recently made it a highly restricted material “due to potential human health and surface water concerns“.
Lets not forget the children whose health has been negatively affected. A $23 million dollar judgement was awarded to a family because Dursban, an insecticide containing chlorpyrifos, caused major health problems for their children. It gets really sad: “their 5-month-old was hospitalized for uncontrollable seizures, and their 3-year-old was hospitalized for a seizure three months later”.
I could go on for a long, long time. But I think you get the picture.
Hey, thanks for the forum.Really thank you! Overmyer