Pesticide Exposure Quotes

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

Farm workers are society's canaries. Farm workers - and their children - demonstrate the effects of pesticide poisoning before anyone else.

My understanding has always been that if there is any indication that pesticides are harmful, that they would not be allowed to be used.

We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.

On the other hand, there are plenty of red flags that link developmental disabilities to things like lead and mercury and pesticides and air pollution and certain kinds of unhealthy foods, and that's what's begging for a comprehensive and definitive study. We should have a long-term prospectus study that looks at all, you know, exposures, medications, life habits, etc., pollution, and traces people over a period of many years, starting with when - starting with their parents, from when they are healthy. This is how we learned what causes heart disease.

There are certain products that it's worth buying organic just because the alternatives have so much pesticide. There's a list of the dirty dozen that you can get off the Web. Strawberries, potatoes. A handful of crops that have very high pesticide residues if you don't buy organic. If you eat that a lot, that's a good place to invest.

Be sure to buy organic versions of the 'dirty dozen:' the fruits and vegetables that, when grown conventionally, are loaded with pesticides and chemicals: Grapes, apples, lettuce, bell peppers, carrots, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, pears, kale, and celery.

The people who harvest America's food must be treated with respect and earn a living wage.

We all can agree we want our kids active and moving and healthy. But we also have a right to know whether the turf fields our kids are playing on contain harmful chemicals.

We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency.

I'm glad that the fact that people are still getting poisoned by pesticide drift is gaining attention.

A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.

I eliminated coffee and fish from my diet. The pesticides in coffee and fish, as well as the mercury in the latter, are considered possible contributors to birth defects in fetal tissue.

I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.

The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.