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Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
A Weekly News Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives
See PANUPSarchive for complete information.
May 28, 2010
- ‘Enviromics’ links diabetes to pesticides
- Haitians burn Monsanto seeds, reject USAID
- South Africa ends home use of Dow’s chlorpyrifos
‘Enviromics’ links diabetes to pesticides
A new study out of Stanford reinforces the link between type 2 diabetes and organochlorine (OC) pesticide exposure by pioneering a new method for assessing the contribution of environmental factors to disease formation more generally. More than 23 million people in the U.S. suffer from the disease, which is on the rise, and genetics have thus far offered little insight. The study’s specific findings were that the development of type 2 diabetes correlates strongly with the presence of the OC pesticide-derivative heptachlor in blood or urine, with environmental contaminant polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also showing a significant association. Beta-carotenes had a protective effect against the development of type 2 diabetes. At least as significant as the study’s findings were its methodological advances in documenting environmental contributions to health outcomes.
Disease formation is enormously complex, requiring analysis of myriad causal factors over long time frames. Accordingly, the demonstration of causality for increased incidence of chronic diseases like cancer, type 2 diabetes and other autoimmune and metabolic disorders has been difficult. Over the last few decades, much more money has been devoted to the study of genetic and lifestyle causal factors than to environmental ones — one effect of which has been the “gross underestimation” of environmental contributions to disease-formation. The Stanford authors piloted an Environment-Wide Association Study (EWAS) in which epidemiological data are comprehensively and systematically interpreted in a way that builds upon Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS). Using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, scientists performed multiple cross-sectional analyses associating 266 environmental factors with the occurrence of type 2 diabetes. Of those 266 environmental factors, OC pesticide-derivative heptachlor showed the strongest correlation. According to Scientific American, the idea for conducting what amounts to a “mass-screening” of environmental risk factors came from a Stanford graduate student, Chirag Patel, the study’s lead author. Patel wanted to find a way to “use bioinformatics for the environment,” in part to address widespread dissatisfaction with what genetics have been able to explain about disease risk factors. “The time is ripe, to usher in ‘enviromics’,” claim the study’s authors.
shareMORE PAN’s Spring Magazine :: “We Know Enough: The Limits of Certainty in a Chemical Era” | Digg This
Haitians burn Monsanto seeds, reject USAID
Monsanto failed to mention any of the dangers or necessary safety precautions of thiram to Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture. The seeds will be distributed by the by the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID), a tax-payer funded agency infamous for promoting U.S. agendas while offering development assistance. A Monsanto representative also told Business Week that, while Monsanto won’t be receiving any of the profits, farmers will have to pay for the seeds, “to avoid flooding the local economy with free goods.” The U.S. hasn’t had any qualms about flooding Haiti’s markets in the past. Haiti was forced to open its markets to foreign agricultural imports by the International Monetary Fund in order to qualify for a much-needed loan. Haitian farmers couldn’t compete with heavily subsidized rice from the U.S., and farmers lost their only source of income. In 2008, 78% of Haitian people were living on less than $2 a day. Farmers involved in the MPP’s agroecological projects recognize Monsanto’s ploy to force chemical-reliant industrial agriculture on a struggling economy; Jean-Baptiste said earlier this year, “We need to establish seed banks and have silos where we can store our Creole seeds. Local, organic seeds are the basis of food sovereignty…. It’s urgent that Haitians buy local seeds…. What’s the danger we face today? It’s that food aid from USAID and others is getting dumped in the country.”
takeACTION OCA: Tell Obama & USAID to support Haitian farmers, not Monsanto |
South Africa ends home use of Dow’s chlorpyrifos
among children in agricultural areas, after ruling that it is too hazardous for kids in urban settings,” said Pesticide Action Network staff scientist Dr. Margaret Reeves, “it’s time to get rid of it, once and for all.”
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takeACTION Tell the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos |
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