According to Virginia A. Rauh of the Columbia University Center for Children’s Environmental Health in New York City, she and her colleagues discovered that developing brains exposed to a widely used, common pesticide were irreversibly damaged. Prenatal exposure to CPF or chlorpyrifos, caused structural changes in the brains of developing fetuses. These irreversible alterations affect cognitive ability, social cognition, critical thinking and motor development. There were pronounced learning disabilities and depressed I.Q.s.
“Our findings indicate that prenatal CPF [chlorpyrifos] exposure, at levels observed with routine (nonoccupational) use and below the threshold for any signs of acute exposure, has a measurable effect on brain structure,” they wrote.
The use of CPF was widespread until the EPA banned it for residential use beginning in 2001. However, it is still widely used in Agriculture with heaviest use on crops such as cotton, almonds, and fruit trees including citrus and apples. It was packaged and sold to the public under the trade names of Dursban, Lorsban, Scout, Piridane, Stipend and Tricel.
These studies monitored brain structure over a period of time for children with minor, intermediate and heavy exposure and the scientists found irreversible problems in the brains that affected areas:
• Involved in social cognition
• That subserve attention and language comprehension
• Involved in sensory and motor processing
• Supporting executive functioning
The levels of exposure were all within acceptable, ‘safe’ levels according to EPA guidelines. Clearly, this study illustrates that the EPA guidelines are not strict enough! And even scarier is the fact that the ‘high-exposure’ group had chlorpyrifos levels of 4.39 pg/g or greater in their umbilical cord blood… which was not unusually high given that the concentration in one blood bank during the same time period was twice as high at an average of 9 pg/g. That means the ‘high exposure’ group had less than half the levels in their bloodstream than what the normal population had during the same time period!
So in a nutshell, toxic chemicals are being used on our food supply and we are ingesting these synthetic poisons and they are now part of our being. These toxins are in our blood, coursing through our vital organs, and being passed on in concentrated levels into our offspring. We are unknowingly being poisoned and unknowingly poisoning our children.
Great.
The lesson in all of this? Take your own safety into your hands! Do not use synthetic, chemical pesticides as they are not natural substances and the long term affects range from unclear to disastrous. Here is an example of short to mid-term affects that is devastating and it is but one of many classes of chemical pesticides being used everyday in our food supply, in our schools, in public venues, and just about everywhere we go. Just because some agency or product label says something is okay, do not blindly follow. A chemical pesticide is a pesticide – it is created to kill something so make sure that something isn’t you!
Greenbug is a safe, natural, and effective solution. Nature has provided the ingredient of cedar and Greenbug has captured it in products that can successfully kill and repel pests you do not want yet cause no harm to humans, animals and the environment. Greenbug is the ‘green’ way to wipe out bugs!
Why would you use anything else?