Pesticide Poisoning Affects

Thousands
Anna Kormis

Martin Luther King Jr. Day fell on Monday, January 20 th. During it, Dr. Ed Davis
held a discussion session titled Poisoning Our Neighbors. It covered how pesticides
are harmful to the workers who are around them and the people who come in
contact with the pesticides. It started with DDT. Americans used to spray DDT on
all of their plants to keep bugs away. This DDT washed into the water by runoff and
was ingested by the fish. Chemicals build up in fish by them eating other fish.
Birds, specifically eagles, ate the fish with the high levels of DDT in them. The high
levels of DDT now in the birds weakened the shells of their eggs which broke when
the mother birds sat on them. Rachel Carsons book Silent Spring discussed that
issue. Shortly after that, DDT was partially banned.
Dr. Ed Davis talked about the workers who handle or are around the
pesticides are not told pesticide safety or warned of the risk. He also mentioned
that the instructions on the labels of the pesticides are normally in one language
and that language is not the native one because migrant farmers are the most
exposed to pesticides.

On the other side of this, poorer regions are taken advantage of in the
industrial farming industry which causes children to be forced to work in the fields.
In these regions, workers sometimes work the fields barefoot and wash vegetables
in the nearby creeks and rivers. These actions cause pesticides to get on the feet of
the workers and wash off into the water that is then carried to the towns. The
people who drink pesticide contaminated water have a high risk of pesticide
poisoning. Another way people get pesticide poisoning is from being sprayed with
the pesticides while working in the fields. This is done by planes flying overhead
and spraying the pesticides on the crops that people are working on. Those people
are covered in the toxic chemicals of the pesticides. About thirty people die from
pesticide poisoning a year and 60,000 people suffer from non-fatal pesticide
poisoning a year.
The history of Emory&Henry College attempting to reduce its use of pesticide
covered products started with the cafeterias provider, Sodexo, agreeing to buying
10-20% of its produce from local farmers. The cafeteria buys from the campus
organic garden as part of its local percentage. For two years Sodexo bought local
beef, but stopped because of the price difference. Organic food is an easy way to
stand up against the use of pesticides on crops. Student, Leighann Hartless said,
organic food is more expensive because of the labor and people do not want to pay
even a little bit extra for safer food. The group discussion decided that the best
way to get a company like Sodexo to buy more organic food is to positively
approach them with data on how organic is worth the cost.
Poisoning Our Neighbors covered the early history of pesticide poisoning and
what it has developed into. A person being injured by pesticide poisoning is a
common occurrence that mainly afflicts the people who work in industrial farming
fields that use a massive amount of pesticides. In the end, the audience discussed
with the speaker ways to prevent pesticide poisoning and ultimately reduce the use
of pesticides.