Pesticides—Blessing or Curse?

EACH year the land and crops of many nations are drenched with millions of pounds of poisonous chemicals. Chemical pesticides are used to kill unwanted insects, rodents and fungi. Chemical poisons are also used to kill weeds and defoliate plants.

The degree to which chemical poisons are used in some areas was noted by the New York Times of December 26, 1969. Speaking of cotton farms in the state of Mississippi, it said:

“From March through November, the air is filled with chemicals to keep weeds from sprouting, and others to kill them if they do; with chemicals to kill boll weevils, boll worms and other insects; and finally, at harvest time, with a foul-smelling defoliant to take the leaves off the cotton plants. . . . Altogether, the chemicals are spread 10 to 20 times a season.”

Evidence Mounts

Yet, there were those who for many years warned against the trend of using more and more chemicals on crops and lands. They argued that harm was being done that could have serious long-term consequences.

Today, the evidence is mounting that pesticides and other poisons are doing what these persons said. In recent years the harsh consequences of the heavy use of pesticides have become evident. These poisons have proved to be killers of large numbers of birds and fish, rendering some species almost extinct.

It has also been found that some of the long-lasting pesticides such as DDT were finding their way into humans. Newsweek of January 26, 1970, stated: “American women carry in their breasts milk that has anywhere from three to ten times more of the pesticide DDT than the Federal government allows in dairy milk meant for human consumption.”

Thus, even government officials and scientists are worried now. Dr. Charles F. Wurster, biologist at the State University of New York, said: “The danger is no longer debatable; it’s established, scientific fact.” Another scientist who examined the evidence remarked: “I’m scared.”

Animal Life Affected

Chemical poisons are carried through the air when sprayed, or washed from the land into rivers and lakes, affecting the fish. In the Mississippi River, mosquito fish were found to contain so much poison that Dr. Denzel B. Ferguson of the Mississippi State University zoology department declared: “These fish are living bombs. Anything that comes along and eats them is just doomed.”

Last year the United States government seized 28,000 pounds of Lake Michigan salmon. It was contaminated with too much DDT and dieldrin. The salmon contained nearly four times as much pesticide as the allowable limit.

American birds such as the bald eagle, peregrine falcon and brown pelican are in danger of being wiped out. In the ocean off California, tiny marine plants and animals known as plankton absorb pesticides that have washed off from the land or have been carried to the ocean through the air. Fish eat the plankton and build up pesticides in their systems. Then, as pelicans eat the fish the pesticides build up in them. This has upset their intricate reproductive system. Now female pelicans lay eggs with such thin shells that the eggs crack and fall apart almost immediately. Eggs that may last a few days are so fragile that when the female sits on them, they break apart under her weight.

Thus, even though the pelicans may not be killed directly by pesticides, they are being exterminated because their eggs do not hatch. As the San Francisco Chronicle stated: “It looks as though the huge brown birds will hatch no young at all in California this year, and the path of death is sweeping inexorably southward as far as the Mexican islands off Baja California.”

At a turkey farm in Arkansas, the powerful pesticide heptachlor was used on live turkeys to control chiggers. Out of a total of 300,000 turkeys checked, 124,000 were found to be contaminated with the pesticide.

At times, large numbers of animals are killed directly by pesticides. For instance, in Hanover, New Hampshire, pesticides used on elm trees wiped out hundreds of birds. About 70 percent of the robins were killed.

Medical World News of February 27, 1970, reports on an experiment where twenty-five fertilized eggs were injected with small amounts of a chemical defoliant widely used in the United States (and in Vietnam). Only fifteen chicks survived. Eleven of the fifteen were crippled and had other defects. In the unhatched chicks serious disorders and deformities were found.

Powerful and Long-lasting

So powerful and long-lasting are some pesticides that traces of them have been found in Antarctic penguins. This was thousands of miles away from the nearest point of use!

What makes the problem grave is that some pesticides, such as DDT, are not soluble in water. So they accumulate in the organisms that are exposed to them. In time the animal may contain far more pesticide residues in its system than are in the environment. Indeed, it is said that some animals may contain more than a million times as much as their environment!

When one animal eats another, such as birds eating fish that contain pesticides, the poisons accumulate rapidly in the eater. Hence, the higher up we go in the chain of animals, the more concentrated become the accumulations of poisons.

The use of pesticides, particularly DDT, has been so widespread that Dr. Lorenzo Tomatis of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France declared: “There is no animal, no water, no soil on this earth which at present is not contaminated with DDT.” Also, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin stated of DDT: “In only one generation, it has contaminated the atmosphere, the sea, the lakes and streams, and infiltrated the fatty tissue of most of the world’s creatures.”

Because DDT has turned up in milk, meat, vegetables, fruit and people, government officials in the United States placed strict limits on its use after January 1, 1970. But Robert H. Finch, Secretary of the Health, Education and Welfare department said that residues of DDT would show up in foods for “ten years or longer” after a ban goes into effect. While several other countries have also limited the use of DDT, hundreds of other pesticides continue to be used.

What Effect on Man?

Studies show that Americans have an average of 12 parts per million of DDT in the fatty tissues of their bodies. This is more than twice the amount allowed in fish sold commercially. England’s Guardian Weekly of November 15, 1969, reported: “It has also been discovered that the blood of the average American contains more DDT than is permitted in meat . . . chlorinated insecticides can cause chronic poisoning in people most exposed to them, and liver and kidney damage are known to be hazards.”

Breast-fed babies were found to be getting from their mother’s milk twice the quantity of pesticides recommended as the limit by the World Health Organization. Swedish toxicologist Dr. Goran Lofroth noted that when such amounts are present in animals, they begin to show biochemical changes.

Traces of pesticides have been found in the tissues of stillborn and unborn babies. In some cases the concentrations of poisons were as high as existed in the mother. The pesticides were found in the babies’ liver, kidney and brain, with the greatest concentration being in the fatty tissue.

In a case reported by national television in the United States, a father mistakenly fed his hog grain that had been treated with mercury, grain that is supposed to be planted but not eaten. Later, he butchered the hog and his family ate it. Serious illness resulted to his pregnant wife and several children. There were blindness, speech defects, brain damage and other complications. It was said of one child that if she lived she would be a “vegetable” because of such severe brain damage.

In experiments with rats, heavy doses of pesticide produced cancer, birth abnormalities and long-term heredity defects. True, most persons do not get a concentrated dose of chemical poisons at one time. But what happens to humans who are taking in small amounts daily in the food they eat, the air they breathe and the water they drink? Are we to assume that insects, birds and fish can be killed and some species rendered nearly extinct, yet no harm come to man from these same poisons?

Upsetting Balance

Pesticides have disturbed what is called “the balance of nature.” An example of this was reported by Dr. Lamont C. Cole of Cornell University, as noted by U.S. News & World Report of November 24, 1969:

“The World Health Organization sent DDT to Borneo to kill mosquitoes. It worked fine. But it didn’t kill roaches, which accumulated DDT in their bodies. Lizards which lived in the thatched huts ate the roaches. The DDT slowed the lizards. Cats then easily caught the lizards. But the cats died . . . With the cats gone, rats came, carrying a threat of plague. And, with the lizards gone, caterpillars multiplied in the huts, where they fed on the roof thatching. Then the roofs started caving in.”

What is ironic is that while pesticides have killed insects, these same types of insects have produced strains that are resistant to those pesticides. Thus, more powerful poisons are needed to kill them. But it is said that there is no pesticide that insects cannot eventually handle.

What are these insects? The United States Department of Agriculture made a census of all insects regarded by man as harmful. Out of more than 800,000 known types the number classified as “harmful” came to only 235, less than 1/25th of 1 percent of those known to science!

The work of insects that pollinate plants far offsets the damage done by other insects. If pollen-carrying insects were eliminated, most blooming plants and flowers would become extinct. If bees alone were to disappear, it is estimated that 100,000 types of flowering plants would die out.

Also, consider this comment by World Book Encyclopedia: “Farmers have contributed to the spread and increase of insect pests by upsetting the balance of nature, and replacing the varied plant life of the wild fields with acres of one kind of plant.” Certain insects seem to thrive when large areas are planted in a single crop.

What Alternatives?

Are there alternatives to the use of pesticides? Yes. One is the use of insects that eat other insects considered harmful. Pest-controlling insects are many, such as ladybugs, praying mantises, lacewing flies and trichogramma wasps.

In Kansas, certain crops were being destroyed by greenbugs, so farmers imported large quantities of ladybugs from breeders. After six weeks, the ladybugs had brought the greenbugs under control. One large user of ladybugs reported that the greenbugs were almost completely controlled within two days. And the ladybugs were not a threat to crops.

Other alternatives include growing strains of plants more resistant to insects; insect-sterilization techniques; mechanical controls; interplanting of crops; use of sprays made from organic materials such as onions, garlic, mint and others.

In regard to the function and control of insects, the following observation of Organic Gardening and Farming of August 1969 is of interest. It states: “The more we observe her methods, the more we come to understand that the insect is Nature’s censor in destroying unwanted vegetation. . . . in general, insects prefer to feed on plants grown with chemical fertilizers rather than on those grown by the organic method. Control of insect pests is possible in any number of ways, without resorting to the use of poison sprays and chemicals. Plants strongly attacked by insects are often nutritionally unbalanced.”

The World Tries to Manage Her Population

WELL-MEANING men and organizations have long been engaged in programs to relieve the problems attributed to population growth. Many “solutions” have been tried—some agricultural, some economic and some political.

However, as with most “cures” that attack symptoms rather than the cause of a disease, the results have been disappointing. Most programs have either had little success, failed outright or aggravated things still further. A look at some of these “solutions” shows why.

Free Food

A growing population can survive without many things, but not without food. For years the productive North American Great Plains have been a “granary of last resort” for starving nations. When populations living at bare subsistence levels had local crop failures, they could always count on the grain-rich countries to pack off millions of tons of surplus to tide them over.

Now the surplus is nearly gone. World food reserves are reported to be at their lowest in many years. Whether there will be enough food to eat during the year to come depends on the weather during the current growing season. “The world has become dangerously dependent on current production and hence on weather conditions,” says director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization A.H. Boerma.

Should bad weather strike, do you really think people will dip into their own reduced food supplies to aid starving peoples? Or, due to modern food production’s dependence on energy, will they sacrifice their energy supplies to aid these people? As the New York Times recently editorialized: “Affluent Americans could soon be faced with the choice of consuming energy on highways and in air-conditioned rooms, or permitting the production of food to feed whole populations in Africa and Asia.”—March 25, 1974.

Agricultural Self-Sufficiency

Programs to help the poor nations feed themselves have been launched with much fanfare. Dr. Norman Borlaug’s 1970 Nobel Peace Prize citation credited him with a “technological breakthrough that makes it possible to abolish hunger in the developing countries in the course of a few years.” Yet, even so, Dr. Borlaug said his Green Revolution was “not the solution.” It could only delay the food crisis while the nations continue working on population control. “If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species,” he said.

Now the results are coming in. Among other things, this technology requires large amounts of increasingly costly energy, fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, rich farmers benefit far more than poor ones, who often cannot afford to use it at all. Wealthy households then buy up poor farmers’ lands, thus only adding to unemployment problems.

For these very reasons, a report on one nation’s intensive efforts to use Green Revolution technology says: “They are failing. Their optimistic plans and programs have created only increased human suffering and promise more of the same.”—Natural History, January 1974.

Economic Development

Other efforts attempt to slow the rate of population growth, rather than trying to feed any number that are born. Wealthy industrial nations generally have low growth rates, some even approaching the widely hailed goal of “zero population growth.” Their peoples seem naturally motivated to have fewer, better cared for children. On the other hand, in the less developed countries with largely rural populations, children themselves are considered a form of wealth. Parents desire them to help with farm work and as “social security” to care for them in old age.

As a result, families in these countries average nearly twice as many children as those in industrial nations. Also, “people have six or more children because they know that two or three will die,” says a Bangladesh official. And studies show that families who lose children often overcompensate by producing more living children than those whose children all survive.

Thus many conclude that the answer to overpopulation lies in economic development and industrialization, together with adequate measures to keep children alive so parents will not overcompensate. However, says The Encyclopædia Britannica, “overrapid growth of the population brings in its train an excessive need for [economic] investments . . . just to keep pace with the extra mouths to feed and bodies to clothe and shelter.” Thus, little or nothing is left to improve living standards.—Vol. 14, p. 823.

Recognizing this, most experts now agree that there are just not enough time, energy and other resources to develop the poor nations to the point that birthrates begin to drop naturally. Even if they could be developed, at least a generation passes before results begin to be felt. So the experts say that population growth must be reduced first, before economic development can be successful. That brings up—

Birth Control

Many believe that some form of birth control must be part of any successful population program. Accordingly, some nations are pouring funds into family-planning programs and reducing aid in other fields. What is the outlook for this “solution”? Disappointment.

“Radical” birth-control measures such as abortion and sterilization have morally destructive side effects. Japan legalized abortion in 1948. Professor T. S. Ueno of Tokyo’s Nihon University says, “We can now say the law is a bad one.” Free sex and lack of respect for the life of the unborn are among the moral problems he cited. “Abortion has become a substitute for contraception,” as indicated by the 1.5 million performed in 1972. He believes that where life is held in such low regard, the next step could be euthanasia, putting those over a certain age to death!

India, with perhaps the world’s oldest family-planning program, recently slashed her target figure for reduction in the 1980 birthrate by 40 percent! Many of the people and even their leaders are resisting government and international programs.

Selfish interests keep many from cooperating with family planning. They may want to keep their race, religion or language group numerically superior to gain or maintain political power, though they would be glad to see reduction in other’s populations. One major Latin-American nation recently restricted birth control there, hoping to double her population within the century. The desire for growing national power and fear of overpopulated neighbors were cited as reasons.

The Catholic Church has long used religious dogma to block any “artificial” form of birth control, so keeping her impoverished masses swelling in numbers. The Encyclopædia Britannica summarizes the overall outlook:

“It would be futile to deny that artificial population control is inhibited by powerful moral constraints and taboos. . . . even the most optimistic program of population control can only hope to achieve a slight reduction in the rate of increase by the end of the 20th century.”—Vol. 18, p. 54.

Does a “slight reduction” in twenty-five years sound like the “solution” to you?

“United” Action?

Failure of all the foregoing “solutions” is bringing home to world leaders that population growth is a world problem. Civilization has become tightly interdependent, and nations can no longer act without regard for international repercussions. Growing numbers of leaders are urging a cooperative world approach to solving problems associated with population. Accordingly, the United Nations has declared 1974 to be “World Population Year” and plans a world conference on population control in August.

A “world population plan of action” is expected to arise from this meeting. Will it be binding? One observer notes that the plan “could more appropriately be called a suggestion,” which will outline steps that countries “might wish” to take in their own circumstances. “This all seems pretty weak medicine,” notes this writer, in view of the rapidly escalating situation.—Science, March 1, 1974, p. 833.

The alternative to vigorous worldwide action is seen by many to be a series of jolting hardships that may pave the way for dictatorial control of population and resources, as well as the loss of human freedoms. They foresee forced abortion, sterilization and even such things as genetic engineering and elimination of the weak. Would you want such a “solution” imposed on you? Is there a better on

Efforts to manage the world’s population problems end in failure when “cures” attack symptoms rather than the cause