by S. Suzanne Fisher, © 1999

We thank the author that we can publish here the whole article.

Throw aways, cast offs, disposable – are terms we would use for trash or waste, right? We certainly would not use these terms to describe our friends, our families, our loved ones or ourselves. However, large corporations, hand in hand with our government, are now telling us that many of us in our society are disposable.

In our world, the ‘quick fix’ has become the preferred method of dealing with things. We spray away odors, bugs, weeds, and anything else that bothers us. Our penchant for haste and ease has led us to want increasingly more products we can use in this manner. Moreover, our government and industry have tacitly formed a partnership to bring them to us, many times without prior studies to determine the hazards posed by these timesaving products.

Throughout the past twenty years, many pesticides in particular (a term that includes herbicides) have been developed to replace the DDT and dioxin-related ones that caused so many past environmental problems. The newer pesticides are supposedly safer, but are they? We assume that our government would not allow products to be sold that were hazardous to society. But, is our assumption correct?

We depend on our governmental agencies to protect us from products that are harmful. But the misshapen and deformed thalidomide babies born in the seventies showed us that these agencies are not as watchful as we would like them to be. Nor do most of them have the regulatory authority to adequately protect the American public.

The watchdog for pesticides, the Environmental Protection Agency, is a case in point. The EPA and the chemical industries have a revolving door, through which chemical industry executives go to work at the EPA, and EPA employees are hired by the chemical industry. The pesticide-producing chemical companies are huge contributors to Presidential and congressional campaigns. Any incentive to toughen laws on pesticides to adequately protect the public from their potential harm is lost in these massive contributions. Many EPA employees are dedicated to their jobs and concerned about the effect of pesticides on humans and the planet we inhabit. Their job of protecting the public, however, is complicated by the lack of adequate laws and regulations.

These regulations include the one that allows pesticides to be registered by the EPA (and offered for sale) after manufacturers supply information on the toxicity of the active ingredient. Unfortunately, there have been many instances in which the toxicity information supplied to the EPA was wholly or partially fraudulent. Most people assume that the EPA tests these products when they are submitted for registration. The EPA not only does not test pesticides, it does not even have a system for ensuring that the tests that are done by the manufacturers are accurate. Registration of pesticides is based solely on the test data submitted for the active ingredient.

The active ingredient, however, is only one part of the full pesticide toxicity. Pesticides contain inert ingredients (surfactants, stabilizers, etc.) that in many cases are much more toxic to humans (and other animals) than the active ingredient. Some pesticides have even been found to contain toxic waste. Since the full formulation of the pesticide is never tested, the synergy between the inerts and the active ingredient (which can be even more toxic than the inerts and active ingredients separately) remains unknown. The full formulation of a pesticide is only tested after it causes poisoning incidents, and by then it is too late to protect the public.

Therefore, what we end up with on the market are pesticides whose actual formula has not been tested. These products are then used around the chronically ill. They are used in homes and in yards where children (whose detoxification systems are still forming) live and play. They are used in nursing homes where the elderly (whose bodies cannot withstand environmental toxins due to lowered detoxification capacities) live. Only after illnesses begin to develop in people who use (or are exposed to) the products are medical studies begun to identify and quantify the problems caused by these pesticides. Before that, they are presumed safe by the public because they are registered with the EPA.

However, the EPA is the first to say that no pesticide is "safe." In the EPA's registration process, they require a designation for each pesticide called the ‘LD50.’ LD50 stands for ‘Lethal Dose 50,’ or according to the EPA, "the dose at which 50% of the animals died." According to the EPA, the "lower the LD 50, the more toxic the compound. " There are oral, inhalation, and dermal LD50 studies for pesticides. These studies are performed on laboratory rats, rabbits, and sometimes guinea pigs.

LD50 values are used to rate the toxicity of the pesticides. The LD50 is an abbreviation for the dose (expressed in milligrams per kilogram of body weight of the test animal) that is lethal to 50 per cent of the group of test animals. For example, if a pesticide has an oral LD50 value of 10 mg/kg, and the test animals each weigh 1 kg, 50 per cent of the animals would die of poisoning if each ate 10 mg of the pesticide.

The LD50 values for pesticides are developed using healthy adult animals. (There is still doubt about whether data from rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs can be reliably extrapolated to humans.) However, most toxicologists would agree that there are three groups of people who are more vulnerable to the effects of pesticide overexposure: children, the elderly, and chronically ill persons. Recent studies have also shown that a growing fetus is far more susceptible to pesticide damage than previously thought.

Using just the first three groups (children, chronically ill, and elderly) leads us to a startling discovery - a whopping 59.07% of Americans fall into the category of being more vulnerable to overexposure to pesticides. Since pesticides are now touted as a panacea for everything from fleas to weeds, they can be found everywhere. Schools spray on a weekly basis in cafeterias, and almost as frequently in other school areas. Public buildings usually have a maintenance contract with a pesticide contractor. Lawns are ChemLawned, TruGreened, and zapped with RoundUp everywhere from parks to golf courses to homes.

Therefore, the underlying message here is a very profound one. Persons with chronic illnesses, children and the elderly are disposable commodities insofar as our government and the chemical companies are concerned.

Recent research has also shown that women, because of their much higher estrogen production, are far more susceptible to the ravages of pesticides than men. Many pesticides have been found to be estrogenic, meaning that the pesticides link with estrogen receptors to disrupt many bodily functions. According to the U. S. Bureau of the Census' 1998 estimates, women comprise 51% of the American population. So, does that mean that women are disposable too?

What we are left with when we have removed the chronically ill of both sexes, healthy women, children and the elderly is that the only non-disposable category left is healthy males. Is this truly the message we want to offer the citizens of this country? Is it the way we want our nation represented to the world? Even more important, is this the message we want to give to the next generation?

The chart below shows the numbers of persons estimated by the Center for Disease Control to have chronic illnesses that are widely accepted by the medical community. Census figures are from the US Census Bureau's estimated 1998 population figures.