UFSC Explains Pesticides Pesticides are chemical substances RUBENS ONOFRE NODARI FULL PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PLANT SCIENCE - CCA/UFSC RESEARCHES THE EFFECTS OF HERBICIDES ON BEES AND ORGANIC AND AGROECOLOGICAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS that were discovered or artificially synthetized, which try to prevent the growth or kill the living organisms, such as bacteria and fungi that cause diseases, or plants which are considered unwanted or insects that are called plagues. The pesticides are a mixture of chemical products. They have an active principle PABLO MORITZ DOCTOR AT THE UFSC UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL COORDINATES THE TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION AND ASSISTANCE CENTER OF SANTA CATARINA and several other chemical substances that often are more toxic than the active principle itself, which are made to provide durability, to better penetrate the plants, to better penetrate the cell membrane, to stay longer in the environment.
And many of these chemicals are not declared by the manufacturer. So, we live this global exposure, on a global level, to increasingly greater doses of these chemicals, to an increasing number of these chemicals. The farmer producing food is the most exposed.
The consumers are becoming more and more exposed. We are seeing more residues in fresh food, in processed food, in the water and in the air. The pesticide applied on the farm can be carried by the wind.
It can be carried by rainwater, during heavy rainfall. And it can also be removed from the farm along with the harvested product. So, let's say a pesticide is applied to a corn field.
The harvested corn carries along a residue of pesticide wherever it goes. And, sometimes, it spreads to five continents. Even if it was applied in just one location here in Brazil, or vice versa.
So, pesticides have a high mobility. There are very dangerous molecules that have been authorized for use in Brazil. SÔNIA HESS FULL PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES - UFSC CURITIBANOS CAMPUS CONDUCTS RESEARCH ON ORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION The three main pesticides used in the greatest quantities today are: glyphosate, 2,4–D and atrazine.
And they are very harmful to human health. It is very sad because they are extensively used. And they are certainly getting to our homes.
There are four crops that use 79% of the pesticides in Brazil: soybean (52%), corn (10%), sugar cane (10%) and cotton (7%). Totaling 79% of the poison used in Brazil. Less than 20% is used to produce food for Brazilians because soybean and corn crops are produced for animal feed, for livestock, both in Brazil and for the export market, and not food for human beings.
With this view of the numbers, we understand that we are poisoning ourselves. We are destroying the water. I will talk about livestock now: Most of the pesticides are used for livestock.
The animals are confined, and cause an indescribable pollution. Agriculture uses pesticides, the water is polluted with waste, and there is the industrialization itself. And we take all of this, clean it up nicely, and send it abroad.
The burden remains entirely here and it is not accounted for anywhere. We only talk about the profit from selling the product, but we don't account for the cost of the damage that remains here. A product that is intended to inhibit the growth of living beings or kill it, it does not inhibit the growth or kill only the target for which it was developed.
Let's say, an insecticide. It was developed to kill insects, but it also kills useful insects, such as bees. And it kills other insects that are harmless to us.
it kills insects that are agricultural pest parasites. So, the moment we exterminate the organisms that are beneficial to us, we increase, for instance, the diseases. That is, the vectors of human diseases in general are made of insects.
If we hadn't extinguished the natural enemies of these insect vectors, we would have less disease. The disease mechanisms, that is, the exposure to small doses in food, in water, it has basically four major consequences. The first is the neurotoxicity, toxicity to our nervous system.
So a lot of these chemicals, especially those used to kill insects, the insecticides, they are neurotoxins. It is being discovered that even in small doses these neurotoxins cause developmental disorders: changes in the IQ in children; attention deficit; hyperactivity; autism; emotional development problems; psychiatric disorders, such as depression, increasingly frequent in childhood and adolescence; anxiety. In adulthood, this leads to all the neurological diseases we know.
So, there is a strong relationship between exposure to pesticides and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. The second mechanism is the toxicity to the endocrine system. We have several organs and many functions of our body that are regulated by hormones.
The pesticides and several other chemical substances are powerful endocrine disruptors. Hormonal dysregulation means obesity, it means diabetes, it means infertility, it means precocious puberty, it means cancer of multiple organs that depend on hormones. So, breast cancer, which is one of the fastest growing in the world, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and testicular cancer, depression and psychiatric disorder.
In other words, it is not only through the neurotoxicity of pesticides that depression is caused. But also through the hormonal dysregulation. The third mechanism is cancer.
Most of these chemical substances are carcinogenic. Even those pesticides considered to be less toxic, such as glyphosate, which is the most commercialized in Brazil and in the world. Science says it is carcinogenic.
There is plenty of evidence already. Very high quality scientific evidence stating that exposure of producers as well as consumers, even to low doses, which is considered legal for that country, within the limits allowed for that country, is related to a higher incidence of leukemia, lymphoma in children, solid tumors of the central nervous system, and various other types of cancer. And the fourth mechanism is that these chemicals alter the bacteria in our gut.
Many of these chemical substances function like antibiotics. Ingesting small doses of pesticide residues every day is like ingesting small doses of antibiotics every day, which unbalances the bacteria in our gut and causes what we call intestinal dysbiosis. This intestinal dysbiosis causes psychiatric diseases.
Depression is very much related to this. It causes very important alterations in the immune system. Such as autoimmune diseases, rheumatisms in general.
Such as allergies. And it causes inflammatory bowel disease. People are surprised with the expansion, the mortality, the morbidity by cancer in Brazil.
For those who study this, it is no surprise. In fact I think it is not much, Brazilians are resistant beings, because we are being massively poisoned. And cancer is a disease resulting from poisoning.
That is basically it, there is no explanation. The literature says that at least 80% of the cases of cancer are due to poisoning, contamination by substances found in the environment. We talk about cigarettes and alcohol, they also cause cancer.
But there are people who never smoked, never drank and got sick. For those who study this, there is no doubt. The population is the one who doesn't know, because the media doesn't help to spread the word.
Who would want to publicize this? Nobody. Because the media is paid by the companies that produce these substances.
So it remains a secret. And even if it were publicized, sometimes, in order to understand, people need to have some technical knowledge. It is easier to believe a misleading advertisement than the truth.
The approval for use of dangerous substances in agriculture has been facilitated since the Temer government. And now with Bolsonaro, in just a few months, we have already had more than 150 new active ingredients approved. Some of them very dangerous.
Substances that have been prohibited in other countries for a long time and nobody prohibits them here. So, we are in the hands of corporate profits, right? That's what matters.
Public health is not a priority. In Brazil, the acceptable limits are absurdly higher than in developed countries. Science shows us that these limits that in Brazil we consider acceptable are absolutely not safe.
The same exposure to these limits causes all the diseases I mentioned. The same industries that produce pesticides are the same ones that produce medicine. So, when someone gets sick with cancer it is great for them, because they will make a lot of money from the treatment.
And at the same time they keep producing sick people selling dangerous substances to be applied anywhere, not only in agriculture. These are industrial groups that profit a lot from the disease. They produce the disease, then they profit from the disease.
So we will not escape from this easily. What science is showing is that there is no safe way to use pesticides in food production. That is, in those periods of greater vulnerability of our bodies: pregnancy, childhood and adolescence, any dose can cause disease and causes a lot of diseases.
So, we really have to rethink the way food is produced. In many developed countries, they are already restricting the use. The European Union restricts quite a lot the use.
It restricts the number of substances, restricts to use only the less toxic ones, low-toxicity ones. So, really, it is an important issue for the whole world to rethink the way food is produced. Science tells us that it is fully possible to produce food on a large scale, to feed the world without using or using minimally or only using a few products.
Once the food is contaminated, there are residues, or the water is contaminated, is there a way to remove these residues? The most frequent question is whether removing the skin from the food can decrease our exposure. The answer is: Most of the most important nutrients in food are in the skin.
Most of the micronutrients that prevent cancer, the vitamins, the elements that we need for our health are in the skin. So, removing the skin reduces a small part of our exposure to contact pesticides, which are those applied on top of the products, which are in residues on the skin. But removing the skin ends up reducing a lot of nutritional content, and in no way should it be recommended.
And removing the skin does not reduce at all the residue of systemic pesticides, which are those that penetrate the structure of the plant and get to the fruit or leaf, which we consume, systemically in the plant, via root or via cell structure. These are permeated in the whole plant and if you remove the skin it will not change anything. So, there is no way to effectively decontaminate food.
Water is the same thing, traditional water treatment does not remove these kinds of chemicals. The problem when we talk about water, about public supply, is that there is no way to turn off the tap, there is no way to stop this water from flowing out. Changing the type of agriculture, changing the protection of the public supply sources: it has to be considered a treasure of the community.
Water has to be seen as a very important asset. You can't throw sewage in it, you can't spread poison near it. There has to be legislation to protect the water.
And we are not doing this. So, the payment for this is the disease. What science also shows us is that the toxicity of these substances is transmitted from generation to generation.
We have seen that the parents' exposure leads to diseases in their children, and often in their grandchildren as well, through genetic alterations. And the number of publications on these health consequences has grown progressively in the last years. Today, we already have countless studies of very high quality, of high scientific rigor.
These scientific evidences are available. The decision to apply them is totally political. So, we need to make these decisions as a society, to listen to science, just like many countries are already doing.
We have agricultural systems that make extensive use of pesticides. And we have agricultural systems that don't use pesticides. And in between them there are systems where a farmer tries to use a minimum of pesticides.
But pesticides were made to kill, so it is natural that they cause damage to all living beings. Of course, one type of product can cause more harm than another, that's true. But they are designed to cause harm to living beings.
And we have ways to produce food and have drinking water without pesticide residues.
