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It is now well known that pesticide residues, and/or the combination of so many of them on our diets has a negative impact on our health and are recognized causes for diseases such as cancer, hormonal and endocrine disruption, declining sperm counts, immune system damage and birth defects.

Farmers have a much larger risk than non-farmers of contracting cancer. Farm worker health is also a serious problem in developing nations, where pesticide use can be be poorly regulated. As estimated 1 million people are poisoned annually by pesticides.

Cancer
The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists 34 pesticides as probable and possible human carcinogens. The United States Enviromental Protection Agency (US EPA) considers that at least 62% of all pesticides are carcinogenic. A total of 48 pesticides registered and used in New Zealand belong to this US EPA’s carcinogenic list.

The types of cancer linked to pesticides, insecticides and herbicides are: Stomach cancer, brain cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and breast cancer.

Children are exposed to more cancer causing substances because pound for pound they eat more food and breath more air than adults do, and they can’t process or get rid of toxins as easily as adults. Infants up to age two are almost 10 times more vulnerable to cancer causing chemicals.

Hormone and Endocrine Disruption
It has been widely reported that hormones of wildlife (including humans) can be affected by pesticides containing compounds that act in a similar way to estrogen, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals. Some of these pesticides have been linked to masculinisation of female animals, and femeninisation of male animals.

Declining sperm counts
Average sperm count across the globe has dropped by 50%.
According to an article published on June 29, 1996, in the medical Journal Lancet, men who consume organic foods have a higher sperm count than men with mainstream diets. In the study reviewed by Lancet comparing organic farmers with men working for an airline, it was found that men whose diets contained at least 25 percent organic produce had 43 percent more sperm per milliliter of semen than those eating a mainstream diet.

Immune system damage
Very small doses of pesticides can affect the inmune system, making us more susceptible to disease.

Growers are particularly susceptible to the effects of pesticides on their immune systems. In the agricultural districts of central Moldova, where pesticides have been used heavily, 80 percent of healthy children had suppressed immunity. Children from these areas were three times more likely to have infectious diseases of the digestive tract, and two to five times more likely to have infectious diseases of the respiratory tract. Workers in pesticide factories and on farms in the area exhibited elevated rates of infectious diseases of the digestive, urinary, respiratory, and female genital tracts.

Farmers generally have lower risks of cancer than other men, but have a higher risk for the kinds of cancers found in immune-deficient patients (those with AIDS and those taking immuno-suppressive drugs): Hodgkin's disease, melanoma, multiple myeloma, leukemia (all cancers of the immune system) and cancers of the lip, stomach and prostate. Farmers most heavily exposed to pesticides have the highest relative rates.