Snyder 1
Jennifer Snyder
May 4, 2011
Professor Bateman
ENG 102-022
Pesticides: more dangerous than you think
Agriculture is used all over the world every single day. Agriculture is important for everyday society but can the products that help support agriculture be dangerous to everyday life? Many agriculturalists use pesticides on their crops so that bugs and other pests do not kill or damage their crops in any way. Even though pesticides do help agriculturalists with their crops, they are beginning to be harmful to humans and animals who are near these dangerous pesticides. In this essay I argue that the use of pesticides in California’s agricultural practices increase cancer rates. These pesticides increase cancer rates so, California needs to look at more organic and more effective farming methods. There also needs to be further research done for safer and healthier pesticides. Pesticides are supposed to stay stationary but that is not always the case. They can be easily spread, accidently, to surrounding neighborhoods due to wind and other environmental factors.
Humans have the job of doing all the hard work in the agriculture business. In the agriculture business there are certain people where all they do is handle the pesticides. Many people will be spraying pesticides on the crops all day long for weeks, and that is there only job.
Many people who work on agriculture crops in California are immigrants from out of the country. One of these men who moved from Mexico to California to work on the crops felt that there was something wrong with the pesticides that he was putting on the plants. A farm worker in California stated, “I remember the first time I worked with the pesticides, I was wearing a full

Snyder 2 mask while we were spraying, nut my nose, it wouldn’t stop bleeding, I was worried” (Clarren
23).
Cancer rates in California have not always been as high as they are now. As of today,
California has the highest number of people with breast and testicular cancer in the country.
California also has the fastest growing cancer rate in the country. The pesticides that are used on crops in California is leading to and causing the increase in breast cancer rates. Many people do not realize that pesticides can even have an effect on peoples’ lives, but it can.
Cancer rates in California have not always been as high as they are now. As of today,
California has the highest number of people with breast and testicular cancer in the country.
California also has the fastest growing cancer rate in the country. The pesticides that are used on crops in California is leading to and causing the increase in breast cancer rates. Many people do not realize that pesticides can even have an effect on peoples’ lives, but it can.
Pesticides are used in agriculture to be harmful to other things and that is exactly what they are doing. These chemicals are being harmful to human beings who live in an area with agriculture. They are also known to cause cancer in humans. California alone has an extremely high breast cancer rate and is the state with the most pesticide use, more than anywhere else in the country. There needs to be a limit put on the use of pesticides so they will stop harming perfectly healthy human beings. Some sort of pesticides should be used to help agriculturalists but there should be adequate and severe testing done on each pesticide before it is allowed to be used on crops to make sure it will not harm human beings if they ever do come in to contact with them.
The pesticide use in California agriculture has been increasing rapidly. Out of the entire country and all fifty states, California represents one-eighth of the countries entire agriculture

Snyder 3 production. California also uses over eight hundred and fifty different pesticides, in that state alone (Hertz 994). The crops and agriculture in California is completely different than anywhere else in the country because of California’s environment. The use of all these different pesticides help farmers and agriculturalists save money and not worry about damaged crops, but they do not realize what it is doing to the rest of the people involved.
When people go to the grocery market, they are also at risk of coming into contact with pesticides. Many products that people can find in everyday grocery stores may still have dangerous pesticides all over them. Foods such as strawberries and grapes have a high likelihood to have pesticides on them, but people do not think of that while buying their food. Now, there can be various chemicals all over the items you buy and not one person would know about it.
Certain pesticides are used on certain crops such that the pesticide methyl iodide is used on strawberry crops in California. According to Jeannie Moulton, “Methyl iodide is a known toxin and cancer-causing agent. Even the CDC and USDA state that methyl iodide exhibits high toxicity when inhaled or ingested” (Moulton).
Pesticides used in California agriculture vary from crop to crop. Different crops need different pesticides and different pesticides have different effects on the crops. That is how things work in agriculture. Some pesticides that are used on crops don’t have any evidence to link them to cancer or any reason why they would seem dangerous when other pesticides do. The use in pesticides has grown rapidly over the past years just like how agriculture has grown rapidly over the past few years. When it comes to agriculture and producing crops people need to stop being greedy and realize what they are doing. People need to realize that by growing and producing crops, they have other peoples’ lives in their own hands. One should way out the consequences and figure out if it is really worth the risk. Use pesticides, save money, and risk

Snyder 4 millions of people getting cancer and dying or spend a little money to produce healthy crops and have no risk of people attracting cancer and dying because of the food they ate.
Cancer rates in California have not always been as high as they are now. As of today,
California has the highest number of people with breast and testicular cancer in the country.
California also has the fastest growing cancer rate in the country. The pesticides that are used on crops in California is leading to and causing the increase in breast cancer rates. Many people do not realize that pesticides can even have an effect on peoples’ lives, but it can.
Pesticides in California have been found to increase breast cancer rates in females and prostate cancer rates in males. As stated in the Tehran Times, “Pesticides are a real buzz-kill when it comes to men's below-the-belt health. Mounting research shows certain bug, fungus, and weed killers wreak havoc on guys' hormonal systems, with some chemicals escalating male cancer risk while others sink sperm counts. A new study out of University of Southern California finds certain chemicals used to grow our food even increase the risk of prostate cancer”
(Tehrantimes.com).
Not all pesticides are dangerous, but the ones that are should not be able to be used on any type of farmland. The more agriculture in an area, then the higher the risk is to coming into contact with various pesticides.
Pesticides are not only used on crops in agriculture but they are used for other things to.
They are used for things such as termite and pest control. There are also pesticides that get banned in some places but not in others. This is the case with a pesticide known as
Organochlorine or OC. Years ago, this pesticide was banned from the United States but it is still used today all around the world. Nabih concluded in his research that, “Serum concentrations of
OC pesticides were positively associated with hormone-related cancer as a group and with prostate cancer specifically in this sample of the U.S. population” (Nabih 65). Although the

Snyder 5
United States has solid evidence that this pesticide is extremely dangerous and is linked to cancer, it is still used all around the world.
There have been multiple studies done all around the country, and world, that link the use of pesticides to the likelihood of a person getting cancer. Many people may believe that in order to come into contact with dangerous pesticides such as the ones that contribute to cancer than you must be on a farm or crop field to get them. That is certainly not the case though. People can come in to contact with dangerous pesticides many different ways. Coming into contact with any type of chemical or pesticide can increase ones chances of attracting cancer. The most popular forms of cancer related to pesticides are hormonal cancers. Hormonal cancers such as testicular cancer and breast cancer are the most clearly seen cancers that have been directly related to coming into contact with various pesticides around the world.
In California, breast cancer rates were not always as high as they are today. People were starting to wonder why the rates of breast cancer were increasing so incredibly rapidly just in
California alone. Now, people know why breast cancer rates have been increasingly so rapidly. It is because of the increase of pesticide use in California. It is also because there is so many different pesticides that are being used in California agriculture, it is getting out of control.
With the agriculture in California being so big, one would think people would want to know what exactly is going on in this agricultural business. So many people do not realize what can and very well may be happening behind closed doors. All products that are involved in agriculture should need to be tested and approved multiple times before they are used. Why?
Well because these products are consumed by millions of people all around the country. The lives of every citizen, and non citizen, residing in the United States is at risk when items are not tested but still used on crops.

Snyder 6
The testing processes of chemicals and pesticides that are used on or going to be used on crops needs to be more serious. The laws or what can or can not go on the fields of agriculture need to be more restricted. It is because of these small restrictions and lack of testing processes that people are attracting cancer. Clarren states that, “In fact, he says, pesticide poisoning is a big problem—pesticides are the only things besides war gases that we intentionally put into the environment to harm things—but because of regulatory failures, exposure continues unabated.
When the EPA registers new pesticide products it balances safety and health concerns with economics” (24). If these testing processes worked the way that they should, then the dangerous pesticides that are leading to people getting cancer would not be out there right now.
Although, testing processes may seem like a pain and a long, difficult process they would better help the country. It would help the country to spend more time and money on testing because in the long run, it will save peoples’ lives. The cancer rates would decrease if the country tested pesticides more seriously because then they would realize how dangerous and life altering some of these pesticides can actually be. Just taking a little more precautions and care into the agriculture and pesticide business can change the country completely. Saving lives and preventing people from getting cancer seems like a much better way to spend ones time than to just spray crops with pesticides knowing that people are going to get cancer from such a thing.
One way to decrease the risk of people attracting cancer through pesticide contact is to produce and grow only organic food. Even though organic food is grown and produced in the present, it is not a very popular way to produce food. One of the problems with producing organic food is the cost of it. Organic food is about double the price or regularly grown food.
This causes problems because people who grow organic food are losing money in the long run, since no one will buy their expensive products. Organic food, although expensive, could be

Snyder 7 better for one in the long run. Yes, someone might end up paying nearly double each month for groceries and yes it may be extremely costly. One might have to ask themselves a question though, would you rather spend your money on food that is healthy for you or would you save money and take the risk that you may or may not get cancer in the future.
Who would want to take a risk like that when they know the risks? Cochran states that he has, “been growing strawberries without using pesticides in California for 25 years,” says
Cochran. "It’s certainly possible to grow commercially viable and ecologically sound strawberry crops without using methyl iodide or any other chemical pesticides"(Qtd in Bednarz). Organic farming methods could work and be productive if only people gave them a chance. People tend to believe the first things they hear and leave no room for adjusting. Most people only know about the cost of organic food and that is stopping them from wanting to buy it. Even though, this is the healthy way to go, not everyone wants to stay on the healthy path these days.
Another alternative in not using these cancer causing pesticides is to use organic pesticides. Organic pesticides are like have a fake pesticide. These fake pesticides work for the plant and crops not against it. According to Walter Crinnion, “World pesticide use exceeded 5.0 billion lbs in both 2000 and 2001 (total cost, $64.5 billion) with the United States accounting for
1.2 billion lbs per year at an annual cost of $11 billion. While the totals are staggering, so too is the infinitesimal amount of those five billion pounds a year that actually make it to the target pest
- less than 0.1 percent. No one has accounted for where the other 99.9 percent ends up, and it is known these compounds can travel thousands of miles around the globe. Both the amount of pesticide residue on foodstuff and the amount released into the atmosphere are factors that should he considered when individuals purchase organically raised food” (Crinnion 6). The

Snyder 8 entire reason that organic pesticides are even used is to help better the environment and help rid the world of actual pesticides.
Pesticides are used in everyday life, sadly enough. Even though it is cheap, easy, and accessible to use pesticides it is not the way to go. Pesticides in agriculture and everything else they are used in needs to be limited. It is proven and shown that pesticides only create harm to the country. They may help the agriculturalists but while working one must think of the bigger picture here, which is the health of all United States citizens. Pesticides do not need to be used in order to grow crops and produce food. They were not used thousands of years ago when agriculture just started and they do not need to be used today.
There are so many other options that people can use instead of using pesticides that are healthy and will not harm the human race. People have the chance to buy organic products just like people have the chance to use organic pesticides. Everyone who has to go out and buy groceries for themselves or their families should know what exactly they are buying and how exactly what they are buying was produced.
People also have the chance to survive the pesticides if only there was more testing done.
Laws in the United States are not at all as strict as they should be when it comes to agriculture production, crops, and pesticides. The people who are in charge of these laws know that there are risks when it comes to pesticides but they decide to do nothing about it. When people attract cancer due to these pesticides, law makers and agriculturalists are the ones responsible. They are responsible because they know how harmful they can be they just do not care enough.
Cancer is a very serious matter in this world. Cancer takes peoples’ lives from them without any warning. There are so many different types of cancer and so few cures for all the types. Once people attract the horrible cancerous disease, there is no going back. You can’t rid

Snyder 9 yourself of cancer once you have it, cancer will always be there. If only people would stop using these harmful pesticides on their crops, maybe there can be a pause in the cancer world.

Snyder 10
Works cited
1.
Clarren, Rebecca. "Fields of Poison." Nation 277.22 (2003): 23-25. Academic Search
Complete . EBSCO. Web. 4 May 2011.
2.
Andrew Hertz, et al. "Residential Proximity to Agricultural Pesticide Use and Incidence of Breast Cancer in California, 1988--1997." Environmental Health Perspectives 113.8
(2005): 993-1000. Academic Search Complete . EBSCO. Web. 4 May 2011.
3.
Moulton, Jeannie. "Maybe Think Twice before Buying Strawberries from
California." Eat Drink Better . Web.
4.
"Cancer Risk Doubled: Men's Reproductive Health Jeopardized by
Pesticides." Tehrantimes . Web.
5.
Nabih R. Asal, et al. "Associations of Serum Concentrations of Organochlorine
Pesticides with Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer in U.S. Adults." Environmental Health
Perspectives 118.1 (2010): 60-66.
Academic Search Complete . EBSCO. Web. 4 May
2011.
6.
Bednarz, Colleen. "Methyl Iodide Does Not Deserve Its Day in the Sun - Santa Cruz, CA
Patch." Santa Cruz, CA Patch - News, Sports, Events, Businesses & Deals . Web. 04 May
2011. <http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/methyl-iodide-does-not-deserve-its-day-in-thesun>.
7.
Crinnion, Walter J. "Organic Foods Contain Higher Levels of Certain Nutrients, Lower
Levels of Pesticides, and May Provide Health Benefits for the Consumer." Alternative
Medicine Review 15.1 (2010): 4-12.
Academic Search Complete . EBSCO. Web. 4 May
2011.