It’s been decades since the world was exposed to the pesticide DDT, but almost everyone is suffering after being exposed to the chemical during WWII and from the 1950’s and 60’s in the US, until today in places globally that, unfortunately, still use it. New damning evidence is proving that DDT is more noxious than ever, causing a four-fold increase in breast cancer risk. But that’s not all . . .
- The pesticide infiltrated our food supply. The USDA found DDT breakdown products in 60% of heavy cream samples, 42% of kale greens, 28% of carrots, and lower percentages of many other foods, according to Panna.org.
- DDT doesn’t go away for decades. DDT breakdown products were found in the blood of 99% of the people tested by CDC.
- Women and Girls are Especially Vulnerable. Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are 5 times more likely to develop breast cancer in middle age, according to the President’s Cancer Panel.
DDT’s toxicity became world-renown in Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, but the story doesn’t end. New research conducted in California has found that women exposed to DDT in the womb are more likely to develop cancer almost a half a century later.
Shanna Swan, an environmental health scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York is concerned about the study results, though she wasn’t involved in the research:
“If the results of this study are real, it’s possible that DDT could be responsible for raising the risk of breast cancer for a whole generation of women.”
The implications for this study, which accounts for three generations of women and looks at more than 15,000 mothers, daughters, and grandchildren, are profound surpassing inquiry into DDT since Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and other pesticide and herbicide makers continuously tout the safety of their chemical concoctions.
It is clear from research like this that we don’t always understand the true damage that a pesticide can inflict on human health until many years after its initial use.
We also are just cognizant of the true malice with which these chemicals were sprayed, since early reports also indicated that DDT was exceptionally harmful to human health.
With a study like this combined with studies provided by even our own government agencies, prove that DDT should never have been used.
The EPA admits that DDT, DDE, and DDD have been found in at least 442 of the 1,613 current or former National Priority List sites. No different than what is being done today with neonicotinoids and glyphosate, large amounts of DDT were released into the air and on soil or water when it was sprayed on crops and forests to control insects, but pregnant women exposed to these chemicals were passing them down, unbeknownst, to their own unborn children. (Thankfully, some research shows that this key vitamin can protect against DDT damage.)
Nearly 50 years later, we are doing the same thing with new chemicals in the name of eliminating ‘pests’ from farms, but what we are really agreeing to is another form of genocide. The human race is being exterminated with these chemicals. It is time that we stand up and say “no more.”
Additional Sources:
National Geographic
Featured image credit: Huffpost / Personal.psu.edu