Grist | Topics | 23 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 23 of 23
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Check Mate, CheckMate California officials yank controversial urban spraying plan		22 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 12:07 PM on 22 Jun 2008 California officials have announced that they will not spray the urban Bay Area with a pheromone this summer, delighting activists who had campaigned strenuously against the plan. The pheromone with the ominous name CheckMate LBAM-F keeps the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth from reproducing, but also has been linked to complaints of respiratory trouble in humans. Spraying had ...
Topics: agriculture, California, health, news, San Francisco, toxics (all these topics)

Missouri mystery Why are sperm counts so low in the show-me state?	Tom Philpott	19 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Surrounded by agriculture powerhouses Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois, Missouri sits at the southern edge of the heartland. Are the region's titanic annual lashings of agrichemicals -- synthetic and mined fertilizers, as well as poisons designed to kill bugs, weeds, and mold -- leaching into drinking water and doing creepy things to the state's citizens? And what about manure from the stunning concentration of concentrated-animal feedlot operations ...
Topics: Agriculture, health, Missouri, toxics, water pollution (all these topics)

Take My Breath Away Fumes from Minn. dairy force neighbors to evacuate		11 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 3:25 PM on 11 Jun 2008 A giant dairy farm in Thief River Falls, Minn., is producing such noxious fumes that the state health department has advised nearby residents to evacuate. Excel Dairy's emissions of hydrogen sulfide have been calculated at 200 times the standard allowed by Minnesota law; neighbors' complaints include headaches, nausea, blurred vision, shortness of breath, and fatigue. "It's so strong and ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, health, industrial ag, Minnesota, news, toxics (all these topics)

USDA: What pesticide use? The agency cravenly stops measuring the poisons used in U.S. farming	Tom Philpott	23 May 2008	Gristmill
The USDA's 'Agricultural Chemical Use Database' is a wonderful thing. With a few clicks, consumers, researchers, and anyone else kind find all manner of information on pesticides, broken down by crop and by state. As an agriculture writer, I have an interest in industrial corn, by far our biggest crop. With a simple search, I find that corn farmers have increased applications of glyphosphate -- Monsanto's broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup -- by a factor of eight since M ...
Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, health, shenanigans, toxics, websites (all these topics)

Organically killed Are 'organic pesticides' the way forward for organic agriculture?	Tom Philpott	23 May 2008	Gristmill
How are proponents of regenerative agriculture supposed to respond to news like this? Green pesticide and herbicide developer Marrone Organic Innovations is nearly done raising $7 million in a second round of funding, CEO Pamela Marrone said Wednesday. Wow, somebody's investing in organic agriculture -- millions, no less. That's news. But does it have to involve pesticides?Pesticides aren't just problematic because they're derived synthetically. They're also troubli ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, health, industrial ag, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

The Moth-Ban Prophecies Bay Area escapes aerial spraying, for now		25 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 10:48 AM on 25 Apr 2008 A plan to spray Santa Cruz County with synthetic pheromones must be postponed until an environmental review is completed, a county judge ruled Thursday. The spraying, an attempt by agriculture officials to curb the invasion of the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth, was to begin in Santa Cruz County in June and expand to seven other Bay Area counties in August. But many of the 7 million resident ...
Topics: agriculture, California, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

Got food? Farmworker Awareness Week is a chance to recognize the people whose labor means we can eat	Fawn Pattison	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
This is Farmworker Awareness Week, a time to support the millions of farmworkers whose labor puts food on every American table, and who work and live in some of the worst environmental conditions in our nation. It's estimated that 2 to 3 million farmworkers plant, tend, and harvest American crops every year. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are migrants who move from place to place following the harvest. Where I live, in North Carolina, migrant farmworkers are the ma ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, environmental justice, food, grassroots activism, health, toxics (all these topics)

Got chemical and pesticide residues in your milk? Conventional milk contains toxics, says the USDA	Tom Philpott	13 Mar 2008	Gristmill
The Organic Center acts as a kind of shadow USDA, digesting the latest peer-reviewed research on organic food, translating it into English, and issuing summary reports. Consumers won't want to miss the center's newest one on pesticide residues [PDF]. It contains one of those handy guides on which conventional fruits and veggies convey the most toxic traces to eaters (here's a handy two-pager [PDF] for the fridge), as well as a blunt and important discussion of the pl ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

One hell of a company Monsanto uses child labor in its Indian cottonseed fields	Tom Philpott	29 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Photo: iStockphoto Monsanto dominates the global seed industry and churns out $1 billion a year in profit. Investors are so enamored of its market power and profitability that they've bid up its share price by nearly 1500 percent since 2004. So why does Monsanto rely on farms that use child labor to cultivate its genetically modified cotton seeds in India? From Forbes Magazine: Yothi Ramulla Naga is 4 feet tall. From sunup to sundown she is hunched ov ...
Topics: agriculture, business, health, India, toxics (all these topics)

Pesticide-free produce, pesticide-free kids Organic food reduces organophosphate exposure in children	Clark Williams-Derry	31 Jan 2008	Gristmill
By now, I think most people understand that organic food is supposed to be healthier for you. But I think there are still some people who feel that the health benefits are a just a bunch of marketing hype. Well, this new study suggests that it ain't just hype -- organic produce really does reduce kids' exposure to some potentially risky pesticides. From the Seattle P-I: The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety o ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

Banana Split Six farmworkers compensated for pesticide exposure, six cases dismissed		06 Nov 2007	News
Posted at 3:00 PM on 06 Nov 2007 Six farmworkers who became sterile after working on a Nicaraguan banana plantation three decades ago were awarded a total $3.3 million from Dole Food Co. and Dow Chemical, after a judge agreed that the corporations "actively suppressed information about" the "reproductive toxicity" of now-banned pesticide DBCP. Six other plaintiffs with a similar claim had th ...
Topics: agriculture, business, health, industrial ag, litigation, news, Nicaragua, toxics (all these topics)

Berry Bad News EPA approves carcinogenic pesticide		08 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 1:45 PM on 08 Oct 2007 Just when we think the U.S. EPA might have some sense, it goes and approves a carcinogenic pesticide, ignoring scientists' warnings that "pregnant women and the fetus, children, the elderly, farmworkers, and other people living near application sites would be at serious risk." As a substitute for ozone-depleting fumigant methyl bromide, California and Florida strawberry growers and other farmers will w ...
Topics: agriculture, California, Florida, health, news, toxics, US EPA (all these topics)

DDT, Yeah You Know Me Study suggests link between DDT exposure and breast cancer		01 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 1:04 PM on 01 Oct 2007 Women exposed to the pesticide DDT as children are five times as likely to develop breast cancer, according to a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives. Draw your own conclusions. source:� Los Angeles Times From the Archives Veg Out. Today is World Vegetarian Day. Lejeune Bugged. U.S. Navy must notify N.C.-based Marines of exposure to contamin ...
Topics: agriculture, health, news, scientific research, toxics (all these topics)

Pick Your Poison Pesticides up to no good, says new research		18 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 5:08 PM on 18 Sep 2007 A decrease in pesticide availability led to an associated decrease in suicide rates in Sri Lanka, researchers publishing in the International Journal of Epidemiology have concluded. In 1995 and 1998, restrictions were put into place on importation and sales of highly toxic pesticides in Sri Lanka; in 2005, the country's suicide rate was half what it had been in 1995. "Changes in the availability o ...
Topics: agriculture, health, news, Sri Lanka, toxics (all these topics)

Organo Failure California study suggests link between autism and pesticide exposure		31 Jul 2007	Daily Grist
Organo Failure California study suggests link between autism and pesticide exposure A "very preliminary" study from the California Department of Public Health suggests that higher rates of autism can be seen in children whose mothers were exposed to two organochlorine pesticides still in use in the United States, endosulfan and dicofol. Organochlorine pesticides, which take a long time to break down in the environment ...
Topics: agriculture, health, toxics (all these topics)

Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Pesticide-Free Garden Pesticide exposure increases risk of Parkinson's disease, study says		01 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Pesticide-Free Garden Pesticide exposure increases risk of Parkinson's disease, study says A new study from researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland concludes that pesticide exposure increases the risk of getting Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition affecting the nervous system. Patients from five European countries participated in the study, published in the Journal ...
Topics: agriculture, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

Chemically Dependent Decades after Silent Spring, pesticides remain a menace -- especially to farmworkers	Tom Philpott	18 Oct 2006	Victual Reality
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her landmark Silent Spring, which documented the ravages of agricultural pesticides, particularly DDT, on wildlife. The book inspired wide outrage and helped spark the modern environmental movement. It eventually led to a (now-controversial) ban on DDT. But since then, use of other pesticides has boomed. Sign of the times? Photos: ...
Topics: agriculture, health, industrial ag, toxics, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Give Him a Farmhand Tirso Moreno, farmworker organizer, answers readers' questions		24 Mar 2006	InterActivist
Tirso Moreno, Farmworker Association of Florida. A note from Moreno: This interview is especially timely as next week (March 27 - April 2) is national Farmworker Awareness Week. I hope you will all take a few minutes to find out more about the actions, activities, and campaigns going on around the country and see what you can do to help make a difference for farmworkers in the U.S. Do you support bans ...
Topics: agriculture, environmental justice, Florida, health, InterActivist, interview, Poverty and the Environment, toxics (all these topics)

The Not-So-Funny Farm Tirso Moreno, farmworker organizer, answers Grist's questions		20 Mar 2006	InterActivist
Tirso Moreno. What's your job title? General coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida. What does your organization do? We work to empower communities of farmworkers and the rural poor, focusing on a wide range of issues, from workplace and community organizing to disaster preparedness and response, from vocational rehabilitation to immigrants' rights advocacy for farmworkers and students. ...
Topics: agriculture, environmental justice, Florida, health, InterActivist, interview, Poverty and the Environment, toxics (all these topics)

Salad Daze On Roundup	Umbra Fisk	18 Aug 2003	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, I have a large, organic (hopefully) vegetable garden. However, I occasionally use Roundup around the edges to keep invasive grasses from creeping in. Now, I have been given to understand that Roundup is relatively safe and breaks down almost immediately. What are your thoughts on this subject? I totally trust your judgment. Betsy Michigan Dearest Betsy, Roundup is relatively safe -- it's not as bad as, say, depleted uranium -- but that ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food, gardening, GMOs, health, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

Puff the Toxic Dragon On green reasons to quit smoking	Umbra Fisk	15 May 2003	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, I want to quit smoking. As if the risks to my health weren't enough, could you help out by twisting that knife of guilt into my tree-hugging heart and give me some environmental reasons to stop supporting the tobacco industry? Cough, wheeze, Elaine Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada Dearest Elaine, I don't care whether you smoke or not. In fact, I think anti-smoking hype is often thinly disguised clas ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food and agriculture, green living, health, toxics (all these topics)

A New Day Lawning On lawn and garden pesticides	Umbra Fisk	30 Jul 2002	Ask Umbra
Dearest Umbra, Goddess of Green Knowledge, A few years ago, a farmer friend of mine argued that more pesticides and chemical fertilizers are applied to suburban lawns and gardens than are used in commercial agriculture. I can see how this might be the case, given the massive size of the lawn and garden chemical industry, but I haven't been able to verify this information. Can you help? Ed Hunt Dearest Ed, Supplicant, The l ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, gardening, green living, health, toxics (all these topics)

Absolut Advertising	Ben White	28 Jul 1999	Muckraker
If you are like us (and we bet you are) you were sipping your coffee and peacefully perusing your New York Times Tuesday morning when POW! you were smacked upside the head by a clever full-page ad from the Environmental Working Group previewing its release of a study on the effects of the herbicide atrazine. The ad, mimicking the long-running Absolut Vodka campaign, pictures a baby bottle with an atrazine-warning label. The caption reads, "Absolu ...
Topics: agriculture, Environmental Working Group, health, Muckraker, national forests, politics, toxics, US EPA, water pollution (all these topics)

Stories About: agriculture AND health AND toxics