AUTISM-CAUSING PESTICIDES FOUND IN BREAKFAST CEREALS & ELSEWHERE
“Each year, more than 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on American crops, primarily on ‘Roundup-ready’ corn and soybeans genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide. But when it comes to the food we eat, the highest glyphosate levels are not found in products made with GMO corn. Increasingly, glyphosate is also sprayed just before harvest on wheat, barley, oats and beans that are not genetically engineered. Glyphosate kills the crop, drying it out so that it can be harvested sooner than if the plant were allowed to die naturally.” From Dr. Temkin’s article by the EWG being discussed today.
Monsanto has a line of GMO seeds known as “Roundup Ready”. The plants produced by Roundup Ready seeds have the ability to withstand being doused in the broadleaf weedkiller, Roundup. Although there are a host of health problems associated with exposure to Roundup or similar pesticides / herbicides (ENDOCRINE SYSTEM DISRUPTION is a major one), one is rightfully gaining a great deal of media exposure.
It’s become obvious that there is an intimate relationship between GLYPHOSATE (Roundup’s active ingredient) and autism — a relationship which is becoming more pronounced with every published study (HERE and HERE) not to mention those that are never published (HERE). And now this.
Last week we discovered from the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) testing of oat-containing cereals and cereal-like products (breakfast bars, granola, etc) that they all contained glyphosate; most of them significant amounts of glyphosate. In fact, one of the samples of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats contained a whopping 1,300 parts per billion (ppb), with another sample coming in at 1,000.
And while several “TRUST US” governmental watchdog agencies have said that glyphosate is safe to consume in concentrations of 160 ppb or less, a quick peek at the chart produced by the EWG (using independently verified lab results) showed that several products contained much higher levels. For instance, Cheerios came in at almost 500 ppb, while Quaker Dinosaur Eggs, Brown Sugar, Instant Oatmeal averaged a stunning 700 ppb per sample. Study author, Dr. Alexis Temkin, wrote…..
The EPA has calculated that 1-to-2-year-old children are likely to have the highest exposure, at a level twice greater than California’s No Significant Risk Level and 230 times EWG’s health benchmark.
Did you catch that? 230 times higher? By the way, this is not the first study of its kind. Back in October of 2016, the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) published a report titled Do Breakfast Cereals Contain Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides? which stated,
“Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are natural or artificial substances that are foreign to the human body. Exposure to these chemicals can interfere with the endocrine system and induce many adverse effects on an individual or on a person’s children or grandchildren. Many pesticides or biocides are either proven or strongly suspected to be EDCs. On average, 9.4 residues were found in the non-organic samples.
Of the 70 non-organic samples that could be quantified, the average concentration of residues was .177 mg/kg per sample – a level 354 times higher than the maximum allowable concentration (MAC) tolerated in drinking water for all pesticides!“
And now this; just days ago the American Journal of Psychiatry (Association of Maternal Insecticide Levels With Autism in Offspring From a National Birth Cohort) concluded that this relationship to AUTISM is not only real, it’s strong.
“Prenatal exposure to neurotoxins including persistent organic pollutants are common in the pregnant population and are suggested to influence risk of neurobehavioral syndromes including outcome. The odds of autism among offspring were significantly increased with maternal DDE levels that were in the highest 75th percentile, with adjustment for maternal age, parity, and history of psychiatric disorders.
The odds of autism with intellectual disability were increased by greater than twofold with maternal DDE levels above this threshold. These findings provide the first biomarker-based evidence that maternal exposure to insecticides is associated with autism among offspring.“
Here’s what’s really crazy about this study. When the authors were interviewed by Kristen Monaco for MedPage Today (Pesticide Exposure in Pregnancy Tied to Autism Risk), they made it clear that these results were not a shocker. “Brown added that his group wasn’t particularly surprised by this DDE-autism link, given that this chemical class was associated with other developmental outcomes in prior research.” All of this begs the question of what are DDE’s?
According to PubChem, “Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) is a chemical compound formed by the loss of hydrogen chloride from DDT. DDE is an organochlorine pesticide, it is the ethylene metabolite of DDT. DDE is a breakdown product of DDT, which was used in the past as an insecticide.” DDT was banned decades ago because it weakened the shells of various bird’s eggs.
For instance, when I first started running the CURRENT RIVER 25 years ago, there were no eagles. About 15 years ago or so I started seeing a few eagles, and when you saw one it was a big deal. Now, if you don’t see an eagle (or several) it’s a big deal.
The reason I mentioned DDT is because our government’s ATSDR profile on DDE (Toxicological Profile for DDT, DDE, and DDD) states,
“Birds of prey, waterfowl, and song birds are more susceptible to eggshell thinning than chickens and related species, and DDE appears to be more potent than DDT.” Wikipedia says this of DDE. “DDE is particularly dangerous because it is fat-soluble like other organochlorines; thus, it is rarely excreted from the body, and concentrations tend to increase throughout life. The major exception is the excretion of DDE in breast milk, which transfers a substantial portion of the mother’s DDE burden to the young animal or child.”
What can you do to protect yourself and your family above and beyond limiting their exposure?
The studies mentioned above show that while eating organic oats or other foods is helpful, thanks to cross-contamination, it doesn’t completely solve the problem, and it certainly doesn’t solve the problem of it getting into groundwater. Speaking of cross-contamination, if you want to see what it looks like, look no farther than the increasingly common phenomenon known as “Dicamba Drift”.
Dicamba is a weed killer that has gotten more popular as weed resistance to Roundup has increased (just like ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE), and has the propensity to vaporize after spraying and then “drift” over to neighboring fields. How big is this problem? One short month ago, EcoWatch (New Dicamba Drift Estimate: 1.1 Million Acres Damaged Already in 2018) stated that, “A University of Missouri report estimates that drift damage from the pesticide dicamba has occurred across 1.1 million acres of agricultural crops….“
The most famous case of Dicamba Drift in these parts happened down in Missouri’s boot heel area in Campbell. Campbell, MO is famous for their peaches. If you’ve never had a Campbell peach, you are truly missing out. Unfortunately, thanks to Dicamba Drift, enjoying these peaches has gotten much more difficult as the St. Louis Post Dispatch (Missouri’s Largest Peach Farmer Sues Monsanto Over Alleged Damage from Illegal Herbicide Use) recently revealed.
“In 2015, about 7,000 trees in Bader’s orchards were damaged, leading to a loss of $1.5 million, according to the lawsuit. This year an estimated 30,000 trees are considered a permanent loss, amounting to a financial blow that has yet to fully come into focus. ‘Those numbers are still being estimated,’ said Bev Randles of Randles & Splittgerber, a Kansas City law firm. ‘The losses will certainly be in the millions.'”
The point of today’s post? We are swimming in a sea of chemicals, including not only those you just read about, but PRESCRIPTION DRUGS and VACCINES as well, which have side effect profiles that are, according to scores of studies, underestimated by almost two orders of magnitude (100 times — HERE). It’s also why taking care of your body’s natural detox systems (BIOTRANSFORMATION) is more critical than ever, and part of THE PROTOCOL I give my patients and readers to help them start the process of taking their lives back.
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