Like this?

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/metiram-propoxur/phosmet-ext.html

A full discussion on the types of epidemiological studies and their limitations, and how to interpret a given paper and its limitations, is way beyond the scope of this forum.
(I wish all media "science reporters" would take a university epidemiology or medical statistics class -- they fail almost every time when they try to interpret research.) As Harvestman said, epidemiological studies can't separate all the variables.

I am familiar with epidemiology and statistics and if anyone has very specific questions I would try to answer them, but I don't have time to write a book's worth of notes. I would encourage anyone who is very interested to take a class.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to provide medical advice. Discuss your exposure potential with your doctor in person, ALWAYS follow label directions, and use all appropriate personal protective equipment.

I haven't seen anything in the literature that persuaded me not to use pesticides. I don't worry about the minimal amount of pesticides I use (mostly fungicides), with one exception -- I don't use insecticides because Parkinson Disease runs in my husband's family.

Occupational and home exposure to insecticides (organophosphates and rotenone) has been associated with Parkinson Disease. In fact, people who live near farmland and use well water (as opposed to city water sources) also have a higher risk of PD. The mechanism is believed to involve reactive oxygen species, and requires both genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to slowly kill a particular type of neurons over time. Symptoms don't appear until/unless 80% of dopaminergic neurons have been destroyed. The PD-insecticide link has been known for some time and I don't know the original source, but several recent studies containing epidemiological data can be found by searching PubMed for insecticide, Parkinson, epidemiology. A couple examples:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19847896
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20558393

Obviously, acute overdoses are an entirely different beast from chronic low level exposures. Call 911 in the event of an accidental overexposure.

HIlton, absolutely not like that. Did you read what I wrote?

I'm interested in comparing populations of people with a lot of exposure to pesticides and comparing it to those who don't have much exposure. Can you explain to me how such a study of say 70,000 farmers could come of with a health comparison that so dramatically demonstrated the improved health and mortality of those farmers over the general population and at the same time claim pesticide exposure is as dangerous as is the current public perception?

All crops are dosed with pesticides and I would rather control pesticide use on fruits and vegetables I grow.

For instance; Commercial Cherries can be sprayed with a substance that makes the stems fall off the tree easily, I prefer to grow them my self. If I stored 40# of peaches in a box and shipped them across the country they would rot. Mine are tree ripe and delicious 3-4 weeks with out spray. Commercial peaches are picked unripe and green with fungicide. If you knew how China produces apples you would never drink apple juice again. A family gets 3/4 of an acre to make a apple orchard on. They spray anything on the tree so long as it is cheap. The apples are stored in a hole underground. The bad ones make juice. Does anybody trust fruit growers using pesticides in Chile? Potatoes are sprayed with a substance that inhibits formation of buds. Remember a long time ago when potatoes sprouted and now they don't.

To give up growing and eating backyard fruit is way more health adverse than eating store bought fruit, or none at all.

This has the makings of a flame thread. In spite of that, I'll put in my two cents.

First, I don't have at my fingertips any of the epidemiological studies requested.

As far as the general theme of the thread I will say this:

Ag chemicals get more than their share of negative attention in my opinion. From a human health standpoint, there are plenty of carcinogens in our man made environment (and some even in the natural environment) that don't get much focus.

Many plastics (think baby toys) contain some level of carcinogens.

On a personal level, I've been exposed to so many chemicals throughout my life, I'll probably die of cancer (although I'm hoping for heart disease). Currently, I work in a machine shop (as my day job) and have my hands soaked in tool coolant all day long. The tools spin so fast, a lot of the coolant is inhaled as aerosol as well. This coolant is a petroleum distillate, and as most petro chemicals, is probably a carcinogen at some level. We also machine beryllium copper, well known as a significant carcinogen. Unlike farmers, machinists have higher rates of cancer than the general population. None of this gets a lot of play in the public arena.

On a positive note, it's also often ignored that technology continues to produce safer Ag chemicals. More testing and higher standards continue to move the risk avoidance paradigm up a notch. This can be good in my opinion, as long as it's not taken overboard by radicals who somehow think we can live in a zero risk environment, and as long as it's not applied to agriculture only.

To me the central issue is, world population continues to increase, even in the developed world. The 2010 census indicated the U.S. population increased about 7% in the last 10 years. There is only so much desert area that can be used organically to feed the growing populace.

The bottom line is, chemicals are a necessary ingredient to generate the quantities of foodstuffs required to feed 7 bill. people.

I think part of the issue is that people think "poisons" when they think of insecticides/fungicides. "Poisons" naturally invoke an emotion of something harmful.

IMO the oft quoted, but still sound words of Paracelsus "Father of toxicology" were wise beyond his time - All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, it's the dose that makes the difference.

I can't help but note the rotenone danger mentioned above, a natural insecticide that organic gardeners would normally accept. (My biologist friends used it while diving to stun [kill? I forget] reef fish for experimental purposes.) Nicotine, strychnine, cyanide, the list of natural poisons goes on. Actually, some natural arsenic or mercury or lead mineral if powdered would presumably pass muster for use, it is natural. How do organic gardeners normally set these limits?

>>It would also seem that regular exercise and the less smoking and drinking that characterize the farmer lifestyle are the most important things to overall health that we can practice.I was thinking the same...you hit the nail on the head!

My dad in those years...50 years ago, we had a hose pumping up the spray, drift's get's inhaled, the horse and me too pulling the cart, into the grass, grass gets eaten by the cow...on and on.

General live style was allot better then now, better eating too,
allot of smokers got old...not anymore.

I don't know the answers and have had some of the same misgivings about the current fear/hatred of anything chemical. I try to limit the use of chemical sprays but I'm convinced that it would be difficult or impossible to grow decent fruit in my area without so I use it sparingly and I "suit up" to spray it. I also lay off the sprays long before the manufacturers typically recommend before picking any fruit.

The thing that really bothers me is the chem lawn type of stuff and I wonder if some people don't contract with this sort of service yet fall into the PC trap of complaining about any insecticide, herbicide or fungicide on their foods. Once again, I don't know for a fact that it's hurting people or polluting our groundwater but it doesn't have much real need other than to change a home's aesthetics slightly or feed someone's ego. With fruit tree sprays in my area, it's a necessary evil.

My biggest concern about pesticides is environment contamination, its not hard to wipe out whole ecosystems with a baddie that is not degrading. And, its hard to accurately measure how much is getting in the environment and what its exactly doing. Many of the assumptions in the studies are in fact too conservative but you never know what will happen in practice (recall Fukushima). I don't think the risk to humans is very high from eating the food, but its surely a factor for applicators and folks downwind. For the farmers the fact that their healthy lifestyle is compensating for the downsides of the chemicals and shows the risk is not all that high. Still, its irresponsible to use hazardous chemicals when they are not needed. The whole Chem-Lawn thing I find very annoying.

Scott

I don't have time to do anything but briefly (and I mean briefly) skim this thread, but I think Harvestman hit the nail on the head. Pesticides in mass can do a lot of environmental damage if misused and overused, but the people that think they're going to die because someone 3 doors down sprayed their apple tree are just overreacting. Like the PETA people who own $3,000 Prada leather bags or the folks who guzzle soft drinks and puff their Camels all day and then worry about terrorists getting them.

Trust me, I drive the freeways of Detroit 5 days a week to and from work. Pesticides are NOT the most dangerous thing you face in your daily life.

Just my 2 cents worth. Flame away if desired.

No flaming here and nothing said by anyone so far is very far from my own thinking. If someone has a contrary opinion to anything posted it would be just as welcome as statements I agree with.

Because this is the time of year I'm most obsessed with spray issues I thought the business of how pesticides appear to affect farmers health or not would be a fresh angle.

As far as environmental contamination, I wonder if anyone has attempted to compare environmental damage created by various environmental assaults- from agriculture to industry to just plain human habitation (septic tanks, sewage systems, commuting to work, lawn care, etc.). These things are entwined but it would be interesting to have some idea of what the percentages are from various sources.

Obviously, all these things are not equal and some things are necessary (like food), some merely useful and some things just mindless consumption of unnecessary and poorly made goods. The latter category, IMO, would be the chemical lawn care, and throw away lawn furniture that lasts a season or two and bottled water, many of the toys for children, and on an on. Of course if the world and particularly Americans stopped buying such things the world economy would completely tank- at least for a time.

I'm not sure if dangerous is the right word. Common sense dictates that it's a good idea to limit our exposure to pesticides. You don't need a study to tell you that ingesting or contacting low-levels of poison is not optimal. Likewise, it is not optimal to kill beneficial insects along with the bad. On the other side of the coin it's certainly not a reason for panic, horror, nor is it a harbinger of the Apocalypse. Any way you slice it we're generally better off eating fresh fruits and vegetables than not eating them at all.

I don't use pesticides, nevertheless, I think I subscribe to the "a man's got to do what a man's got to do" way of thinking. We have periodic complete crop failures here which break the life cycle of the pests very nicely and make it possible for people like me to avoid pesticides.

My folks used to dust the chickens with DDT when I was a kid. They used something called "dipterex" around the horse corral to control flies. I think the government makes dipterex sites superfund sites now.

from a statistical standpoint the percentage play is for everyone to say, double their consumption of green stuff grown cheaply through the use of chemicals.

Yes, organic gets a free ride. You can poison the groundwater with Nitrogen through over growing hairy vetch. Rotenone is dangerous. Something isn't safe just because it came from the bark of a tree in Africa.

"Any way you slice it we're generally better off eating fresh fruits and vegetables than not eating them at all."

That's my argument against those who freak out about names like Triazicide and Malathion. It comes down to 500lbs of apples with some possible residue or 0lbs of apples because I won't eat that tasteless crap I've been finding in stores lately.

I got excited when I decide to try plums again since I'm spraying now, so I bought some. I ended up throwing them in the compost bin.

My thoughts on pesticide and herbicide use were greatly influenced by a news report I heard on NPR years ago. I was driving so I couldn't write down any of the hard numbers or details so you'll just have to trust my memory. It was the results of a study comparing chemicals in the tissue of regular city dwellers against people that were born and raised on organic communes. I remember them saying that it took many years to compile enough samples to have a thousand of each category and that they were looking at samples taken throughout a persons life, from infancy to adulthood. There was no difference. The organic-food-only people had the same level of chemicals in their tissues.

The explanation they gave was that our digestive system is very good at removing bad things from the food we eat and the fluids we drink but that our skin and lungs are very bad at it. So, drinking a glass of water with Chlorine and Fluoride in it had little effect on our health but taking a shower with the same water, where those chemicals are absorbed through our lungs does show up on these tests. Our man made environment exposes us to far more damage than the food we eat. Passing judgement on, and controlling the food people eat is the easy opinion to have even though it is not the truth nor will it solve the problem.

I find that a lot of people screaming about chemical free fruit are the same people that scream about the high price of food.

What burns me up is when you hear a food expert tell wanna-be chefs to look for the perfect unblemished fruit at the market - the desire for perfect and unblemished is part of the problem.

Most of the fruit I eat out of hand in the field looks very bad. I don't mind seeing half a worm in an apple. The pretty fruit goes to the farm stand. My real job is marine mechanic and I am on lobster and shrimp boats very often. The fishermen laugh at the public in private only they say a lobster is an ocean cockroach and shrimp are a swimming grub. In early cape cod the lobsters were only fit to rake off the beach to fertalise corn.

Yes, it is that quest for pristine fruit that makes eastern fruit growing as spray dependent as it is. Here in the northeast, when I found out how much less spray it requires to produce blemished but sound fruit I ran with it with every customer I have.

Now I have only 2 customers that want to pay for the extra spray required to have the pristine stuff. They don't want it for themselves but they love to give it away and there friends don't appreciate the ugly stuff nearly as much.

What kind of sprayer do you use?

I have a Rears estate sprayer on bike wheels with a 4HP Honda Engine, 25 gallon stainless steal tank 300 ft of hose,hand reel, and pistol sprayer. The wheels make getting it on my truck a 1 man operation.

4 years ago the cost was about $1,200 for the sprayer alone, now it's $2,200 or more.

Hman- You have it pretty much right on, but here's a couple more considerations. First, look at the "average" person in these studies, pretty much sedentary, not vitally healthy. Hard physical exertion burns off all kinds of crap in our systems. Second, there are plenty of "organic" toxins that humans have evolved to deal with over the ages. Third, the consuming public demands PERFECT appearance in their produce. Chemical usage could be scaled back substantially if people tolerated a few cosmetic imperfections. We say choose between veggies with bug chews you CAN see, or veggies with pesticide you can't see.

The problem with cosmetic imperfections is storage. I wouldn't mind only having fruit in season instead of shipped around the world because I know this crap that's being shipped around the world is tasteless.
But I think the average person who's very rarely ever tasted real fresh fruit likes the way it is better.

Even the locally grown melons are tasteless because they're also picked to be shipped around the world.

fruitback, yeah, I realize the commercial reasons for the appeal of pristine, I was just pointing out that people can be re-educated on the issue.

Mykl, bug bites damage fruit for storage, the summer fungus- not so much. I've still got some firm apples in my fridge from last year that are covered with sooty blotch and fly-speck. They're Goldrush, and surprisingly, Roxbury Russet and both received no spray after May.