Saturday, December 22, 2007

Pesticide News

The newest editions of two of AqueousSolutions' papers are available for download from the Aqueous website, on the Resources page: Pesticide Use in Thailand and the US: Ecological and Human Health Effects, and Agrichemicals of Concern in Northern Thailand.

These docs are jam packed full of all kinds of factoids, tid-bits and statistics you don't wanna know about the insane degree to which we're poisoning ourselves and our environments with toxic agri-chemicals.

Some highlights from the reports:

At latest count, out of the 58 pesticide products we've identified as commonly used in Thailand and in our region here in the north around Pun Pun Farm in particular...

32 are moderately to highly acutely toxic to humans
14 are possible human carcinogens, and 9 are known human carcinogens
15 are cholinesterase inhibitors (indicating neurotoxicity)
19 are suspected endocrine disruptors
8 are reproductive or developmental toxins
30 are classified as "Bad Actors" by the Pesticide Action Network
and 19 represent known or potential threats to groundwater contamination.


Our big emphasis at AqueousSolutions is to develop drinking water purification systems that are DIY (Do-It-Yourself) and affordable to most people in the world. Well check this out:

A 1988 report estimated that nearly one-half of the ground water and well water in the United States is or has the potential to be contaminated by pesticides. A 1992 report calculated that if monitoring and cleanup activities were carried out in the US such that all pesticide-contaminated groundwater were cleared of pesticides before human consumption, the total cost would be approximately $1.8 billion annually.

I'll have to run some number and do some back-of-the-envelope calculations before I can say this definitively, but the chances are very good that our designs for cheap, DIY water filtration systems could provide safe water for folks in the US for way, way, way less than $1.8 billion a year.

www.aqsolutions.org

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