More nutritious? Maybe. Safer? Absolutely.

The other day my father mentioned that numerous studies had demonstrated that organic produce is not more nutritious than conventional produce. I had seen this research as well. I was unmoved.
"That's not why I go organic," I said. "I don't want pesticides in my body, or my children's bodies." He said nothing for a few moments. I anticipated a challenge (since I was twelve, we've engaged in "devil's advocate" debates, in which one of us, for the hell of it, takes up the mantle of the other side and argues passionately, just to see if the other's reasoning is sound.) But the challenge didn't come on this time.

He's challenged me before on this one, of course. Many huge agricultural conglomerates argue, sometimes convincingly, that without pesticides and herbicides, yield would not be able to meet global demand, and hunger would become even more of a problem. But I have not yet seen any science-based evidence that this is true. What I have seen is reports, like the one out today in the American Journal of Public Health (and linked below), that states that pesticides are, in fact, harmful to the human body--particularly the developing child. In this case, the study looked at chlorpyrifos, a pesticide used on fruits and vegetables. Interestingly, it has been outlawed for use in American households, but can be used freely in agriculture.

The dangers of pesticides have been evident for decades. Rachel Carson sacrificed her peace to bringing these truths to light. However, to this day, organic outfits can only say that pesticides "may" cause harm (I'm thinking of Earth's Best's baby food labels). So it's heartening to see that research on this continues, and continues toward the conclusive end of things. In the study I mention, 266 children in the South Bronx and Upper Manhattan (a battered, profoundly ill-used urban neighborhood, where the rates of asthma and obesity are staggering) were followed to determine if high exposure to chlorpyrifos affected development. The conclusion showed that in children exposed to levels of 6.17 pg/g (tested in umbilical cord blood at time of birth), they suffered a 6.5 point decrease in the Psychomotor Development Index score and a 3.3 point decrease in the Mental Development Index score (the children were three at the time of follow-up testing).
The study was published online March 18 in advance of print publication in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

"Although this pesticide has been banned for residential use in the United States, chlorpyrifos and other organophosphorus insecticides are still commonly used for a variety of agricultural purposes, study co-author Virginia Rauh, co-deputy director for the Columbia Center for Childrens Environmental Health, said in the news release. "We hope that the results of this study, further demonstrating the neurotoxicity of chlorpyrifos under a range of community conditions, may inform public health professionals and policy-makers about the potential hazards of exposure to this chemical for pregnant women and young children."

Now, the question of "high exposure" has always been a tricky one in scientific research of this type. No one is going to volunteer for high exposure to chemicals to help scientists determine if such exposure is risky. What makes this study so compelling was that the children (and their mothers, when they were pregnant) were exposed at these levels from the day-to-day, as a matter of course. Now, for other parents, the question might be, well, if I'm not exposed to chlorpyrifos in this way, am I at risk? The short answer, for now, is: I don't know. Perhaps over the course of years, the amount of residual pesticides on fruit will have an adverse affect on one's health. But choosing organic produce is not a risky use of the precautionary principle. Obviously we have not reached the point yet where regular purchase of organic produce is within reach of everyone. Hell, when I lived in Harlem, it was next to impossible to get fresh produce, period (and this remains a huge problem and a factor in the area's obesity levels). But for those of us who have a choice, even if we are, like me, on a pretty tight budget, it might be worth it to, as Michael Pollan states in Food Rules, to "spend more, eat less."

Letter to my Representative

I won't be making it a habit to write much about vaccines here, since I've found that the topic is one that so divides people, despite objective science (which, because of its separation from opinion and emotion, is the kind of data I trust most), that there is no "convincing" and almost never any rational discussion or debate. I have already written about where I stand on this topic, and as I promised, I wanted to post the letter I finally got around to writing to my local representative in case anyone else needed a template. My letter is specific, in places, to Minnesota law. It does, however, cite New York State's "sincerity testing" for parents who opt-out of mandatory vaccinations for "philosophical reasons." I felt it was important to let my rep know that parents like me are out there, even if we aren't writing as many letters.

Dear Rep. Simon,

When my son started Montessori this fall, I was terrified. These were not the raw nerves of a mother sending her toddler off to school for the first time. This was the fear of a mother sending her child into a classroom in which vaccination is optional. Minnesota has one of the most lax, truly laughable policies regarding vaccination, and because of this, the entire community is at grave risk. The loophole in the vaccination policy for children is so wide that the 5% of the population who is not vaccinated (and who, therefore, have put our precious herd immunity at risk), could fall through it. It is of cold comfort to me, as a parent, that vaccinations are “mandatory”—unless there is a medical reason vaccination would be dangerous or a parent has a philosophical objection to vaccination.

When my son was an infant, I was concerned, like many new parents, about the information swirling around the Internet about vaccines.
It's natural for an intelligent parent to question medication and vaccinations. In an ideal world, we would all have access to and the ability to understand the raw scientific data regarding the medications and vaccinations we get. However, it is reckless to ignore science in favor of celebrity advice and scare tactics used by doctors who rely so little on science that they have been ostracized by the medical community. As I’m sure you’ve heard, the sole piece of research that suggested a link between autism and vaccines was withdrawn by The Lancet, in which is appeared, due to error-filled data and unethical practices. In an article by Dr. John Snyder, who took anti-vaccine pediatrician Dr. Sears to task for his book The Vaccine Book (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=512), he responded to another physician who commented that he had decided simply to not see patients whose parents were not vaccinating them. I can't have you bringing pertussis or measles into my waiting room and infecting vulnerable patients (like babies too young for the vaccine, for example), he said. Dr. Snyder responded this way:

I can absolutely appreciate your stance with vaccine-refusing parents. I have opted to keep them in my practice as I think I am more likely to get them to vaccinate than others might be. I posted a sign the other day in my waiting room, referencing a recent local measles outbreak, asking parents of under/unvaccinated children to immediately notify the front desk as they enter, so that they can be removed from the waiting room. It makes it clear that they are a risk to the other families. We’ve reached a point at which it’s important for these parents to feel a bit ostracized, and for the other parents to feel some outrage.


Dr. Snyder is right. It's time for the heretofore-quiet vaccinating parents to speak up and ask our representatives to change the current laws regarding vaccinations, to close that loophole or at least make it smaller. In New York State, parents who object on “philosophical” grounds must attend a court hearing, not simply get a form notarized. I’d like to see this sort of law enacted in Minnesota. Thankfully, the majority of us vaccinate our children (90%), which is the only reason the parents who don't vaccinate their children feel comfortable keeping their children unvaccinated, even as they put the rest of the population at risk. We need 95% vaccination rates, however, to keep diseases like measles, mumps, etc., at bay. As one physician said, vaccine rejectionism is dangerous. “It harms the children who are not vaccinated, and it harms unrelated children who are too young to be vaccinated. Parents who reject vaccines implicitly rely on other people being vaccinated. They are willing to accept the benefits, without partaking of the risk. They expose their own children to life threatening illness, and they expose other people’s children to life threatening illness. The government should act to restrict vaccine waivers to only those with medical indications for forgoing vaccination. The right to indulge one’s philosophical beliefs ends at the point where it threatens the life and health of other people’s children.” (italics are mine)

In Minnesota, we are nearing that threshold for several childhood diseases. Unvaccinated children may come in contact with the disease in many ways, including from children coming here from other countries where immunization is not standard or is unavailable and where these diseases still exist ( polio is still a huge issue in India for example) And this final thought is the most frightening to me, as the mother of a five-month-old: a vaccinated child might come in contact with an infected unvaccinated child in a preschool setting, carry home the virus and/or bacteria and remain immune: however, the infant sibling, who is too young to be vaccinated for these diseases, will not be immune and could fall seriously ill or even die. Representative Simon, please consider introducing legislation that tightens the loopholes in our vaccination requirements It’s unfeasible to simply eliminate the philosophical opt-out, but we can make it more difficult for parents to put their children, and ours, at risk. New York State insists on “sincerity testing” of all applicants for religious exemption. I’d like to see such safeguards put into place. I guarantee you that millions of Minnesota parents will thank you.

Not Sure What to Title This

About three months ago, I wrote a "final post," which was a bit overdramatic--the exhausted writer, up at 3am working on her many projects, injecting a little too much pathos into her blogging. I'd just welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the family, joining our two-and-a-half year old son and my husband and me. It was a heady, but stressful time, and I was just embarking on a book project. I thought if I went too long between posts, my readers would grow annoyed, then leave for good. But after that last post, so many people e-mailed me wishing me well, including several who said, hey, we're moms, too. Don't sweat it if you let a few weeks go between posts.

With my book project well underway (I just received a Minnesota State Arts Board grant for it!), and my daughter nearing six months old, I turn again to this blog. In the hopes that my readers will forgive periods of silence, I will continue writing about my adventures in the toxic and nontoxic worlds. I'll probably be reimagining the blog as well. When I started the blog a couple years ago, it was designed mainly as an extension of a book project I was working on, titled Science for Sale: Politics, Profit, and the Manipulation of Science. That project was to have been a journalistic account of the machinations corporations and government use to thwart science and keep toxic products on the market. But as I became a mom, the blog took on a slightly different tone--one of an individual who was struggling to understand what products were safe for her family, using science as her benchmark.

I'll continue this blog in that spirit but I anticipate some changes, perhaps even a blog name change. We'll see. In the meantime, thanks so much for your support. I look forward to posting again.