Originally published February 27 2014
Health officials warn consumers to avoid pesticide-tainted cactus from Mexico
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) A shipment of edible cactus pads, or nopales, from Mexico was recently analyzed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), who determined that the cactus products were saturated with a pesticide that has been banned even in the USA since 1989.
Monocrotophos, an organophosphate-based pesticide, was found on the cactus at various Hispanic food outlets throughout different California locations after a "routine surveillance sample" from the shipment was found to contain as much as 5.8 parts per million of monocrotophos.
The CDPH located the retail outlets with the toxic nopales, removed them from those stores and destroyed them.
Meanwhile, people who had purchased them were advised to return them or throw them away. While it's theoretically possible to remove the pesticides with washing or peeling, consumers don't have the ability to measure how much is still left after such efforts.
It's encouraging that a US health agency does something useful, but one wonders about the toxic agricultural poisons that are permitted to be used here in the USA.
Meanwhile, back in the USA
The US Geological Survey tested air and rain samples in Mississippi and discovered significant traces of glyphosate in over 75% of those samples. This means that it is very likely for the herbicide to recycle into crops, leach into drinking water or be breathed in by anyone in or near agricultural regions.
The surveys were conducted in 1995 and again in 2007, then compared. In 1995, glyphosate and Roundup-related compounds were not detected, as Roundup was not being widely used then. A few pesticides showed up in 50% of rain and air samples then. But in 2007, glyphosate herbicide products dominated at 86% in the air and 77% in rain water.
According to the Geological Survey's statistics, 2 million kilograms of glyphosate was used in Mississippi during 2007. That comes out to 4.4 million pounds in one year in one small state. In addition to more weeds resisting glyphosate-based herbicides that demand more continual use, another Big Ag practice increases glyphosate use even further.
That is the process of spraying glyphosate products or Roundup onto crops after harvesting to dry and ripen them. Hey, somebody has to make sure your food is really toxic! And the total amount of increased glyphosate in air and rainwater samples has increased 18-fold from 1995 to 2007, or over a period of 12 years.
Recent study links glyphosate to celiac and other modern ailments
Investigative reporter Jon Rapport did an email interview of Stephanie Seneff, the co-author of the study "Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases II: Celiac sprue and gluten intolerance." Stephanie and her MIT team pursued a strictly chemical analysis of how gluten binds to glyphosate to create problems.
Stephanie Seneff explains, "We propose in the paper... that glyphosate binds to the gluten in wheat and disrupts its ability to be transformed into a much less allergenic form. The body develops an allergic reaction to the strange form of gluten that it encounters... developing the intolerance that characterizes gluten disease."
She added, "The increased use of glyphosate on corn and soy correlates extremely well with the rise in incidence of a host of modern diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, autism, Alzheimer's, celiac disease, irritable bowel... kidney cancer, kidney failure, hepatitis C, pancreatic cancer, Parkinson's disease and thyroid cancer."
Add to this the fact that Serallini and his research team in France recently broke through the corporate "trade secrets" shield and proved that the combination of inert ingredients in Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides are worse than the active ingredient alone. And they're all approved by the USDA and EPA.
Sources for this article include:
[1] http://www.techtimes.com
[2] http://us6.campaign
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
[4] http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
[5] http://sustainablepulse.com
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