Some of you may remember the slogan when DDT became big: "DDT is good for me," sung in a little jingly voice. Of course in retrospect, we know that DDT is one of the most lethal pesticides out there - but discovering that took twenty years and a lot of repercussions. Rachel Carson was the person to make the horrors of DDT public, in her book Silent Spring. She started a revolution cautioning of science's power to alter nature for good - and the environmental movement was born.
Today DDT has been replaced by big chemical companies with glyphosate. Glyphosate, the main compound in pesticides like Roundup, is in basically all GMO crops. Health statistics show that parallel to an increase of glyphosate is an increase in thyroid cancer, infertility, obesity, liver and kidney disease, and diabetes, among others. The government denies any correlation between these health consequences and glyphosate. And those are only the affects on humans, not even mentioning the impacts on wildlife and native plant species, rivers, and soils.
So what do we do about this seemingly all-invasive system? Be a Rachel Carson! Inform yourself and others about the things that go into making your foods.
