Positive Health Online

Originally published in India First 16 October 2023

https://indiafirstepaper.com/epaper/

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Picture this – the damage to soil caused by powerful chemical pesticides, not to speak of their impact on beneficial soil microbes as also intrusion on the natural growth of plants, including those that are genetically-modified (GM) to resisting them. When you add a contentious body of independent, new research, you are witness to an alarming prospect – that certain pesticides may trigger abortion and sterility in farm animals. What next? We are not sure yet.

Research implicates that chemical pesticides may be just as toxic to human placental cells, especially in farm workers exposed to high concentrations. Studies in Europe have found that pesticide levels in human urine exceeded “safe drinking water” limits. Critics, however, insist that farmers do not use ‘pure’ pesticides anyway – they argue that there are far more toxic ingredients than pesticides used in the world today.

The ‘counter-punch’ is more and more people are being exposed to the dangers of pesticides. It’s a different thing that research cannot disrupt, or tweak, our metabolic process. What actually wobbles such a function are microbes – in addition, we may be harming our inner biological canvas with varied ‘gut’ pesticides, including herbicides, whose deleterious effects have not been fully understood, or established yet. As research grapples with newer pesticides, including herbicides, while exploring the composite idea, the jury is out that certain pesticides may exterminate several species of beneficial, or ‘good’ gut bacteria, while not affecting harmful, or ‘bad,’ gut bacteria, like Escherichia coli – the cause of epidemics in cattle. One shudders to think of the likely impact the same bacteria, which have colonised the human species, may possibly exert.

Our gut bacteria play a key role in maintaining our health and wellness. On the contrary, an unhealthy gut, as new studies reveal, may trigger obesity and other disorders of the gut, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Recent research also points out to a potential long-list of health disorders that pesticides, in combination with other environmental toxins, may contribute to – depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – also referred to as motor neurone disease – aside from multiple sclerosis, infertility, developmental defects, cancer, and so on.

It is imperative, in the whole context, that we circumspectly took a fresh, new look at the origin of our food. Here is how it goes. Conventionally-produced vegetarian produce and animal products are often grown, or fed, from farming practices that make use of factory-farmed manure and raw human sewage. The fact today is animal and human excreta are extraordinarily toxic. This also includes a vast array of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, hormones and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, not to speak of pathogens that taint our food and our bodies too – if we opt to eat them, which we do, primarily because of certain compulsions. We are not talking of another perilous dimension yet – the use of nuclear waste-based food irradiation and bacteriophage sprays, to disinfect inherently toxic food, which produce different and far more hazardous compounds as a consequence.

There’s yet another paradox that dawdles us – non-organic lobbies are increasing the amounts of anti-microbial pesticides and herbicides in our food. What’s worse – we do not have adequate data as to how much we’re exposed to such chemicals, in the first instance, on the periphery, and within us, or elsewhere. Yet another downside is certain new-found pesticides, to highlight a classical example, are difficult customers to ‘test’ for. Their usage is expanding, not just in the US, but also across the globe. If this isn’t nothing short of a distress call, or formula for disaster, what is?

Is there a way out? Yes, there is. It isn’t easy though. The big point is – it is time we stalled that archaic, rationally unrefined idea that disease, or illness, is, for the most part, caused by germs in the environment, rather than viewing our risk of infection as being principally determined by immune, or gut, vulnerabilities within us.

We ought to go for a paradigm change, if not shift, and drastically alter our understanding of health and illness, if we are to endure the indiscriminate demolition of our biosphere, while refraining from supporting, endorsing, buying, or consuming food produced through dubious non-organic, or chemical, farming practices. We need to respect and revere our body – which is encased grandeur, derived from the molecular framework of the cosmos. If we don’t, we will have to blame ourselves for not only ‘genetically-modifying’ nature and the environment, but also for vilifying ourselves – in mind, body, spirit and soul.

Acknowledgement Citation

Originally published in India First 16 October 2023

https://indiafirstepaper.com/epaper/

http://indiafirstepaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/20231016.pdf