HelkeFerrie

I was highly amused by your e-mail. I suppose when you work for the pest control business and have to pay a mortgage, it is possible to come up with a question as funny as yours. However, you appear not to be trained in medical science, toxicology, or nutritional science and, therefore, may still subscribe to the notion that the issue of cancer and pesticides/herbicides/fungicides is "controversial". However, you surely must know that something stops being "controversial” when consensus has been reached - especially by those people who do not stand to gain financially or in any other way from warning the public about a health hazard. A quick web search on your organization made it clear that you make your living by selling or promoting pesticides.

The sources I provided in my article are about as gilt-edged as one can get in medical science. Some were directly referenced - are you telling me you did not notice that? - and I am surprised that you did not check them out first before asking me about my sources, but here is a more detailed list:

1. Canadian Cancer Society whose website provides ample sources for their opinion that all pesticides should be banned. They are supported by the Toronto Public Health Department and various other institutions, all of which are accessed easily through the sources I provided in the article itself.

2. Ontario College of Family Physicians, specifically their 2004 Report which provides a complete literature review from the primary scientific literature.

3. Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment whose publications provide entire charts of all the currently known specific cancers and which are a. caused, which are b. triggered and c. for which strong evidence is emerging that they are linked to pesticides, and specifically to which pesticides or herbicides as well. These reports by the OCFP and CAPE are all based on the mainstream literature, of course, and can be obtained for free off their websites, complete with their bibliographies, all of which are accessible through PubMed as well.

4. On the international level, I refer you to Harvard Medical School’s peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives and to Standford University's peer reviewed journal Annals of Environmental Health. Harvard University has done possibly the most research into pesticides and cancer.

5. A quick search through the website of the flagship journal Cancer would be useful, too, in which for example the link between Roundup and breast cancer was very nicely established starting in June 2002.

6. The best one-stop source for all the primary literature is regularly published by the International Journal for Pesticide Reform which, incidentally, publishes the industry's (!) safety data information on every single available pesticide and herbicide on a regular basis, as new products come to market and as old ones have new scientific information published.

7. The most prestigious source is of course the United States' National Institutes of Health website which would take some time to navigate, but is extremely well organized, so a search for the pesticide + cancer topic is made easy.

8. The World Resources Institute in Washington DC which is, incidentally, co-funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and many other awfully mainstream outfits, publishes regular reports in book format on these issues, the latest one pertaining to pesticides being entitled Why Poison Ourselves? It provides a world report on pesticides and all manner of disease, cancer just being one of them, since pesticides and herbicides are also endocrine disruptors, cause birth defects, and are neurological poisons too.

9, The World Health Organization is too huge a site to navigate unless you have the time. It has so much on pesticides and cancer and other illnesses, you would have to change your career focus.

10. The Canadian Medical Association Journal, free on-line, has a lot of excellent in the world literature. The best material starts in April 2002 and a quick search will allow you to download those articles, designed to be teaching instruments for Canadian doctors so they can learn how to evaluate, diagnose and treat pesticide exposure problems in their patient. Also, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine would be helpful to you if you browsed them on their websites just for cancer + pesticides articles.

11. There are some really good textbooks, too. The most mainstream being of course Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, the current 16th edition, which is the standard work for all doctors working in English-speaking countries; it provides information on pesticides in its various sections on various diseases, such as Parkinson's, cancer, Alzheimer's and so on. Specific textbooks devoted to these connections are standard lexicons such as the current edition of Poisoning and Toxicology Compendium, or Neurotoxicology: A Clinical Source Book (current edition), or the Rapid Guide to Hazardous Chemicals in the Workplace, 4th edition buy Richard J. Lewis (this is the standard one used in factories for quick reference in cases of accidents). The ultimate classic on the subject is of course Chemical Exposure: Low levels and High Stakes by the Massachusetts Institute of technology professor Nicholas Ashford and his colleague, then at the National Institutes of Health, Claudia Miller. Or you could browse through the textbook Principles and Practice of Environmental Medicine by A. B. Tarcher et al. Finally, you may want to look at the massive four-volume work by Dr. William Rae, Chemical Sensitivity, all available through amazon.com or google-related sites.)

12. Last and certainly not least, the US government's Environmental Protection Agency website can keep you going for days and days, if you want to make the time, on the link between pesticides and cancer and other disease. Health Canada relies mostly on the EPA and is nowhere near as useful in getting to primary research information, except in the documents upon which the new 2004 federal Pesticide Act (not yet promulgated) is based. Go to the Health Canada website for that: It's called "Making the Right Choice". The European Union has various agencies that provide pesticide information, specifically with regard to cancer. A bit of work with google will get you to them.

Of course, all you really need to do is goggle for the word “carcinogens” and access to the complete list of them comes up; a list of the active ingredients in all currently sold pesticides should be by your side (they are listed on the containers themselves – not much work involved), and voila! You will have all your officially recognized carcinogens and your question would be answered by the industry’s own label information.

The information is available: everywhere and in the primary, scientific literature. It is also available in its experimental form by turning to the vast amount of publications coming from the pharmaceutical industry. There we learn not only of the connection between pesticides, herbicides and cancer, but how to induce specific cancers with specific pesticides or herbicides in animals, so the drug industry can then proceed to figure out what drugs to make to treat those cancers. So, for example,

§ the DDT family of pesticides works great to produce ovarian cancer.

§ Roundup and its family of herbicides is great for causing breast cancer.

§ The whole range of common garden and golf-course pesticides are perfect for the creation of the leukemias and especially prostate cancers.

All of this is easily available through the sources cited above and through the pharmaceutical industry's primary publishing company called Humana.

If you want a large source list, order my recent book Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health (any book store or through my website www.kospublishing.com, $ 25 plus GST and shipping costs.

Of course, you are in for a few years of careful science research which would cut into your work performance at your current job, which is focused on informing people how to use pesticides and herbicides, rather than informing them about the personal and public health hazards involved.

Now, I am fully aware that all of the above was a terrific waste of time to put together in an e-mail. You did not really want this answer and I would be very surprised if you actually went and researched this in the primary literature. You are not a doctor. You sell pesticides. However, I don't think it is possible to live on this particular planet for the past fifty years - provided one can read and has access to the internet - and NOT know that pesticides cause cancer and many other nasty conditions. For you to research all this seriously and provide a link on your website to mine (www.kospublishing.com) would mean that you would have to doubt your product's essential safety and, above all, allow yourself to be confused by the facts. That is difficult to do - and I am serious when I say that. To doubt cherished notions is painful. Indeed this may be impossible for you because the only appropriate use for pesticides and herbicides is not to use them at all, according to the consensus of these agencies, organizations and researchers listed above. Note, I did not even mention a single NGO in that list. Besides, the non-toxic alternatives all exist - as I know only too well, sitting here in my study overlooking a garden that has never seen any of these toxins and is quite magnificent. Check out www.theenvironmentalfactor.ca. They make a hell of a good living without pesticides.