The technological changes that have occurred in agriculture since 1950 have taken many forms; these changes have been wide- ranging and their effects far-reaching. The petro-chemical corporations, in particular, have done more than their share of altering the life-patterns of many people; their strategic market planning has introduced great social changes in the last 40 years, much of it detrimental to human life.
The continual expansion in their product sales that has occurred since 1950 has increased the use of cancer causing chemicals — carcinogenic — in food production to an alarming degree; the use of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides have all undergone incredible increases in total volume sales. It has reached a level today that very few food items can be produced without the use, somewhere in the food production chain, of carcinogenic chemicals; large elements of the continual rise in cases of cancer can be attributed to this continual expansion in agricultural chemical use.
The marketing ploys of petro-chemical corporations have been partially instrumental in the long term increase in the numbers of cancer deaths. Avoid carcinogenic cancer causing chemicals, toxic disease agents, chlorine, synthetic drugs, formaldehyde, herbicides, and pesticides. Cancer causing chemicals, health destroying compounds contaminate air, food, and water supply. They are in most types of lawn chemicals and other health destroying compounds. There are some 400 pesticides used on the foods we eat.
Several hundred of these toxic chemicals in pesticides are thought to be carcinogenic or cancer causing. EPA estimates that about one-third of the active ingredients used in pesticides are toxic, and one-fourth are carcinogenic. Scientists have long contended there is no safe level of exposure to carcinogens. Many carcinogens are stored and build up in our bodily tissues, especially in the fat cells. Smaller insignificant exposures over time can accumulate to levels sufficient to trigger the process that causes cancer and other ailments.
Children are much more sensitive to these levels than adults. Many of the non-carcinogenic chemicals will enhance the cancer causing effects of carcinogens. 1978 report issued by the Presidents Council on Environmental Quality states, most researchers agree that 70 to 90 per cent of all cancers are caused by environmental influences and are hence theoretically preventable. Chemical contamination is contributing to our current cancer epidemic, which will strike three out of four families in the USA. The cancer rate in the USA in 1900 was three out of one hundred.
Today, one in three people will get cancer and one in four will die from it. This amounts to over one million people yearly, killing some 520,000 of us annually. One recent report commissioned by the California EPA done by University of Calif. researchers estimate that in 2004, 200,000 California workers suffered from chronic diseases linked to workplace exposure to industrial chemicals and 4,400 people died of these diseases including cancer, emphysema and Parkinson’s disease. In there 2007 report they found that low-level synthetic chemicals can disrupt the natural development of infants and children.
Research shows that chlorine use in drinking water causes chemical reactions that produce carcinogenic compounds called chloroforms and tri-halomethanes. Chlorine is the greatest crippler and killer of modern times and drinking it is hazardous, if not deadly to your health. Cancer risk among people drinking chlorinated water is 93 percent higher than that of those not drinking chlorinated water. About 4,200 cases of bladder cancers per year are associated with chlorinated water. There is higher incidence of cancer disorders of the esophagus, rectum, breast, larynx and of Hodgkin’s Disease. One person dies every minute from cancer.