Many Kauai locals have been outraged to discover that their island paradise is also home to a proliferating genetically engineered crop industry that is dousing the Garden Isle with extremely toxic chemical pesticides.
When students at Waimea Canyon Middle School complained of headaches, nausea, disorientation, itchy eyes, and dizziness, their families knew something was very wrong, and that the State wasn’t doing much to help. They may not have realized a chemical pesticide, which was developed during World War II as a nerve gas, had drifted into the school from nearby crop fields. Between 2010 and 2012, the University of Hawaii tested air samples in and around the school and found this chemical — chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient of many pesticides — every time.
What’s not surprising is that these pesticides are remarkably efficient at killing insects. On humans, they act by disrupting the body’s transmission of nerve impulses, essentially driving the nervous system haywire. In addition to acute poisonings, peer-reviewed studies have linked low-level exposures of this chemical to birth defects such as small head circumference, stunted brain growth, autism, lower IQs, and memory problems in children. About a week ago, the peer-reviewed journal Lancet Neurologypublished a study that adds chlorpyrifos to a list of known developmental neurotoxins. Earthjustice went to court to force the Environmental Protection Agency to assess chlorpyrifos’ health risks, and EPA has promised to respond imminently to our plea to ban this pesticide to protect kids from brain impairments and communities from poisonous drift.
Read the full original article: GMOs in Kauai: Not Just Another Day in Paradise
