Herbicides May Complicate Pregnancies
Click
Here to Add Comment Subject:
Herbicides May Complicate Pregnancies
Date:
Thu, 26 Sep
2002 10:26:31 -0400
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
HERBICIDES MAY COMPLICATE PREGNANCIES
Chuck Quirmbach
September 23, 2002
A Midwest researcher has found that the combination of chemicals in some common weed killers may threaten human fetuses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Warren Porter is an environmental toxicologist at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He says he went to the hardware store and bought common herbicides containing the chemical compounds 2-4-d, dicamba, and mecoprop. Porter diluted the mixture with water and fed it many times to hundreds of lab mice. Porter says the mice experienced a 20 percent increase in failed pregnancies and he contends exposure to the combination of chemicals is to blame. He says government regulators often test only individual chemicals and don't realize how chemical mixes might affect a living cell.
"It's like a molecular bull in a china shop. It's almost impossible to predict in advance all the possible things they might do."
Porter says exposure to the mix of weed killer chemicals can also threaten human pregnancies. But other researchers say the risk to most people is very low.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I'm Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.
© 2002 Great Lakes Radio Consortium
If you would like to be included in our mailing list for continuing information on pesticides, please email us at list@safe2use.com.