Sharing w/others – lessons learned

Locals call the Salinas Valley region of California the world’s salad bowl. Dole, Naturipe and Fresh Express all have farms there.

Researchers recruited 600 women, who underwent a series of tests to measure pesticide levels in their bodies. The women were then tracked throughout their pregnancies, and their children had their growth, mental development and general health charted.

According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop:

“… [A]t age 2 the children of mothers who had the highest levels of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in their blood had the worst mental development in the group … At age 5, the children whose mothers were most exposed during pregnancy had poorer attention spans compared to those born to mothers who had lower levels of pesticide metabolites in their urine.”