Scoundrels who Scaremonger
Why Pesticide Action Network wants your children to suffer from headlice, mosquito bites and bedbugs.
It’s late at night and you can’t sleep.
Breathe in, breathe out…
But that’s the problem. With each breath, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) wants you to believe that you are consuming 137 toxic pesticides in every mg of dust in your bedroom. Neurotoxins, endocrine disrupters, carcinogens, chemicals … chemicals harmful to reproduction just floating in your air as you sleep.
Breathe in, breathe out…
70% of these pesticides come from large industrial farms … farmers who poison the food, poison the air … it’s in your dust … it’s in your bedroom … it’s in your children’s bedroom.
Breathe in, breathe out…
You just don’t know what the cocktail effect of all of these pesticides are. You feel helpless. Maybe you should get up and dust the bedroom … again.
This is an old, rather tired strategy of chemophobic NGOs. Take a mundane activity (sleeping, eating breakfast, drinking water) and show how you are being exposed to thousands of untested industrial chemical substances. These NGOs never get into the actual risks or the exposure levels. They don’t tell you what the substances were there for (eg, disinfectants, protecting food, preventing fires…). They don’t have to. A big industrial company is poisoning you with toxic chemicals, foreign invaders violating your health and well-being, they are not supposed to be there and that should make you angry as hell. Time to act, change the laws, stop industry … donate!!!
This week, Pesticide Action Network used this scare-mongering tactic in amplifying a study by their Flemish partner NGO, Velt. The study is called SOS Bedroom (SOS Slaapkamer). It measured the level of pesticides found in dust in 112 bedrooms in Flanders. Their data, conclusions and communications of the study were sensationalized, selective and laughable. Velt claim to have found 137 pesticides in dust taken from the bedrooms tested with an average of 21 substances per room.
Pesticide Action Network played it up in a press release, ignored the study’s limitations and adapted the findings to fit into their campaign strategy. SOS Bedroom shows how the NGO does not only have zero regard for responsible campaigns, but that they have no respect for the intellect of their followers or other stakeholders. It took me five minutes reading the Velt study to conclude that this campaign was nothing more than shallow scaremongering.
But who bothers to read anymore? Certainly not Pesticide Action Network.
The Source of these Bedroom “Pesticides”
PAN wants you to believe that the pesticides lurking in your bedroom dust all originate from agricultural sources. They campaign against conventional farming so this is important for them and they make the claim that 70% of these pesticides come from conventional farming.
If anyone were to leave the PAN press release and actually read the Velt report, the first thing they would discover is that the main sources of pesticide exposures Velt had detected, from the 112 bedrooms they measured, come from household applications like mosquito repellent, headlice treatment, flea powders for pets or wood preservatives. The top four “pesticides” in order of detection (and at the highest levels) are:
Permethrin: found in 100 homes. It is used in a lotion to treat headlice and scabies. It has a very low toxicity at application levels.
Deet: found in 96 homes. It is a common mosquito repellent and is considered to have very little risk to human health.
Propiconazole: found in 92 homes. It is a lawn care fungicide as well as a wood preserver.
Piperonyl butoxide: found in 85 homes. It is actually not a pesticide but works as a synergist with many products including headlice and body crab shampoos. It is practically non-toxic to mammals.
There were also several neonicotinoid residues found in dust particles (dinotefuran, and imidacloprid). These are used in flea collars and flea powders for pets (namely cats and dogs).
The Velt study also found trace residues of four substances used in many applications from paper to rubber to paints to deodorants but that can also be used as pesticides. Seriously? Salt, lemon juice and garlic can also be used as pesticides, but only a fool would consider including them in a scientific study.
In other words, the main “pesticides” found in the dust in our bedrooms were intentionally used by the inhabitants to treat headlice, body crabs, fleas, ticks and wood. None of these products had high levels of toxicity and posed little risk to mammals. It beggars belief that Pesticide Action Network would try to scare the public and try to deceive them that these useful products were invading their bedrooms and threatening their lives.
On the basis of these results, PAN Europe called for stricter regulations on the agricultural use of pesticides. Of course they did. What is even more ridiculous is that many of these products Europeans are allowed for use on their hair, skin and pets but are banned for agricultural applications.
Exposure Levels: How Small is Too Small?
Of the 137 pesticides found in the 112 bedrooms, 34 were detected at “trace” amounts meaning their levels were too low to be measured (assumedly below 0.01mg/kg). Of those 34 that were too low to be quantified (ie, shadows), 31 of them were agricultural pesticides. Most of the agriculture pesticides detected in the dust were at levels below 0.1 mg/kg. In other words, the authors of the study were looking for agricultural pesticides and calibrated their analytical equipment to find them even at indetectable levels. They did not find 137 pesticide substances in dust, they were looking for them and used technologies to ensure their success.
This is no surprise since both Velt and Pesticide Action Network campaign for organic or agroecological farming practices. Maybe someone should have told them that many of the detected substances, like piperonyl butoxide, are also used in pesticides approved for use in organic farming.
But how small is 0.1 mg per kg of pesticide contaminated dust? A milligram is 1000 grams and there are 1000 grams in a kilogram so it is one ten millionth of a kilogram. So in ten million kilograms of dust, the researchers could detect a kilo of the substance. I know I haven’t dusted for a while, but is this even a realistic level for rational people to be considering?
Toxicologists measure exposures via NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Levels) – the amount of an exposure to a toxin before a subject would have an observable adverse effect. The Velt study did not get into the NOAEL for the dust exposures because, well, their findings aren’t anywhere near the levels that could have an adverse effect. They are absurdly low if even detectable (but still worthy of publication in a cynical, chemophobic campaign). Their strategy again is simplistic: We found a chemical, it isn’t supposed to be there and it was made by some evil industry and we just don’t know if there is any risk.
We need to realize that the most interesting value of this study is how sophisticated our lab detection equipment has become in being able to measure substances at unimaginably low levels. The Firebreak observed this earlier this year when nanoplastics were detected in the environment, humans and animals at levels a decade ago would have been immeasurable. But the question remains: At such infinitesimal levels, should we legitimately be concerned?
Keep PAN out of my Bedroom
PAN wants to come into your bedroom, wants to keep you awake at night, wants you to be terrified of these harmful chemicals lurking in your dust. These scoundrels are paid to be scaremongers and this pathetic campaign is just one more example of how these cynical activists would deceive people to reach their goals and advance their zealot ideology.
So chemical campaigners at Pesticide Action Network don’t care if your children suffer from headlice, mosquito bites or bedbugs. Many of them have argued against having children (BirthStrike) so that is just as well since putting rigid ideology ahead of a child’s well-being would not make them ideal parents. I just feel sorry for their cats, struggling with rampant uncontrolled cases of fleas and ticks. I suppose these people have other priorities.