In the second of two talks in Iowa this week, Hygeia’s founder Dr. Charles Benbrook shared our latest dynamic presentation, “Managing Weeds for Healthy Kids: Emerging Challenges for Physicians, Families, and Farmers” at the Ames Public Library in Ames, IA.
This presentation takes a closer look at the wealth of data demonstrating a clear rising trend in herbicide use in Iowa, and then reviews the science that shows a link between herbicide use and public health issues like cancer, kidney disease, and adverse reproductive and developmental impacts.
See the link above to view the presentation in full (or view on video here), and visit the Managing Weeds for Healthy Kids project website for additional publications from the science team and lots of background on the issues. If you have any trouble with the Prezi format, or are interested in a copy for your own use, see the Dynamic Presentations section on Hygeia for user guides and contact info.
Thanks to my hosts and friends, new and old, that came out for my presentations in Iowa this week. This is a difficult topic to discuss and confront. The basic question that will not go away is whether the huge increase in high-risk herbicide use going on now across the Midwest will increase the frequency or severity of reproductive problems and birth defects. The science challenges are enormous but manageable. If a sufficient number of mother-infant pairs are tracked over the next few years, we will likely know by 2021 or so whether the concerns of some scientists are well founded or misplaced. Seems like a prudent thing to do, given that the health of a generation of children born across the middle 1/3 of the country is at risk.