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California harvests about 90% of the country’s strawberries and almost all of the crops produced are full of harmful chemicals.
Strawberry cultivators have been using chloropicrin, since it is advantageous for yield crops, however its application has increased in recent years as a substitute to methyl bromide. In the year 2008, the US EPA re-permitted chloropicrin as harmless in farming settings, declaring that treatments can bring benefits to both cultivators and consumers. But then it’s about time to be aware that chloropicrin, a chemical that several farmers inject into the soil for growing certain crops like strawberries, raspberries, almonds and some other harvests, has been associated to countless severe health diseases like cancer, respiratory impairment, nervous system damage, endocrine trouble, and many other ailments. It can even cause lachrymation, nausea, bronchitis, congestive heart failure, pulmonary edema; the lung damage can be deadly.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) categorizes chloropicrin, which has been applied as a soil fumigant since 1920, as a Class I poison. Chloropicrin is actually an irritant that resembles a tear gas that was produced as a chemical war agent for the period of World War I, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In World War I, armed forces used it as an agent of chemical feud; it would pierce gas masks and make fighters vomit, compelling them to take out their masks, this will make them more exposed to other more detrimental gases.
The pesticide is a powerful fumigant that kills insects, weeds and microbes. There is also study that shows that it brought cancer in rats and mice.
The EPA’s website states that the rats which received internal injections, medical tumours and respiratory metastases were confirmed to have cancer. An increased frequency of lung tumors was recounted in mice exposed to top levels of methyl iodide by intraperitoneal dose.
Soil Science professional Margaret Reeves, PhD, a senior scientist with Pesticide Action Network, states that terms like methyl bromide, chloropicrin, and Telone , powerful fumigants, are all associated to cancer, hormone disorder, and developmental harms in children. Dr. Reeves also said that they have been waiting for so long for a response from California and federal officials to provide a clear roadmap to get rid of the application and use of these toxic chemicals in all agricultural production by the year 2020.
