Thursday, May 2, 2013

Jerry's Sad Story With Pesticide Chemicals






               The application of pesticides and fertilizers to crops is used in intensive farming to increase production. There are consequences to using these fertilizers and pesticides. The workers exposed to these pesticides are at extreme health risk. The pesticides are proven to cause reproductive problems as well as cancer to those exposed to them. The United Nations Environment Programme states that approximately “18,000” people around the world will die of pesticide poisoning each year.



           I would like to tell a story about farmer named Jerry Vann. Jerry Vann is a 58-year-old farmer who is dying because of exposure to pesticides. Jerry grew up on a farm and loved the farming lifestyle. He left the farm to go to college but eventually dropped out and married his high school sweat-heart. They went on to have kids, and that is when Jerry went back to farming.Eventually there was huge increase in the amount of farmers using pesticides and fertilizers. Jerry could see that it was increasing their crop production so he decided to use them as well. The companies producing the pesticides didn’t know the side effects at this time, nobody did. Jerry started to use the chemical organophosphate on his cotton crops. After he started to use this chemical he noticed changes in his health. Jerry kept going to the doctor but nobody could figure out what was going on. Eventually   they did tests on his brain and found out he had peripheral neuropathy. This meant his outer nervous system was dying.




Jerry is now dying and the doctors don’t know how much time he has left. He will be leaving behind his beautiful family because of these chemicals. The use of these pesticides us unnatural and very dangerous to the workers using them. For Jerry’s complete story visit http://www.getipm.com/articles/farmer.html

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