Top 82 Pesticides Quotes & Sayings

I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing.

I don't prefer to fill my body with antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and growth hormones - my body is my temple, and I treat it as such.

The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.

And of course the Green Party wants to remove carcinogens from our food, our cosmetics, our backyard pesticides.

We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.

What, then, is the effect of pesticides? Pesticides have created a legacy of pain, and misery, and death for farm workers and consumers alike. The crop which poses the greatest danger, and the focus of our struggle, is the table grape crop. These pesticides soak the fields. Drift with the wind, pollute the water, and are eaten by unwitting consumers. These poisons are designed to kill, and pose a very real threat to consumers and farm workers alike.

Our generation has taken to the cosmetic use of pesticides and I think, perhaps unwittingly, not fully understanding the dangers it represents to ourselves and, most importantly, to our children.

My understanding has always been that if there is any indication that pesticides are harmful, that they would not be allowed to be used.

When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water.

I eliminated coffee and fish from my diet. The pesticides in coffee and fish, as well as the mercury in the latter, are considered possible contributors to birth defects in fetal tissue.

I'm on the road a lot, but I eat healthy whenever I can with foods that don't contain pesticides.

Be sure to buy organic versions of the 'dirty dozen:' the fruits and vegetables that, when grown conventionally, are loaded with pesticides and chemicals: Grapes, apples, lettuce, bell peppers, carrots, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, pears, kale, and celery.

Since the first Earth Day, the EPA has regulated lead out of paint, air, and gasoline. It started fuel-economy testing (and then caught those cheating on them), phased out ozone-depleting aerosols, and removed cancer-causing pesticides from the marketplace.

Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.

In general, I try to eat food without added hormones and pesticides, but I'm not so strict that I won't have a Big Mac once in a while.

Harmful bacteria, viruses, calcium-forming micro-organisms, and candida are part of our world. Unfortunately, so are toxic chemicals, including everything from pesticides to car pollution to nuclear radiation to most municipal tap waters.

Organic farming and other earlier methods can be effective, provided they can help us improve soil health and plant health. Plant pesticides like neem and tobacco need to be promoted.

When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow.

Training of farmers in integrated pest management is exceedingly important to protect them during the use of pesticides.

The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

We have to draw the line someplace with all the pesticides being used by the farmers.

Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds.

Here in the United States, a study of nearly 700 women in California showed an increased risk of fetal death among babies whose mothers lived near crops when certain pesticides were sprayed. The largest risks were found among pregnant women exposed during the critical first trimester and among those who lived in the same square mile where pesticides were used.

Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.

Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.

I love judging food by its smell and feel and taste. The healthiest tomato isn't always the perfect one that's been covered in pesticides.

The widespread use of pesticides in the French countryside, and its worrying effects on nature and the environment, had troubled me for years.

Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have...remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ...from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.

When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce.

On one hand, our food is polluted with herbicides and on the other hand by antibiotics. And then we have hormones and pesticides.

Pharmaceuticals are regulated. Pesticides are, as well as food, save the occasional salmonella outbreak. But chemicals and their witch's brew of ingredients continue to augment American industry without anyone quite knowing their makeup and possible toxicity. And that needs to change.

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.

I had all kinds of allergy problems with certain meats, and with fruits and vegetables with pesticides. So I turned to bear, caribou, venison, hippopotamus, buffalo, elk and moose. Taste-wise, buffalo and elk are tied for first. Not gamy, and loaded with protein. And very expensive, I might add.

I'm thinking waiters and waitresses are going to be bracing for more customers coming in going, not just kind of where is that beef from, but, like, where is that vanilla from and what's up with that sunflower oil? Is it organic or not and how many pesticides?

Most of the plants grown to be fed to farm animals are heavily saturated with pesticides and herbicides and have been genetically modified, all of which contributes to the pollution and destruction of our environment, which harms us all.

The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.

We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency.

Chemicals are not currently tested for their endocrine disruption potential before they are approved for use and enter our environment, and there are endocrine disruptors in a vast array of products we come into contact with every day, including organochlorine pesticides, plastics, fuels, and other industrial chemicals.

I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.

Consumers can choose organic cotton grown without pesticides, but it uses more water and requires more land than conventional crops. Organic cotton can also be much more expensive and difficult to find.

Our actions today will protect children from the adverse effects of exposure to pesticides commonly used on foods. The agency also is on schedule to meet all deadlines for ensuring safer pesticides use under the new Food Quality Protection Act.

The farmer and the farm, like "the environment," are looked upon, for example, as means to offset trade deficits. The farm is a place where we can externalize costs. The cost of pesticides to the farmer and the cost of the pesticides to the soil and groundwater are regarded similarly by the public: "a serious problem that something ought to be done about." But the problem is more fundamental than this glib statement would indicate, for soil pollution is an expense of production. So are pesticides and nitrates in our farm wells. So is the loss of farmers from the land.

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water. And this is in a world where we know that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are toxic, and water is more and more scarce. Golf could do a lot more.

Healthy, sustainable food production methods give us food that is nutritionally better and with fewer pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.

A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.

The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.

Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal.

If we weren't so dirt-conscious, we would obtain adequate vitamin B12 from soil, air, water, and bacteria, but we meticulously wash and peel our vegetables now - and with good reason, as we can't be sure our soil is not contaminated with pesticides and herbicides.

As we've focused more on our food and where it comes from, people now have greater awareness of what's being put onto our food, pesticides, labeling issues, and consumer health.

Certainly people in empty places feel they have the right to do what they want to their property and don't necessarily see the effect of their pollution or pesticides on others. But Texans have an appreciation for water problems and are very aware of the droughts.

The Green Revolution was criticised by social activists on the ground that the high-yield technology involving the use of mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides is environmentally harmful.

I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.

Most pesticides lose their efficacy after a few years, because of pest resistance to pesticides. This is why companies go on changing the varieties.

It's important to concede that modern pesticides have helped to make farming more productive and to increase yields.

Nature is solving all sorts of problems that we throw at her - how to degrade plastic bottles, how to degrade pesticides and herbicides and antibiotics. She creates new enzymes in response to that all the time, in real time.

The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

Pesticides came about after the first world war. Some brainy petrochemical money maker said, 'Hey, that mustard gas worked great on people, maybe we could dilute it down and spray it on our crops to deal with pests.'