Environmental Toxins and Your Unique Doberman

​8 Tips for Preventing your Kids and Dobermans to unseen exposure to Allergy and Cancer Causing Toxins and Poisons.

1. Your kids may be more profoundly affected by random, chronic pesticide exposures than adults simply because they are smaller and still growing, according to studies.

Kids also tend to have a more severe reaction to gases, toxins and pesticides. Study after study shows this can cause extreme harm to your growing child, their bodies absorb gases and toxins like a sponge, thereby contributing to various skin issues and rashes, lung issues such as asthma and in severe cases, dizziness, disorientation and even death.

In 2005, the Organic Consumers Association gathered evidence showing that cumulative exposure to residues on foods from pesticides — some of which, like 2,4-D, are the same as those used on lawns — could affect child development. The OCA summed up:

“According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Academy of Sciences, standard chemicals are up to ten times more toxic to children than to adults, depending on body weight. This is due to the fact that children take in more toxic chemicals relative to body weight than adults and have developing organ systems that are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify toxic chemicals.”

Similarly, Beyond Pesticides notes:

“The National Academy of Sciences reports that children are more susceptible to chemicals than adults and estimates that 50 percent of lifetime pesticide exposure occurs during the first five years of life.

EPA concurs that children take in more pesticides relative to body weight than adults and have developing organ systems that are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify toxic chemicals.”

Findings showing that kids take on a proportionately heavier load of chemicals — from food, plastics, and household products — has led to concerns that lawn chemicals contribute to their “body burden,” in the parlance of those who discuss personal pollution issues.

Scientists are finding that pesticides, like certain components in plastic such as BPA, can disrupt the human hormone system. Both major weed and feed chemicals, atrazine and 2,4-D, are considered to be “potential endocrine disruptors” (along with an array of other pesticides), meaning they can interfere with the human body’s hormonal system.

Endocrine disruptors are known for their insidious way of creeping into the human body undetected at low levels, essentially thwarting the body’s usual defenses. They mimic or interfere with natural hormones, acting on the thyroid or pituitary glands, reproductive organs and the brain.

Studies suggest that this interference can cause problems with child or fetal development, and metabolism and fertility, later in life.

The effect of synthetic endocrine disruptors on reproductive organs could explain why human fertility issues are suddenly “off the Richter scale,” said Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute in a recent interview.

“Sometimes exposures to these toxics can have catastrophic lifelong impact,” he said. “It might be a triggering device, especially in the reproductive organs, causing them to develop inadequately.”

Endocrine disruption is just one way pesticides may harm kids.

Two studies by Minnesota researchers found that pesticides, either a mix that included 2,4-D but also fungicides and glyphosate, appeared to raise the risk of birth defects among the children of exposed farm families.

Other studies have found that the use of household and lawn pesticides raises the risk of childhood leukemia (here’s one paper that reviewed 17 studies of the link to leukemia). Beyond Pesticides has collected a long list of research, showing  implicating pesticides in childhood development issues, increased asthma rates and even brain cancer.