How World War I and II played a big part in the development of pesticides.

Insecticides were first developed in the 1930's by the German scientist Gerhard Schrader. Early experiments noted dimmed vision and 'a choking sensation' on exposure to these chemicals. (Organophosphates.)

The Nazi government saw the potential for a new weapon in World War II. They put Schrader in charge developing the first chemical warfare gases using organophosphates. They called this Nerve Gas.

The British also developed their own nerve gases using organochlorides in the 1950's.

After World War II, the Americans got hold of Schrader's lab reports. They then used them to develop pesticides and insecticides. The first on the market was Parathion. Others followed. These pesticides became even more popular after insecticides like DDT and heptachlor were banned in the 1970's.

These banned insecticides used organochlorides. They proved to be cancer causing. They were also dangerous because they stuck around. They didn't break down in the earth and they accumulated in people and animals as well.

A famous book 'The Silent Spring' written in that time the story of one lady who noticed that all the robins had disappeared. An investigation lead to the conclusion they had all died due DDT disrupting their life cycles. This book is credited with helping to launch the environmental movement in the West.

So organophosphates became the pesticides of choice. Research has shown they degrade rapidly on exposure to water, air and soil. However they were originally used as nerve toxins. This makes them more toxic to people immediately if they are exposed.

According to the world health organization, thousands of farm workers die each year from exposure to pesticides. This occurs in the USA and in the developing world.

Small quantities of organophosphate toxins are now also being found in water supplies. This suggests that they don't break down as completely as people first thought they did.

• Aldicarb - used on cotton, beans, and crops.
• Effects on people - weakness, blurred vision, headache, nausea, tearing, sweating, and tremors in people. Very high doses can kill people, because it can paralyze the respiratory system. It is a possible carcinogen for humans. Also very poisonous to birds and animals.

• Parathion - this is an organophosphate. It is used as an insecticide mainly on cotton, rice and fruit trees. There are proposals to ban it from use and it is banned from most food crops.
• It is highly toxic to non-target organisms and is banned or restricted in many countries.

Cotton can have much stronger chemicals used on it than food crops. Here are some facts that may make you think differently about supposedly 'safe' pesticides.

• Five of the top nine pesticides used in conventional cotton production in the US are known cancer-causing chemicals.

• (These are cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite and trifluralin.)
• To make one T-shirt takes about a third of a pound of toxic chemicals
• In some recent tests, 90% of water and fish samples from streams in the USA had pesticides. About 50% of all sampled wells contained one or more pesticides.
• DDT and chlordane pesticides have been found in vegetables grown in contaminated soil 38 years after being banned.
• Each year, around 2,500,000 tons = 5 billion pounds of pesticide are dumped on the planet's crops.

All this makes organic bedding a good choice not only for good health, but also for the environment.

As final proof, here are some statistics for pesticide related deaths. These farmers and farm workers died from over-exposure to pesticides.

• In 2002, an estimated 69,000 children were poisoned by pesticides in the US
• The World Health Organization reports 220,000 people die every year worldwide because of pesticide poisoning. Hard to believe, isn't it?

Do we need pesticides though?

According to capitalism, the free market economy, consumerism and the laws of the universe nothing arises in the market without demand for it.

The pesticide industry is huge - about 30 billion a year.

So is the health insurance industry, cancer research industry and pharmaceutical industry.

Can we fulfill the demand for food and textile crops without the use of pesticides? Is this demand legitimate? And what are pesticides truly costing us?