In Autlan, Jalisco, girls, and boys urinate pesticides

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One study showed that 100% of the girls and boys in the El Mentidero delegation have glyphosate in their urine, which could lead to problems from development to cancer.

Nausea, cramping, and vomiting. Those were the conditions that set off the alert of fathers and mothers of the El Mentidero delegation, in the municipality of Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco.

Autlán is a valley 150 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara, characterized by its agricultural production in which cane and vegetables stand out.

To identify possible causes of discomfort in children El Mentidero, a town of a thousand inhabitants surrounded by cane fields , researchers Alejandro Peregrina and Felipe Lozano of the University of Guadalajara and Humberto González del CIESAS Occidente conducted a chemical study of the urine of 93 children and preschool and elementary school girls and 53 high school girls.

The results were alarming: 100% of the children registered herbicides in their urine. The most recurrent and most dangerous substance found in children was glyphosate.

Glyphosate is a herbicide that farmers use to kill herbs that grow in the middle of their crops; However, it produces severe side effects. According to UdeG researcher Brian Rodríguez, in children, it can cause developmental defects.

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

“It has been found in animals that this has carcinogenic properties ,” he said in an interview with Atomic Feathers.

In the case of the telesecundaria Venustiano Carranza de El Mentidero, the symptoms presented by the 53 boys and girls for three years were more acute due to the adjacency of the school with a plot where cucumber is grown.

“We arrived in the morning and sprayed or sometimes we arrived at lunchtime and sprayed. The consequences of the headache symptoms, the nausea, began, ”said an affected girl.

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

“A smell like a rat. We were eating and a friend who was next to me and a cousin began to vomit in his food and said that his belly hurt a lot ,  said an affected child.

On August 16, the municipality of Autlán summoned the researchers who conducted the study and agricultural producers to propose solutions to the problem. The families of the affected infants were not invited to the meeting but two came to demand a solution to the problem.

In the absence of Mayor Miguel Íñiguez Brambila, after three hours of discussion, and the councilor Walter Méndez Parra, he promised that the municipality of Autlán would modify the internal regulations “so that a talk is given mainly to those who border on some agencies or delegations and, based on that, work on the elimination of pesticides ”.

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

Photography: Elizabeth Jiménez / Atomic Feathers

The position of the city council did not eliminate the anguish of the mothers, who requested the prohibition of pesticides in Autlán.

Humberto González Chávez, a CIESAS researcher and co-author of the study, said that this problem is a result of the exponential agricultural growth that has occurred in Jalisco, in which production is prioritized over the care of the environment and the health of the population.

“If no measures are taken, this will be seen in an increase, in a few years, that no health system, Mexican or any other country in the world can attend. The ideal is agroecological agriculture: it is possible to produce without pesticides and it is also possible to produce food thinking about the population that will consume them, ” said González Chávez.

The case of Autlán is about to be resolved. Meanwhile, two questions remain: how many more Autlanes are there in Mexico? How many more children urinate pesticides in our country?

Source: plumasatomicas

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