Pesticides? Genetically modified organisms? Drugs given to animals in factory farms?
You know that eating organic is the best way to avoid food produced with these toxins and GMOs.
But there’s another evil lurking in our food system. It’s so pervasive that you’re more likely to be exposed to it through the water you drink or the air you breathe, than via your food.
TAKE ACTION: Tell your state lawmakers: We need a plan to ban synthetic nitrogen fertilizers!
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer pollutes drinking water and is linked to “blue baby syndrome.”
It’s also the cause of the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, Lake Erie’s algal blooms and the red tides on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Each year in the U.S., synthetic nitrogen fertilizer causes tens of thousands of illnesses, including:
• 2,939 cases of very low birth weight; 1,725 cases of very preterm birth; and 41 cases of neural tube defects.
• 12,594 cases of cancer, including colorectal, ovarian, thyroid, kidney and bladder cancer.
• 4,300 premature deaths due to nitrogen oxide-heavy smog from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use on corn alone.
If you ask Monsanto’s evil twins in the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer industry—CF Industries Holdings, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan and Terra Nitrogen Company—they’ll tell you farmers can’t grow food without it.
Yet organic farmers grow food just fine without synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. And scientists say we must drastically reduce its use.
The National Academy of Engineering calls synthetic nitrogen fertilizer pollution one of the “grand challenges” facing the world.
But Trump has blocked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from doing anything about it.
If you want clean water to drink and clean air to breathe where you live, you’re going to have to get your state legislators to move as quickly as possible to completely phase out the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in your state.