In Hawai‘i, an epicenter of GM corn testing, pesticide poisoning complaints persist.

When Valerie, 33, from Nevada, found a rental house a five-minute walk from a sheltered beach on the west side of Maui, she was overjoyed. She suffers from asthma and allergies to mold, and the brand-new Kamalani development offered affordable deliverance and the promise of a healthy life for her, her husband, their five boys, and a sixth on the way. But soon, “I felt more and more sick, in ways I never had been before,” she recounted as the family was packing their belongings into a truck last January. “My eyes are itchy, my joints are sore, I’m tired all the time. And my family feels the same way.” Her 12-year-old son, Mathias, chimed in, “My joints hurt so much, I feel like an old man.”

Valerie and her husband, Russell (they asked that their last names not be used), blamed their ailments on pesticides used on the nearby Bayer-Monsanto Mokulele farm, which tests new strains of genetically modified seed corn. “The county should never have approved [a residential development] this close to Monsanto because it’s for families, and kids are the most susceptible,” said Russell, 39. On their doctor’s advice, they moved after just four months in the house — to Fiji.