Go Organic! Vote with Your Wallet, Vote with Your Fork is a campaign of the Maryland Smart on Pesticides Coalition of 96 organizations and businesses. We’re working to protect our babies, bees and the Bay from adverse impacts of pesticides, while promoting safer alternatives.
We cast a vote everyday with our wallet and our fork. Protect your health by avoiding pesticide laden food, products and services. Instead, choose organic or pesticide-free alternatives. Each choice is a powerful act that can reduce your toxic chemical body-burden. And, with every dollar you withhold from polluting industries, you’ll be creating greater demand for affordable, clean and organic alternatives.
Even adding a few organic or pesticide-free products can support your, and your family’s, health! Prices have fallen, so that some organic products and services can be little or no more expensive than pesticide reliant conventional products and services. See our Organic On A Budget page for tons of ideas and connections.
A Baltimore family goes organic for 1 week in a study examining pesticide body burden.
Ask your local orchard if they use chlorpyrifos on the apples, pears and pumpkins you’re buying?
Some stores are still selling these baned products. Download these easy steps to verify.
Find new suppliers for food (vote with your fork), services and products (vote with your wallet)—and learn the compelling reasons you should choose them. The following website sections will be expanded weekly with lots of new resources to help you move toward a pesticide-free lifestyle. Get started now, with the links below. Go Organic! Vote with Your Wallet, Vote with Your Fork.
Organic on a budget.
Avoid the Dirty Dozen.
Finding clean food.
Farmers market pocket guide.
GO Now.
Find Eco-friendly diapers,
organic beauty care,
healthy home products.
Safe home pest control.
GO now.
New farming trends.
Healthy lawn & garden.
Bee-safe plants, seeds.
Bee-safe pest control.
GO now.
Support clean farmers.
Find products, services,
shops and websites.
Guide to “eco” labels.
GO now.
Pesticide research library.
Go Organic principals.
Need to know strategies,
i.e. Safe mosquito control.
GO now.
On a tight budget?
No worries! Learn
cost-effective ways
to Go Organic,
enjoy the benefits,
on budget.
GO now.
Step 1: Pledge your intent
to buy less pesticide-
laden products, to vote with
your wallet & fork. Sign on!
GO now.
Join Smart on Pesticides
listserv for action alerts
on Maryland efforts to
reduce toxic impacts.
GO now.
Alarming news of RoundUp, aka glyphosate, the most used agricultural chemical, had me wondering just how much exposure the average person has.
Health Research Institute (HRI) offers us answers–Glyphosate Check is a “citizen science” (funded by the public) study that you can participate in. HRI is examining the environmental exposure to glyphosate on adults, children and pets. You can get tested, receive the results, and help HRI accumulate study data. Glyphosate is measured by testing urine. You can order a test kit–$99 at cost–and receive your results back in a few weeks.
A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found glyphosate rates are up 500%, but average levels are up 1200% in people over the last 20 years. Though we’re hearing about court cases involving non-Hodgkins lymphoma, FDA links glyphosate to digestive and intestinal problems—know anyone with Crohns, irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut, colitis, colon cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? These conditions are sharply on the rise. Research indicates that glyphosate is also an endocrine disruptor, kills beneficial gut bacteria, and is linked to birth defects, reproductive problems and cancer.
Did you know? Increasingly, farmers apply glyphosate to non-organic grains just before they harvest them, so crops die and dry more rapidly. Think about all the non-organic breakfast cereals, snack foods, and bread products we consume—especially children—they are now coated with RoundUp just before they are processed into food! Did you know that 1 bowl of oats = 100 glasses of wine for RoundUp/glyphosate?
Kids are disproportionately affected, with up to 140 times greater impact, due to their small bodies and sensitive developmental growth stages.
Pet owners should also be aware: dogs are testing 30-50 times higher than humans for glyphosate largely because it’s found in kibble at levels higher than human food; grain-free kibble substituting lentil, chickpea, or pea flour for corn and soy fillers, has substanitally higher levels.
Get two tests for the price of one. The study needs a larger sampling of children ranging from 2 to 18 years of age. HRI offers testing for both a parent and child in the same household for $99.
Links to order your test kit for $99:
Learn more about Health Research Institute and HRI Labs.
Looking for affordable organic and low-pesticide dog foods? Look here.
