Greenpeace Says Pesticides Tainting Traditional China Herbs

by Kathy Jones on? June 24, 2013 at 10:01 PM Alternative Medicine News Campaign group Greenpeace has said that traditional Chinese herbs are being contaminated with a toxic cocktail of pesticides that poses a threat to consumer health and the environment.
Some residue levels were hundreds of times higher than European Union food safety standards, according to tests carried out for a Greenpeace report "Chinese herbs: elixir of health or pesticides cocktail?", the latest to focus on the harmful effects of China's large-scale farming industry.

"These test results expose the cracks in the current industrial agriculture system that is heavily reliant on toxic chemicals at the expense of human and environmental health," said Greenpeace ecological farming campaigner Jing Wang.

"Chinese herbs are trusted and used as food ingredients for healing purposes by millions of people around the world. They are an iconic part of our heritage we must preserve. Chinese herbs should heal, not harm people and must be pesticide free."

Exposure to pesticide residue causes toxic chemicals to accumulate inside the body, leading to learning difficulties, hormone disruption and reproductive abnormalities, according to Greenpeace.

The group sampled 65 herb products, finding 51 different types of pesticide residues. Twenty-six of the samples contained pesticides that are illegal in China.

Some pesticides were found in "extremely high concentration", with residues on the san qi flower 500 times over safety limits and on the honeysuckle more than 100 times over.

The report follows an investigation by Greenpeace in April which revealed mountains of hazardous waste left from China's huge phosphate fertiliser industry are polluting nearby communities and waters.

China, the world's top maker of phosphate fertiliser, has seen production more than double over the past decade to 20 million tons last year, leaving 300 million tons of a byproduct called phosphogypsum that can contain harmful substances.

China's agricultural sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, and "intense" farming methods have been blamed by state media for recent food scares, including a deadly outbreak of bird flu earlier this year.

Source-AFP

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Caregiving Fathers Face More Disrespect at Work Compared to Men Who Perform Traditional Roles

The study found that women without children and mothers with non-traditional caregiving arrangements are treated worst of all.

"Their hours are no different than other employees', but their co-workers appear to be picking up on their non-traditional caregiving roles and are treating them disrespectfully," Prof. Jennifer Berdahl of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, who co-authored the study with Sue Moon from the Long Island University Post, said.

Results were based on two separate field studies, each using mail-in surveys.

The first was targeted at unionized workers in female-dominated occupations and the other was targeted at public service workers in a male-dominated workforce.

Overall, the studies found consequences for any employee who violated traditional gender roles when it came to having a family.

The least harassed in the office - Fathers and mothers who followed more traditional gender norms; that is, men who did less caregiving and domestic tasks at home and women who did more.

The results suggest that how well a worker performs their gender role in the home has more bearing on how they are treated at work than how well that worker performs their job.

As a result, men and women are likely to feel pressure at work to conform to traditional roles at home.

The study is set to be published in the Journal of Social Issues.

Source-ANI

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