The number of pesticides in the world is beyond alarming. In the UK, every woman, man and child contains 420 grams of pesticides. The world produces more than 50,000 different pesticides with over 600 active ingredients. However, pests do not go away anywhere.
Also read: Pesticides: Biodiversity at risk
Almost everything we eat in the conventional diet is subject to manifold doses of the chemicals - pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and more. Some crops get the brunt of pesticide contamination with cereal crops such as wheat being baptized an estimated five to eight times during just one growing season, while other foods are subject to lower doses.
Pesticides are used in sprays for vegetables and fruit, in raising livestock, at parks and so on and so forth.
Other vegetables and fruit crops will be treated with 10 to 15 sprays, and that's considered the norm. Add to this ridiculous amount of toxins we're exposed to, the pesticides used in raising livestock (even arsenic compounds), pesticides used at parks and even on protected forestland, and you have a recipe for environmental devastation and human health problems like we are seeing today.
There are six big companies that make 50,000 different pesticides: Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dow, Dupont and BASF. Millions of agricultural workers suffer from pesticide poisoning every year.