Pesticides and Planned Parenthood

There’s more to PP than abortions

By Culinate staff

November 10, 2011

The family-planning organization Planned Parenthood has been the target of much political polemic this year. But as Andrew Leonard recently reported on Grist, there’s much more to the nonprofit than abortions.

His profile of Traci Townsend, a Planned Parenthood employee in California, emphasizes the many connections between human reproduction and what we eat — notably pesticides and the foods laced with them. “Pesticide exposure has been linked to birth defects,” writes Leonard. “Therefore, mitigating its impact is a reproductive health issue.”

Townsend works with California farmworkers. “If we banned pesticides tomorrow, half of our clients would be unemployed,” Townsend told Leonard. “In public health we kind of take things where they are. So if pesticides aren’t going away, let’s do what we can to protect ourselves against them.”