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Dude, why're you wearing that shirt?

Cotton: World's Most Toxic Crop

by Organic Consumers' Association

Cotton is the most toxic crop on the planet. While only three percentof the world's farming acreage is cotton, these crops are sprayed withup to 25 percent of the world's pesticides and herbicides, includingsome of the most toxic ones, such as aldicarb. And of course cotton ispresent in many other consumer products besides garments--foodproducts, tampons, bandages, baby diapers, mattresses, bed linen, etc.

According to www.sustainablecotton.org, "the simple act of growing andharvesting the one pound of cotton fiber needed to make a T-shirttakes an enormous toll on the air, water, and soil, not to mention thehealth of people in cotton growing areas. The cotton grown for justone T-shirt requires a third of a pound of agricultural chemicals."

Moreover, some 60 percent of a cotton crop, by weight, enters the foodchain in the form of cottonseed oil which is used widely in processedfoods, and as cottonseed feed for cows, ending up in meat and dairyproducts. The pesticide residues from these cottonseeds concentrate inthe fatty tissues of these animals, and in turn are passed on in meatand dairy products to consumers.

Genetically engineered (GE) cotton is another problem. Playing onconcerns about pesticides, Monsanto has pushed GE cottonseeds onto themarket in more than a half-dozen countries as the "green alternative"for cotton growers. In terms of human health hazards,herbicide-resistant GE cotton plants--and their oil and seedderivatives--contain foreign proteins, bacteria, viral promoters, andantibiotic resistant genes--food ingredients that humans have nevereaten before. These GE plants and their derivatives are unlabeled anduntested for hazards to human health and the environment. Over tenmillion acres of genetically engineered cotton are now being grownacross the US. These cotton plants are gene-spliced so that the cottonplant emits its own pesticide, or else the plant is geneticallyengineered to be able to survive mega-doses of powerful pesticides.

Biotech cotton is a mortal threat to organic cotton farming, the real"no pesticide" alternative. This threat is two-fold. First of all, itis a source of genetic pollution (like GE corn or canola), spreadingits altered DNA. Even worse, it is slowly but steadily building upresistance among cotton pests, creating the preconditions for cottonsuperpests to arise.