Take Off Your Shoes! Pesticide Residue and Health Risks To Children

Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 by Jen

The other day I made a comment to Corina about someone who visited my house that didn’t take their kid’s shoes off. I am not a clean freak by any means but it did seem a little weird. While I was thinking about it from a “dirt” perspective, Corina raised another, more concerning issue, pesticide residues.

As an Agrologist by trade, it was funny to me that I never thought of this before. A number of studies have shown pesticide residues residing in the homes of both farm and non farm families.

Pesticides are everywhere. Many are used on farms, but a lot are used for cosmetic purposes in suburbia. Pesticides include, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Our kids go out and play on many surfaces that contain trace amounts of these and if they don’t take off their shoes, pesticides come on in with them.

Pesticide residues in homes are most often found in the carpet dust. While most pesticides are designed to break down in the environment over a period of time, they don’t do this as quickly in our homes because there isn’t any rain, wind, or soil microbes to help the process occur. Studies have shown these residues to persist over a period of one year.

Children are at most risk when it comes to the harmful effects of exposure to these toxic chemicals because they tend to play on the floor and stick everything in their mouths. Health effects include: brain cancer, birth defects, Parkinson’s Disease, Leukemia, miscarriage, infertility, asthma, and sterility. Their little bodies are also less able to detoxify themselves against what is a relatively greater exposure as opposed to adults because they breathe more air and consume more water for their body weight.

Given all this, make sure your kids take their shoes off when they get in the house and help to keep their home environment a little safer.