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A herbicide is by many considered a type of pesticide. This includes the EPA. Calling glyphosate a pesticide isn't wrong; its just less specific.

https://www.beyondpesticides.o....

https://www.epa.gov/minimum-ri...

Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree.

1. The Zika virus has been Africa and Southeast Asia since forever.

2. They don't seem to have microcephalic cases like Brazil has.

3. The virus was introduced into Brazil sometime around 2015.

4. 2015 Brazil sees a 10x increase in microcephalic cases.

So far that seems compelling that Zika is causing the cases. But why aren't we seeing the same thing in Africa or Asia? It's not like the Zika virus in Brazil has had thousands of years to mutate into a version that causes microcephaly, but not the original strain in Africa and Southeast Asia. It's the same virus.

It's not like the people in Brazil don't have the same "immunity" that people in Africa and Southeast Asian people have -- a large percentage of the Brazilian people *have* West African ancestors where the Zika virus has been found.

Here's an alternate hypothesis: some kind of chemical has been introduced into Brazil in 2015 that's causing the birth defects. Maybe a pesticide that hasn't been properly tested, or a morning sickness drug that wasn't tested.

Citations:

For pesticides and birth defects: http://www.counterpunch.org/20... http://americanpregnancy.org/p... and http://www.beyondpesticides.or...

Pesticides and microcephaly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... and http://www.gmls.eu/beitraege/1...

For morning sickness drugs: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/...

According to http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=3574 and other sources, this research is already years old. Europe has acted on the research in 2010 to ban the additive.

At least it has been banned from being used in the food industry! (Yes, it was used in plastics that came into direct contact with our own food until 2010).

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=3574

Dust is mostly made up of dead skin. If it is just your dead skin, well, a dust mask may be OK for you. However, keep in mind that people are regularly excreting small amounts of their medications through their skin and people also have a tendency to rub various medications (and who-knows-what else) onto themselves as well. Not to mention the various pesticides we regularly squirt onto our pets for flea and tick control. Coming in contact with such chemicals usually isn't a big deal (be careful, wash your hands, etc) but inhaling them is an entirely different matter (especially considering the half-life of some popular pesticides).

For example, I would not want to be the guy cleaning out PCs in/from a retirement home. There's enough hormone replacement therapy going on in places like that you might wind up with gynomastia (well, probably not THAT much =).

Besides, a good respirator is much more comfortable than a dusk mask anyway.

Actually, many pesticides are at least somewhat effective nerve agents against mammals in high enough concentrations. Certain people can be extremely effected by certain pesticides over and above average reactions, too. Many of them are toxic in other ways instead of or in addition to being nerve agents in people. In the U.S., the EPA makes no suggestion that pesticides are not toxic to humans. They rate them by how toxic they are and how quickly they break down. They then clear some of them for use in certain concentrations with certain labels and certain restrictions on who can use some of them. Pesticides are known to be a danger to the nervous, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The health benefits of having higher yields and therefore cheaper prices on foods -- especially fruits and vegetables -- is often thought to outweigh the risks. This may be true when properly designed pesticides are properly used and your food is properly cleaned before you eat it. As with most things in life, though, there are trade-offs.

I, for one, have been in the emergency room for a number of hours before with what the doctors called giant hives due to exposure to pesticides. Giant hives are just like regular hives, only my hives were 2-3 inches wide, 4-8 inches long, and up to a quarter of an inch raised from the normal surface of the skin. They itch like hell, are pretty painful, they're very discolored, and they can last for days or weeks. They're caused by a number of things, but mine were caused by pesticide exposure. The doctors were monitoring to make sure my throat didn't close since I had such a strong reaction in the skin.

Lots of people are even saying that lower IQ scores, more asthma, and other health problems among children are due the amount of pesticides used in schools. ADD, Asperger's, and many of the issues that have been increasingly diagnosed are neurological in nature. Those rates may or may not have something to do with pesticides. The truth is, no one really knows what the levels of pesticides in U.S. schools is doing to kids. The EPA has guidelines to reduce exposure due to suspicion that it can't be good to have children inundated with the stuff. The state of Washington a few years ago pass a law stating that parents must be notified when there children's schools would be using pesticides. The state of New York has a nice writeup on a study it did in which it states that 87% of schools in NY used pesticides, that no pesticide be considered completely safe, and lists the more usual effects of several common pesticides and herbicides.