Conventional agriculture's use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers has contributed greatly to the pollution of our local and national water resources.

Several Central Illinois communities have had to pay for the installation of expensive treatment projects to remove unhealthy levels of nitrates, or pesticides like atrazine from their water. Research with radioactive tracers shows that Midwest fertilizer pollution has created low oxygen areas in the Gulf of Mexico. There, fertilizer pollution damages marine habitat and the livelihoods of Gulf fishermen.

Researchers know that many of the pesticides applied in Central Illinois end up in the shallow ground water that supplies rural residents' wells. Additionally, it is nationally documented that farmers suffer from higher levels of certain cancers. Farmers' cancers are recorded with other Illinois residents in the state's cancer registry. However, they will likely never be directly correlated because the state legislature failed to fund the Illinois Health and Hazardous Substances Registry Act in 1984.

For more information on this issue see:
Troubled Waters, The Public i, September 2003 (pdf).