Cleaner Cotton™

Help Clean up
Cotton in California

Care What You Wear Campaign

DDT IS GOOD FOR ME!

Believe it or not, this was the headline for a 1947 pesticide advertisement, an attempt to persuade farmers and the public that chemicals could be safely applied anywhere on the farm, in the factory, around the house or even at the beach. Fifty years later, although regulations have increased, so have the number of toxic chemicals and the amounts applied to crops, as well as backyard gardens and public landscapes. The facts about worldwide cotton production are staggering.

• Cotton uses about 25% of the world's insecticide and more than 10% of the pesticides (including insecticides, fungicides, miticides, herbicides, defoliants, and growth regulators.)
  
• In the United States, 25% of all pesticides used are applied to cotton.
  
• In the United States, it takes about a third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow enough cotton for a T-shirt.
  
• In California, five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton are cancer-causing chemicals (cyanazine, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin).
  
• All of the top nine cotton pesticides in California are labeled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as Category I or Category II materials, the most toxic classifications.
  
• In India, 91% of male cotton farm workers regularly exposed to pesticides eight hours or more per day experience some type of health disorder, including chromosomal aberrations, cell death and cell decay.
  
• Cotton fibers account for almost 50% of the textile market worldwide.
  
• Globally, nearly 90 million acres of cotton are grown in more that 70 countries.o The United States is the second largest cotton producer in the world, growing approximately 19 million bales worth $6 billion in 1997 (enough to make approximately 9,215,000,000 T-shirts).
  
• As much as two-thirds of a cotton crop can creep into the food chain. Each year, half a million tons of cottonseed oil make their way into salad dressings, baked goods and snack food; another three million tons of raw cottonseed are fed to beef and dairy cattle.