How food choices affect drinking
water quality & human health
Lynn Markham
UW-Extension
Center for Land Use Education
ECOS-Fox Valley
August 5, 2010
Menasha
Overview
Pesticide use on Wisconsin
crops
Pesticides in Wisconsin’s
drinking water
Human health
How can “eaters” benefit
drinking water when
buying food?
20
upper sandstone
aquifer
lower sandstone
aquifer
confining shale layer
water table
40
100
260
120
DEPTH BELOW GROUND SURFACE (feet)water flow direction
0
Monitoring Wells
Private Well
Bedfod Falls
Municipal
Well
Ag-chemical
plume
Over 95% of WI’s communities rely on
groundwater for their drinking water
Groundwater is a LOCAL resource
Groundwater moves quickly in the central sands
at ~1 foot per day. To move 1 mile takes???
The quality of our drinking water depends on
how food is grown in our communities
How is food grown near your
source of drinking water?
Pesticide use on
WI crops
Annual use on major agricultural
crops:
• 13 million pounds of pesticides
• Over 2 pounds of pesticides per
year for each person living in
Wisconsin
Source: Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service, 2004-05 data
Which crops have the greatest
total amounts of pesticides
applied in Wisconsin?
Crop
Acres
Total pesticides applied per
year
Field corn
3,800,000
6,503,000
Soybeans
1,610,000
1,770,000
Oats
400,000
25,000
Sweet corn for
processing
81,000
182,000
Snap beans for
processing
76,000
252,000
Potatoes
68,000
950,000
Apples
5,800
163,000
Source: Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service, 2004-05 data
How much pesticide is applied
per acre?
No WI pesticide data for:
Cranberries
Other berries
Pears
Melons
Salad vegetables
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
28
14
8
7
3
2
2
1
1
1
1 <1 <1
Average pounds of pesticides applied per acre
in Wisconsin
Source:
USDA data
Dietary risks calculated
by The Organic Center
Which domestically grown
crops have the greatest
pesticide risks?
2007 Groundwater Pesticide
Survey
Estimated that 1/3
of private drinking
water wells in WI
contained a
pesticide or
pestici