IERE has recently taken on a project to bring together the facts about the environmental impacts of conventional cotton growing. Cotton uses more pesticides than any other crop for which reliable statistics are known. In fact, our preliminary estimate of the toxicity and persistence of the pesticides used on cotton in the United States is that enough pesticides are used every year to poison the Great Lakes five times over.

Cotton cultivation also has impacts that derive from soil cultivation practices, the use of limited water resources and other cropping practices.

We are gathering the latest research about the effects of these practices on human health and the environment, and will publish a monograph and fact sheets based on our work. We intend that this information be used to inform the decisions of purchasers as well as policy makers.