Aerial assault on boll weevils sends people scurrying
... a new aerial assault is under way across a dozen counties of West Tennessee. Nearly 70 planes and two helicopters, along with several ground-application machines, have been summoned to wipe out boll weevils from 370,000 acres of cotton.
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Subject: Aerial assault on boll weevils sends people scurrying, too-----
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 17:03:09 -0400
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an
article entitled: Aerial assault on
boll weevils sends people scurrying, too. By
TOM CHARLIER - Scripps Howard News Service - October 04, 2000.
HENNING, Tenn. - Bill Dedman set out for a quiet,
recuperative walk down his country lane one recent morning. Next thing he knew,
he was scurrying for cover.
The 67-year-old recovering cancer patient was driven back
by pungent odors wafting toward him from a crop-duster spraying an adjacent
cotton field. He got home just as the plane flew over his roof.
"It smelled so bad I had to come back to the house.
Then it started smelling bad here," Dedman said, referring to the
back porch where he and his wife were about to eat lunch. "We had to go
inside."
As Dedman can attest, a new aerial assault is under way across a dozen counties of West Tennessee. Nearly 70 planes and two helicopters, along with several ground-application machines, have been summoned to wipe out boll weevils from 370,000 acres of cotton.
The boll weevil eradication program, voted on and largely
financed by farmers, employs repeated treatments with the pesticide malathion.
Program officials, state authorities and environmental regulators say the
spraying is carefully monitored and safe.
(Even
though statements like this are against the federal "law"!)
But in the two months since the latest campaign began,
state agriculture officials have handled more than 150 complaints. And health
authorities have asked physicians in the region to notify them if they notice
any problems related to the spraying.
"We take those complaints very seriously," said
Jimmy Hopper, director of the regulatory services division in the Tennessee
Department of Agriculture.
Malathion, widely used against mosquitoes, is an
organophosphate that breaks down a pest's central nervous system. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency considers it safe to humans when used properly.
(Here is that damn "safe" word again!)
The boll weevil program has been under way in different
regions of the Southeast since the mid-1980s. The program lasts four to five
years, with the frequency of the spraying typically dropping each successive
year.
The latest round, which began around Aug. 1, took in a
dozen or so West Tennessee counties. In all, there are now 90 planes, four
helicopters and 10-12 ground-application machines spraying 575,000 acres across
West Tennessee.
The effort has prompted complaints from residents who say
the spraying threatens them or their property.
Crockett County resident Charlie Rodgers, 71, said he was
working in his vegetable garden - too far out in the open to find shelter - when
a crop-duster swooped down over nearby cotton. "I got a snoot full of
it," he said.
Rodgers and his wife, Wilma, said they're not safe from the
pesticide even indoors. "We are prisoners in our house," he said.
"I can taste the stuff that comes in."
Sidney Meece, 69, who lives across a field from the
Rodgerses, said that prior to the spraying, her asthma had improved to the point
that she turned in her breathing machine. "Since this stuff has started,
I've had some terrible attacks," Meece said.
Dedman, a retired farmer himself, also worries about the
effect the spraying has on the environment. While he was out walking recently,
he found the ground covered with dead June bugs and butterflies. "I'm sure
the spraying killed them," Dedman said.
For all the complaints, state officials say they have yet
to document any major flaws with the spraying. Of the 151 complaints received by
the middle of last week, 106 were closed after investigators concluded they
didn't involve any apparent misapplication by crop-dusters, Hopper said.
In 27 other cases, state officials took samples from
air-conditioner filters, homes, plants, creeks and ponds. Nearly two dozen
samples have been analyzed, with malathion confirmed in 14 of them. In those
cases, investigators are looking into "possible misapplication,"
Hopper said.
State agriculture officials can issue civil penalties or
pull the licenses of anyone found to have misapplied pesticides.
Officials say the boll weevil program uses ultra-low
concentrations of the pesticide - 10 ounces per acre, compared to the three- to
five-gallon-per-acre rates often used in malathion spraying.
Diane Denton, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of
Health, said her agency sent letters to 75 doctors in the areas affected by the
spraying. "We wanted to know if physicians were seeing things you would
associate with malathion," se said.
So far, however, the state hasn't received any
"medical confirmation" of problems, she said.
(Contact Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis,
Tenn., at http://www.gomemphis.com.)
Well Mr. Helliker, This story sounds all too familiar,
especially the "regulatory" cover-up. At least during boll weevil
"registered" POISON "control" (unlike medfly and mosquito
"controls"), POISON drift onto the public is supposedly illegal.
But, I am sure that no one will be severely punished for
"drift" or "residue" problems.
When will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to use safe and far
more effective (unregistered) alternatives to actually control pest problems in
California?
TOP
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