Poisons have more rights than humans

Healthy Children Forum Report - POISONS Have More Rights Than Humans

Risk assessment looks for the lowest safest level rather then no exposure. Risk management is the policy maker and it gets very watered down at this stage. Hazard ID, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment (combination of science, guesswork and questionable ethics) are part of the Risk / Characterization. Chemicals have more rights then humans.

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Subject:   Healthy Children Forum Report-POISONS Have More Rights Than Humans--
Date:       Fri, 10 Nov 2000 08:01:20 -0500
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 email entitled: Healthy Children Forum Report - Toronto - November 8th, 2000.

I attended the forum held in Toronto last night on Children's Health it was well attended and there were a lot of great displays from CAPE (Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment), World Wild Life Fund, The Oak Ridges Moraine, Pollution Probe, Health Canada were a few of the booths. The new pesticide poster was there get a hold of TEA, CAPE, or CAW to receive your copy.

David Rosenberg from CAPE was the host of the forum. It was great to see members or representatives of CPRO (Citizens Pesticide Reduction of Ontario), GCA (Green Communities Association), Dorothy Rosenburg, WHSC (Workers Health and Safety Centre), CAPE, Lori Stahlbrand from the World Wildlife Fund, CAW (Canadian Auto Workers), to name a few, as part of the guests in the audience.

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Canadian Institute of Child Health - Graham W. Chance

Graham W. Chance (Canadian Institute of Child Health CICH) talked about speaking out for children, monitoring of children's health, healthy pregnancy and childbirth, healthy child development and healthy and safe environment.

He explained "Why Children are different then Adults" i.e. they are in the largest growth cycle, they can't read signs that tell them pesticides are sprayed here, they take in up to 3-4 times more fluid, up to 3 times more food and breath more air then adults. These are also one of the 3 main pollutants. They eat soil which can contain LEAD, pick up things from the carpet or crawl across it. Your carpet accumulates things from your shoes (this includes pesticides from the grass you walked on) or things you spray in your home. Their brain in the fetus stage and the 1st couple years is growing rapidly and depending on the day you have exposed that stage of development of the brain can and will effect the growth and development.

This is a very complex issue. The standards are set by a healthy male who can read how then does this compare to a child? He ended with a quote from Dr. Phillip Landrigan 1999 "By default we are conducting a massive toxicological experiment, and our children are the experimental animals"

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Jean Dominic Lévesque-René

Jean Dominic a 17 year old from Quebec told his story and why he is fighting to have pesticides banned. It was a very moving story of how his life has been effected after his exposure to pesticides. January 7, 1994 at 10 years of age he found a bump on the right side of his head which turned out to be non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Over the years he has been at the hospital many times with nose bleeds and eventually the hospital suggested his parents stop using pesticides.

His symptoms disappeared until he started to play at the public playgrounds which had been sprayed. There are many golf courses in his city of 30,5000 with over 4,000 children living there. He saw an article from the American Cancer Society which linked 2,4-D to his type of cancer. He then tried to get pesticides banned, every year he went back to council and was always told by the mayor there was no link to his cancer.

He protested at city hall and made up a map showing where all the children from the cancer ward lived. He discovered 22 were from his city and his study was published 2/21/1998. He found that 1 - 20 in his city had cancer which is 10 times the National Rate. The pesticides continue to cause him nosebleeds, asthma, allergy and a learning disability. His dream is for doctors to talk about pesticides and health and for the government to listen.

He quoted a Jewish quote "If you save a life of one person it's like you saved the world". Jean travels across the country fighting for children's health and he received a standing ovation at the end of his speech.

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Canadian Environmental Law Association - Kathleen Cooper

Kathleen Cooper from CELA talked about the report on Environmental Standard Setting and Children's Health. 11% of children have asthma and 1 in 5 live in poverty. The laws are reactive not proactive. Industry insists on proof of harm and this can take literally 10's of thousands of studies. Millions were exposed to LEAD before it was finally regulated but even this is a problem as new sources of lead aren't regulated.

Risk assessment looks for the lowest safest level rather then no exposure. Risk management is the policy maker and it gets very watered down at this stage. Hazard ID, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment (combination of science, guesswork and questionable ethics) are part of the Risk / Characterization. Chemicals have more rights then humans.

The law protects us from murder, assault, etc. but not chemicals. The wingspread statement of the precautionary principle is "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically". We must continue to push this agenda forward.

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Healthy Environments Consumer Safety Branch - Rod Raphael

Rod Raphael Director General, Safe Environments Programme, Healthy Environments Consumer Safety Branch spoke about the role of government in Children's environmental health.

There is a formation of the new Healthy Environments and consumer Safety Branch (HECS) which will including looking at safe environments program, product safety program, tobacco control program, drug strategy and controlled substances program, Occupational Health and Safety Agency, office of sustainable development and regional operations - RDG's.

Why are they looking at children well asthma has 4-fold increased prevalence in 20 years, major factor in school absenteeism, one million children have asthma (12% of Canada's 8 million children and youth age 0-19) and there were 28,000 hospitalizations per year (1996 stats).

Another reason is childhood cancer has had a 20% increase over 20 years, 2nd cause of death for age 1-19, there are 1350 new cases per year, about 10,000 survivors at risk of second cancers and reduced quality of life and about 10% are caused by genetic factors.

There is also Neurobehavioral and developmental effect. The neurotoxins disrupt brain "wiring" causing cognitive, learning and behavioural problems, 28% of children (0-11) have at least one identifiable learning or behavioural problem (NLSCY) - known risk factors explain <25%, 16% of children aged 4-5 show delayed vocabulary skills, and only 23% of the 3,000 high-production chemicals have been tested for potential neurobehavioral effects.

Other issues are low birth weight and birth defects with 30,000 hospitalizations and 1,500 deaths per year, major causes of long-term disability and good animal and limited epidemiological evidence to environmental links i.e. chlorinated disinfection by products, environmental tobacco smoke, parent's occupational exposures and solvents.

There is a high public concern about children's health, there is a need for evidence to drive risk assessment and risk management decision-making, criticism of CELA and AG reports, calls for action from stakeholder groups, CPHA, CICH, and the Senate of Canada and finally there are international action and commitments, New International Momentum CEC.

He ended by telling us the key features of the new branch is to establish a "Blue Ribbon" panel of experts to advise the ministers, establish a CEH office as an instrument to support action, invest in knowledge development to build the evidence needed to drive federal risk assessment/risk management and priority setting and to engage Canadians in the protection of child health.

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Please feel free to pass this information on to anyone you think would be interested. We must all continue to work towards making our planet healthy to live in not poison it. If you aren't involved get involved every little bit we do helps in making our world healthy and safe for every living thing humans, animals, plants, water, air, etc. Remember the little boy who went into McDonalds and said no styrofoam containers and today they no longer use them. When can make a difference and we MUST.

by Bonnie Henderson
Groundswell, Stratford
bhenderson@cooperstandard.com

Well Mr. Helliker, You can either continue to promote the sale and use/misuse of your "registered" POISONS or you can promote the use of safe and far more effective (unregistered) alternatives. We are all waiting.

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten