Steve Tvedten of Get Set, Inc.'s email to Lyndon Hawkins of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation citing additional study of Weed killer in rain in Europe.

Questions have been asked of the California Department of Pesticide Control since Fontana Unified School District declined to consider a pesticide free IPM program because of the Department of Agriculture's opinion about only utilizing registered pesticides to eliminate pests.  The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has remained silent and not responded to these issues:

Subject     More pesticide poisons found in the rain
       Date   Thu, 08 Apr 1999 08:56:32 -0400
       From;     Rosalind Tvedten <stvedten@earthlink.net>
 Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
         To:      Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>

Swiss Study Says It's Raining Pesticide Poisons in Europe - Lyndon, have you checked the rain in California recently?

FRED PEARCE and DEBORA MACKENZIE c. c.1999 New Scientist

Rain is not what it used to be. A new study reveals that much of the  precipitation in Europe contains such high levels of dissolved pesticides that it would be illegal to supply it as drinking water.

Studies in Switzerland have found that rain is laced with toxic levels of atrazine, alachlor and other commonly used crop sprays. ``Drinking water standards are regularly exceeded in rain,'' says Stephan Muller, a chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Dbendorf. The chemicals appear to have evaporated from fields and become part of the clouds.

Both the European Union and Switzerland have set a limit of 100 nanograms for any particular pesticide in a liter of drinking water. But, especially in the first minutes of a heavy storm, rain can contain much more than that.

In a study to be published by Muller and his colleague Thomas Bucheli in Analytical Chemistry this summer, one sample of rainwater contained almost 4,000 nanograms per liter of 2,4-dinitrophenol, a widely used pesticide. Previously, the authors had shown that in rain samples taken from 41 storms, nine contained more than 100 nanograms of atrazine per liter, one of them around 900 nanograms.

In the latest study, the highest concentrations of pesticides turned up in the first rain after a long dry spell, particularly when local fields had recently been sprayed. Until now, scientists had assumed that the pesticides only infiltrated groundwater directly from fields.

Muller warns that the growing practice of using rainwater that falls onto roofs to recharge underground water may be adding to the danger. This water often contains dissolved herbicides that had been added to roofing materials, such as bitumen sheets, to prevent vegetation growing. He suggests that the first flush of rains should be diverted into sewers to minimise the pollution of drinking water, which is not usually treated to remove these herbicides and pesticides.

Meanwhile, Swedish researchers have linked pesticides to one of the most rapidly increasing cancers in the Western world. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has risen by 73 per cent in the US since 1973, is probably caused by several commonly used crop sprays, say the scientists.

Lennart Hardell of Orebro Medical Center and Mikael Eriksson of Lund University Hospital found Swedish sufferers of the disease were 2-to-7 times more likely to have been exposed to MCPA, a widely used weedkiller, than healthy people.

MCPA, which is used on grain crops, is sold as Target by the Swiss firm Novartis. In addition, patients were 3-to-7 times more likely to have been exposed to a range of fungicides, an association not previously reported.

The patients were also 2-to-3 times more likely to have had contact with glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide in Sweden. Use of this chemical, sold as Round-Up by the US firm Monsanto, is expected to rocket with the introduction of crops, such as Roundup-Ready soya beans, that are genetically modified to resist glyphosate. The researchers suggest that the chemicals have suppressed the patients' immunity, allowing viruses such as Epstein-Barr to trigger cancer.

(This article is excerpted from New Scientist, a weekly science and technology magazine based in London. The New Scientist Web site is at http://www.newscientist.com.)

(Distributed by New York Times Syndicate)

Lyndon, the very rain is full of "registered" pesticide poisons - if these poisons actually "controlled" pests, there would be no pests wherever the rain falls.  It is obvious to me and many others the pests are "resistant" to your "registered" poisons, but we are not!  When will it [in your opinion] be legal in California to wash your can?