Steve Tvedten of Get Set, Inc.'s email to Lyndon Hawkins of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation .

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 that are pointing out ever increasing scientific and medical information on the damages done by pesticides:

Dear Lyndon, as you well know most of the food we eat is already tainted/contaminated with your"registered" pesticide poisons.  These toxins are especially concentrated in the meats and dairy products we eat, and we bioaccumulate them in our bodies.  Most "registered" pesticide poisons (including insecticides and herbicides) and many other chemicals we are exposed to from the time we are in our Mother's womb, are environmental estrogens or xenoestrogens - potent estrogen-like chemicals that can wreak havoc in our bodies.  The rising incidence of homosexuality, infertility, female problems like fibroids and endrometriosis, and reproductive cancers in both men and women have all been attributed to the effects of these man-made estrogens.

Estrogens promote the growth of tissues in our bodies.  Think of environmental estrogens as estrogens with an attitude - a much more potent growth-promoting effect than natural estrogens.  When we are overloaded with environmental estrogens, tissues grow out of control and cancer takes hold.

It's thought that our lifelong exposure to xenoestrogens increases the number of estrogen receptors in our bodies - especially in hormone-sensitive tissues like the male prostrate.  When there are more receptors for estrogen, any estrogen that comes along can hook onto them and become active, and this increases the risk of cancerous growth.

The August, 1999 issue of Farm Chemicals had an editorial comment on page 6 by James Sulecki:  "Nothing is likely to test dealerships' mettle more in the next few years than the current cost/price squeeze your grower-customers are in.  In times of good prices and high clover, recommend a slightly amped-up fertility program or another herbicide pass and you're likely to get a shrug of the shoulders and a permission-giving wave of the hand.

Not so in a spring as ugly as this one, when fertilizer and chemical usage across the country was estimated to be down a nasty 20%.  Among typically weed-hating farmers to whom cleanliness is practically next to godliness, farming ugly - allowing some weed to flourish while still pulling off a decent-yielding crop - has almost become a badge of honor.

When it comes to imput expenditures, how low can farmers go?  There's a movement afoot in the Cotton Belt, where the market is really bad, to whack the current Mississippi Delta average of around 50¢ necessary to produce a pound of cotton down to 35¢.  One influential grower now employs only one farmhand per 1000 acres."  The article continued, but I would like to add my own comments here - putting the nation's farmers between the poison "industry's" claims and the "regulators'" demands is like being placed between the dog and the fire hydrant.  You have almost single-handedly destroyed/ wiped out/bankrupted our nation's farmers.  Yet, none of you is actually promoting or even allowing the use of safer, more effective and more productive "alternatives" to your dangerous "registered" poisons!

It would seem to me that the best course of action for all humanity, including our farmers, would be to simply ban/stop using these terrible and useless "registered" toxins - especially when there are more effective, less expensive and far safer solutions.  But, that is up to you Mr. Hawkins - you must decide whether you are part of the pollution or part of the solution.  When will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to wash your can (and thus to kill the flies and maggots) with soap and water in California?

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten.