Subject: Victims of Anvil Spray Had No Place to Hide----------
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 16:35:50 -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
cc: Carol Browner browner.carol@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an
article from the Daily News, dated 1/26/2001 and entitled: Victims of Anvil
Spray Had No Place to Hide by Juan Gonzalez.
On the night of Sept. 11, a work crew from the city
Department of Transportation was
spray-painting new double-yellow lines along the middle of 53rd St. near
Flatlands Ave. in Brooklyn.
Around 11 p.m., one of the spray nozzles on the painting
vehicle became clogged, so crew member Ricardo Rosa, who was directing
traffic, walked over to clear it.
As he finished, he noticed a police car approaching
slowly. Its top lights were flashing, and a pickup truck was trailing behind.
He realized too late that the second vehicle was a
mosquito-spray truck.
"Before I could even stop them, they passed right by
and sprayed us," Rosa said. "The cops never said a thing on their
bullhorn."
The men in the crew shrugged and kept painting stripes.
Because they were headed in the same direction as the truck, they drove into
foul clouds of Anvil mist for several blocks.
The next day, Rosa, who is 39 and physically trim and
loves to work out, went to play his weekly round of paddleball.
"I noticed I was short of breath," he said.
"All my stamina was gone. After a couple of games, I had to quit."
The problem persisted, so Rosa visited his primary-care
doctor in early October and was shocked to learn he had asthma.
"I'd never had asthma before," he said. "I
don't even smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol."
All this made him suspicious about the spray used against
the West Nile virus. So he went to Mount Sinai Medical Center's Irving J.
Selikoff Occupational Health Clinical Center.
"Occupational asthma" caused by exposure to the
pesticide Anvil, the doctors concluded after analyzing results of the
pulmonary function and stress tests.
They recommended that he be approved for a partial
disability by the state Workers' Compensation Board.
Rosa, who has been employed at DOT for 10 years, now
carries two asthma sprays. He has kept working on the street crews but says:
"I can't work as hard as I used to."
Most people would be surprised that a one-time
exposure to a pesticide can bring on chronic asthma.
But it doesn't surprise Dr. Irwin Berlin, chief of
pulmonary medicine at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J.
Several of the ingredients that help make Anvil
effective are "skin and lung allergens and can cause respiratory
reactions," Berlin said.
The pesticide, in effect, can trigger asthma in people
who may be predisposed to the
disease, said Dr. Mitchell Rubin, assistant director of
medicine at Metropolitan Hospital and an expert in childhood asthma.
As this column reported Wednesday, at least six men who
worked in the city's Anvil spraying campaign last summer say they've been
plagued by ailments that include fatigue, severe headaches, difficulty
breathing, loss of hair, nausea and even sexual dysfunction.
The men charge Clarke Environmental Mosquito Management,
the city contractor that hired them, didn't train them in how to spray the
pesticide and failed to protect them.
The company says it followed state and federal
requirements in the training and supervision of its crews.
Meanwhile, state officials have confirmed investigating
at least 14 cases statewide of people who reported poisoning from exposure to
pesticides, mostly Anvil. That also happens to be the number of people who got
sick from West Nile virus last year.
While safety officials and the medical experts continue
to investigate these very real concerns, we have Mayor Giuliani casually
dismissing the whole matter.
"Anvil is very safe," Giuliani said Wednesday.
"Obviously, it's not safe if you go right up next to it and breathe it
in. ..."
Ricardo Rosa, like many people in this city, didn't have
much choice in the matter.
Original Publication Date: 1/26/01
Well Mr. Helliker, what do you say to the people who
are permanently harmed by even one exposure to your "registered' POISONS?
Don't breathe it in? When
will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to use safe and far more
effective (unregistered) alternatives to actually control pest problems?
Respectfully, Stephen
L. Tvedten
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