EPA Will Test Pesticide Hormone Side Effects Next Year
Subject: EPA Will Test Pesticide Hormone Side Effects Next Year..........Yada, Yada, Yada
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:04:16 -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
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read the following article:
http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/11/pesticides.htm
EPA Will Test Pesticide Hormone Side Effects Next Year The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has requested $20.3 million for fiscal year 2002 to screen, test, and conduct research on endocrine disrupting chemicals, widespread synthetic compounds that disrupt the functioning of hormone systems. Due to the serious hazard endocrine disruptors pose to wildlife and humans, Congress required EPA in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 to establish a screening and testing program for these chemicals. Although EPA has made some progress, no validated screens and tests have been put in place.
Exposure to endocrine disruptors is associated with reproductive, neurological, and behavioral problems. These chemicals can disrupt normal cellular communication, limit the production of chemical messengers and interfere with development of organs, the immune and nervous systems, reproductive function, and growth processes as well as increasing the incidence of specific diseases (e.g., childhood diabetes, childhoodcancer, and thyroid diseases).
Many ("registered") pesticides are endocrine disrupting chemicals including: aldicarb atrazine endosulfan lindane (see the PANNA pesticide database for more information: http://pesticideinfo.org).
Scientific studies have found endocrine disruption in birds, fish, shellfish, mammals, alligators, and turtles. High concentrations of suspect chemicals have been found in whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and polar bears. Killer whales in the Pacific Northwest contain some of the highest concentrations of PCBs (an endocrine disruptor) found in wildlife.
Bald eagles that nest along the shores of the Great Lakes and eat food contaminated with endocrine disrupting chemicals are experiencing continued reproductive problems. Canadian scientists have linked spraying of endocrine disrupting pesticides with declines in Atlantic salmon populations.
Effects on wildlife include brain damage, premature deaths, reproductive problems, abnormal development of the reproductive tract, both subtle and gross birth defects, thyroid dysfunction, severely weakened immune systems, cancers, and behavioral changes.
Humans Are Also At Risk
There is now a growing collection of studies revealing that some of these chemicals can affect children's ability to learn, to socially integrate, to fend off disease, and to reproduce. In most instances, there is no way to answer without great uncertainty how endocrine disruptors are affecting people, because there is no unexposed population to study as a control group and because scientists do not for ethical reasons conduct experiments on people.
Nevertheless, there is disturbing evidence from studies in Michigan and New York that children whose mothers were exposed to PCBs from contaminated fish or other sources exhibit short-term memory and behavioral problems.
As the children have grown, there has been a consistent correlation between their developmental problems and the PCBs (from fish or other sources) in their mothers while they were in the womb.
Hormones influence development even at extremely low doses: one-tenth of a trillionth of a gram. Low doses of endocrine disruptors have been found to cause disturbing and irreversible effects in male and female laboratory mice exposed prenatally to endocrine disruptors.
Unfortunately, since we only know the endocrine disruption effects of a tiny fraction of the thousands of synthetic chemicals released into our environment, research and testing of these chemicals is urgently needed. The U.S. Congress will soon make a decision regarding the EPA's funding request for vitally important programs to screen, test, and conduct research on endocrine disruptors.
What You Can Do
To support further action on these hazardous chemicals, contact members of Congress as soon as possible and urge them to approve EPA's funding request for screening, testing, and conducting research on endocrine disrupting chemicals.
How to reach members of Congress: Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, look up your Senator on the U.S. Senate Web site at http://www.senate.gov or look up your Representative on the U.S. House of Representatives website at http://www.house.gov.
To send a free email message urging congressional representatives to support EPA's budget request for its endocrine disruptor programs go to http://takeaction.worldwildlife.org.
Garden State EnviroNews June 27, 2001
Well Mr. Helliker, just some more evidence that your "registered" POISONS are harming more than the pests they supposedly are "controlling", and yet more proof that your "registered" POISONS have not been adequately tested. Why do you wait until the entire world is CONTAMINATED with your "registered" POISONS before you even begin to "study" their dangerous side-effects? But, I forget, you have quite a history of ignoring the real dangers your "registered" POISONS create for those who are routinely exposed to them; as Rachel Carson wrote in "Silent Spring", in 1962: "In England [in 1951]...the Ministry of Agriculture considered it necessary to give warning of the hazard of going into the arsenic-sprayed fields, but the warning was not understood by the cattle (nor, we assume, by the wild animals and birds) and reports of cattle poisoned by the arsenic sprays came with monotonous regularity. When death also came to a farmer's wife through arsenic-contaminated water, one of the major English chemical companies (in 1959) stopped production of arsenical sprays and called in supplies already in the hands of dealers, and shortly thereafter the Ministry of Agriculture announced that because of high risks to people and cattle restrictions on the use of arsenites would be imposed. In 1961, the Australian government announced a similar ban. No such restrictions impede the use of these poisons in the United States, however." I would like to note that we STILL have your "registered" arsenic (POISON) in our pressure treated wood for use in our children's playgrounds! Quite an alarming history of "regulation" don't you think? 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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