Pesticide Wars: The Solution
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Subject: Pesticide Wars: The Solution
Date:
Thu, 14 Feb 2002 08:53:43 -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: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker,
I thought you might like to read the following article:
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5066
Pesticide Wars: The Solution Non-toxic Alternatives Exist
-- If Public Demands Them
Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing
in agriculture, health and the environment.
Public officials have warned that the recent emergence of
West Nile Virus (WNV) in this country is a harbinger of noxious pests and
infectious diseases to come. This caveat sometimes carries another warning: that
people better get used to accommodating such outbreaks and the pesticides
routinely used to combat them.
Mosquitos transmit
West Nile
, and when human cases were first discovered in
New York City
in August 1999, the first response was an aggressive aerial spraying campaign
of the insecticide malathion over the Big Apple, surrounding communities, and
their 10 million-plus residents.
West Nile
reappeared the last two summers and spread via migrating infected birds from
Canada
to
Florida
.
New York City
resumed spraying, and most other communities that found the virus followed
suit.
Gauging the health and environmental consequences of aerial
spraying is difficult, because pesticide use is already so pervasive, says
Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a scientist with Consumers Union. Though agriculture
accounts for about 75 percent of all pesticides used in the
United States
, they are also commonly applied on lawns and golf courses, in homes, gardens,
parks, schools, hospitals, and other public and commercial buildings. But we
dont know the cumulative effects of more than 50 years of pesticide use, exactly
what we are being exposed to, or even how much is being released into the
environment. Comprehensive data simply is not collected, Hansen says.
Its a case of dont look, dont see.
Pesticide-related health complaints tend to be similar, and
thousands have been filed by citizens subjected to aerial spraying of
insecticides in
California
,
Florida
and now
New York
. But they are considered anecdotal, because they are not monitored
systematically.
Jay Feldman, executive director of the Washington-based
pesticides watchdog group, Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the
Misuse of Pesticides is only aware of one attempt by
U.S.
public health officials to track health complaints associated with aerial
spraying. Following a spraying campaign against the Mediterranean fruit fly in
1998 over residential areas in
Florida
, state epidemiologist Dr. Omar Shafey found 123 cases of acute
pesticide-related illness. Shafey was fired after he refused to alter a report
on his findings. The Florida Department of Health released the final report in
January 2000 and concluded that the spraying was not a public health threat.
Biologically-based Integrated Pest Management now offers
much more effective and less toxic methods of pest and disease control, says
pest management expert, Chuck Benbrook. In the 1996 Consumers Union report, Pest
Management at the Crossroads, Benbrook writes that two to five pesticide
applications are now needed to do what one application accomplished in the early
1970s. More than 500 insect species have developed resistance to insecticides,
while the chemicals have decimated populations of natural enemies that would
otherwise have helped keep the target pests in check.
Though the lions share of research funding is going to
biotechnology and more chemical approaches to pest management, Benbrook says the
scientific literature and field research make it abundantly clear that IPM
techniques, such as the use of a pests natural enemies or agents that regulate
an insects growth, work best. Were in kind of a golden era of safer biopesticide
alternatives that are working well, are affordable, and dont involve genetic
engineering, he said. These techniques also essentially eliminate the risks of
chemical pest control to humans and non-target organisms, he adds.
Biopesticides require more skill and attention to the
biology of the target pest than broad-spectrum chemicals, and the infrastructure
-- trained IPM personnel and equipment -- is not yet in place to handle as large
an outbreak as the West Nile Virus. However, Benbrook says that would change if
demand increased. And that will only happen if the public insists.
Published:
Jan 29 2002
Related Articles:
features Pesticide
Wars When Agriculture and Public Health Collide by Karen Charman http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5064
features Collateral
Damage In The Pesticide Wars The Troubling Story of Dr. Omar Shafey by Karen
Charman http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4691
Well Mr. Helliker, I know of
literally thousands of safe and far more effective (unregistered) alternatives
that actually control even resistant pest problems.
The real problem is that you will not allow the use of anything but your
own "registered" POISONS to "control" pest problems;
therefore there will never be any real solution to the dangerous pesticide wars.
Respectfully,
Stephen L. Tvedten
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