Pesticide registration no guarantee of safety

Subject: Pesticide registration no guarantee of safety
Date:    Fri, 31 May 2002 08:46:53 -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

Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article dated: Thursday, May 30, 2002 from the Montreal Gazette entitled: Pesticide registration no guarantee of safety.

In reading Joe Schwarcz's assessment of golfers overreacting to spraying of pesticides (Weekender, May 25, "Pesticides: weeding out the myths"), I couldn't help but wonder. For golfers to overreact would imply a reasonable amount of knowledge on their part of the potential consequences and ramifications stemming from low-level exposures to man-made chemicals. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case, as most people - and way too many physicians - are still largely unaware of the true impact of pesticides - not so much of the pesticides themselves but of the result of all of them mixed up together with other products in our communities and very own backyards.

I was particularly concerned by the article's presumptions on the Pest Management Regulatory Agency governed by Health Canada. Pesticide registration, far from being a guarantee of safety, is merely an acknowledgement that a product works. If a product kills dandelions as it says it does, it is registered, provided that it does not seem to pose an unacceptable risk.

Moreover, any pre-market testing is done by the manufacturer, as the government has cut funding to its own labs. Today, these tests are considered obsolete and incomplete, as they fail to be based on current observations that repeated low-level exposures to chemicals and, in large part, pesticides have taken a toll on the health and the metabolic and neurological functions of wildlife and human populations.

A recent auditor-general's report on the environment stated that only 70 of the 7,000 pesticides currently used in Canada have been re-evaluated since 1990. While common sense says authorities should have proof that a product is safe before they decide to allow it on the market, they are actually working the other way around - considering a product safe until there is absolute proof that it is harmful.

When it comes to examining the documented links between what children are exposed to in their everyday life and their current state of health, there is no question that we should be relying on alternative solutions to pesticides rather than insisting on their alleged benefits.

After seeing what some 40 years of widespread pesticide use has done to our environment and considering all limits and contingencies of what science has to offer, the absence of scientific proof does not and should not in any way interfere with our capacity to opt for precaution and make enlightened decisions based on sound real-life observations.

Well Mr. Helliker, there can be no alternatives to your "registered" POISONS, until you "legally" allow their use.

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