THE DAY THE DOCTORS FINALLY READ TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILES OF PESTICIDES

(a dream)

By Maxina Ventura, founder and Chronic Effects Researcher,

East Bay Pesticide Alert, also known as Don’t Spray California

East Bay Pesticide Alert

Prior to reading the OEHHA report concluding that all the people sickened in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties by the spraying of pesticides as part of the Light Brown Apple Moth program were wrong, that the obvious was not so, I gleaned a lot of knowledge of what was to come merely by reading through the list of contributors and reviewers. To wit: Contributors included Dr. Ting from the OEHHA, whom many of us heard in person at the Berkeley City Council meeting 2/24/08 at which CDFA was trying to pass off this newest state pesticides program as necessary, benign and even “environmentally friendly”. First we heard Secretary of Agriculture Kawamura describe the smallest particles of the plastic capsules surrounding the pesticides used in aerial spraying in this program as 10 microns and not inhalable. The EPA would beg to differ (http://es.epa.gov/ncer/science/pm/). So would Robert Lieber, RN, and Mayor of Albany, who was triage nurse at a toxic spill of Chevron’s and has provided emergency care after many toxic releases.

Perhaps Mr. Kawamura has special powers, or a built-in air purifier to keep the stuff out. But no matter! Dr. Ting of OEHHA was there to reassure us all as he said, “If inhaled most of them, if not all, should be trapped or deposited in the upper respiratory region and will be coughed out or through the mucociliary system and then maybe ingested. Particles of this size is (sic) not likely to reach the deep lung region.”

As a woman who developed asthma living in wine country, a toxic pesticide hell overall (though ironically with some of the grooviest, most soil-loving, dedicated organic and biodynamic farmers anywhere, mixed in between the toxics), when I heard Dr. Ting make that statement I was shocked, yet amused. I imagined starting a new trend; instead of laughing yoga for health, we could line up people on the beaches of Santa Cruz and Monterey, and if the spraying is indeed done in the Bay Area, at Ocean Beach and around the Bay, and do coughing yoga exercises, to cough it all out. Would we have to get registered as pesticide applicators?

Then there was Dr. Kreutzer from CDFA, another contributor to this report. When Mayor Bates asked this doctor if he’d want his parents or kids exposed to the stuff, this guy hmm’d and haw’d so the Mayor asked again. More hmm’ing and haw’ing and shifting in his seat, so the mayor demanded a third time saying, “Just a yes or no answer. Would you want your parents or kids exposed to this stuff?” to which Dr. Kreutzer meekly replied that he wouldn’t want it, but he’d accept it. My daughter then responded, “He sure doesn’t care much about his family, does he?”

Yes, my daughter is a rocket scientist, and we have a rocket for sale at a good price this week. Wanna buy it?

But then we come to my personal favorite, Louise Mehler, a staff scientist for DPR, the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation. Oh, many memories of Ms. Mehler from a decade ago when I was working with Sonoma Pesticide Alert and, along with West County Californians for Alternatives to Toxics we did informal health surveying. While we saw rampant cancer, particularly horrifying in the numbers of kids with cancers, living with, and dead of, we also saw other health problem clusters and many chronic health problems consistent with pesticide poisonings. In the Sonoma Valley, for instance, we discovered 3 significant cancer clusters as well as a Lou Gehrig’s and Parkinson’s cluster, at least one thyroid problem cluster, and severe animal and wildlife problems.

We started contacting every agency you’d think might be there to gather such information and you’d hope would be there to help stop whatever action was causing problems. My older son, also a rocket scientist, at 4 suggested that we should be locking the neighbor grower in his barn so that he couldn’t spray us anymore. His alternative idea was that we could fill up the tractor pesticide tank with water so that Dale would think he was spraying pesticides but would only be spraying water. It was a good theory, but I had to break it to my son that, the well water would be contaminated with pesticides Dale had used before so we’d still be getting sprayed with pesticides.

Okay, so he was only a junior rocket scientist at that point. Still, that rocket is for sale…..

Back to those agencies. We’ll let’s see… there was the Agriculture Department; there were hospital administrations; individual doctors such as Oncologists and Dermatologists, ENT doctors and ER doctors and nurses; there was Public Health; Environmental Health; the Air Resources Board; Water agencies; Fish and Game; I’m sure I’m leaving out some, and then there was DPR, the Department of Pesticide Regulation with its stated mission including, “to protect human health and the environment.” So I was on the horn with Louise Mehler, a staff scientist, telling her about what we had found in our surveying and calling for an epidemiological study to be done of Sonoma, or of Sonoma and Napa Counties.

First she said that an epidemiological study could not be done, even of both Sonoma and Napa counties combined, that there wouldn’t be enough people to be considered a good sample, which I knew was wrong and told her so. Only weeks before I had attended a daylong workshop sponsored by Tri-Valley CAREs, watchdog organization around the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs, and we were addressed by a professor from the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, from their renowned Department of Epidemiology. This professor had outlined the many ways that sampling can be done in relatively small populations to perform a legitimate epidemiological study. Ms. Mehler in response to that said that she knew that DPR would never come up with the funding for it anyway.

She said they were unaware of any health problems associated with pesticides in wine country. I told her that we were happy to share our findings with DPR and that this, indeed, was why I had contacted DPR when we had found no other agency willing to be involved in such a study. So I asked her how DPR collects information about pesticide poisonings. She said they get their information from OSHA (that would be the Occupational Health and Safety Administration… think an industrial hygienist getting called out to a mill when a hand is cut off, or when someone falls into a vat of pesticides). So I reminded her that every day in my neighborhood I was witnessing undocumented workers in the fields (and by the way, being cropdusted and tractor sprayed while working in the fields, with in fact no form of protection at all, as flimsy as even the white suits, masks and gloves have proven). She sounded a bit meek as she acknowledged that perhaps DPR wouldn’t be getting a heck of a lot of paper action off of undocumented workers. But no matter. There were the rest of us not working in the fields. Were we counted? Apparently not either. Well, at least there was some sort of equality on the ground, as they say.

My experiences were of years trying to get my kids’ and my health problems documented as pesticide-related, as my neighbor, Ben, had tried to do for years before this wonderful man, an artist, home gardener and lover of life died at 47 of a heart attack. We both had heart arrhythmias in Sonoma. Mine stopped when I got out. His took his life soon after he got out.

Doctors could never say what caused the problems, but they were always 100% clear it couldn’t be pesticides. There was the particularly-dedicated young dermatologist who, between appointments had actually read through the articles I had given him about pesticides and childhood cancers; the stack of pesticide use reports I had collected from the Ag. Dept. about my neighbor growers’ usage; and the toxicological profiles to accompany those, with many citings from governmental studies. He said it all was fascinating, and further, he had a good friend who lived right in our neighborhood suffering for years with similar serious rashes and he’d always wondered what caused them. So I said, “Well, there. See? All consistent with what you’ve read. It’s the common denominator for us.” His response? “No, it couldn’t be pesticides.” End of story. For him.

Then there was a later doctor who watched my son a number of times having chemical reactions in toxic Kaiser offices. I would explain to him what was happening; he figured my son was just a brat. So all these kids in schools across the country are being labeled as brats when they are experiencing chemical poisoning because they are sensitized to petrochemically-derived products. They’re near someone wearing clothes dried with fabric softener sheets and they go haywire, or they walk into a classroom whose floors were mopped with a toxic product and they start banging into things, or people. They get sent to detention, they are put on a fast track to academic loss, and they are thrown away by our society.

Does this report by OEHHA tell us anything worthwhile? I’d say yes, in that it further clarifies for what this agency and those contributing to, and reviewing for this agency stand. For whichever reasons, perhaps quite personal to some, these people are supporting chemical companies and not our health. It is interesting to remember that these individuals are at risk, too, but perhaps they think that as they are such friends to the chemical companies, the chemicals will just pass them by, that they are, somehow, immune to the afteraffects of toxic pesticide use by any delivery, whether by permethrins on utility poles and trees, toxic chemical twist ties and traps in trees and on fences, ground spraying of toxics or that aerial spraying that already occurred in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, which caused so much dishealth that many people have fled the areas for good. One woman took her daughter and fled to Vermont where, she pointed out, it is snowing so much of the year that at least at those times she knows they won’t have to worry about pesticide spraying. Another moved to New Mexico, many have relocated to other counties, two of them to Sonoma County, one of them sickened by what she’s encountered now in Sonoma, and she’s not even right by the vineyards. Many are planning to flee to refugee camps (yes, this is what they are calling them) if more spraying is done.

The group with which I work, East Bay Pesticide Alert, also known as Don’t Spray California (www.dontspraycalifornia.org) has the toxicology of the state’s many methods up on our site on the LBAM page. Read up. Decide for yourself.

People are still sick after all the sprayings in Monterey and Santa Cruz and this is a repeat-spray program.

People are mortified of more, so much so that they are having another Nonviolence Training in Santa Cruz Saturday, April 19th, 11-5, to prepare themselves for the possibility of risking arrest (you can do this, too… go to our site). It’s gotten to that after people have tried every avenue imaginable. But when the governor has been paid $144,600 by the maker of the pesticide, and the people on the state Ag. Committee have been paid thousands by the same maker, is it any wonder that the state has decided, without consulting the doctors who treated people harmed by the spraying that, it’s all one big coincidence? All these ill people were just having a bad day. All that red urine, all the brand new cases of asthma, the post-menopausal women menstruating again, and previously healthy young women bleeding for two weeks straight, the baby who almost died of respiratory arrest. All a coincidence.

Look, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, but I have three of them living right here with me. You can consult with them if you need more information.

Meanwhile, go to our website and see for yourself. By all means, don’t believe me. I’m just one of those damned environmentalists. So read up on what entomologists and botanists have to say. And listen to the organic farmers who say, “It’s just another bug.” Listen to the nurses who say this could be deadly. Listen to the East Bay Regional Park District union demanding that CDFA and USDA oppose this whole pesticides program, and listen to the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission recommending that the Berkeley City Council oppose the whole toxics program, not only the aerial spray portion of it.

It will be a happy day when USDA and CDFA (and mosquito abatement and vector control departments) have to do bake sales to come up with money they want to use on pesticides programs. Make them work for it, and see if people support their toxic plans. Hardly a chance!

Maxina Ventura

East Bay Pesticide Alert / Don’t Spray California 4/12/08

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