Mike Lynberg Tells OEHHA To Step Down And Apologize in LBAM Spray Health Disaster
Monday 21 Apr 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area
The following letter to Joan Denton and her OEHHA colleagues is published with Mike Lynberg’s permission. Vegan Reader joins Mr. Lynberg in his condemnation of OEHHA’s dangerous negligence and supports his demands that this agency call for a halt to the spraying, step down and apologize for neglecting their duty to protect public health.
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Joan, Mary-Ann and Mark:
As you know, many citizens and our elected representatives have been highly critical of the two cursory reports you have issued so far on the hundreds of illnesses that followed aerial spraying of California cities by the USDA and CDFA late last year.
Rather than doing a thorough study of the people who got sick, you threw out 90 percent of the complaints and then did a statistical analysis of those that remained. You never met with a single victim or doctor. You made pie charts and graphs, cited studies that confirmed your bias, and then made reckless “no link” statements in the press.
But our criticism has been relatively mild compared to that of Dr. Larry Rose, former Senior Public Medical Officer for Cal-OSHA and part of the UCSF Occupational/Environmental Medicine Department. He calls your lack of deep, professional involvement in this public health crisis “irresponsible and criminally negligent”
Dr. Rose’s statements are directed at all of you, but Mark, as you know, I pleaded with you and Kevin Reilly, then Deputy Director of CDPH, to get CDPH involved even before the spraying occurred. You failed to do so. And Joan, I asked you to meet with the people who got sick and to have “feet on the street” in order to do a thorough investigation, and you failed to do so.
Dr. Rose states that a questionnaire should now be administered to all California citizens impacted by the aerial spraying, and I agree. That would help establish that thousands of people were likely harmed. But I will take his call to action one step further:
1. I call on your agencies immediately call a halt to further aerial spraying by issuing a statement that there are still too many unknowns and that there is substantial evidence that millions of people are at risk.
2. I call on your agencies to step down from further investigating this crisis because the public has lost all confidence in your ability to carry out any kind of unbiased, in-depth look at the injury and harm already caused by the USDA’s and CDFA’s misguided campaign. Further studies need to be carried out by a team of independent experts, perhaps from the UC system, selected and approved by our elected representatives.
3. I call on each of you to issue a formal apology to the people of this state. You have added insult to injury by not taking their illness complaints seriously. You have failed the citizens in this state in a number of very important ways, as described by Dr. Rose in the attached alert. I don’t know if this is criminal negligence, but I do know that it is morally and ethically reprehensible. The citizens of this state deserve better, including the parents of children who were made very sick by the aerial spraying that you’ve failed to prevent.
Do the right thing: Call a halt to further spraying. Issue an apology. Step back from this issue and hand it off to a reliable third party focused on public health and selected by our government representatives.
Sincerely,
Mike Lynberg
Monday 21 Apr 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area |
All of us need to thank Mike for his tireless efforts to move an outdated government bureaucracy and its incompetent employees in the right moral, ethical, and legal direction. It is a very sad commentary when public officials turn their backs on the very public they were hired to protect.
I so agree, BPM.
Mike has truly acted with bravery and dogged determination in this, and all of us thank him.
Mim
Mike - Thank you for standing up and speaking. It makes the rest of us stronger.
This comment prompted my response below:
wrote:
“Last night I watched the video of the sf animal welfare groups with dowell. I just went to utube and searched for dowell and lbam and there it was. anyway…there was a guy talking about either white or yellow
viscous stuff all over the place after the spray. I didn’t know you were visibly slimed. Did you folks in the spray area see this stuff?”
MY COMMENT TO BEING VISIBLY SLIMED WERE:
Hi,
There were different reactions from the spray. It seemed to depend
on many things. We have different terrain, some flat areas with no
very many trees, to forested thick hilly areas, which may or may not
have something to do with how the crop planes sprayed us. It seems
those in the TREE area - got double whammy - because the dripping off
the tree to one’s roof or yard could be heard onto the skylights or
rooftops. It was during our Indian Summer, NO FOG, sort of like the
weather we are having this week. Yes, in Monterey we do get nights of
Blue skies and heat waves - especially during August - September.
There was “foaming” when watering the next day. Sticky substances
on windshields. Many people saw reactions after the spray - from red
spots in their ponds, some saw a foam ball roll down their street -
from what looks like a “bad spray” gone wrong from the plane. Some
areas were accidently sprayed that were not on the list, and some on
the wrong day - so people were outside.
So - yes, as you call it, we were visibly slimed.
We were told it was only a safe pheromone and was not a
pesticide. But, we were told the airplanes would NOT go over the
football games, or waited until the game was over. We were told to
close all our windows, and stay indoors from 8pm to 5 am. This is a
bit hard, when we were in the middle of a heat wave and 90% of the
people and stores do not own air conditioning and usually just sleep
with the windows open.
We had kids running home from sports practice, mom’s calling them
on their cell phones that the planes were starting earlier than they
thought. Tourists walking the bike path, unknowingly. Businesses that
stay open 24 hours at gas stations, hotels, and late night movies and
cafes.
The planes were small like crop planes, and seemed closer than 500
feet above our rooftops. It almost seemed like the planes would crash
into our roofs. We were not use to small airplanes above our houses.
They seemed to be going in straight lines, then turning around and
coming back, slightly over and aiming at one’s house, moving slowly,
loud engines, red or blue slow blinking lights … as slowly our house
was being completely covered in the spray, over again. Our front
yards, back gardens, places where our pets roam, where we take walks -
everything was drenched in this toxic pesticide cocktail - that sticks
to where it lands and sprays the toxin for 30 to 90 days continuously
in a FLUME TRAIL AIR of pesticide. Picture an invisible fog all
around you.
Many people for weeks did not know the synthentic pheromone was
this toxic cocktail of untested chemicals in the plastic capsule -
which seems just as toxic. People did not know their sore throats were
from the spray. We were still being told after the first spray, that
it was still safe. Yet, we had schools or parks washing down the
playground equipment, only later to find this was the worst thing to do.
Hosptials and physicans were not treating anyone for the spray. No
one at schools were keeping tract of illnesses. No one knew how to
help, since they didn’t know the ingredients, had no antidote or notice
from their government on what to do.
The only hope - was that the people starting working together. The
label on the pesticide bottle said it was toxic, said to wash in
water. It also said NOT to be sprayed over water. (That still has not
seemed to be discussed.) There are bodies of water in Monterey County,
small ponds, lakes, small rivers, and I know that in Santa Cruz county
you have many larger rivers and many more lakes.
You will also note on utube - the surfers talking about the red
tide.
So - yes, we in the spray area saw the stuff. We also smelled the
pesticide. Weeks after the spray, you could be driving through certain
areas and that distinct smell would hit you and one’s body would
immediately react. The tongue would swell, a metal taste, sudden
dryness in the mouth, throat, eyes and skin. Some would stay sicker
longer from this. Some would leave the area and feel better. People
that lived in Carmel Valley, but travel to work here in the day would
feel sick, until they went home - their “flu” would go away. (You see
some doctors were saying it was a new flu … a flu doesn’t disappear
each night!)
People called for help, before the first spray. We called for help
again, before the second spray. The people said, “NO to SPRAY”, but
USDA and CDFA refused to listen to us. They said over and over again
that it was a safe pheromone, they sent flyers, they met and bombarded
us with mistruths, over and over and hypotized our medical staff into
believing them.
Some parents were watching their children get sick or their pets.
Think - how terrible it is. It would be like watching your child
be dosed with raid spray, watching them get sick, and hearing and
knowing the same monster was going to dose your kid again, and you are
saying “no more”, but helplessly hearing that it was going to happen
again!
So, we not only saw the stuff, we smelled the stuff, and some waited
in terror as the second month came again. We had to dial the 800
number to find if we were next. Only to be told, it would be another
night … waiting … to get sprayed, with nothing we could do to stop
them. Some people left town, and it was delayed, and they came back
and got sprayed.
So, yeah - we saw the stuff. We threw up the stuff. We coughed up
the stuff. We smelled the stuff. We walked in the stuff. The stuff
continued to release slowly the pesticide from the plastic micro balls
for 30 to 90 days from wherever they landed.
Many people got skin irritations or infections. Some got hot
lungs, unable to breathe deeply or it would burn. A bit lethargic.
For some, these symptoms would go away if we left town or went to
the Pacific Ocean side of the water. For others, the symptoms stayed
with them and they had no relief.
Now we are learning there could be future problems with lung cancer,
thyroid, prostrate, and more from this untested pesticide that was
sprayed over large populations of people - in the USA.
hotchilipepper