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.

image of Mike Lynberg

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