Are you sitting down?

I hope you have a good, firm chair to sit in before you read what is undoubtedly the worst, most offensive article any news source has yet published on the LBAM public health crisis.

The honor of infamy goes to reporter Sarah Campbell of the Kenwood Press, and I warn you, reading the following news piece may cause your blood pressure to skyrocket dangerously high.

Here is the jaw-dropping Kenwood Press article

In addition to regurgitating the CDFA’s tired propaganda regarding the ‘threat’ of the light brown apple moth, Campbell gets wonderfully cute, summing up deadly chemicals being poured on human beings like this, “So, if you sense something’s a little different in the air this summer, don’t worry, it’s just the love.”

I would like this misguided reporter to have to stand up and read this article to the DeLay family, the Wilcox family, the Lynbergs, the Nagels and the hundreds of other Central Coast families who fell so terribly ill after being forced to inhale carcinogenic pesticides by the CDFA in 2007. I would like her to play it up for big laughs as Mrs. Wilcox turns quietly aside to give her little baby another dose of corticosteroids to keep him breathing.

And, I would like you, my valued readers, to join me in letting this news writer know what you think of her coverage after you’ve read the above piece.

Lies are one thing. They are easy to call ‘evil’ once you know what you’re hearing. But levity…in the face of 7 million people being force-fed deadly pesticides….I hardly know how to respond.

But I did try, and here is the letter I’ve just sent off to Ms. Campbell:

Dear Ms. Campbell,
I am writing in regards to your article on the subject of the light brown apple moth featured in this month’s edition of the Kenwood Press. I am running the web’s most active blog on this subject, and feel compelled to write to you personally, having read your coverage of this issue.

What you have done, Ms. Campbell, either due to a lack of information and research or for other reasons I can’t conceive of, is to tell the people of Sonoma County that if something is different in the air this summer, it’s love. In point of fact, if something is different in the air this summer it is toxic chemicals which will cause devastating harm to humans, wildlife, the watershed and soil.

To begin with, the substance the CDFA intends to spray is a registered pesticide, not an alternative to a pesticide as you have stated in your article. The 2 forms of Checkmate sprayed on the people of the Central Coast in 2007 are registered with the EPA as pesticides. The aerial pesticide consists of 3 extremely dangerous components: 1) the carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disrupting ‘inert’ ingredients, 2) the synthetic insect pheromone mimics which a growing body of evidence suggests causes alarming sexual aggression in large mammals including human beings and 3) the plastic microcapsules, more than half of which will be smaller than the American Lung Association’s designation of PM10 – a size of particulate matter which lodges deep in the human lung from which it cannot be expelled and causes disease and death.

My blog is frequented by many members of the hundreds and hundreds of families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying. One man’s baby went into cardiac arrest, his eyes rolled back into his head and he was rushed to an emergency hospital while having respiratory failure. This formerly-healthy baby is now being kept breathing by means of corticosteroids. Local school attendance in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area was cut in half during the spraying due to illness. Many of my women readers experienced bizarre reproductive health effects including menopausal women over the age of 65 recommencing menstruation. Dogs, cats, rabbits and honeybees died. The local people woke up to a world devoid of bird song after the enforced aerial spraying and over 600 sea birds washed up dead on the beaches. Imagine, no bird song. Some regions have seen no hummingbirds since the spraying last fall in their gardens. My readers and their friends and family were victims of an illegal and unconstitutional aerial assault. Some of them are still sick with respiratory problems, 10 months later.

One by one, UC scientists and independent physicians (not employed by the USDA or CDFA) have stepped forward to explain that exposure to the aerial spray will cause catastrophic damage to infants, children, expectant mothers, elders and any resident who is in poor health. The CDFA is planning to chronically expose 7 million people to a registered pesticide encapsulated in PM10 particulate matter. This will be happening 8 hours a night, up to 5 nights a month, 9 months out of the year for 5-10 years. And, because the pesticide is designed to break down over a 30-90 day period each time it is sprayed, the air and our bodies will never be free of it. We will be eating, drinking and breathing this toxic, carcinogenic pollution for the next decade. I’m hoping that at this point, you are starting to see how inappropriate your remarks about love being in the air seem to me and to anyone who is having their life turned upside down by this aerial assault on the public health.

In regards to the twist ties, again, your article strives to portray these materials as safe and necessary. In point of fact, over 30% of the chemicals in the twist ties are being kept a secret from the public, so there is no way for you or anyone else in Sonoma to know what you are being exposed to. What we know do know about the twist ties is this:

1) 33.48% of the ingredients in the twist ties are secret. They do not have to be disclosed to the public because of laws which protect trade secrets rather than public health.

2) The product is being listed as harmful if absorbed through skin and dangerous to the eyes. People exposed to the product are instructed to contact a poison control center and go to a doctor.

3) You are supposed to bring the container for the toxic twist ties with you to the doctor. You will not have the container if you are poisoned by LBAM twist ties.

4) Because 33.48% of the ingredients on the twist ties are secret, your doctor will have no idea what you were poisoned by.

5) The Material Safety Data Sheet created by the manufacturer says that this poison must not be applied to water or areas where water surface is present. In other words, you must not put it near creeks, ponds, coasts, reservoirs, rivers, or any other type of watershed. The sheet says do not contaminate water when disposing of this product. From this, we understand that Isomate-LBAM PLUS twist ties contaminate water.

6) This is an unregistered product that has been approved for use in California only. It has not gone through the normal battery of tests required of registered products.

The region which CDFA intends to blanket with these toxic materials not only includes schools and parks, but also thousands of people. Children will be surrounded by these dangerous poisons and will undoubtedly be touching them as they play in and around trees and bushes. Pets and wildlife are also going to be at risk of chemical damage from these twist ties. These are not harmless products, as you have portrayed them, and I cannot understate the disservice you have done to your community by falsely informing people of the safety of registered pesticides and toxic substances.

As for the light brown apple moth, your article is strangely silent on the fact that this moth has done and is expected to do zero damage to California’s agriculture and environment. You are totally incorrect in stating that California has no natural predators of this harmless bug. Birds, bats and bugs eat the light brown apple moth…I hope you will agree with me that Sonoma County has a tremendous amount of birds, bats and bugs. But, if we kill them off with pesticides we will be removing the very predators that do keep leafrollers in a good balance. As was discovered by a team of scientists who visited New Zealand to research the LBAM, so long as organophosphate pesticides aren’t being used and killing off the birds, bats and bugs, LBAM is no problem. Even CDFA admits it has done zero damage in California, despite the fact that it has been here from as little as 7 and as many as 50 years.

I urge you, Ms. Campbell, to do further research on this issue which is without question the most egregious California has faced in modern times. Do you really support a government that subjects its citizens to aerial spraying of pesticide on human beings without their consent? Do you really want to live in a country where this can happen?

31 cities have now passed strong resolutions vehemently opposing the bombardment of their communities with aerial pesticides. Mayors, senators, representatives, major media, independent medical experts and UC scientists are demanding that these misguided agencies uphold the California Constitution which protects our right to safety. We cannot be safe when we are being chronically exposed to deadly chemicals.

CDFA has now been found guilty by 2 superior courts of violating the California Environmental Quality Act in declaring their completely unfounded emergency. It was this phony declaration that enabled them to spray our neighbors on the Central Coast who then fell horribly ill. CDFA has been found guilty…they are lawbreakers, not people you should trust. To put it bluntly, they are liars.

Why would they lie to us? CDFA stands to receive billions of dollars in federal funding over the next decade if they are not stopped from spraying us. In order to keep the money coming in, they are totally willing to spray me, my family, you, your family, with carcinogenic pesticide.

What you have done, Ms. Campbell, is to reprint their totally unscientific hogwash about the ‘threat’ of this negligible bug that needs to be reclassified as a harmless insect. At best, the LBAM issue is a trade issue, as you will quickly discover with a bit of research. At worst, this is the most blatant human experiment to be undertaken by our government in its total history.

I am writing to you out of horrified concern, having read what you have just written for our community to read. I implore you to run corrections at the least of the misstatements you have authored regarding the chemicals being an alternative to pesticides, being safe, and the LBAM having no predators here. I urge you to correct the gross misstatement that Oakland, Marin, San Francisco and other cities have ‘elected’ to be aerially sprayed. To the contrary, all of the local governments are demanding that the spraying be halted, but are being told the pesticide will be enforced on them. We have been told ‘there is no vote’. We are being told we have no choice. I urge you correct what you wrote. And, I am praying you will do more than this. I am praying you will sit down with your editors and start truly researching what is happening here, and that you will print a truthful article in next month’s Kenwood Press.

When you are in the media, you are responsible for printing the facts…all of the facts. How will you feel if, when the twist ties go up, your neighborhood falls ill, children are being rushed to the ER, and you’ve got people asking you why you made light of what is, in fact, a terribly dangerous substance? How will the Kenwood Press staff feel when the planes start flying over the Bay Area and the vast population begins to fall ill, as happened on the Central Coast last year, and you have to face that you have covered this issue with a tongue-in-cheek reference to ‘love being in the air’?

Unfortunately, it is death that’s in the air for our most vulnerable and precious populations…children, mothers, elders, the infirm. Nothing to laugh about, I am sure you will agree, once you start learning more about this matter.

I do understand, CDFA has employed some first-class liars. Their statements seem so plausible if you don’t understand how they operate. Anyone can be duped if they don’t take the time to find out what is actually going on here in California. But, I am so hoping that this letter will be the start of your own research. What is happening is going to affect you and everyone you care for who lives here, Ms. Campbell.

Allow me to suggest that you visit the following sites to read articles and watch video documentation of the truth about the most severe public health crisis our state has ever faced.

Here is a YouTube page featuring numerous interviews both with families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying and with scientists:

http://youtube.com/user/eon3

These are the most active websites regarding this issue:

http://www.lbamspray.com

http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org

http://www.stopthespray.org

http://www.cassonline.org

http://www.veganreader.com

http://www.dontspray.com

Over the past months, my family has been devoting all of our free time to trying to educate our communities about what happened to Central Coast families in 2007. I have spoken with countless, honest individuals who were sickened by CDFA’s illegal spraying. I don’t want this to happen to our Bay Area, and am so hoping that when you learn more about this, you will feel the need that we do to work to protect our families from this unnecessary, unconstitutional violation of our basic human rights.

Sincerely,
& etc.

I think you’ll agree with me that the Central Coast families and the Bay Area families who are set to be sprayed have already got enough to deal with without being snickered at by totally uninformed and unworthy news people. Can this woman have done more than 5 minutes of research on this subject prior to firing up Microsoft Word? I hope you will take a moment to set her straight and let her know this is no joking matter:

Contact:
Sarah Campbell
sarah@kenwoodpress.com