i hope u and your family stay healthy and happy where you are. it is a dream of mine to live there, i just find it an absurd way to get there! will certainly stay in touch.

donna

You deserve peace and a good long rest, Donna. These have been terrible times for you. Please, don’t lose touch with us here. We will want to know that you are okay, wherever you are.

Mim

the sonoma county board of supervisors is backing a lot more than twist ties which are toxic. other than disagreement over spraying “rural” areas they back various toxic ground treatments such as permethrin. for those of sickened by checkmate which has now been pulled off the market we do not wish to be experimented on again.

all i can say is i’ve been sprayed with checkmate and i decided when i had to move, if the lbam program was still not over i would leave california. i have never recovered it from it fully. i am going to taos where the air is clean, the rents are cheap compared to here and i can stop living in limbo. i’m just afraid to set up a new home and have to flee if the cdfa has it’s way again. i am scared, sad (this is breaking up my family) and excited.

thank you for your continued hard work. now that i am waking up i saw a cal trans truck spraying a busy road here and i was horrified to be anywhere near it.

donna

Are people sickened by fungicides? Oh, yeah. Insecticides? Certainly? Herbicides? Ever heard of Hormonal Disruption? Metabolic disturbances? Everywhere in Wine Country, along with rampant cancers, respiratory problems, neurological problems and the list goes on and on and on. My old obits files from Sonoma point to one thing abundantly clearly: If you live in Sonoma, your life expectancy is slashed dramatically. So many kids with cancers, many dead. So many in their 20′s, so many in their 30′s, so many in their 40′s. Notice all the people limping around Sonoma? Neurotoxins are wiping out the quality of life for many while carcinogens are straight out killing people.

This is a case of the truth being worse than any fiction we could create. An epidemiological study must be done of Sonoma and Napa but the fact is that no public agency which should be arranging this has, or ever has been willing to demand it of the state or feds. That’s fact.

Now, about LBAM twist ties. These not only are not nontoxic, they are very toxic. Rather than rehash is less useful detail, I will point you to our LBAM page on our website: http://www.DontSprayCalifornia.org. On the right side of the home page you can click on the LBAM page. To the right of that page, click on the section about the harmful effects of the pesticides part of that program. The same pesticide as in the aerial pesticide which made actually tens of thousands sick (based on a prof. of Systems Management and Statistics) is in the twist ties AND in the white tent-like LBAM traps. Many of us have been sickened by exposure to those already. Please do not believe the hype thrown out by the government. Take a look at our site for facts facts facts. More than you might want to know, but I urge you to take the thousands of hours of work assembling this information and use it to avoid reinventing the wheel. You don’t even have to do a lot of research yourself if you just read down the LBAM page and click on whatever document interests you to see the source materials.

I have not recovered from exposure to the twist ties at a hearing on the subject held in Sonoma in July of ’08. It is scary. I see an opthamologist tomorrow because I have had eye problems since then, and my blood sugar has remained dangerously high since then, even with whatever supportive health care I have been able to access (far less than I need after that).

I appreciate that you might want to believe people we SHOULD be able to trust. I mean, tax money is put into funding these massive bureaucracies… what’s going on here? THIS subject is one where you might want to put in some more research time. All we can tell you is the facts show LBAM is NOT a problem, nor is it expected to be (check out the entomologists’ statements) but the pesticides (including in the traps and twist ties) are a clear and present danger.

Poisoning people, pets, wildlife, the environment is off the table for discussion. None must occur.

I am sorry, but you have been misinformed by someone about the toxicity of the twist ties. They are, in fact, quite toxic and I have now heard from multiple people who have fallen extremely ill after being near them. Please, do some further research on this and do not accept CDFA’s assurances that the toxic substances they promote are safe. Please, if you are interested, visit this page and scroll down to the information about twist ties and the other poisonous substances being suggested by CDFA and the alcohol industry:

http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org/lbam.html

At VeganReader, we maintain a strict zero toxins policy. We don’t use chemicals on our farm. True organic farming practices do not require sprays of any kind, whether they are organic-approved or not. Nature keeps the balance when man understands the right role to play in the garden, but the groups and methods you are choosing to defend and champion have very different views about this.

The bottom line, however, is that twist ties are definitely toxic, and if you’ve been misinformed by industry sources regarding this, perhaps it’s time for you to question how much of your information is correct. Fortunately, the Internet makes it very easy for concerned citizens to seek disinterested truths rather than party line propaganda. I hope you will keep researching this issue, Sane Jane. It’s a critical one.

Mim

Fortunately, with research, people like yourself can learn to see past the marketing slogans to the truth of millions of Californian’s being sickened and killed by the pesticide/herbicide use that makes monoculture possible. And, you can share that truth with everyone you care about. That’s a powerful fact!

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Solstice. It’s always a pleasure to see you here.
Mim

So, the spraying has definitely begun. You can really smell it along the portion of HWY 12 that runs from Santa Rosa to Sonoma and we are thankful every day that we no longer live there. The few times we have had to go back, our family felt totally sick from being re-exposed to the toxins.

All, I can say is…if you buy wine, please buy Organic wine.

I am totally distressed that you feel you will be forced to move in September if the LBAM program isn’t stopped, Donna. We also researched this option, but our research resulted in the knowledge that there is literally no place you can live in the USA where some sort of Ag Program isn’t going on. Whether it’s so-called ‘invasive’ insects, or industrial farming, pesticides and herbicides are being dumped across the land year-round.

Short of moving to a small island of our own somewhere (I wish!), we determined that all we could do is stand and fight, right where we are. Protecting ourselves from poisoning doesn’t seem possible, but fighting to change the world we live in is definitely possible, and it is happening around the globe…in Mexico, Canada, South America, Australia, Europe. I believe we can make change happen, but I also know that I am being exposed to toxins every day while America continues to be chemical-dependent. I wish there was a safe place to be, but we could not find one.

I am so wishing you protection, health and peace, Donna.
Mim