Snouter
05-18-2002, 01:51 AM
The crazy bastards of the state and local governments in Connecticut occasionally resort to spraying or fogging miles of streets with a pesticide to alledgely kill mosquitos because the potentially carry a rare disease called West Nile that can affect people with weak immune systems. This approach to dealing with pest insects is obviously insane. There are many way to reduce mosquitos by safetly that do not involve toxic chemicals that posion all exposed to it.
The following is from Gary Null's website...
Special Anti-Spray Campaign
A number of you have contacted me, asking what you can do to help stop the spraying. Letters and calls directed to politicians seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and as time goes by, seem more and more like an exercise in futility.
A new strategy is under way: A campaign of letters to the newspapers would be a much more valuable, influential course of action. Connecticut residents have successfully mounted a massive letters-to-the-editor campaign and we need to do the same.
The newspapers to target are the three City biggies: the NY Post, Daily News, and New York Times. Staten Island residents would do best to place the Staten Island Advance at the top of their list.
Letters may be submitted by email at the addresses listed below. Please keep a list of these handy:
Staten Island Advance
Hanley@SIAdvance.com
FAX (718) 981-5679
New York Post
Letters@NYPost.com
FAX: (212) 930-8546
Daily News editors
voicers@edit.nydailynews.com
Please include your full name, address and phone number.
New York Times (Limit to 150 words)
letters@nytimes.com
Fax: (212) 556-3622
"Letters to the Times should only be sent to the Times, and not to other publications. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. When writing be certain to include your name, address and a daytime and evening phone number. Letters should be limited to about 150 words. We regret we cannot return or acknowledge unpublished letters. Writers of those letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be shortened for space requirements."
Please make every effort to take action in this campaign.
THE SOUNDBYTES KIT:
Use these convenient soundbites in the course of writing your letter.
1. The spraying of pesticides is a dangerous precedent that creates significant short-term and long-term risks to our human health and environment.
2. Do we want the City to send out trucks filled with poisonous spray every time a virus-carrying mosquito or bird is discovered?
3. Do you want to be spraying a pesticide, a suspected cancer-causing agent, into the indefinite future without knowing the long-term consequences on the environment and human health?
4. SPRAYING WITH PESTICIDES CAN INCREASE THE RISK OF A FUTURE WEST-NILE VIRUS OUTBREAK.
Pesticides can kill off fish and other natural predators to mosquitoes, making mosquito control difficult if not impossible.
** Repeated spraying can create pesticide-resistant strains of mosquitoes while destroying ecosystems in the environment. Spraying does not eliminate WNV mosquitoes in the long-term, due to their quick breeding cycles, more mosquitoes come back every seven to ten days. We have all learned that the excess use of antibiotics provided limited short-term health benefits at a major long-term costs. We will end up applying ever more increasing toxic pesticides.
** The probability of contracting West-Nile Virus, estimated at 1 for every 300,000 mosquito bites, will increase if our mosquito population grows out of control.
** Call Professor Pimentel at 607-255-2212, expert of pesticide spraying, who explains how ineffective the spraying really is.
5. THE DANGERS OF WEST-NILE VIRUS TO HUMANS ARE BEING HUGELY EXAGGERATED. THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE AND THE CURE IS INEFFECTIVE TOO.
** According to State Health Department Commissioner Dr. James Hadler, very few people who contract the virus become seriously ill.
** Therefore, the dangers of WNV to a very few people must be kept in the context of both the known and unknown dangers of pesticide exposure to the entire human population and environment.
** Spraying does not eliminate virus-carrying mosquitoes.
** This is a band-aid solution to a long-term problem.
** How can you risk cancer to millions of women versus the minimal risk of a 1 in 300,000 West-Nile illness and even more miniscule risk of dying from WNV?
** One mosquito isolate was found (primarily a BIRD biting mosquito) and only one dead crow in Fairfield County. NO infected humans in the state of CT or New York.
** Of the seven who died from WNV last year, three were immuno-compromised and one was HIV positive. Compare these death rates to the 2800 who died of the flu this year. Or the thousands of deaths on the highway.
** Some experts have even stated that this is primarily a bird phenomenon.
6. SPRAYING WITH PESTICIDES CAN BE EXTREMELY HARMFUL TO HUMANS IN THE SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM
Use of pesticides is often linked to cancer in humans. Unfortunately, we find out when it is too late to do anything about it!
** Pyrethroids can act as endocrine disruptors
** Many people experience symptoms of dizziness, burning of throat, asthma, and other, more severe reactions, when exposed to pesticides.
** Recent findings show pesticide use to be much more toxic to children. Children breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults do and are more vulnerable. (Senator Lieberman press release regarding pesticides and schools in 1/00)
** Pesticides have serious consequences, especially in regards to half-life, runoff into water supply, synergy with other chemicals and cumulative effects in our lives.
** Can't be a calculated risk if we simply don't know all the long-term risks. Can't say there will be no collateral damage without doing human and environmental impact studies.
** The real epidemic is cancer, not WNV. Sumethrin and Resmethrin are not proven to be "safe" and have been hastily and incorrectly applied by government officials
** History shows that we can not use poisonous pesticides to achieve long-term health and many pesticides once deemed "safe" are now banned, such as Dursban and DDT. Malathion is allowed in the U.S., but banned in Japan. Resmethrin could be next. Sumethrin and its cousin Resmethrin are not up for review until the year 2002.
** EPA is not the gold standard. They have recalled pesticides before and they can do the same with Sumethrin and Resmethrin. EPA recently admitted that they withheld evidence of asbestos in W.R. Grace building products.
** Specifically Sumethrin and Resmethrin have a synergist called Piperonyl butoxide, which is a synergist that enhances toxic hazard of the pesticide (New York State Attorney General's Office)
** No dosage is Completely SAFE. We are lulled into a false sense of security just as people are lulled into a false sense of security about low-tar cigarettes. Low-tar cigarettes are just as cancer-causing as regular tar cigarettes.
** It is illegal to say that a pesticide is SAFE. as per FiFRA, Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
** The public at large knows as much about pesticides today as they did tobacco decades ago.
** If these pesticides are so "safe," why are officials telling us to wash off toys left outside, garden chairs etc.. How ironic that after the state of CT gives a false sense of security about the spraying that there would be a need for the officials to wipe off playground equipment. They want us to take precautions, yet they won't step up to take serious responsibility for costly side effects to the environment and human health.
** Cannot spray in the rain. NYC does this routinely and Stamford sprayed, knowing it was going to rain, which subsequently washed the pesticide into the surface water and then into the Long Island Sound.
** Should wear protective equipment when handling pesticides. Government employees wore no protective clothing.
** Should provide adequate notice to allow public to take appropriate precautions. Stamford's rush to spray showed total incompetence of City and State officials
7. The risk/benefit analysis must take into account that spraying has impacted a larger number of -------County Residents than WNV could under current amplification/epidemic statistics.
8. While it is true that many people expose themselves to pesticides through their lawn treatments, that doesn't give officials the right to add to the toxic soup or take the matter of cumulative exposure so frivolously. Officials are using a forceful scattershot spraying of a toxic chemical resulting in major short-term and long-term human health and environmental consequences, We are being used as guinea pigs. Their methodology is entirely different than lawn applications and a homeowner's individual right to choose how to treat their property.
This petition emphasizes that reputable doctors appreciate the significant harm that this widespread and repeated pesticide spraying can cause to our community. We and other medical practioners are using sound judgement and sound science to determine that the risk of the pesticides are greater than the risk of the WNV. We object exposing our patients to a pesticide laced with a potential carcinogen for a virus that is significantly less deadly than last year's flu.
WNV is here to stay and the pesticide program should be not continued in this manner as it is proving to be ineffective and harmful both in the short-term and long-term to human health.
9. Stop the band-aid solution. We'v balanced the risk of disease to the cost of ineffective and life-threatening pesticide programs and do NOT support the widespread pesticide approach.
10. Pesticides are cancer risks just as cigarettes are. I have a right to sit in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, but I don't have a choice on the poisons used on my house and children? THAT IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS
11. The State should focus on those individuals at risk (who are also at risk for pesticide exposure) and educate them on personal preventative actions. Government has no right to poison most of us for the unlikely benefit of a few.
12. ONLY WINNER: chemical companies who manufacture pesticides…. LIST OF LOSERS: Women who will be more prone to breast cancer, children whose endocrine systems will be disrupted, lobsters, fish and other aquatic life that can be wiped out. Taxpayers who pay for ineffective programs. ELDERLY lose out because they are also at risk for the same cancers and ailments.
SAMPLE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letter to the Editor
After almost a year of research into West Nile Virus (WNV) and pesticides, I am, like many (your county) residents, still full of questions.
First, why aren't the DEP and local health districts working as hard to disseminate accurate information on pesticides as they are on disseminating WNV facts? The "hotlines" give only limited and reassuring information. No one appears to be addressing real questions, such as: If we can smell the fumes in our homes, and sunlight doesn't get into our homes to break down the resmethrin, are we at risk? If I live in the middle of a dead end street, am I getting a double dose of Scourge? If we cover our home-grown vegetables, how should we dispose of the cover? Should we wash down decks and patios as well as swingsets? Is the wash water contaminated? If a dog wears a pyrethroid-containing flea collar, could the Scourge spraying put the animal at risk from too high a dose of the compound? Who decides how much exposure is safe? What if we are sprayed two or three times a year? Or two and three times a week, as on Staten Island?
Also, the information the towns and DEP provide on pesticide safety is based on manufacturer tests of resmethrin in isolation. While it may be true that resmethrin breaks down in sunlight under ideal conditions, the piperonyl butoxide with which it is mixed is intended to retard that process. It also affects the ability of humans to excrete the resmethrin. Does that mean Scourge really isn't safe?
Second, aren't the repeated assertions that use of pesticides is "worth the risk" disingenuous if health districts do not record and and track incidents of pesticide poisoning? These records should be available to the public and the press.
Third, what are we to do if we are sickened by the pesticide? Will public health officials be able to put us in touch with specialists in this field? Even top-notch doctors may have limited toxicology experience and are unprepared to assist patients who are poisoned. Residents and physicans should be aware that any new "symptom," even an odd one, that appears after spraying should be investigated, as the effects of pesticide poisoning can vary in type and intensity.
And why is the Centers for Disease Control reacting so strongly to a disease they admit may affect one in 300,000 people, when cancer, for example, affects one child in 600?
Thank you,
DEAR NEWSDAY:
First, do no harm.
How can it be "common sense" to spray poisons on your community in order to combat a disease that is predicted to affect (not kill) one in 300,000? The science is pretty clear: a strong immune system is your best defense against any virus, including West Nile. Pesticides, of course, depress the immune system.
Why do you assume that last year's spraying was what prevented West Nile's spread? Not only did studies show the disease had "peaked" before the spraying began, but West Nile is known in other parts of the world to be primarily an avian (not human) disease.
Judge Baer's ruling had to do with the law, not the merits of the environmentalists' case. Look how long it took the U.S. to recognize that DDT was not safe. Unfortunately, the EPA and state agencies we think are protecting us have decided that West Nile is more of a threat than pesticides. It will take years to prove that anyone has broken the law (by misapplication, by promulgating disinformation on the risks of pesticides). On e can only hope that common sense and good science will triumph before then.
It is infantile to sit home and wait for the government to attempt eradication of a disease that is, in the scope of things, quite mild. If you fear disease, you'd do better to stop spraying pesticides on your lawn, or to eat well and exercise. If you truly fear this relatively mild disease and don't want to get bitten, do your part. Stay inside evenings. Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants (easy this cool summer). Empty containers of standing water. And wake up to the reality that, no matter how hubris-filled our public officials are, we cannot hope to eliminate the risks inherent in living.
The following is from Gary Null's website...
Special Anti-Spray Campaign
A number of you have contacted me, asking what you can do to help stop the spraying. Letters and calls directed to politicians seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and as time goes by, seem more and more like an exercise in futility.
A new strategy is under way: A campaign of letters to the newspapers would be a much more valuable, influential course of action. Connecticut residents have successfully mounted a massive letters-to-the-editor campaign and we need to do the same.
The newspapers to target are the three City biggies: the NY Post, Daily News, and New York Times. Staten Island residents would do best to place the Staten Island Advance at the top of their list.
Letters may be submitted by email at the addresses listed below. Please keep a list of these handy:
Staten Island Advance
Hanley@SIAdvance.com
FAX (718) 981-5679
New York Post
Letters@NYPost.com
FAX: (212) 930-8546
Daily News editors
voicers@edit.nydailynews.com
Please include your full name, address and phone number.
New York Times (Limit to 150 words)
letters@nytimes.com
Fax: (212) 556-3622
"Letters to the Times should only be sent to the Times, and not to other publications. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. When writing be certain to include your name, address and a daytime and evening phone number. Letters should be limited to about 150 words. We regret we cannot return or acknowledge unpublished letters. Writers of those letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be shortened for space requirements."
Please make every effort to take action in this campaign.
THE SOUNDBYTES KIT:
Use these convenient soundbites in the course of writing your letter.
1. The spraying of pesticides is a dangerous precedent that creates significant short-term and long-term risks to our human health and environment.
2. Do we want the City to send out trucks filled with poisonous spray every time a virus-carrying mosquito or bird is discovered?
3. Do you want to be spraying a pesticide, a suspected cancer-causing agent, into the indefinite future without knowing the long-term consequences on the environment and human health?
4. SPRAYING WITH PESTICIDES CAN INCREASE THE RISK OF A FUTURE WEST-NILE VIRUS OUTBREAK.
Pesticides can kill off fish and other natural predators to mosquitoes, making mosquito control difficult if not impossible.
** Repeated spraying can create pesticide-resistant strains of mosquitoes while destroying ecosystems in the environment. Spraying does not eliminate WNV mosquitoes in the long-term, due to their quick breeding cycles, more mosquitoes come back every seven to ten days. We have all learned that the excess use of antibiotics provided limited short-term health benefits at a major long-term costs. We will end up applying ever more increasing toxic pesticides.
** The probability of contracting West-Nile Virus, estimated at 1 for every 300,000 mosquito bites, will increase if our mosquito population grows out of control.
** Call Professor Pimentel at 607-255-2212, expert of pesticide spraying, who explains how ineffective the spraying really is.
5. THE DANGERS OF WEST-NILE VIRUS TO HUMANS ARE BEING HUGELY EXAGGERATED. THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE AND THE CURE IS INEFFECTIVE TOO.
** According to State Health Department Commissioner Dr. James Hadler, very few people who contract the virus become seriously ill.
** Therefore, the dangers of WNV to a very few people must be kept in the context of both the known and unknown dangers of pesticide exposure to the entire human population and environment.
** Spraying does not eliminate virus-carrying mosquitoes.
** This is a band-aid solution to a long-term problem.
** How can you risk cancer to millions of women versus the minimal risk of a 1 in 300,000 West-Nile illness and even more miniscule risk of dying from WNV?
** One mosquito isolate was found (primarily a BIRD biting mosquito) and only one dead crow in Fairfield County. NO infected humans in the state of CT or New York.
** Of the seven who died from WNV last year, three were immuno-compromised and one was HIV positive. Compare these death rates to the 2800 who died of the flu this year. Or the thousands of deaths on the highway.
** Some experts have even stated that this is primarily a bird phenomenon.
6. SPRAYING WITH PESTICIDES CAN BE EXTREMELY HARMFUL TO HUMANS IN THE SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM
Use of pesticides is often linked to cancer in humans. Unfortunately, we find out when it is too late to do anything about it!
** Pyrethroids can act as endocrine disruptors
** Many people experience symptoms of dizziness, burning of throat, asthma, and other, more severe reactions, when exposed to pesticides.
** Recent findings show pesticide use to be much more toxic to children. Children breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults do and are more vulnerable. (Senator Lieberman press release regarding pesticides and schools in 1/00)
** Pesticides have serious consequences, especially in regards to half-life, runoff into water supply, synergy with other chemicals and cumulative effects in our lives.
** Can't be a calculated risk if we simply don't know all the long-term risks. Can't say there will be no collateral damage without doing human and environmental impact studies.
** The real epidemic is cancer, not WNV. Sumethrin and Resmethrin are not proven to be "safe" and have been hastily and incorrectly applied by government officials
** History shows that we can not use poisonous pesticides to achieve long-term health and many pesticides once deemed "safe" are now banned, such as Dursban and DDT. Malathion is allowed in the U.S., but banned in Japan. Resmethrin could be next. Sumethrin and its cousin Resmethrin are not up for review until the year 2002.
** EPA is not the gold standard. They have recalled pesticides before and they can do the same with Sumethrin and Resmethrin. EPA recently admitted that they withheld evidence of asbestos in W.R. Grace building products.
** Specifically Sumethrin and Resmethrin have a synergist called Piperonyl butoxide, which is a synergist that enhances toxic hazard of the pesticide (New York State Attorney General's Office)
** No dosage is Completely SAFE. We are lulled into a false sense of security just as people are lulled into a false sense of security about low-tar cigarettes. Low-tar cigarettes are just as cancer-causing as regular tar cigarettes.
** It is illegal to say that a pesticide is SAFE. as per FiFRA, Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
** The public at large knows as much about pesticides today as they did tobacco decades ago.
** If these pesticides are so "safe," why are officials telling us to wash off toys left outside, garden chairs etc.. How ironic that after the state of CT gives a false sense of security about the spraying that there would be a need for the officials to wipe off playground equipment. They want us to take precautions, yet they won't step up to take serious responsibility for costly side effects to the environment and human health.
** Cannot spray in the rain. NYC does this routinely and Stamford sprayed, knowing it was going to rain, which subsequently washed the pesticide into the surface water and then into the Long Island Sound.
** Should wear protective equipment when handling pesticides. Government employees wore no protective clothing.
** Should provide adequate notice to allow public to take appropriate precautions. Stamford's rush to spray showed total incompetence of City and State officials
7. The risk/benefit analysis must take into account that spraying has impacted a larger number of -------County Residents than WNV could under current amplification/epidemic statistics.
8. While it is true that many people expose themselves to pesticides through their lawn treatments, that doesn't give officials the right to add to the toxic soup or take the matter of cumulative exposure so frivolously. Officials are using a forceful scattershot spraying of a toxic chemical resulting in major short-term and long-term human health and environmental consequences, We are being used as guinea pigs. Their methodology is entirely different than lawn applications and a homeowner's individual right to choose how to treat their property.
This petition emphasizes that reputable doctors appreciate the significant harm that this widespread and repeated pesticide spraying can cause to our community. We and other medical practioners are using sound judgement and sound science to determine that the risk of the pesticides are greater than the risk of the WNV. We object exposing our patients to a pesticide laced with a potential carcinogen for a virus that is significantly less deadly than last year's flu.
WNV is here to stay and the pesticide program should be not continued in this manner as it is proving to be ineffective and harmful both in the short-term and long-term to human health.
9. Stop the band-aid solution. We'v balanced the risk of disease to the cost of ineffective and life-threatening pesticide programs and do NOT support the widespread pesticide approach.
10. Pesticides are cancer risks just as cigarettes are. I have a right to sit in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, but I don't have a choice on the poisons used on my house and children? THAT IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS
11. The State should focus on those individuals at risk (who are also at risk for pesticide exposure) and educate them on personal preventative actions. Government has no right to poison most of us for the unlikely benefit of a few.
12. ONLY WINNER: chemical companies who manufacture pesticides…. LIST OF LOSERS: Women who will be more prone to breast cancer, children whose endocrine systems will be disrupted, lobsters, fish and other aquatic life that can be wiped out. Taxpayers who pay for ineffective programs. ELDERLY lose out because they are also at risk for the same cancers and ailments.
SAMPLE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letter to the Editor
After almost a year of research into West Nile Virus (WNV) and pesticides, I am, like many (your county) residents, still full of questions.
First, why aren't the DEP and local health districts working as hard to disseminate accurate information on pesticides as they are on disseminating WNV facts? The "hotlines" give only limited and reassuring information. No one appears to be addressing real questions, such as: If we can smell the fumes in our homes, and sunlight doesn't get into our homes to break down the resmethrin, are we at risk? If I live in the middle of a dead end street, am I getting a double dose of Scourge? If we cover our home-grown vegetables, how should we dispose of the cover? Should we wash down decks and patios as well as swingsets? Is the wash water contaminated? If a dog wears a pyrethroid-containing flea collar, could the Scourge spraying put the animal at risk from too high a dose of the compound? Who decides how much exposure is safe? What if we are sprayed two or three times a year? Or two and three times a week, as on Staten Island?
Also, the information the towns and DEP provide on pesticide safety is based on manufacturer tests of resmethrin in isolation. While it may be true that resmethrin breaks down in sunlight under ideal conditions, the piperonyl butoxide with which it is mixed is intended to retard that process. It also affects the ability of humans to excrete the resmethrin. Does that mean Scourge really isn't safe?
Second, aren't the repeated assertions that use of pesticides is "worth the risk" disingenuous if health districts do not record and and track incidents of pesticide poisoning? These records should be available to the public and the press.
Third, what are we to do if we are sickened by the pesticide? Will public health officials be able to put us in touch with specialists in this field? Even top-notch doctors may have limited toxicology experience and are unprepared to assist patients who are poisoned. Residents and physicans should be aware that any new "symptom," even an odd one, that appears after spraying should be investigated, as the effects of pesticide poisoning can vary in type and intensity.
And why is the Centers for Disease Control reacting so strongly to a disease they admit may affect one in 300,000 people, when cancer, for example, affects one child in 600?
Thank you,
DEAR NEWSDAY:
First, do no harm.
How can it be "common sense" to spray poisons on your community in order to combat a disease that is predicted to affect (not kill) one in 300,000? The science is pretty clear: a strong immune system is your best defense against any virus, including West Nile. Pesticides, of course, depress the immune system.
Why do you assume that last year's spraying was what prevented West Nile's spread? Not only did studies show the disease had "peaked" before the spraying began, but West Nile is known in other parts of the world to be primarily an avian (not human) disease.
Judge Baer's ruling had to do with the law, not the merits of the environmentalists' case. Look how long it took the U.S. to recognize that DDT was not safe. Unfortunately, the EPA and state agencies we think are protecting us have decided that West Nile is more of a threat than pesticides. It will take years to prove that anyone has broken the law (by misapplication, by promulgating disinformation on the risks of pesticides). On e can only hope that common sense and good science will triumph before then.
It is infantile to sit home and wait for the government to attempt eradication of a disease that is, in the scope of things, quite mild. If you fear disease, you'd do better to stop spraying pesticides on your lawn, or to eat well and exercise. If you truly fear this relatively mild disease and don't want to get bitten, do your part. Stay inside evenings. Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants (easy this cool summer). Empty containers of standing water. And wake up to the reality that, no matter how hubris-filled our public officials are, we cannot hope to eliminate the risks inherent in living.