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Aftermoth: A Legacy of Pain and Ethical Considerations About Spraying Untested Chemicals on Californians

Mike-Lynberg.gif

After they made hundreds of people sick on the Central Coast, and nearly killed at least two children, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Secretary A. G. Kawamura of the CDFA are changing tactics and no longer aerial spraying highly populated cities with untested pesticides. For that, residents of Northern and Central California are grateful.

They were wrong about the public’s willingness to be aerial sprayed. Now, if only the Governor and Secretary would realize that they are also wrong about the threat LBAM poses.

To read Kawamura's statements in the press, you would think that the light brown apple moth is so voracious that New Zealand, where it has been established for 110 years, would be a barren landscape, with no surviving plants.

Yet New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and parts of the United Kingdom consider the apple moth to be an insignificant pest. The United States’ trade embargo and policies related to LBAM are the only things that do significant damage, and the damage is economic. The crusade against the apple moth is a political charade.

In his characteristically misleading way, Kawamura likes to say the apple moth was discovered in California in 2007. That might be true. But leading entomologists say there is no way the moth could be spread out from Los Angeles to Napa, over an area of 10,000 square miles, unless it has been here for at least 30-50 years. The moths only fly a short distance in their lifetime.

Scientists also note that the moth has caused no damage anywhere because it is the same as many other leaf-rolling species already in the state, and is probably being controlled by natural predators.

Two courts in Monterey and Santa Cruz have ruled that the state’s LBAM eradication campaign was launched under the pretense of a false emergency and therefore has been illegal. Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Kawamura have been willing to defy and break state environmental laws, in the opinion of two judges, who found there is no evidence of any damage caused by the moth in California.

Therefore, the self-proclaimed “People’s Governor” and his appointee, Kawamura, have been willing to put people at risk by breaking state law. With appalling arrogance and for no good reason, they have rushed to use an untested biochemical mix that included plastic microcapsules that people breathed in and that affected their body systems in a variety of terrible ways. Children were harmed. Two nearly died. That needs to be remembered.

The state’s investigation of the hundreds of illnesses was cursory, inconclusive and flawed because it was based on false information provided by the pesticide manufacturer, which claimed the microparticles in the spray were too large to inhale. Thanks to work done by independent scientists, we now know that is not true, and that half of the microparticles were small enough to become lodged deep in a person’s lungs.

In effect, the aerial spraying was a vast experiment on people’s health without their informed consent. No one knew in advance how the spray’s ingredients would impact people’s health, because no inhalation studies had been done, and the pesticide was delivered in the air people breathed. We still do not know the long-term effects.

Standards of ethics such as the Nuremberg Code, created after the atrocities of World War II, prohibit such human experimentation. Yet Schwarzenegger and Kawamura don’t think there was anything wrong with their actions, and they would likely still be aerial spraying pesticides on our cities if there were not so much political, legal and public opposition – and moral outrage.

Now Schwarzenegger and Kawamura want to continue their poorly conceived and poorly managed program on the ground, using a variety of techniques to eradicate a moth that experts say is harmless and cannot be eradicated. Will the ground-based measures be safe? The sterile insect technology sounds promising, but based on their legacy of pain, people have a right to be worried about other next steps the Governor and Secretary might take.

Before they can even begin to regain the public’s trust, both the Governor and the Secretary need issue an apology to the people they have already harmed, and they need to show that they are truly listening to experts who express concerns about whether their program is safe, necessary and effective. These independent experts need to have a stronger voice and be part of the process, beginning now.

Mike Lynberg of Pacific Grove collected hundreds of complaints of illnesses following aerial spraying in the Monterey and Santa Cruz areas. He sent a report on the illnesses to state agencies and elected officials, and the illness complaints have been widely reported in the press. He works as a communications consultant in Silicon Valley, and has written 10 published books.

Posted on June 25, 2008

Comments

Beautifully stated.

Posted by: David Dilworth at June 25, 2008 09:00 AM

Read what the American Lung Association says about particulate matter like that in the aerial spray:
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=50324
and
http://lungaction.org/reports/sota07_basics.html

Posted by: mike lynberg at June 25, 2008 09:21 AM

"Never has any pesticide program been so thoroughy and deservedly damned by practically everyone except for the beneficiaries of this 'sales bonanza'. It is an outstanding example of an ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of insects, an experiment so expensive in dollars, in destruction of animal life, and in the loss of public confidence in the Agriculture Department that it is incomprehensible that any funds should be devoted to it."
Rachel Carsson about the fire ant eradication campaign in the 1950s.

And I thought "eradication" sounded so war on terror! Turns out what we experience here on the Central Coast today is only the most recent example of a long, painful and dangerous tradition that started after WW II.

Just like the Light Brown Apple Moth the fire ant is non-native, has been in the US for decades without posing a threat to crops and yet in 1957 was suddenly made subject of a remarkable publicity campaign to establish the reasons for massive aerial spraying. The fire ant is still around after 50 years of "eradication".

In that same chapter in Silent Spring, Carsson describes the horrific fall-out after aerial spraying for the gipsy moth. During the phone conference with environmental groups last Thursday, when asked if he could imagine a situation that would still warrant aerial spraying, Kawamura named the gipsy moth (also still around after 50 years of "eradication").

Yet history only repeats itself if we allow it to do so. So many people, ordinary citizens like the amazing Mike Lynberg, have been awakened and show no sign of moth fatigue. We will not tolerate this injustice to go unrepented and work towards lasting change.


Posted by: Isabelle Jenniches at June 25, 2008 11:06 AM

"Never has any pesticide program been so thoroughy and deservedly damned by practically everyone except for the beneficiaries of this 'sales bonanza'. It is an outstanding example of an ill-conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of insects, an experiment so expensive in dollars, in destruction of animal life, and in the loss of public confidence in the Agriculture Department that it is incomprehensible that any funds should be devoted to it."
Rachel Carsson about the fire ant eradication campaign in the 1950s.

And I thought "eradication" sounded so war on terror! Turns out what we experience here on the Central Coast today is only the most recent example of a long, painful and dangerous tradition that started after WW II.

Just like the Light Brown Apple Moth the fire ant is non-native, has been in the US for decades without posing a threat to crops and yet in 1957 was suddenly made subject of a remarkable publicity campaign to establish the reasons for massive aerial spraying. The fire ant is still around after 50 years of "eradication".

In that same chapter in Silent Spring, Carsson describes the horrific fall-out after aerial spraying for the gipsy moth. During the phone conference with environmental groups last Thursday, when asked if he could imagine a situation that would still warrant aerial spraying, Kawamura named the gipsy moth (also still around after 50 years of "eradication").

Yet history only repeats itself if we allow it to do so. So many people, ordinary citizens like the amazing Mike Lynberg, have been awakened and show no sign of moth fatigue. We will not tolerate this injustice to go unrepented and work towards lasting change.


Posted by: Isabelle Jenniches at June 25, 2008 11:07 AM

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