Increasing effectiveness in Pesticide Activism (excuse cross-posting)

[Guest guest]

Why have we made so little progress in pesticide activism during the past

decade?

We know profits are at the heart of this but that has always been the

case. An additional impediment is that we are also a people devoted to

routines and customs, hesitant to explore new avenues of action.  We

become attached to 'life-style' rather than 'life', even in roles which

have traditionally challenged established authority in matters of

harmful public policies.

Let's review some major issues which have barred us from attaining our goals:

Activist strategies for

influencing public policy need to be updated. Petitions lead legislators

to offer lip service to stated demands from significant numbers of

signers, but they don't have the power

to enact change. NAFTA rules bar the US government from banning

products or otherwise interfering with profits to which industry feels

'entitled' (chapter 11). Arguing bans won't work because Congress won't pass

them and EPA won't litigate them.  Restrictions

can be managed for long periods of time despite industry objections

(see current policy change on GMO alfalfa by the USDA). When the

evidence is sufficiently common knowledge to discourage litigation by

industry, such restrictions are ultimately accepted (see the history

of Dursban regulation).  Restrictions over bans are far more likely to

succeed and have the added advantage of showing we have no problem with

research and development of products or industry profits. We care about

honest profits through the manufacture and use of products under

conditions which don't leave a trail of sick and injured citizens,

costly to all of society.

Activists will attain faster

results by litigating/pushing for enforcement of existing laws. In

attempting to draft new legislation, we must recognize the reasons for

failure over the past decade and change the manner in which particular

bills are released to the floor of the legislature for actual voting. 

For example, the School Environment Protection Act, (SEPA), passed twice

in the Senate and is mainly remembered as a 'success'. 

However, legislators involved knew that it would fail in the next hurdle

of passing in the House of Representatives.  In fact, SEPA has been

held hostage by the Committee on Agriculture for over a decade now and

will never see a floor vote.  Schools aren't farms and the HHS

committees ought to be in charge of it.  The Committee on Agriculture

should have nothing to do with bills involving pesticides used off of

farms. This is an HHS matter. Legislative lobbying needs to take a

different direction in identifying barriers such as these.

It is inefficient for activists

to only highlight groups of people in particular need of  a new law or a

ban on a particular practices (e.g.spraying malathion from helicopters

in NYC). Intense local activism may succeed as it did in 2000. However,

we know that individuals do very little when they feel personally

disengaged from a situation which permits practices banned in one area

to spread to many others quite successfully.  If everyone were required

to have a 'smart meter' (and eventually they will), the arrests of

demonstrators or the calls for help on a national level would be more

widespread than at present.

It is ineffective for activists

to argue with industry claims that only human testing can prove a

product should be restricted or removed from the marketplace. We don't

need to rely on the precautionary principle to utilize existing research

in these areas. Cells respond in particular ways to poisons and those

responses from animal testing has long been deemed sufficient for

marketing purposes. Why not take action for 'de-marketing' purposes when

we see evidence of abnormal endocrine responses of amphibians to atrazine

herbicide or in the evidence of neuronal and immunological damage

to fish species from pyrethroids? Since the active ingredients are

intended to disrupt cellular function and synergists are intended to

reduce detoxification efficiency, there can be no court-worthy arguments

that similar effects have to be induced in live humans to know they

occur. In fact, to administer or expose humans to any pesticide for

non-medicinal purposes of market research for a poisonous product is a

violation of the Hippocratic Oath for participating physicians since

administration of poison harms by definition. While companies see the

NOEL limits (No observable Effect Level), harm occurs sub-clinically. 

Overt harm is based upon initially 'non-visible' alteration of bodily

functions.

Strategies for educating the public:

Make it personal: Let people

know there is no indoor pest control industry.  Farm chemicals have been

displaced to the interior of your home, school and office. There have

been no requirement for new tests in those environments of need,

efficacy, residues absorbed by furnishings and porous

flooring/sheet-rock etc., degradation in the absence of sunlight and

content in the air circulating within closed rooms (by ppm/ppb)

longitudinally following applications to interiors and/or exteriors of

buildings. No studies of the effects of repeat applications of

pesticides on successive days/weeks etc. have been done with regard to

effects on indoor air quality. If such an industry were to be developed,

it would be enormously profitable and the EPA could require an entirely

new set of parameters for indoor applications.

Make it personal: Let people

know that even if you suspect you were made ill by pesticides, there is

virtually no way your physician can test you for recent exposures to

current use pesticides including those ordered by your town! No medical labs

are conducting such tests commercially at this time.  This enables

industry to claim they are non-toxic for lack of data challenging that

statement. This should be litigated immediately on the premise that

bio-monitoring for any approved chemical on the market today ought to be

possible. Low or no-cost permits must be given to labs for such tests

and appropriate equipment supplied regionally. This

'coincidentally' leads to a lack of evidence which permits formal legal

challenges to proceed in the courts. Please make careful note of the

fact that veterinary clinics can test animals for metabolites of these

chemicals. So, when pets sicken and die from pesticides, such

information is available to 'enquiring minds'.  

Make it personal: Non-profit

laboratory facilities are desperately needed for use by consumers to

test materials in their homes for absorption of pollutants. This

includes clothing and fabrics, carpet fibers and HEPA filters in air

purifiers which all easily capture particulates allowing people to know

something about their homes which is otherwise invisible in every way

now that low-odor pesticides have become prevalent and masking

fragrances completely disguise the presence of such harmful residues for

workers and tenants. Individuals submitting samples to labs must do so

at high expense to companies dedicated to agricultural interests which

would compete with the interests of consumers, making business relations

unnecessarily complicated. We need to know the reality of pesticide

concentrations in our homes from both current use pesticides and

older/banned ones. Once you've measured (as I have) levels of chlordane

above OSHA levels in homes, it is certainly 'personal'. Chlordane was

banned in 1988. Absorption by food products during storage in treated

stores and home is not addressed by any agency or researcher yet is a

definite hazard since kitchens are routinely treated during fumigation

and one informant told me of a company used by her own landlord which

sprayed the interior of her microwave oven.  

Make it public: The practice of

adding scents and masking fragrances to pesticides confuses consumers

about the difference between 'low-odor' and low-toxicity chemicals. Too

many consider odor a clue to the presence or absence of harmful fumes.

The EPA must insist upon the addition of odorants to pesticides so all

citizens (who are primary or secondary users), are aware of exposures

and can attempt to limit contact. Sometimes it means altering schedules

of applications between home and work or altering what is applied in one

or both locales. Certainly it would permit consumers to be alert to

signs and symptoms of over-exposure and be able to request information

or seek medical attention for recurring problems associated with such

exposures.

Make it public: The pervasive

use of legal poisons is based in the absence of legal precedents which

discourage misuse of toxic chemicals.  The deaths of two little girls in Utah 

became a matter of    criminal negligence because the pesticide was

applied too close to the house.  What if it had been applied as per

'legal' requirement, and the children merely became chronically ill or

learning disabled?  Or an elderly member of the household suddenly

developed dementia?  When these things are discovered, they are kept

from setting precedents because lawyers no longer go to trial. Many

'toxics' cases are dismissed for poor prosecution on the basis of

'sensitivity' rather than frank poisoning. Others are dismissed for lack

of evidence and some for immunity from prosecution when connected with

municipal applications. The majority which retain standing with the

court are settled in sealed agreements

so the abuses continue in society. Litigants must obey their lawyers in

consenting to such terms or be 'fired' as clients with no one else to

take the case.  Settlements must be altered to permit public disclosure

as to the nature of the argument even if financial details aren't

disclosed. Anything else is really a private contract and should not

concern the courts.

Make it public:  Ask pesticide

activist groups to compile and publish lists of court cases as reference

points which will allow more of these cases to be filed and prosecuted.

Too few lawyers know how to go about this and too few physicians can

comfortably investigate such cases on behalf of patients. Experts need

to write 'how-to' guides in differential diagnosis and we need to

disseminate free literature (like the EPA book on Recognition and Management of

Pesticide Poisoning) to medical associations.

Make it public: Require

officials to add activists and litigants to the list of protected

classes under discrimination laws. You may not be aware that activists

and litigants are denied all manner of privileges in this country such

as leases to residential properties, jobs, police protection etc. 

Harassment and abuse are extremely common just as union activists

suffered egregious harm in earlier years (and still do).  It is unfair

to urge others to action without their understanding of associated risks

and in the absence of recourse within the system. Currently, only

employees can claim protections as whistle-blowers. Yet, many who are

sickened by the practices of individuals and companies who do not employ

them are subject to retaliation from social consequences to vandalism

of property and brutal assaults  

 

Make it public: We know that

polluters and their 'yes-men' in government discriminate. Minorities and

those comprising the lowest economic strata of society are far more

likely to live in highly polluted areas. Many activists come from that

naturally beleaguered group of citizens. The struggle for

survival—making a living, dealing with environmentally induced illness

and those costs—are already reducing the time and energy activists can

devote to our causes. We know that industry has hired security

companies, including the infamous 'Blackwater',  to stalk and harass

activists in documentation compiled by Greenpeace and award-winning journalist

Scahill.

It has been my personal experience that industry tactics to further

reduce the ability of effective activists to create change is through

the enlistment of 'hate' groups to target those who can be labeled using

reasons sufficient to inspire criminal action among such persons.

Identifying others by race, creed, color or alleged past activities,  is

an easy way to direct easily manipulated people on the fringes of their

own societal groupings to act while redirecting attention away from the

actual source of subsversive activity. One detective termed this

'cause-stalking' in which paid and unpaid community members bent up on

removing targeted individuals from their communities for reasons of

bigotry or misinformation about their history (e.g. sex offender). I

believe such groups are being given funding, training and materials with

which to do harm to selected 'targets' and will become far more

numerous and powerful with such backing. I am also sending this to the

Southern Poverty Law center for their further research on this matter.  

Barbara Rubin

www.armchairactivist.us