Shafee article

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Collateral Damage In The Pesticide Wars - The Troubling Story of Dr.

Shafey.

Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in agriculture,

health and the environment.

Chances are, you know someone who has contracted an unexplained disease: a

young, healthy woman who gets breast or ovarian cancer, or an otherwise

energetic person who suddenly develops chronic fatigue syndrome, chemical

sensitivity, multiple allergies, or fibromyalgia.

Most people assume public health officials are working diligently to solve

these mysterious afflictions. But the troubling story of Dr. Shafey

demonstrates how government agencies sometimes conspire to protect the

interests of influential industries rather than the public they are entrusted

to serve.

In February 1998, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) hired Dr. Shafey to

track pesticide-related heath problems. Although pesticide usage in Florida is

comparatively high, cases of pesticide poisoning have been woefully

underreported there for years.

In Shafey, Florida got both credentials and enthusiasm. An epidemiologist, he

has a PhD from Berkeley in Medical Anthropology. After being hired, he

traveled

the Sunshine state investigating complaints. He uncovered previously

unrecognized pesticide exposure routes. He worked to educate physicians on how

to diagnose health problems caused by pesticides -- something barely

covered in

medical school. He wrote recommendations for protecting the public health

based

on the data he compiled.

Initially Shafey's hard work paid off. He was honored with appreciation awards

by state and county health departments for " professional, caring and

compassionate " service. And he earned the respect of diverse communities

colleagues, academics, farm workers, and ordinary citizens.

Yet two years after Shafey began his job, he was fired and forcibly removed

from his office in Tallahassee after allegedly overcharging his department

$12.50 on a travel reimbursement claim.

Shafey claims he was harassed and ultimately sacked for resisting pressure

from

his supervisors to present results more pleasing to powerful agriculture

interests. He is suing the Florida health department and two of his former

bosses for wrongful dismissal under whistleblower statutes as well as for

infringement of his First Amendment rights.

Department policy prevents commenting on pending litigation, says spokesperson

Bill Parizek, so Florida health department staff could not answer questions

about Shafey or his lawsuit.

Shafey's star began its meteoric descent after he refused to alter his

recommendation against spraying urban areas with malathion to control an

agricultural pest. Malathion is a widely used organophosphate insecticide, a

nerve agent (like many pesticides) of the same chemical family as sarin gas.

After analyzing medical reports and interviewing patients, Shafey concluded

the

spraying was making people sick.

Florida deployed malathion against an outbreak of Mediterranean fruit fly, or

medfly, long considered horticultural enemy number one. The females lay their

eggs in about 250 different crops. The medfly is an invasive species, neither

established nor tolerated in the U.S. or Japan. An outbreak results in

quarantines that prevent growers from selling fresh produce in either country.

A medfly outbreak hit Florida in 1997-1998, during which eradication efforts

subjected more than a million people, mainly from Tampa to Sarasota, to

malathion spraying. Call it collateral damage in the pesticide wars. Public

outrage over the spraying led to the passage of a state law in early 1998

mandating the health department to set up a citizen complaint and referral

hotline. The law also requires the department to verify complaints, educate

health care professionals and refer patients to doctors who know how to treat

chemical poisonings. Shafey joined the department soon after the law took

effect.

Stripped One of Shafey's first investigations began after medflies were found

in an abandoned orange grove in April 1998 in Umatilla, a rural town in

central

Florida's citrus country. A medfly emergency was declared in Lake and n

counties. After the area was sprayed, the county health department received 14

complaints.

Some of those complaints came from Charmaine Kaiser, now 36, her fiancé Dennis

, 38, and the six children in their combined family. Kaiser says

authorities were supposed to notify residents door-to-door before spraying so

that people would stay inside, but that didn't happen. " The hel icopters were

right above, not very high up, and they sprayed our house. I ran out to get

the

kids who were playing outside, and we all got coated, " she says.

Immediately after the spraying, Kaiser, who works for a local pediatrician,

says her family and a lot of neighbors were very ill with long bouts of

flu-like symptoms. " Two or three weeks later, I remember we were all

vomiting, "

adds. " I was just lying on the couch, and every one of us had a

bucket

or something by us. It was horrible. " Since the spraying, says he has

been hospitalized twice a year for pneumonia, and Kaiser and her kids still

suffer from respiratory complaints.

A few weeks after the spraying, more medflies were found in densely populated

Manatee County, just south of Tampa on the west coast, and another emergency

was declared. Shafey says throughout the duration of spraying there, the

health

department received dozens of complaints daily, eventually totaling 199.

By October 1998 Shafey had confirmed 123 cases of illness related to the

spraying, a finding that was later published in the U.S. Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention's Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.

The same month Shafey wrote the report that he and colleagues say led to

reprisals against him: a draft on the health effects of the medfly eradication

program recommending that the department prevent aerial spraying in

non-agricultural areas. The final medfly report FDOH issued was stripped of

both Shafey's recommendation and his name.

Pressured Shafey says he was pressured for months by his supervisors to change

his recommendation and conform to health department policy that was much less

aggressive about documenting cases of pesticide poisoning than he was. In

early

December 1999, he says his boss, , suggested Shafey consider

money

and politics as driving forces behind the way the department treated health

issues involving pesticides, and that if Shafey could not " bend " to

accommodate

FDOH policy, he should leave. denied the conversation, both in e-mail

to Shafey copied to his boss and later in court documents.

Shafey's boss suggested he consider money and politics as driving forces

behind

the way the department treated health issues.

wasn't the only one who stood in Shafey's way. For more than a year,

department lawyers had denied him access to worker's compensation data that

would have helped him protect workers against future poisonings. Eventually,

the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Washington

intervened on Shafey's behalf and sent a letter to Sharon Heber, the head of

Shafey's division, urging her to help get the worker's comp data.

Three days later, she asked the department's Inspector General to

investigate a

business trip that Shafey took the month before to see if he had submitted a

fraudulent travel claim.

Shafey had gone to Immokalee to investigate a methyl bromide spill at an

agricultural chemical supply house that injured about 40 people. Heber

suspected Shafey had traveled out of the way at the state's expense for his

own

benefit. Though Shafey flew to Miami, which was farther from his destination

than other places, the inspector-general's report acknowledged Shafey saved

the

state $47.11 because he had no hotel expenses.

The inspector-general did conclude Shafey defrauded the department $12.50 on

his next trip to the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual

conference in Chicago, where he presented his medfly data. The

inspector-general said he should have claimed reimbursement for three-quarters

of a day's per diem instead of a full day when he returned to Tallahassee, a

charge Shafey disputes.

Over the next month, Shafey's responsibilities diminished, according to health

department correspondence. A cornerstone of the pesticide surveillance program

is to categorize to what extent medical complaints are likely linked to

pesticide exposure. Despite protests from NIOSH, which funds Florida's

pesticide poisoning tracking program, took the classification task

away

from Shafey.

Something Really Underhanded On March 1, 2000 Shafey was presented with a

detailed letter informing him that the department was considering firing

him on

March 13 for falsifying a travel claim and conduct unbecoming a public

employee. The second charge stemmed from some emails Shafey sent to several

colleagues at various state and federal agencies questioning whether the

state's use of potassium chloride to execute prisoners by lethal injection was

a misuse of pesticides, because the chemical was not registered for that use.

Although tensions had been rising between Shafey and his supervisors, he was

surprised and upset by the move to fire him. At the time, state employees who

were not political appointees were protected from being sacked for policy

differences with management, so Shafey thought his job was secure.

Incidentally, that changed on July 1, 2001, when Florida Governor Jeb Bush's

plan to remove career service protection for Florida state workers went into

effect, throwing nearly 17,000 positions -- including the one Shafey occupied

-- into " at will employment. " Now any state worker who refused to bow to the

kind of pressure Shafey was subjected to can be fired without cause.

After he received the termination letter, there was an incident during which

Shafey says provoked him. Shafey closed his office door on and

admits to calling him " a low life " and " a piece of shit. "

The next day Shafey was told he could no longer come into work pending an

investigation of the " door slamming incident " the previous day. Shafey denies

that he slammed the door but just closed it while was on the other

side. " Anything I did at that point was blown all out of proportion, " he says.

" I think they were afraid I'd go postal, because they knew they were doing

something really underhanded. " He was instructed to go home and wait to be

called in.

On his last day Shafey was told to come in immediately to meet with Heber

(Shafey's division head) even though his lawyer could not be present under

such

short notice. Shafey went in and was told he was terminated immediately

without

any right to appeal because he used abusive language and created an " emergency

condition. " Then the sheriff was called to escort him out.

Burying the Controversy The Farmworker Association of Florida viewed Shafey's

ouster as a major setback to their efforts to address pesticide issues on

behalf of the state's 400,000-plus farm workers. Tirso Moreno, the

association's executive director, says Florida's pesticide safety regulations

are too lax to protect workers, and the few laws on the books are not

enforced,

so pesticide poisonings are rampant.

Aside from dealing with acute symptoms associated with individual exposures,

Moreno says his community seems to have unusually high rates of birth defects,

skin problems, respiratory complaints, and autoimmune diseases, like lupus.

Dr. Mohammed Abou-Donia, a professor at Duke University, says it's likely that

pesticide exposures are responsible for the health problems of Florida farm

workers, but proving it is fraught with pitfalls. Since there is no way to

measure all of the pesticides and other contaminants that people are exposed

to, it is impossible to link exposures of particular chemicals back to chronic

health problems. " We're put to such high standards of toxicological proof,

that

you can't meet it, " says n Moses, MD, director of the pesticide education

center.

The Farmworker Association has been trying to get FDOH to help for years, but

until Shafey showed up, he says nobody took their concerns seriously. " When we

had workers who had a problem, we always called him, " Moreno says. " We don't

feel that way now. And since his firing, we haven't expected much from FDOH. "

Public health colleagues have also expressed regret at Shafey's dismissal.

University of Florida health professors e and Joan Flocks wrote in

a letter to former Health Secretary , that Shafey brought

" courage

and objectivity " to the often controversial and heated public debate

surrounding pesticide use, and they urged the department to reinstate him.

The American Public Health Association publicized Shafey's ordeal in a Fall

2000 newsletter of its Occupational Health and Safety Section, and concluded

that his tenacity in carrying out his public health duties led to reprisal

against him. The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, a

professional organization representing more than 800 environmental scientists,

endorsed Shafey's medfly spraying conclusions and said his termination

" appears

highly irregular. "

Soon after his sacking, Shafey sued FDOH for wrongful dismissal seeking

reinstatement and damages under whistleblower provisions. Such legal actions

tend to take time, and Shafey's case is no exception. His first hitch was a

report by Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspector Dennis

on whether Shafey's complaint was justified. concluded in July

2000 that the department did not retaliate against Shafey, although he talked

only to the Florida health department and never tried to interview Shafey.

After repeated attempts, could not be reached for comment.

Florida has pursued a concrete wall defense. Using a newly popular tactic, the

state has invoked -- and the court has accepted -- a " sovereign immunity "

defense, which basically says that states are immune from legal action by

individuals. Though the doctrine was articulated more than a century ago,

recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have given states new power to use it,

explains Kohn, a lawyer representing the National Whistleblower

Center.

He calls it " a critical assault " on public health and environmental defense.

Meanwhile, before the sovereign immunity decision Shafey amended his complaint

to name Sharon Heber and individually. Shafey has also filed

another action claiming Heber, , former Secretary , and Governor

Jeb Bush violated his constitutional rights to free speech and due process of

the law.

On November 1, 2001 the court ruled that Shafey's case can proceed.

Meanwhile, Shafey's attorney of Henrichsen Siegel laments

the uphill trudge: " We've been waging this battle for one and a half years

now,

and we haven't been able to have any discovery yet in the case. I think it

speaks volumes about the merits of Dr. Shafey's case and the fact that the

state has done so much to try to avoid sitting down and talking about this

situation. "

Harassment of public interest-minded health officials, scientists and

technical

experts is widespread and rising, says DeVany, chair of the Industrial

Hygiene Association's Social Concerns Committee. " There's a lot of pressure

being put on people to modify, soften their tone, or hedge their reports to

say

something is possible instead of 'here's the evidence that it happened,' " she

says. " We're talking about an increased acceptance of unethical behavior --

about supervisors and managers putting pressure on their technical

professionals to perform unethical acts. "

De Vany characterizes this phenomenon as " the good corporate soldier

syndrome. "

But the increasing allegiance to corporate interests among public health

officials does little to help Florida farm workers or the Charmaine Kaisers,

Dennis s, and other victims among us.

Published: Jan 07 2002