Healing Our World: Weekly
Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
Biological and Chemical
Warfare Are Here Now
How many deaths will it take 'till we know
that too many people have died.
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
-- Bob Dylan
There has been much written in the press the
last couple of weeks about the threat from
terrorists if they commandeered a crop duster to
spread biological warfare agents. Yet few
writers have mentioned that these planes are
used for this purpose every day, but not by
terrorists. Instead, they are used by licensed
operators who are spraying deadly chemicals on
our lands and on our children.
We don't have to wait for chemical warfare to
be waged on U.S. soil by terrorists. Such
warfare has been underway for over a century.
Every day, billions of pounds of deadly
chemicals, many of which were used as chemical
warfare agents in World War I and II, are
applied as pesticides and herbicides to soil,
plants, and people around the country and the
world.
Near Sheldon, Illinois, grower Joe Zumwalt
applies a low-insecticide bait that is targeted
against western corn rootworms feeding on and
laying eggs in soybeans. The U.S. releases over
six billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the
environment each year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates
that more than 200,000 people are killed by
pesticide poisons, worldwide every year. That
means 547 men, women and children die every day
from pesticide poisoning. In addition, four
million children die each year from the effects
of contaminated water and other toxic hazards.
That's nearly 11,000 per day.
UNICEF reports that many independent
authorities assert that at least 500,000 Iraqi
children under five have died since 1990, in
part as a result of the U.S. sanctions and the
effects of the Gulf War.
Surely these threats and atrocities are worth
waging a war upon to save lives.
Crops aren't the only place pesticides are
sprayed. Pesticides are being used in
classrooms, offices, playgrounds, lawns, playing
fields, locker rooms, bathrooms, storage rooms,
basements, school gymnasiums and day care rooms.
Kitchens and cafeterias are the areas most
frequently treated with pesticides. Pesticides
and herbicides are applied to eliminate many
kinds of pests, including weeds, mice,
cockroaches, ants, flies, lice, ticks, fleas and
other insects. Some people spray outdoors to
kill bees, wasps, ants, rodents and pigeons.
Pesticide and solvent vapors, unlike most
chemical warfare agents that dissipate rapidly,
can persist in indoor air for weeks or even
years. Pesticide residues can contaminate indoor
surfaces, and can remain in carpets and dust for
months or years. They can also persist outdoors
in soil for years and some weed-killers commonly
used at schools can last from one to five years
in the soil.
Research over the last 20 years shows that
pesticides cause sterility, birth defects, and
neurological disorders.
Pesticides stay on fruit and produce and most
cannot be washed off with water. In studies done
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 108
different kinds of pesticides were found on 22
fruits and vegetables commonly eaten by
children! Sixteen pesticides were found in eight
samples of processed baby food.
Crop dusting aircraft are the worst
offenders, possibly contributing to more
pesticide poisoning episodes than any other
delivery method. Less than 10 percent - some say
as little as one percent - of the pesticide gets
applied to the crop. The rest becomes airborne
and can affect people, animals, and plants many
miles away.
These chemicals are regularly detected in the
air thousands of miles from where they were
used. DDT, banned in the United States in the
1970s has been found in Antarctic ice, penguin
tissues, and in most species of whales! Farm
pesticide resides have been found in vacuum
cleaner bags of people living in cities many
hundreds of miles from farms.
The life systems of the Earth are intimately
connected. You cannot affect one without
eventually affecting them all.
Millions of tons of hazardous substances
have been improperly disposed of and cause a
continual threat to human, animal, and ecosystem
health. Crop dusters spray every day, and not
just to end insect infestations. Potato growers
apply pesticides from crop dusters to kill
foliage on fields they are about to harvest to
make it easier to get the potatoes. Apple
growers spray a chemical on the apples to keep
them on the trees longer so they get redder and
don't fall off in the wind.
The Environmental Working Group estimates
that every day, 1.1 million children eat food
that, even after it is washed, contains an
unsafe dose of 13 organophosphate pesticides. Of
those children, 106,600 ate food that exceed the
EPA's own safe daily dosage level for adults by
10 times or more.
The foods found to most likely contain unsafe
pesticide levels are peaches, apples,
nectarines, popcorn and pears. Among baby foods,
pears, peaches and apple juice had the highest
levels.
The problem is much worse than we can even
imagine. We have no way of knowing the true
extent of the illnesses and deaths that result
from toxic pesticide exposure. A study in
California reported that 16 out of 20 critically
ill children that were transferred to a major
medical center from smaller hospitals were
wrongly diagnosed. They were actually suffering
from acute pesticide poisoning.
The number of deaths each year from pesticide
poisoning is staggering and grossly
underestimated. Migrant farm workers suffer the
most and their deaths and birth defects rarely
show up on the lists of the dead, since they
can't afford health care and fear reprisal by
immigration authorities. They may never make it
in to a hospital or to a doctor.
Business and industry have been waging
chemical warfare on U.S. citizens for decades.
The Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) estimates that more than
32 million workers are exposed to harmful
substances from more than 3.5 million
workplaces. Yet over the last 30 years, OSHA has
issued only 170 citations to employers for not
having proper procedures to protect against
toxic substances leaving the workplace.
Solvents such as benzene, carbon disulfide,
methylene chloride, and ketone are a few of the
49 million tons of solvents that are produced
annually in the United States, and 9.8 million
workers are exposed to them daily. They are in
nail polish, paint, plastics, rubber cement,
furniture and thousands of other products. They
are absorbed through the skin or ingested.
Thousands of people are sickened and many die
from these exposures annually.
We are under constant assault from industry
sponsored chemical warfare every day:
- Asbestos, especially from construction
workplaces, causing lung tissue scarring and
cancer of the lining of the lung.
- Hormones from pharmaceutical workers,
embalmers and farm workers cause many health
problems for them and their families.
- Lead from employees who work in the lead
smelting industries, fix batteries or
radiators or who work at a shooting range
can harm the brain, nervous system and
kidneys.
- Cadmium from electroplating plants, paint
pigments and solder is linked to lung and
prostate cancer and even low level exposure
can be harmful.
- PCBs and other chlorinated hydrocarbons
come home with firefighters, plastics
workers or those who work with electrical
transformers and can cause cancer.
- Pesticides from farm workers, gardeners or
park maintenance workers can easily be
transported into the home and can cause many
fatal illnesses.
Many pesticides are part of a deadly family
of pesticides that came from chemicals that were
developed as nerve gases during World War II.
Please take that in for a moment. Chemicals that
were specifically designed to kill all life
forms quickly during wartime were approved by
our government for use on our lawns, in our
homes, and around our children. Toxic terrorism
is taking place right now.
This family of organophosphate pesticides -
nerve gases - were first synthesized in Germany
before and during World War II. Tabun, Sarin,
and Soman were made by Gerhard Schrader in the
1930s and '40s.
Sarin, still available today, is lethal to an
adult human if only 1,700 mg gets on his or her
skin. It doesn't even have to be taken
internally to kill.
Sarin gained worldwide attention when on
March 20, 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo, a terrorist
group in Japan, placed Sarin on five subway
trains traveling toward Kasumigaseki station.
This subway stop is a common one for those
working in Tokyo government offices. Twelve
commuters died and over 5,000 were injured.
More than 100,000 human-made chemicals have
been introduced into the environment in the past
50 years. More than 1,000 new chemicals are
developed each year. Wherever you live, there
are probably more than 250 synthetic industrial
chemicals in your body that were not present in
the bodies of your grandparents when they were
your age.
A permanent ban on crop dusters would not
only lessen a terrorist threat, but would lessen
the daily toxic terrorism that is perpetrated on
American lives and ecosystems - and all the
Earth - every day. Pursuing the American Dream
has many consequences. It is a trail covered
with the blood of innocent children, women and
men, considered by industry to be acceptable
consequences of progress.
The losses in New York, Washington, DC, and
Pennsylvania are tragic, and my heart goes out
to the victims and their families. But sadly,
their numbers pale in comparison to the yearly
death toll from existing toxic practices in the
United States and around the world. Let's extend
our outrage to the other many hundreds of
thousands of senseless deaths around our nation
and the world that occur because of our
business-at-all-costs model for economic growth.
We don't have to wait to demand action on
chemical terrorism - it's here today.
RESOURCES
1. Read the tragic stories of those who have
been poisoned by pesticides at: http://www.getipm.com/our-loved-ones/memorium.htm
2. Find out about pesticide poisoning and
learn of alternatives at: http://www.safe2use.com/
3. Track pesticide abuse from the Pesticide
Action Network at: http://www.panna.org
4. See details of pesticide poisoning from
the Soil
Association
5. Visit the National Coalition Against the
Misuse of Pesticides at: http://www.beyondpesticides.org/
6. The Rachel Carson Council's Guide to
Pesticides can be found online at: http://members.aol.com/rccouncil/ourpage/samples.htm
7. Read the Environmental Working Group
reports at: http://www.ewg.org/pesticides/
8. Read about the facts of the sanctions
against Iraq from Voices
in the Wilderness and from Citizens
Concerned for the People of Iraq at: http://www.endiraqsanctions.org
9. Find out who your Congressional
representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them
that you want an end to ALL the senseless deaths
that take place every year that are considered a
consequence of progress and the pursuit of the
American Dream. If you know your Zip code, you
can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and
teacher in Seattle. He can be found watching at
all the outpouring of support for the tragic
deaths on September 11 while millions of
children and adults die each year, unnoticed.
Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions
to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com
and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com}