by Robert Lederman - July 25, 2000
Watching him react at press
conferences you know exactly when you are getting Rudy Giuliani
angry. His eyes widen, the eyebrows arch and he gets that same, are
you lookin' at me?, expression Robert DeNiro had before going on a
murderous rampage in the film Taxi Driver.
On Thursday 7/20/2000 a coalition
of environmental activists got Giuliani particularly agitated by
filing a Federal lawsuit charging that by indiscriminately spraying
toxic pesticides his administration was violating the Federal Clean
Water Act, the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery (of
Hazardous Waste) Act and the NY State Environmental Quality Review
Act. The suit, in which I am proud to be a plaintiff, also charges
that the administration is violating all the labeling instructions
that come with the insecticides and is spraying without obtaining
any of the legally required permits.
Here is a verbatim transcription
of what Giuliani said when questioned by reporters about the
lawsuit.
7/20/2000
City Hall press conference
Mayor Giuliani
"I think their
lawsuit is highly irresponsible. Because it creates all kind of
misleading impressions on the part of people. And in fact, maybe
over a long period of time the kind of furor that they've created
around the whole idea of insecticides has helped to contribute to
the outbreak of things like this...This is very irresponsible in
terms of what it does to public opinion and public emotion and
public feelings. The mosquitoes that are carrying this virus are
killers. They kill human beings. Insecticides used in responsible
ways pose no similar kind of threat to anyone."
In other words, activists are
irresponsibly airing opinions and distributing scientific
information on pesticides which run counter to official propaganda
that insecticides are totally safe and that spraying them on our
homes, streets, parks, waterways and bodies is desirable.
Blaming protesters and activists
is a tried and true tactic for the Mayor. When activists protested
the NYPD shooting of unarmed West African street vendor Amadou
Diallo 41 times, the Mayor claimed we were, "the worst element
in society"-Daily News 4/1/99. This so-called worst element
included elected officials, ministers, rabbis and even police
officers. Giuliani and NYPD Commissioner Safir repeatedly stated
their theory that a rising murder rate and a sudden general increase
in crime statistics after the Diallo protests were caused by protest
signs comparing the Mayor to Adolf Hitler and the NYPD to the
Gestapo. According to their theory, the signs caused a drop in
morale among police officers who then refused to arrest criminals.
Now activists are even causing
epidemics.
Is the Mayor right? Is the
information activists like myself are giving to the media and the
public needlessly frightening people into being afraid of harmless
pesticides? Are mosquitoes allegedly infected with West Nile Virus
really killers that must be stopped at ANY cost?
Last year according to the
statistics released by the City seven elderly people supposedly died
from the virus, yet to date none of the names of the deceased have
been released nor have any human or bird blood and tissue samples
been made available to independent scientists for testing and
confirmation.
The Department of Health and CDC
press releases state West Nile Virus is extremely hard to get and
very rarely fatal with most of those infected recovering in a few
days with no symptoms whatsoever. More people died last year from
questionable NYPD shootings than are alleged to have died from the
so-called epidemic.
Statistically, your chances of
being seriously injured or killed by falling concrete in NYC is far
greater than your chance of being harmed by West Nile Virus.
According to the Mayors own press
releases only people with weakened immune systems such as the very
young, the elderly and people with AIDs or other immune diseases are
susceptible to the virus. A weakened immune system just happens to
be the single most common physiological side-effect of repeated
exposure to pesticides. Another frequent symptom of pesticide
exposure is encephalitis. Department of Health statistics show that
seven cases of encephalitis is an average number per year for NYC.
The NYC Department of Health press
releases also clearly state that children, the elderly and people
with immune diseases like asthma are particularly susceptible to
getting sick from pesticide exposure. The segment of NYC population
that includes these categories of people numbers in the millions.
Based on the kind of statistical analysis Mayor Giuliani specializes
in, the public health threat from using these pesticides is
thousands of times greater than the threat of West Nile Virus.
While the Mayor and the CDC keep
telling people that West Nile Virus has never before appeared in
North America, the reality is that the CDC, the U.S. Army,
Rockefeller University in Manhattan and the U.S. Animal Disease
bio-warfare lab on Plum Island NY among others have been
experimenting with West Nile Virus for decades. Sloan Kettering
hospital in NYC was even experimentally injecting it into volunteers
in order to test it as a cancer treatment in the 1950's.
Documentation is provided below to prove these facts.
So what do you think? Should
activists just mind their own business and let the Mayor spray the
City as often as he likes with whatever toxic chemicals are handy?
Does the public have a right to weigh in on this issue before being
sprayed? Is the Mayor free to ignore all of the labeling
instructions that the chemical companies and Federal regulations
demand that pesticide applicators follow?
Unlike his frequent free speech
violations, which can and often have been remedied in a court of
law, there is no way to compensate people once you have permanently
damaged their health. A court order cannot restore damaged genes,
repair cells that have mutated into cancerous tumors from pesticide
exposure or recreate the dead fish, birds, and beneficial insects
that have been exterminated from the local environment due to
indiscriminate spraying. Our water and air quality, which more than
any other factor determines the real quality of life in NYC, is
being degraded each time the Mayor sprays. Keep in mind that NYC is
an island-which make the massive spraying of chemicals that are
never to be released over water completely illegal.
Below is a small sample of the
information activists are distributing which the Mayor believes is
wrongly influencing people. Want to help? Call the following numbers
in NY State Attorney General Spitzers office and demand that they
stop the Mayor from illegally claiming pesticides are safe and
illegally dumping them in our environment. David Nocenti, chief
counsel to Elliot Spitzer 212 416-8095 Peter Lehner, in charge of
environmental bureau for Elliot Spritzer 212 416-8450.
Queens Courier 2/17/2000 Attorney
General To City Officials: Stop Claiming Malathion Is Safe City
officials including Mayor Rudy Gillian and Health Commissioner Nil
L. Cohan have repeatedly violated federal and state regulations by
offering public assurances that the pesticide marathon is safe,
Judith Neck, a spokesperson for Attorney General Eliot Spritzer
confirmed officials of her agency have notified the city's
corporation counsel to "cease and desist" this practice.
Peter Leaner, chief of the Attorney Generals environmental
protection bureau, notified the city's corporation counsel, Michael
Hess, that safety claims about pesticides are in violation of US
Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation Law.
From: ANVIL LABEL http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/dshm/pesticid/anvil.gif
Harmful if absorbed through the skin. Do not induce vomiting because
of aspiration pneumonia hazard. Avoid contact with skin, eyes or
clothing. Do not apply directly to water, or to areas where surface
water is present. It is a violation of Federal law to use this
product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.
From the Premed website. (
Click Here to visit ProMED-mail's web site.)
WEST NILE VIRUS UPDATE. 1950'S
EXPERIMENTS USING WEST NILE VIRUS AT SLOAN KETTERING, NYC
In the 1950's, experiments with
WNV were carried out on human volunteers at the Sloan- Kettering
Institute of the Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases, New
York. A total of 95 patients with neoplastic disease were inoculated
intramuscularly with the WNV topotype strain Eg-101 in an effort to
achieve therapeutic pyrexia and oncolysis in them.
Newsday 9/29/99
Area Labs Have Long Studied
Virus / Yale, Rockefeller began tests in '50s 09-29-1999 page A28
Epidemiologists suspect that the West Nile virus has for the first
time been isolated in humans or animals in the Western Hemisphere,
but the virus has for decades made its home in several U.S. research
laboratories, including Rockefeller University in Manhattan and Yale
University in New Haven, Conn. In fact, investigators there were the
first to grow and study the West Nile virus in the United States.
The work began in the 1950s when unidentified viral samples from
around the world arrived at Rockefeller on a steady basis.
The following are verbatim
descriptions of one of many passages from the Giuliani
administration official handbook on Malathion.
City of New York Chem-bio Handbook
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mayor
Page #76. Malathion Malathion is a
commonly used organophosphate insecticide that causes the same
biological effects as nerve agents...Malathion can be absorbed by
ingestion or through the skin.
Newsday 11/21/93 Lab Focus Was On
4 Animal Diseases When the military officially closed Ft. Terry in
1954, Army officers turned over to Plum Island scientists 134
strains of 13 viruses collected from four continents, most obtained
for development as biological warfare weapons.
Newsday 7/2/93 Plum Island Bird
Kill Probed The discovery of the remains of at least 10 dead birds
in a courtyard of Plum Island's research laboratory for exotic
animal diseases is being investigated by Agriculture Department
scientists.
Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to
be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which
he is a member or of the "NO-Spray" lawsuit in which he is
a plaintiff.
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