Here's the opinion article printed Sunday, June 10th, followed by CROW's response printed in the Winnipeg Free Press Tuesday, June 20, 2006.




Winnipeg Free Press:  View from the West

Alligator tears

 

Pesticides are bad: Just ask any gator

 

Sunday, June 11th, 2006

 

By Rolf Penner

 



AFTER failing time and time again to prove that the cosmetic use of lawn-care products causes any number of ailments, including cancer, anti-chemical crusaders are now trying to scare the pants off us. But the latest allegation, that these substances could shrink the male genitalia, also comes up flaccid.


According to Florida zoologist Louis Guillette, using products from the corner hardware store to rid your lawn of annoying weeds like dandelions, thistles and clover will result in the diminishment of one's manhood. As a consequence of his "findings," he personally refuses to apply them to his own lawn. "Just because you can go buy them at the local stores doesn't mean that is appropriate use," he says.


Guillette, who last month lectured at the University of Western Ontario on the subject, maintains he has hard evidence to back up this claim, in the form of... alligator penises. How one convinces these beasts of the scientific necessity of measuring their equipment, or who would fund such an endeavour, are questions best left unanswered. But apparently the measurement of reptilian genitalia, particularly gator gonads, is one of the good professor's specialties. And he doesn't like what he sees. In his estimation, some of the boys just don't measure up, particularly the ones in Florida's polluted Lake Apopka.


He finds other evidence in two studies. One in 2005 found that genital anomalies in humans increased from seven per 1,000 in 1988 to 8.3 per 1,000 in 2000. Another from the Netherlands found "higher than expected" rates of genital deformities in some regions of that country. Guillette points out, "This is important because it is not just an alligator story. It is not just a lake story. We know there has been a dramatic increase in penile and genital abnormalities in baby boys."


Do we know that? Apart from the fact that the epidemiological studies cited fall into the category of statistical insignificance, have numerous confounding factors and that such studies by their very nature are incapable of showing cause and effect, numerous other studies have found no increase in the decrease of manliness, please excuse the phrasing. Studies like one in 2004 from Scotland published in the British Medical Journal, one from California that went on for 13 years, and others from Washington State, Finland and New York, all show no such increase... decrease... you get the picture.


That brings us to Lake Apopka, home of the not-so-well-endowed alligators. It's not your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill lake. It's the most polluted lake in the sunshine state because in 1980 it received an unintentional, yet rather large, spill of industrial pesticides into its waters from the Tower Chemical Company. High concentrations of DDT, its metabolites and sulphuric acid were dumped into the lake.


While it is true that exposure to high concentrations of certain specific pesticides over long periods of time can lead to the kind of penile problems to which Guillette refers, it is quite a leap to suggest that this is the case for all pesticides, at all levels of exposure. In fact, it is down right unscientific. The most basic and fundamental rule of toxicology is that "the dose makes the poison." Implicit in this rule is the notion that such poisons are actually there in the first place. Lawn-care products do not and probably never did contain DDT, sulphuric acid or, for that matter, DBCP, another chemical found to cause sterility at high doses.


In all of the mad, modern rush to scare people away from lawn-care products, Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine's scientific correspondent, raises a good public policy question about foggy, obscure studies like Guillette's. "How much time and resources do we (government, industry and consumers) want to spend in chasing what have so often turned out to be phantom risks?" he asks.


Despite the deprivation suffered by lady alligators in Lake Apopka, the rest of the world does not share their fate. The evidence indicates that today's men are well, as manly as they've ever been -- even the ones who spray dandelions on the weekends.



Rolf Penner is the Agricultural Policy Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, www.fcpp.org. 

winnipegfreepress.com

and CROW's published response:

http://winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/3556155p-4108763c.html

     
Winnipeg Free Press

Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

 

Pesticides are designed to kill life

Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

By Glenda Whiteman

WHO defends pesticide use in today's society? Are there still people defending
smoking? Probably not, but we know that the last to do so were making money
from it.

On the advice of medical practitioners from around the country and
organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society, across Canada today
municipalities are overwhelmingly choosing to restrict cosmetic (meaning
unnecessary or esthetic) pesticide use. They are doing so for the same
reasons that they chose to restrict the use and sale of cigarettes not so
long ago. Cigarette smoking is bad. It's bad for our health, individually and
collectively. Even when we choose not to use it ourselves, we are still being
harmed by other peoples' choice to use it; it's called second-hand smoke. We
all agree now that it's harmful. Even those who profit from it's use, like
the government and the manufacturers, can no longer deny that it's harmful.

Yet people continue to smoke, even though they know it's bad for themselves
and their families, because they are addicted to that behaviour and to the
chemical substances (which, by the way, include pesticides) in the cigarette
smoke they inhale.

Lawns become addicted to their chemical fix, too. Just like humans, if they
are healthy and balanced, they don't need chemicals to get a temporary high.
For workshops and tips on organic lawn care to replace the need for chemical
herbicides, check out the Manitoba Eco-Network
(http://www.mbeconetwork.org/projects_lawncare.asp) and to replace chemical
fertilizer learn how to make and use compost with the Compost Action Project
of Resource Conservation Manitoba
(http://www.resourceconservation.mb.ca/cap/workshops_basic.html).

Using pesticides is like breathing second-hand smoke on your family, pets and
neighbours. Yes, Rolf Penner from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy was
right in the opinion piece Alligator Tears printed in the Winnipeg Free Press
(June 11, 2006) that it is difficult to prove conclusive cause-effect
relationships. We are dependent upon epidemiological evidence to study the
links between pesticide use and ailments such as cancer (particularly
non-hodgkins lymphoma and childhood leukemia), asthma, allergies and other
lung problems, auto-immune dysfunctions, emotional disorders including
suicide, birth defects and sexual abnormalities (yes, even smaller penis
size), multiple chemical sensitivities, and pet cancers, to name a few. One
reason for the difficulty is that it is unethical to deliberately expose an
experimental group to substances known to be toxic. As the Canadian Cancer
Society says in the brochure Pesticides and Your Health, "Pesticides are
poisons." They go on to explain, "Pesticides are designed to destroy living
organisms, so by their very nature they can also be harmful to humans. Young
children are especially at risk..."

It would be a lot easier to study those links if Canada had an adverse
pesticide effects registry or even if we required doctors to screen for and
report potential pesticide exposure incidents. It's too bad that
epidemiological evidence is not considered in registration decisions about
pesticides and other chemicals. It's especially too bad that pesticides are
only registered one "active" ingredient at a time, not in combination with
other "formulants" or petrochemical "carriers" or the way which we're exposed
in the real world, in other words, as just one more ingredient in the toxic
soup that we are daily forced to inhale, ingest, and absorb.

So, if they're not based on human health effects how are registration
decisions made? The government depends on mostly animal studies and
information provided by the industry or the "registrants," which often
include what are called risk/benefit analyses. However, these analyses have
been known to exclude certain segments of the population, such as the
chemically sensitive, because that might skew results.

Who really is most at risk? The federal government's Standing Committee on
Environment and Sustainable Development tells us that the following groups of
people are most vulnerable to pesticides: fetuses, children, seniors, women,
Aboriginal people, persons suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity or in
poor health, and professional users of pesticides.

So who stands to benefit? Perhaps Rolf Penner and the Frontier Centre for
Public Policy, and anybody else who profits financially from pesticide use.
Because clearly, like smoking, we now know there is no other way to profit.
Pesticides are unnecessary, harmful, and avoidable. And by the way, in case
you're still in doubt about whether or not pesticides are toxic, just read
the label and you'll see. You might also see that our eyes are particularly
vulnerable; for example, Health Canada warns us to protect our eyes from
exposure to malathion. But if you are exposed, let yourself cry; it's one of
the body's ways of detoxifying. Tears are healing. Even for alligators like
Rolf Penner.

Glenda Whiteman is executive director of Concerned Residents of Winnipeg
www.CROWinc.org
© 2006 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.