Emerging Worlds: Chronic Illness and Viral Infections

“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 these soybeans. (Photo by Ken Hammond courtesy U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)

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. (Photo courtesy U.S. EPA)

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.

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 effort 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 our hearts go 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.

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}

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