There has been no shortage of grossly exaggerated and completely unsubstantiated claims - such as the pheromone product's being untested and the treatments causing red tide (red tide is a naturally occurring marine algal bloom). Fortunately, the actual facts and due diligence have proven these claims false.
I wrote an article about the spraying after I heard about it. You can read the entire article HERE. An excerpt from the article:
SUMMARY: EPA has received a quarantine exemption request from the United States Department of Agriculture/Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA/APHIS) to use the pesticide (E,E)-9,11-tetradecadien-1-yl acetate (CAS No. 30562-09-5) to treat host plants to control the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). The Applicant proposes the use of a new chemical which has not been registered by EPA. Due to the unique nature of this emergency situation, in which the time to review the conditions of this situation was short, it was not possible to issue a solicitation for public comment, in accordance with 40 CFR 166.24, prior to the Agency's decision to grant these exemptions.
DATES: EPA is waiving the public comment period, as allowed in 40 CFR 166.24, due to the short period of time available with which to review this situation and render a timely decision. However, comments may still be submitted and will be evaluated. (EPA, 2007) This exemption is dated July 2007. The spraying is to begin in August 2008, over a year after the exemption was granted. “Because of that exemption, the spraying program isn't subject to state approval, according to representatives of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation” (Kay, 2008).
The EPA has not registered this pesticide, and because of the exemption granted by the EPA for the spraying program, it is not even subject to state approval. So just whom are we relying on to verify the product's safety? Why California Governor Arnie's buddy and campaign contributor Stewart Resnick, who just happens to own the company that manufactures the pesticide, and is the owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world.
I feel so safe and protected. Thank you Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Kawamura, for entrusting the public's safety to a pesticide manufacturer's discretion.
Here is Drina's response:
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 8:26 AM
Subject: Public request concerning Light Brown Apple Moth aerial pesticide spraying
Dear AG Kawamura, Secretary, California Dept. of Food and Agriculture; and dear Mr. Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver (http://gov.ca.gov/interact)
Referring to your emailed form letter below in response to public concerns about the aerial pesticide-spraying program for the Light Brown Apple Moth, I have a public request. I am carbon copying a chain of concerned citizens, a military-trained expert on chemical warfare, several journalists, and four newspapers as I submit this request to you. All the above have my permission to circulate this letter and/or reprint and/or quote it, publicly.
You state, in your letter below, that a) the proposed untested pesticides to be sprayed over a 250-mile radius of urban areas, is so non-toxic as to be edible without washing the produce. You also state that b) "Public health officials with three state departments thoroughly reviewed health claims submitted during and after the aerial pheromone treatments last year in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties and could find no link between the claims" (of health injury, including more than 600 documented cases plus the near-death of one American child) "and the treatments. As the Governor recently said in Monterey, the spraying is safe, and "there is nothing that says otherwise." "
If that is true, then I publicly request that you, Mr./Ms. Kawamura, Mr. Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, the individuals who are funding this aerial spraying project, and your family members (young and old) and your best friends, all stand unmasked and unprotected in the direct firing line of the pesticide spray, at the moment of occurrence. I request that you thereafter eat of the dripping wet produce, unwashed, directly on the spot, at the moment of spraying. Thereafter, I also request that you issue a public statement with unarguable proof that your own ensuing illnesses are not traceable to the spray which you ate and inhaled, and that "nothing says otherwise.”
To ensure your full participation in this spraying experiment as public proof of non-toxicity, I ask that this entire matter, with you personally and all those above-named individuals standing in direct line of the jet's chemical trail, be televised unedited. Your own hospitalization and doctor's visits, from start to finish, must be viewed on public TV as well, with the attending physician's statement that "nothing says otherwise" that the chemical exposure had zero impact on your health state, and that of your loved ones. I also add to this request that you stand in the direct line of spraying for the Light Brown Apple Moth each and every time such spraying occurs, again aired unedited on public TV, with your own personal health exams thereafter aired unedited on TV as well. After all, if you are cooperating with the Patriot Act in turning our private health info over to the Feds without court warrant, and health information is at this point unconstitutionally considered public property, then you are not exempt either.
I also demand a public explanation why you prefer to spray an urban area of more than 200 radius miles instead of agricultural fields, selectively. It seems to me that if you were serious about exterminating an agricultural pest, that you would spray crop fields and not cities and counties of people themselves.
I hereby request that every reader please contact his or her local newspapers, and their own friends who in turn will also reiterate the same request as above, on a public level. I am requesting that my readers post this letter to the Internet, showing your own letter below which is an e-mailed response to the Light Brown Apple Moth aerial pesticide-spraying program. I also am linking a website which details the chemicals contained in the pheromone spray, their health impacts and their exponentially exacerbated effectiveness together, our legal rights and documented health cases, from an unbiased perspective instead of the perspective offered by your special moneyed interests.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
