Hawai‘i could quit chlorpyrifos now

Governor Ige could immediately cancel chlorpyrifos permits for Waimea and Kekaha and create 1/4-mile buffers for other destructive pesticides, like Roundup, without waiting for the Hawai‘i Legislature. How? Democratic Gov. Andrew Kuomo of New York state used such a strategy to ban chlorpyrifos by bypassing the NY Legislature.

Ige could order the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture who may issue chlorpyrifos permits to our friends, Hartung Brothers and Corteva, through the end of 2022, not to issue any more chlorpyrifos permits. U.S. Congressman Ed Case and U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz are in favor of totally banning chlorpyrifos. Corteva and Hartung Brothers have made brilliant DNA discoveries, but this letter concerns protecting people in Waimea, including employees of Corteva and Hartung Brothers, from dangerous side effects of pesticides.

Please recall prenatal exposure to non-acute, low levels of chlorpyrifos, similar to those measured in Waimea Canyon Middle School (The Garden Island, July 14, 2013), can cause brain defects and low IQ scores, reports PNAS, 2012. The same study from Dr. Rauh from Columbia Medical University reports MRI studies and animal studies also show that non-acute chlorpyrifos prenatal exposure reverses normal structures in the child’s brain which “reverses normal sex differences in learning, memory and emotional behaviors.”

California law requires 1/4-mile pesticide buffers for all schools. Why do U.S. schools need 1/4-mile buffers? President Trump’s EPA legalizes the spraying in Waimea and around U.S. schools of 72 destructive pesticides, including chlorpyrifos, which are banned or being phased out by the European Union.

Ige could order 1/4-mile pesticide buffers to help prepare Hawai‘i citizens for avoiding illness or death by new viruses. Why? Pesticide contamination, especially for those with frail health, weakens their immune system. Pesticide buffers are mostly needed for Corteva and Hartung Bothers. Because they spray approximately 17 times the amount of pesticides as normal farms, reports the Center for Food Safety.

I just met a lady who had recovered from breast cancer. I asked her, “Did you know a new study in Frontiers in Genetics, 2019, discovered Roundup mixed with a second cancer agent (microRNA) triggers aggressive breast cancer?” She said she uses Roundup all the time in her backyard to kill weeds. I told her, “Better to have weeds than cancer.” She said to me, “You’re, right!”

Whose immune systems get most weakened by pesticides? Mostly frailer people, like people recovering from cancer and other illnesses, elderly people and children with preexisting medical conditions like kids born with heart birth defects.

Several books, including “Biologic Markers in Immunotoxicology,” report environmental exposure to checmical pollutants may impact susceptibility to infectious disease.

A new study came out Feb. 11, 2020, in Environmental Sciences Europe (ESE), which confirms the toxicity of Roundup. This study debunks a recent study by Dr. Steinberg, who claimed Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) NK603 corn was safe and no more long-term studies are “justified” concerning Monsanto’s NK603 and other GMOs.

The main discovery explained that this glyphosate is 1,000 times less toxic than Roundup because of residual oxidized petroleum residues and heavy metals such as arsenic present in Roundup that bioaccumulate in bodies and render people or rats sick on a long term. The problem with Dr. Steinberg’s study is both experimental rats (eating NK603) and control rats (eating normal corn) got sick, and some of the rats eating Nk603 corn died, so Dr. Steinburg concluded it couldn’t have been the NK603 corn, or else only the rats eating NK603 would have gotten sick.

However, the ESE study revealed the truth: the control rats were eating toxic chemicals like Roundup residues on the normal corn. Therefore the experimental group probably actually got sick from eating the NK603 corn and the control group got sick eating Roundup and many other pollutants.

“In fact, the treated rats in Steinberg et al.’s experiment showed many adverse effects, some of which, including increased mortality in males fed GM corn + Roundup, were statistically significant. Other adverse effects affected both treated and control groups. The latter trend may be due to contamination of the feed of the control animals by many carcinogenic pollutants, including pesticides, but also by Roundup residues and Roundup-tolerant GMOs. For instance, glyphosate contained in Roundup was found to be 300–1,400 times more elevated in their control feed than in the treated group. In conclusion, Steinberg et al.’s study is invalidated by the contaminated feed, biased interpretations, and major undeclared conflicts of interest,” said the lead author, Prof. Seralini.

Currently, Hawai‘i law requires only a 100-foot pesticide buffer. But everyone knows chlorpyrifos, bifenthrin, and metolachlor were in the Waimea Canyon Middle School’s (WCMS) air and atrazine in WCMS’s drinking water fountains from Syngenta’s spraying with a larger, 300-foot buffer (The Garden Island, July 14, 2013, “Attorney: Pesticides at WCMS violates federal law”). Please recall medical research using MRI scans proves that similar, non-acute, low levels of chlorpyrifos prenatal exposure can cause irreversible brain defects and low IQ scores (PNAS, 2012).

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Will Davis is a resident of Lihu‘e.