Letters for Oct. 26, 2015

Letters for Oct. 26, 2015

Take pride, clean up parks, beaches

A couple months ago, around mid-August, a couple trees were uprooted at Hanalei Black Pot Beach Park. Cars were damaged, but thank God no one was injured. Now fast forward to mid-October. Trees are cut up but limbs, branches, logs and dead foliage are all still sitting where they were cut. There are traffic cones are around them but there they sit. I thought maybe they were waiting for one of the close call hurricanes until they cleaned up the mess but nope. No hurricanes have hit but it looks like the trees were in a storm.

Are they not worried about the appearance of our beaches? How about safety? Kids crawling on them, perhaps getting hurt. Oh wait! The cones are there, the kids will stay out. Think again. It’s a hazard and an accident waiting to happen, not to mention ugly!

I’m sure people would have burned the logs and limbs but no fires are allowed on the beach. So, if we can’t burn it and no one cleans it up, what happens to it?

Another thing that concerns me are the brand new county trash cans that are near the portable bathrooms at Black Pot. No one ever seems to empty them. Just this past Friday there was even a broken vacuum cleaner in there.

They’re not where the county can just come pick them up with their automated truck. They are overflowing and the smell — I’m sure you can imagine. I’m just wondering where the pride is. We are very fortunate to enjoy this beautiful park.

It just seems like when it comes to cleaning up trash, downed trees or sometimes broken plumbing everyone just turns their head and says “not my problem.” Look at that bay, think about all the visitors, don’t we even want to try and make it the beautiful spot that it is? It’s just really sad when no one takes responsibility to make it right.

Barbara Poor

Hanalei

Protect children from pesticides

It was very fortunate that Syngenta has volunteered to become more transparent and we thank them.

It is true that in normal “vertical” evolution as between two parents conceiving a child, there is a very precise determination of the color of eyes like gray or blue, genetically.

However, biotech corporations are generally engineering “horizontal” evolution between two different species like bacteria and corn. In this case there are many imprecise and unpredicted negative outcomes published in peer reviewed toxicology journals. For example, horizontal transfer creates random altered molecular structures of proteins, such as unnatural sugar residues attached, which can render the proteins very toxic, reports the Journal of Agricultural Chemistry, in 2005.

Here is a review of main points from the legal document, Pesticides in Paradise, created by the Center for Food Safety, which promotes litigation especially to protect children’s health.

These are some documented negative situations existing, especially on Kauai, from biotech projects, listed in the above report, which should be addressed in the Hawaii courts to settle the disputes.

“A spate of recent studies is building an irrefutable case that long-term, low-level exposure to organophosphate insecticides in early life has profoundly negative impacts on children’s neurological development.”

Records released by DuPont-Pioneer show that the company sprays organophosphate insecticides on Kauai quite frequently: once every four days (91 days/year).

Children may be harmed by pesticides even from secondhand exposure.

Expectant mothers residing within 500 meters of fields sprayed with organochlorine insecticides during early pregnancy have a six-fold higher risk of bearing children with autism spectrum disorder than mothers not living near such fields.

Atrazine was the most commonly found pesticide in the study, with 80 percent of test sites contaminated by this restricted use pesticide.

Children and others exposed just a single time to a pesticide may in certain cases go on to develop chronic neurological conditions, even if they appear to fully recover.

Will M. Davis

Lihue