Chlorpyrifos is in same chemical family as Nazi nerve agents
<Update: Read the San Francisco Chronicle story on this issue.>
Terri Carawan's health problems began in 1984, soon after the spraying started. Her skin became inflamed and her burning, itching eyes were nearly swollen shut with fluid. Despite tremendous fatigue, she struggled with sleeplessness.
It turns out that the telephone company where Terri worked as an operator had recently hired a pest control service to deal with lice and other insects in the building. Every month, they sprayed a pesticide called chlorpyrifos throughout the premises, including on the switchboard Terri operated.
In one of my first cases as a young lawyer, I represented Terri after her exposure to chlorpyrifos, recovering her medical expenses and lost wages and getting the spraying stopped. More than a quarter century later, while most indoor uses of chlorpyrifos have been banned due to risks to human health, the pesticide is still sprayed liberally—nearly 10 million pounds per year—on corn, oranges, and other crops in fields and orchards across the United States.
Today, I am proud that Earthjustice, along with NRDC and Pesticide Action Network, is filing suit to get this dangerous pesticide banned for good.
Exposure to chlorpyrifos can lead to vomiting, confusion and dizziness, respiratory problems, nervous system disruption, coma, and even death. Luis Medellin understands these risks of chlorpyrifos all too well. Medellin lives with his parents and three little sisters in the agricultural town of Lindsay, CA, where chlorpyrifos is routinely sprayed on the orange groves surrounding his home. The 24-year-old Medellin underwent testing for pesticides and discovered that he harbors concentrations of a compound indicating exposure to chlorpyrifos that are nearly five times higher than the national average for adults, as calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A chilling connection brings home the severe impacts chlorpyrifos can have on human health: the pesticide is from a family of chemicals closely related to nerve agents developed by the Nazis during World War II. Scientific research is discovering links between children who are exposed to chlorpyrifos in the womb or during early childhood and long-lasting developmental effects like ADHD and reduced head sizes at birth. The case we are filing today seeks to permanently protect children and their families—people like Luis Medellin and his young sisters—from the dangers of chlorpyrifos.
When toxic pesticides are retired from the market, however, it's critical that they aren't replaced by something as bad or worse. Unfortunately, such a scenario is unfolding in California. This spring, the state moved to approve the highly toxic pesticide methyl iodide—which has been used in medical research to induce cancer in cell cultures—as a replacement for methyl bromide, another agricultural pesticide. While discontinuing the use of methyl bromide was the right call (it depletes the ozone layer), replacing it with a known carcinogen also linked to miscarriages and other serious health impacts is simply unconscionable.
Methyl iodide is injected directly into soil before strawberries, peppers, and tomatoes are planted. But it doesn't stay there. Methyl iodide is a highly volatile compound, and as such, it can easily drift from the fields where it is applied into nearby communities, subjecting people living, working, and playing nearby to serious health risks. A state-commissioned study on methyl iodide warned that use of the highly toxic pesticide "would result in exposures to a large number of the public and thus would have a significant adverse impact on public health," and that "adequate control of human exposure would be difficult, if not impossible."
California's proposed approval of methyl iodide drew a huge public outcry: more than 50,000 comments were submitted, the largest public response that the state's pesticide regulators have ever seen. The state is currently sifting through these comments before making a final determination. Meanwhile, Earthjustice is petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban methyl iodide, which one scientist said is "without question, one of the most toxic chemicals on earth."
Safe, economically feasible alternatives to methyl iodide, chlorpyrifos and other pesticides do exist. In the case of methyl iodide, however, the state of California didn't investigate any of these alternatives in its proposed approval of the pesticide's use, disregarding both state law and the safety of residents.
Agriculture is a very important industry, but it shouldn't be conducted in a way that poisons people who work in the fields, live, go to school, or play nearby. Earthjustice and our clients and allies will continue working to protect these communities from the unacceptable risks posed by spraying farms and workplaces with unnecessary toxic chemicals.
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Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
lineturk
Whenever you are doing any type of pest control/animal control it is imperative to ask the company what type of chemicals they are using, and what impact they will have on the environment. We all want to get rid of those pests in our house, but without asking, there may be some other unintended consequences. If you'd like to know more about environmentally friendly pest control, check out our company at Manhattan Pest Control
OK, it is not 1984. Abuse of pesticides like you describe is not current information.
The particular chemical in question is only moderately toxic - almost exactly the same, gram-for-gram as ibuprofen (the active in the pain reliever, Advil). It is not like the modern alternatives that are essentially non-toxic to mammals, but what you describe is overblown. The use of chlorpyrifos is much restricted since the 80s and about 60% lower than it once was.
One thing to remember. The largest single use of this particular insecticide (38% in California) is to control a pest on tree nuts that spreads a fungus that produces aflatoxin, one of the single most toxic and carcinogenic chemicals known. When you have a good alternative for control of that pest, and the extremely serious toxin risk, let us know.
Steve Savage, Ph.D.
I took my husband to ER for violent vertigo,vomiting, respiratory problems on July 8. He told the doctor he thought the plum he had eaten had a bitter taste even though he had rinsed it before eating. His symptoms began about 2 hours after ingesting the plum. The doctor poo-pooed the possibility. After an EKG, Chest Xray, CT scan, labwork to rule out stroke or heart condition; he was diagnosed with Miniere's disease/aka positional vertigo. How could we find out whether the pesticide chlorpyrifos was actually the cause?
Thanks for your wonderful work in fighting against the use of dangerous pesticides.
I seem to remember that methyl iodide is also an ozone-depleting chemical. If this is true, that would be a good reason to discontinue its use as a substitute for methyl bromide.
I am an Organic and wild life Long Leaf Pine farmer.
We stopped using chemicals on the farm 10 years ago, 75 acres of USDA Organic Certified produce fields and 80 of long leaf Pine wildlife habitat planted over the last 20 years and still planting.
Our habitats have revived at an astounding rate, surpassing the efforts of our states Department of wildlife's efforts to revive pheasant habitats.
Botanicals can be just as effective as chemicals and the economic trade off has great profit margin and an environment that money can't buy.
We equate the stopping of using chemicals to that of quitting smoking, Life and nature can prevail.
877-257-DGRR
www.dgrr.org
The closed mind syndrome which seemingly afflicts hundreds of thousands of MDs in America is that if they cant pill your troubles away, then you are crazy or in the alternative if they cant poison you with cell killing chemicals or vut on you or burn you with radiation then FORGET IT.
There are other Doctors out there who embrace complimentary medicine which does not come from a DRUG COMPANY ONLY INTENT ON MAKING MEGA BUCKS./
Doctors are not GODS; they are generally closd mind, arrogant, know it all SHUTTUP AND DO WHAT I TELL YOU TYPES.
It is incumbent on each individual to educate themselves about the poisons and chemicals in our world which doctors use to prolong death by a few months at exhorbitant costs to the families involved; nutrition and exercise are critical to the well being.
Doctors by and large are corporate stooges for the DRUG CARTELS.
DI NOT ACCEPT THEIR WORD AS GOSPEL; they are human and oh so fallible.
Thank you! I live in dread of exposures to pesticides and that one is very high on the list. I am very grateful for your work. Pesticides inflict massive death,agony and disability on this planet. The general ignorance about them is appalling, especially among the medical community.
Where can I send a plant sample to be tested for pesticides?
I was also told by my doctor that it seems as if I were being poisoned after 21 hospitilizations in one year for acute abdominal pain, vomiting and nausea, painful nausea. But after telling another doctor what the first doctor suspected, he deemed me mentally unstable because of what "another doctor said" (the first doctors assumption that I was being poisoned) and was subsequently put in the hospital for a "mental" issue because THEY couldn't figure out the problem!! All I said was that "another doctor said? What a nightmare! This was in 2006, after the 21st attack, I never had another episode. I might add, the doctors called it psychological, I kid you not. Mental vomiting, HUH? How many suffer and SUFFER MORE needlessly? Very scary that this isn't regulated!
Encouraging news.
"If I had known then what I know now", I would probably had urged my physicians to conduct the tests I needed when I nearly died. I told my doctors I felt like I was being poisoned, and they laughed and said I should not be "making things up".
Exposure ceased after I was ruled permanently disabled (and stopped working), but the damage had already been done.
We have to continue our fight to make sure our ELECTED OFFICIALS recognize that people take priority over profits.
Terrific! Fighting all these poisons is immensely important.
Thank You.
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