Editor,
Lorne Hepworth’s virtually identical letters defending urban use of pesticides appear in Canada from coast-to-coast. His claim that pesticides enhance “the health and well-being of communities” is preposterous and self-serving. Just as preposterous is his claim that Health Canada is “one of the most respected regulatory agencies in the world.”
Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) has no laboratories of its own and is at the mercy of the industry as to what kind of data may be requested and received by the PMRA for the purpose of lawn chemicals’ evaluation.
The PMRA is known to be using a discredited statistical risks method based on industry-provided results of short-term toxicological tests on rats, while this agency’s perusal of epidemiological (human) studies is highly problematic.
Also bear in mind that common herbicide combinations such as PAR III, consisting of 2,4-D, mecoprop and dicamba, are not tested, even though a “synergistic” (reinforcing) effect is suspected.
Much of the applied product consists of allegedly inert additives. The “inert” formulants are suspected of not being so inert. What is officially tested is a very small portion of the ready-to-use product.
Herbicides do not stay in soil but migrate to ground water. They also rise in the air as dust, fall in the rain and are detectable in the fog.
Rather than entrusting our health to self-interested pesticide promoters like Hepworth, we should avoid the use of these ecological contaminants that also seriously impact human health.
K. Jean Cottam, PhD
BCLocalNews.com – Lobby claims ‘preposterous’.
