BPA in Most Canadians’ Urine, Effects Unknown

Canadian Press

TORONTO – A Health Canada study suggests most Canadians have the chemical bisphenol A in their urine and all have traces of lead in their blood. Details here.

So You Don't Think Climate Change is Worth Fighting? Read on.

 DARA - a Madrid-based humanitrian group.

The Human Toll of Inaction Could Exceed 100 Million Deaths Between Now and 2030 Alone!

•Climate change and the carbon economy as estimated here are responsible for 5 million deaths each year today and cause illness in tens of million people globally comparable to the third leading cause of preventable death with a similar societal impact as tobacco use (see: Health Impact Climate/Carbon)

• The carbon economy claims the largest share of this impact, in particular
due to toxic air pollution, at over 4.5 million deaths a year today 

• Climate change is estimated to be responsible for 400,000 deaths
each year, particularly due to hunger and communicable diseases in the
lowest-income countries 

Arsenic in Our Food

Consumer Reports magazine: November 2012.

Our findings show a real need for federal standards for this toxin. Full story here.

Exposures to the Pesticide Dursban, in Utero, Linked to Brain Abnormalities

Apr 30'12 San Francisco Chronicle

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Babies exposed in the womb to a commonly used insecticide have brain abnormalities after birth, according to a study that looked at children born before the U.S. limited the chemical's use. Details here.

A "crop-duster" sprays Lorsban, (Dursban's "sister" chemical, sharing the same active ingredient, chlorpyrfos) on a canola crop in western Manitoba PLT photo.

Please also read: "Are Pesticide Regulators on the Take?" (See chlorpyrfos reference in section headed "So Who or What is to Blame?)

Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Now at Record Levels - WHO

18 MARCH 2010 | GENEVA | WASHINGTON DC

In some areas….

Have Farm Chemicals Ruined Another Life?

                                          by Larry Powell

Oh look! What the world needs now!
Yet another "crop protection" product!
A PinP photo.

I met him recently at a family event.  Since he prefers not to be identified, I'll call him "James," which is not his real name.

James moved slowly with the use of a cane; a distinguished looking senior with graying hair.

At dinner, he shared bits and pieces of his personal story with me. 

It was both amazing and tragic.

He had worked for a number of years in the farm chemical industry in western Canada. Industry "experts" convinced him at the time that the chemicals he was working with were so safe, "I would have drunk them if they had asked me to!" 

Turns out, he didn't have to. 

James is convinced that, merely inhaling their fumes over the years was enough to change his life forever. And not for the better. 

Later, at my request, James sends me a hand-written letter, going into more detail. In 1960, in a small southern prairie town, he was training to become a grain elevator manager. At that time, the chemicals he handled included 2-4-D. That's a weed killer heavily used in farming all over the world for more than half a century. 

Various studies have linked it to a wide range of adverse human health effects. It is related chemically to Agent Orange, widely used by the US military against the enemy in Viet Nam.

James says, at the time, there was no storage space for the chemicals so they were kept in his office, where he breathed in their fumes.

Later, at another location and another job in the same province, he went to work spraying roadsides, using products that "Were hard to get for the average home owner." 

He then moved to another area of the province where many different crops were grown. There, he says, a surprising number of new chemicals, including bug-killers and fungicides, were "big sellers." He describes fumes from the huge chemical warehouse at that location as "almost putrid."

And there, he actually lost his sense of smell. 

In 1991, he was gripped with full-bodied seizures and tremors. He was forced to retire and lost his driver's license, which he has never gotten back.

The Medical Establishment Turns its Back 

Several visits to a big city hospital turned up nothing. Finally, a full medical team of specialists "Grilled me for six hours," James remembers. He gave them a list of every chemical he had ever handled, sold or otherwise come into contact with and the companies which sold them to him. 

Then, they dropped a bombshell.

The specialists asked "'What would you do if we told you it was definitely the chemicals which caused your medical problems? 

"I explained it would be very nice to receive workers' compensation for this. They put their heads together and, after a short conference, they asked if I would go after the chemical company responsible. My answer was 'yes.' They then informed me that, if litigation ever took place, they would not help me! 

"This was a real slap in the kisser as this was totally unexpected." 

James's motor skills have been damaged and walking is a real effort. His memory has also been damaged. People who obviously know him say "hello," but he has no idea who they are.

He gets bad tremors daily, although medication keeps them under control. He has chosen not to let us use his real name publicly because "I live quite comfortably now, considering all my ailments and don't want to 'stir up a hornet's nest' this late in life."

Meanwhile, a veteran medical ethicist at the University of Manitoba, Paul Schafer, tells me he has heard similar stories before.

                                                 

                Prof. Schafer, Director of the U of M'sCentre 

                               for Professional and Applied Ethics 

.

Prof. Schafer concludes, "Doctors (and even public health officials) who blow the whistle on industries or industrial chemicals often find themselves embroiled in controversy, which can be career-damaging. Some are brave and speak out; many are cowardly and shut up."

-30-

Author's note: This tragic tale is not inconsistent with others I have heard. Given the unwillingness of much of the medical establishment and sometimes our larger society to "take on" these giant corporations, the companies basically carry on with business as usual, unchallenged and unchecked. 

One farmer I spoke to a few years ago told me his family had been exposed to a stiff dose of chemicals from a nearby farm where crop spray was being applied from the air. He and his family had all gotten sick and he was convinced the spray was the reason. 

A tidbit he did not want me to report on at the time was this. He believed a medical doctor employed by the corporation which made the spray, had actually 'phoned his own family doctor. Why? To convince him their spray was not really the cause. It seemed to work. His doctor, who initially said he believed the spray was to blame, changed his mind. 

Then, there was the time I was kicked out of a veterinary clinic. I wanted to confirm with the vet, anecdotal stories I had heard that several dogs and cats were dying in an area where crops were being heavily sprayed. It was a hostile reception which surprised me and made me feel like asking "Doth thou not protesteth too much?" l.p.

Stress, Depression Take Toll on Farmers

Winnipeg Free Press - By: Laura Rance - Manitoba Co-Operator 6/02/2010

Workshops to focus on growing problem...

Canola swaths in October.
l.p. photo

CFIA won't quarantine hogs for H1N1

Staff - Manitoba Co-Operator - 7/27/2009

Any Canadian hog herds that come down with the pandemic strain of H1N1 won't face the same quarantines as one of the few herds in the world known to have caught the virus.
Click headline for full story.

Kichiro Sato

H1N1 Virus: The First Legal Action Targets a Pig Farm

Time Magazine -

By Bryan Walsh Friday, May. 15, 2009

In an initial step toward what could be the first wrongful-death suit of its kind, Texas resident Steven Trunnell has filed a petition against Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer, based in Virginia, and the owner of a massive pig farm in Perote, Mexico, near the village of La Gloria, where the earliest cases of the new H1N1 flu were detected. Trunnell filed the petition in his home state on behalf of his late wife, Judy Dominguez Trunnell, the 33-year-old special-education teacher who on May 4 became the first U.S. resident to die of H1N1 flu.
Read more here....
Also read related article here...

Family Believes it was Poisoned by Crop Spray

by Larry Powell
A west-central Manitoba man says his family got sick from exposure to chemicals from crop dusting planes this summer.

Lloyd & Donna Burghart. In the foreground, a sow with several piglets. PinP photo

Tens of thousands of acres in the Swan Valley, and around Roblin to the south, were sprayed with crop pesticides from spray planes in July and August, following a serious outbreak of Bertha armyworms, which destroy canola crops.

The Swan Valley area is in the far west region of Manitoba, near the Saskatchewan border.

Now, Lloyd and Donna Burghart of nearby Bowsman said they believe Lorsban (chlorpyrifos), an insecticide that was being sprayed on a canola crop across the road from them, has made them and their four children ill.

"I started shaking and a-sweatin' and I kind of was panicking and I didn't know … how severe the symptoms would be," Lloyd Burghart recalled.

"I didn't know if I was going to actually make it to the house."

The hog and cattle farmer described one August morning when he went into his yard to do chores. A stiff breeze came up and he was almost overcome by the strong fumes.

Burghart said he, Donna and their four children packed up and left the house for the next two days.

"When we ran out of the house, I could actually feel my chest tightening — and we were just from the house to the car getting all the kids out," Donna Burghart said.

"And then, [I] just didn't feel good for the next day or so. And our children, their eyes got infected and just red and bloodshot from it."

That week, all members of the family developed problems, including nausea, vomiting, bloodshot eyes, headaches and dizziness.

Ken Cameron of Ken Kane Aerial Spraying in Minnedosa, Man., said it's possible people on the ground could have been exposed to Lorsban, but he's not sure what can be done about it.

"Certain things can affect certain people differently, and I guess if the weather conditions are such that the fumes were blowing into his yard, that can affect him, and I'm not sure how you combat that," Cameron said.

An official of U.S.-based Dow AgroSciences, which makes Lorsban, told CBC News that it needs more evidence before any link can be proven between the Burghart family's ordeal and their product.

Read THIS story on the CBC website.

Hear the story as aired on the CBC.

The Burgharts also worry about their animals following the spray exposure.