Celebrate PANNA’s 25 Years of Working for Change!

PAN North America will host a 25th Anniversary Party on Sunday, October 14, from 3–7 pm at San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. The Ferry Building is an apt choice for the celebration since it is the home of a popular farmers market co-hosted by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture. The Ferry Building is a vibrant hub that connects urban communities with regional foods, crafts and cultures, and PANNA is grateful to partner with the Ferry Building for this wonderful event. So, mark your calendars and please join us for the festivities. Check our website (www.panna.org/25years) for the latest updates on our 25th Anniversary Party.

California’s Right-to-Know Bill

The Chemical Information Act of 2007 (SB 578) would require chemical manufacturers to provide data on the long-term health effects of chemicals—including their ability to cause cancer, reproductive harm, neurological damage and immunological disorders. It is backed by a broad coalition including the Breast Cancer Action Fund, the National Environmental Trust, United Steelworkers and the Just Transition Alliance. SB 578 will face a close vote on the Senate floor in early 2008.

Fair Trade for Farmworkers

In late April, PANNA’s Dr. Chela Vazquez joined representatives of a dozen farmworker organizations for a three-day meeting in Owatonna, Minnesota, to advance farmworker labor standards for Fair Trade food products. The conference, co-hosted by Owatonna’s Centro Campesino (www.centrocampesino.net) and the Minneapolis-based Local Fair Trade Network, was attended by representatives of the Farm Worker Pesticide Project (Washington), the Farmworker Association of Florida, Comunidad a Comunidad, El Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas, California Rural Legal Assistance, the International Labor Rights Fund, and the University of Michigan’s Chicano Studies Department.

The Fair Trade movement has grown as a response to an international outcry over the plight of the millions of small farmers in poor countries who are routinely excluded from international “Free Trade” discussions. Fair Trade is intended to assist small-scale farmers from less-industrialized nations whose livelihoods are threatened by low commodity prices and unfair competition from large producers in rich countries.

As co-op dairy worker Alfonso Rodea told the conference: “I work 12 hours a day without overtime pay. If we had fair trade benefits we would have fair wages, health benefits, and overtime payment.”

Eduardo Alvarez, from Alvarez Organic Farms in Washington’s Yakima Valley, called Fair Trade a good step for small farmers because it brings benefits to farmers and farmworkers alike. Several Minnesota and Wisconsin farms are already participating in the Agricultural Justice Project, a Domestic Fair Trade pilot project. Nancy VanDeHey, from the Colectiva Armonía farming collective in Washington state, stated emphatically: “Healthy food and social justice go hand in hand. I will be proud to call my farm a Fair Trade Farm.”

PAN’s Pesticide Database Expands

Version 7.3 of PAN’s Pesticide Database is now online, containing information on 165 new chemicals and many updated risk lists—including the EPA Cancer List and the World Health Organization’s list of acute hazards. PAN’s Air & Pesticides Information Center (AirPIC) has been improved to allow searches by Chemical Class and Use Type as well as by Crop and Toxicity. Chemicals also can now be sorted for volatility—a major factor in creating the risk of pesticide drift. See pesticideinfo.org.

Washington to Fund Pesticide Drift Study

In the first legislation directly influenced by PANNA’s Drift Catcher project, the state of Washington has budgeted $538,000 for a pilot program to measure the extent of pesticide drift around agricultural lands. Washington’s Department of Health will conduct the program using air monitors. (See “Poisons on the Wind,” Spring 2007, PAN North America Magazine.) “This is a great victory for farmworkers and others who are exposed to pesticide drift,” said Carol Dansereau, director of the Farm Worker Pesticide Project, which lead the drive for state-sponsored air monitoring. Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget also includes $550,000 for the Washington State Horticultural Association (WSHA) to shepherd an ongoing program to help growers make the transition from older, potentially dangerous chemicals to less-toxic alternatives. Not everyone was celebrating. Jim Hazen, WSHA’s executive director, called air monitoring “a waste of funds.”

Activist Murdered in Mexico

On April 11, Santiago Rafael Cruz, an office manager for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), was found bound and murdered in FLOC’s headquarters in Monterrey, Mexico. The daily El Universal reported that Cruz “was apparently beaten to death before dawn Monday morning by an intruder.” FLOC founder Baldemar Velásquez noted that FLOC’s campaign to win farmworkers’ rights has drawn the wrath of “crooked people…so we’ve had continued attacks on our officers here in Mexico, and harassment of our staff.” Ben Crocket, of the Mexico City branch of the AFL-CIO, urged Mexican and U.S. authorities to investigate the death as “a politically connected murder.” After Cruz’ family was forced from their Oaxaca farm in the mid-1990s, Santiago migrated to the U.S. where he labored as an undocumented worker until he was hired to work in FLOC’s Ohio office. Several U.S. Representatives are pressing Mexican authorities to protect the lives of other threatened FLOC workers. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has demanded a “thorough and professional investigation” of the murder. For updates, see www.floc.com. Contributions to Cruz’ family may be sent to the Santiago Tragedy Fund, c/o FLOC, 1221 Broadway St., Toledo, OH 43609.

EPA Urged to Adopt “Precautionary Principle”

On April 17, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) heard testimony from a number of experts who called for the U.S. to adopt “European-style safeguards” for chemicals. These safeguards would include the “Precautionary Principle,” which requires manufacturers to prove that new substances and technologies are harmless before they are allowed on the market. MIT professor Nicholas Ashford (a former chair of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety & Health) called for improved testing methods. “Look at Europe and find out what’s happening,” he advised. Instead of just assessing the risk to single individuals, the NAS was encouraged to consider “potential risks to whole communities.” Ashford praised Massachusetts and New Jersey for passing progressive laws to hold polluters accountable.

Pesticides Shut Down New Jersey School

In early June, state workers in hazmat suits began removing tainted soil from West Brook Middle School in Paramus after the discovery of levels of aldrin, dieldrin and chlordane that exceeded state safety guidelines. The schools were built atop former celery fields where pesticides were used. Bruce Moholt, a former EPA toxicologist, said there’s reason to be concerned, especially “because of the cancer risk” of chlordane.

“In large enough doses, all three of these chemicals are pretty toxic to the central nervous system,” PANNA scientist Karl Tupper told The North Jersey Record. “These chemicals act the same way on people as they do on insects, attacking the central nervous system” and causing “seizures and convulsions.”

Prior to learning of the contaminated soil, The Record reports, the school children “exhibited a variety of health problems, some without a clear explanation.” One worried parent noted that her daughter began having seizures in January. Other children suffer from autoimmune disorders, sore joints, and leg cramps. One mother told The Record that there are some days when her daughter “cannot walk or stand upright.” Parents are being advised to schedule blood tests for their children.

Record reporter Michael Gartland broke the story that school officials waited six months before informing parents about the contaminated soil. Subsequent tests revealed contamination levels 165 times higher than are considered safe under state standards.

Syngenta Website Attacks PAN

In April, Syngenta, the giant multinational corporation that manufactures the acutely toxic herbicide paraquat, posted links to a flurry of articles attacking PAN. Several articles were reposted from The African Executive, a magazine published by the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN), a right-wing think tank based in Kenya that reportedly receives funding from Syngenta.

One article titled “Pesticide Action Network is Preying on the Hungry!” proclaimed: “Africa cannot afford the luxury of Pesticide Action Network’s debate against technologies that will make the continent feed her people and make many to join the middle class [sic]…. Pesticide Action Network should allow Africa to be food secure first, then Africa will be in a better position to have a roundtable discussion on imagined threats.”

Another article, “Pesticides: The Third World War,” attacks PAN, the Berne Declaration (the Swiss NGO), and the organic cotton movement, calling herbicides the “key to food security” and promoting paraquat both as key to “a green revolution for Africa” and “a tool to fight back pain in rural areas.”

According to NuclearSpin.org, IREN receives support from the International Policy Network (IPN), which is fast-becoming “one of the most successful international right-wing corporate front organizations.” IPN creates and funds “partner organizations” that appear to be legitimate African or Asian NGOs but “seem little more than satellite front organizations whose true identity is hidden.” The Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria is another IREN creation.

According to Francois Meienburg of Berne Declaration, a leading member of a global coalition fighting to eliminate paraquat, once these so-called Third World front organizations are established, “they begin to attack Western environmentalists for being Imperialists.”

“This kind of lobbying is nothing new for Syngenta,” says Meienberg. In 2004, Syngenta funded a pro-paraquat study orchestrated by Tech Central Station, the same group that launched a “vigorous attack on the climate sciences after it enlisted Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, as one of its sponsors.”

Pesticide Drift and Schools

On May 15, the Associated Press reported that “over the past decade, hundreds, possibly thousands, of schoolchildren in California and other agricultural states have been exposed to farm chemicals linked to sickness, brain damage and birth defects.” The AP story (“Students Sickened When Pesticides Drift,” by Garance Burke) drew on the extensive work on pesticide risks to children compiled by PAN North America, Californians for Pesticide Reform, and the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.

The AP story noted that “there are no federal laws specifically against spraying near schools, and activists say California and the few other states that do have such laws don’t do enough to enforce them.”

With suburban sprawl encroaching on farmlands, the pesticide poisoning of children has been increasing. More than half the schools in California’s Tulare Valley now sit within a half-mile of sprayed fields. A 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 40% of U.S. children poisoned by pesticides were exposed when chemical clouds drifted over their schools. Despite the danger, the AP reported, the EPA “does not keep comprehensive national figures on students and teachers sickened by drifting pesticide.”

“The regulations are inadequate,” PANNA scientist Dr. Margaret Reeves, told the AP. “In the vast majority of cases, people who didn’t follow the laws received, at best, a $400 fine.”

The AP cited the case of a 15-year-old California high school sophomore who died in 1997 after being exposed to chemicals that drifted over her school. In 2001, a sixth-grader in Washington state nearly died from exposure to endosulfan—a highly toxic organochlorine pesticide responsible for widespread poisoning and banned in several countries in the Global South—that was used on a nearby apple orchard. According to the AP, the pesticide was “picked up from residue on the grass and absorbed into her bloodstream through her skin.”

Facing the Challenges of Climate Change

On June 1, Beyond Pesticides convened its 25th National Pesticide Forum at Chicago’s Loyola University. The theme of the three-day forum was “Changing Course in a Changing Climate.” Topics included the impacts of global warming on human health, organic farming, pesticide use, and environmental justice.

In his keynote address, Dr. Warren Porter, professor of zoology and environmental toxicology at the University of Wisconsin, explained why the chemical industry should be happy that the standard “test subject” for endocrine disrupting chemicals is a “30-year-old male.” It turns out that thirty-something males have the highest natural levels of testosterone, which shields them from the endocrine-disrupting effects of chemicals.

Peter Orris, M.D., associate director of the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health, warned that climate change and increased CO2 will favor the growth of weeds over food crops—in part, because weeds have not been commercially bred and their biodiversity makes them more robust and adaptive. (Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that climate change will produce more pollen, more allergic reactions, and more toxic poison ivy.)

Dr. Paul Hepperly, Rodale Institute’s research and training manager, hailed organic farmers for promoting “carbon sequestration” because—unlike chemical-based agriculture, which transfers carbon from the soil to the atmosphere—organic farming captures carbon from the air and returns it to the earth.

Pam Miller, executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, detailed the effects of climate change in Alaska where ecological feedback loops are warming permafrost, melting ice, releasing carbon and uncovering toxics buried at abandoned military sites throughout the region.

PANNA scientists Karl Tupper and Dr. Margaret Reeves offered presentations on “Community-based Air Monitoring” and “Toxic Policies that Hurt Communities of Color.”

Reform the Farm Bill and Re-farm America

More people would be paying attention to the debate over the 2007 Farm Bill if it were called what it really is—the Food Bill. Originally crafted during the Depression to help small farmers, the Farm Bill has become a tool that mainly serves the needs of large agricultural and food companies.

Because the $300 billion Farm Bill largely determines what is grown on 200 million acres of private land, it also essentially dictates what Americans eat. According to the Berkeley, California, Ecology Center, the existing Farm Bill is responsible for “damaging our farmland, undermining farming communities, and making the most harmful and dangerous foods the cheapest and most plentiful.”

More than 36% of the Farm Bill’s billions go to a few “Big Ag” commodity crops—corn, wheat, cotton, rice, tobacco, soybeans, feed grains and oilseed. The result, says Ecology Center, is that “the most processed and least nutritious foods—associated with heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer—are the cheapest forms of food in our country.”

Food, environmental and social justice organizations are calling for a new Farm Bill that invests in local food systems, increases access to organic fruits and vegetables through urban food banks and food stamps, ensures equal opportunities for minority farmers, supports organic and regenerative agriculture, and protects farmworkers from exposure to pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.

PANNA has endorsed two food-reform bills: Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-OR) Local Food and Farm Act (H.R 2364) and the FOOD (Food Outreach and Opportunity Development) for a Healthy America Act (S. 1232) co-sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

PANorama

Selected staff actions, meetings and lobbying

March

• Senior Scientist Susan Kegley presents EPA with Drift Catcher data suggesting EPA drift exposure models are flawed; EPA agrees to reconsider its standard.
• PANNA members send emails on behalf of “Justice for Bhopal Survivors.” Indian government promises clean water, economic rehabilitation, increased medical care.

April

• PANNA assists a coalition of African NGOs in their petition to block the Ugandan government’s plan to begin indoor DDT spraying in August.
• PANNA’s Kristin Schafer and Stephenie Hendricks join allies in Washington, D.C., to host congressional briefing on DDT for Africa Malaria Day.
• PAN founder Monica Moore joins PAN partners in Dakar, Senegal for the Third Conference of Parties to the Stockholm Convention to push for elimination of lindane and endosulfan.

May

• Susan Kegley meets with EPA officials in Washington, D.C., to address aldicarb, carbofuran, foggers, fumigants, and rodenticides.
• PANNA volunteer Emma Sandon attends Dow’s annual meeting to support resolutions demanding Dow take responsibility for its asthma-inducing pesticides, the Bhopal disaster, and the pollution of Michigan’s Tittabawassee River.

June

• Kristin Schafer co-chairs national Pesticide Working Group strategy meeting in Chicago.
• Marcia Ishii-Eiteman and Erika Rosenthal attend Fourth Global Authors Meeting of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development in Cape Town, South Africa.

July

• Brian Hill and CPR staff participate in statewide meetings calling on the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to adopt stricter controls on releases of volatile organic compounds from pesticide applications.
• PANNA lobbies for passage of HB 1530, a California bill mandating reporting of tests of workers exposed to organophosphate pesticides.

Poison Pusher: Senator Tom Coburn Attacks Rachel Carson

On May 22, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) intervened to block bills honoring Rachel Carson on the eve of the pioneering environmentalist’s 100th birthday. Coburn’s office, repeating claims made by right-wing activists promoting increased use of DDT in Africa, stated: “Millions of people in the developing world…died because governments bought into Carson’s junk science claims about DDT.”

Coburn has actively promoted increased reliance on DDT for malaria control in Africa, despite a global commitment by the World Health Organization and other international agencies to shift to safer alternatives. In 2004, William Dunn, President of Dunn Capital Management, gave $4,000 to Senator Coburn’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. Dunn sits on the board of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a group that promotes the use of DDT. That same year, Dunn also gave $5,000 to the Club for Growth, a political action committee that has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Coburn over the years.

A CEI staff member told the Inter Press Service in 2004 that CEI received funding from Monsanto, one of the corporations that originally manufactured DDT. CEI sponsors a website (RachelWasWrong.org) that accuses Carson of launching “a misinformation campaign that her followers continue without regard for the consequences.”

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) tried to pass a resolution honoring Carson—introduced by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) and co-sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), among others—Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), standing in for Coburn, rose to object.

Human exposure to DDT has been linked to low-birth-weight babies, developmental delays, reduced ability to breast feed and harmful reproductive effects. Many of the politicians leading the crusade to undermine Carson’s legacy (including Oklahoma’s other Senator, James Inhofe) are also aggressively disputing scientific evidence that car and coal power plant emissions contribute to climate change.

U.S. Representatives—all Republicans—who voted against naming a post office after Rachel Carson

Alaska Donald Young Arizona Trent Franks John Shadegg California Walter Herger John Doolittle Devin Nunes Howard McKeon Gary Miller Colorado Marilyn Musgrave Doug Lamborn Florida John Mica C. W. Young David Weldon Tom Feeney

Georgia Jack Kingston John Gingrey Illinois J. Hastert Indiana Dan Burton Mike Pence Iowa Steve King Kentucky Edward Whilfield Ron Lewis Geoff Davis Michigan Timothy Walberg Candice Miller Thaddeus McCotter

Mississippi Roger Wicker Missouri W. Akin Samuel Graves Roy Blunt Ohio Jean Schmidt Jim Jordan John Boehner Patrick Tiberi South Carolina James Barrett Tennessee David Davis Marsha Blackburn

Texas Samuel Johnson Ralph Hall Joe Barton K. Conaway Ronald Paul Randy Neugebauer Kenny Marchant Michael Burgess John Carter Peter Sessions Utah Rob Bishop Christopher Cannon Virginia Virgil Goode Eric Cantor