Re: Pesticides necessary, letter by Steven E. Boultbee, Observer on August 17, 2011.
It is obvious that Mr. Boultbee has a vested interest in the status quo.
There are no poisons under my kitchen sink and more and more people avoid poisons they previously purchased for home use. It is illogical to suggest that poisons under the sink justify the use of poisons elsewhere.
Health and Welfare Canada doesn’t exist. The name was changed to Health Canada many years ago. Moreover, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) has no labs of its own. The PMRA registers pesticides on the basis of industry-provided, toxicological (rodent) data. Rodents have detoxification genes missing in humans.
There are very few epidemiologists (human specialists) at the PMRA. Thus, the PMRA is weak in examining human studies. Inconvenient health studies are routinely withheld from the PMRA by the industry.
The danger of invasive plants has been much exaggerated and every urban/provincial pesticide ban in Canada routinely allows pesticide use against these plants. Lyme disease has little, if anything, to do with pesticide use, while urban insecticide spraying to control mosquitoes continues.
The real issue here is the unnecessary use of herbicides and not the necessary use of insecticides, including dealing with the new epidemic of bed bugs.
There is plenty of data supporting bans on cosmetic use of pesticides, but pesticide promoters pretend such data does not exist or dismisses it unreliable.
I firmly disagree that cancer rates will not drop as a result of ban on pesticides, as this defies common sense apart from solid evidence to the contrary.
Moreover, to suggest that use of pesticides is a means of preventing environmental degradation and protecting public health, usually defies common sense and is laughable.
K. Jean Cottam, PhD