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Pesticides necessary

Pesticides necessary

Regarding “Pesticide ban a win-win situation,” in the Aug. 9 Observer, I respectfully disagree.

The pesticides that are going to come under this ban are not any more toxic than the poisons that are already in the home and under the kitchen sink.

Health and Welfare Canada has cleared the issue as to whether or not the chemicals cause cancer, and have banned anything that even had potential to be a carcinogen decades ago.

It can not be coincidence that while we read in the paper of communities that have banned these safe and effective chemicals, on the next page we can read about invasive weeds destroying plant biodiversity and increasing pressure on endangered species. Lyme disease from ticks, the spread of West Nile Virus and the increase in bedbugs across Canada and the U.S. – bedbugs carrying a dangerous form of bacteria.

It has been determined that bedbugs can and have carried two types of drug-resistant bacteria. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE).  MRSA has increasingly turned up in hospitals and in outbreaks outside of health-care settings, such as among athletes, prison inmates and children.

In an effort to compete for political space with the provincial NDP, our provincial government has said that they will ban pesticides that are used for cosmetic purposes.

Pesticides that are used in the urban environment have already been reviewed by a division of Health and Welfare Canada and have been deemed safe to use.

The people who are against the use of these pesticides cannot come up with the data supporting their claims that the products are unsafe.

Cancer rates will not drop because of a ban on pesticides, and can allow other forms of environmental degradation and an increase to threats to public health to rise.

 

Steven E. Boultbee,

President, Boultbee Vegetation Management

Penticton