In article
,
Billy wrote:

In article
,
Billy wrote:

In the name of fairness, I wrote to Dr. Joe.
Joe Schwarcz:
http://oss.mcgill.ca/contact.php

26 May, 2009

Professor Schwarcz,
there is a debate, in the UseNet group rec.gardens.edible, over the use
of herbicides and pesticides.
A poster there, using the name Sherwin Dubren, claims to have
purportedly received an email from you, which he posted on 25 May, 2009.

From: sherwin dubren
Newsgroups: rec.gardens.edible
Subject: Dr. Schwarcz replies
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 01:55:14 -0500


In response to all the chatter about Dr. Scharcz being on the payroll
of the chemical companies, as well as his office, I sent him the
comments from this forum and he replied with the following:


Thanks for forwarding me that nonsense. Nobody funds me....except
McGill University . I do know where the CBI stuff comes from....a while
ago CBI funded some summer scholarships for McGill students, a couple of
whom ended up working in our office. That had nothing to do with
anything....certainly not with my book. These "organic" people are
paranoid and if a view doesn't fit into their "world view" they think
that some conspiracy is afoot. They generally have a very poor
scientific background and have no understanding of chemistry. They
could use a little oil for their mental machinery. Organic oil if they
so wish.
regards

Dr. Joe Schwarcz



Steve can take pot shots at Dr. Schwarcz to try and malign his knowledge
and connections, but he is only trying to divert people from
understanding what this well educated man has to say. He is well
recognized in the scientific community and well accepted by the public
who buy his books and watch his regular TV show up in Canada. Too bad
certain people have closed minds. Some may call that dogmatism but I
tend to think it is fanaticism.

Sherwin

-------

Some of us would like to know if this accurately reflects your attitude
about "organic" farming (in the contemporary sense of the word).

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Bill Rose

----

I urge others of you to write to Dr. Joe as well.

So the good doctor responds.
----

Subject: Organic
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 16:58:24 -0400
Thread-Topic: Organic
Thread-Index: AcneJaUDVTLa2QAtRnuWe/ZSs5A58AAHkGQw
From: "Joe Schwarcz, Dr."
To: "Bill Rose"
X-McGill-WhereFrom: Internal
X-Sonic-SB-IP-RBLs: IP RBLs .

The email is indeed from me. I have attached a few pieces I have
written on organic agriculture which obviously express my views.

#4 Pesticides.doc

Pesticides have one indisputable effect. They cause emotions to boil
over. That's just what happened when a group of golfers noticed that a
chemical sprayer was out on the course as they were completing their
round. By the time they got into the clubhouse, several were
complaining of headaches, rashes and general malaise and angrily
approached the superintendent to protest what they believed was an
irresponsible activity. The golfers linked their symptoms with the
chemicals being sprayed because they were convinced that the use of
pesticides is inherently unsafe. Are they right?
Asking if it is safe to use pesticides is like asking if it is safe to
take medications. The answer is both ³yes² and ³no² because it depends
on which medication, in what dose, how it is taken, by whom it is taken
and for what reason it is taken. Salt, Vitamin B-6, vitamin A and
caffeine, on a weight for weight basis, are more toxic than many
pesticides. Basically, instead of classifying substances as "safe" or
"dangerous," it is far more appropriate to think in terms of using
substances in a safe or dangerous fashion. Two aspirin tablets can make
a headache go away but a handful of tablets can kill. Unfortunately, in
rare cases, even two tablets can cause side effects. So it is with
pesticides. While there are safe ways to use these chemicals, there can
be no universal "guarantee of safety." After all, pesticides are
designed to kill their targets, whether these be insects, weeds or
fungi. The best we can do is evaluate the risk-benefit ratio of each
substance and make appropriate judgements.
In Canada such judgements are made by Health Canada's "Pest Management
Regulatory Agency (PMRA)." Before a pesticide can be "registered" for
use, the toxicologists, physicians, chemists and agronomists of the
Agency have to be convinced that the substance can effectively handle
the problem it was designed for and that its risk profile is acceptable.
A "registration" is a long and involved process requiring acute,
short-term and lifelong toxicology studies in animals as well as studies
of carcinogenicity and possible damage to the nervous system. Proof of
absence of birth defects is required. Effects on hormonal changes have
to be studied in at least two species, along with the effects of the
pesticide on non-target species. All routes of exposure are assessed,
whether via ingestion, inhalation or skin contact. Cumulative effects
are studied. PMRA also requires field-testing for environmental effects
before a pesticide is approved.
Based on all the data, PMRA assesses the risk, taking into account
exposure of children, pregnant women, seniors, pesticide applicators and
agricultural workers. The potential level of exposure can be no more
than one one hundredth of the dose that showed no effect in animals.
Even once a pesticide is registered, there is a continuous reevaluation
system that includes the "inert" ingredients that are used in the
formulations. Risk assessments are refined in accordance with new
research findings. All ways of reducing pesticide risk are examined,
with great emphasis on Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, which is
aimed at reducing the reliance of pesticides as the sole approach to
pest management. IPM is geared towards taking action only when numbers
of pests warrant it and uses a mix of biological, physical and chemical
techniques. Furthermore, PMRA has inspectors across the country to
monitor the proper use of pesticides.
It is hard to imagine what more could be done to ensure that a pesticide
has an acceptable risk-benefit ratio. But can even such a rigorous
system ensure that we will have no consequences from the use of
pesticides? Absolutely not. There may be subtle effects in humans that
show up only after years of exposure. This can be revealed only by long
term studies, not by anecdotal evidence. Pesticides cannot be linked to
cancer on the basis of a heart wrenching case that may appear in the
media describing how a child who had repeatedly felt ill after exposure
to lawn sprays was later diagnosed with cancer. Long term
epidemiological studies are required. A number of such investigations
have been carried out.
Workers in the agricultural chemical production industries, who would be
expected to have the highest exposures, do not show any unusual disease
patterns, but the number of subjects in these studies is small. A
widely reported study of farmers who sprayed their fields showed a weak
link between acres sprayed and various cancers but overall the farmers
had fewer cancer cases than the general population. An often cited
American study seemed to indicate a link between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
and acres sprayed with the herbicide 2,4-D, a chemical that is used in
home lawn-care as well. But a long-term study of workers who
manufactured 2,4-D, and had huge exposures over many years, showed no
increased cancer incidence at all.
One of the developing concerns about the use of insecticides and
herbicides is a possible effect on the immune system. Laboratory
evidence indicates impaired activity of immune cells after exposure, and
at least one study has shown increased respiratory infection in
teenagers in villages where pesticide use is the heaviest. There is
also the possibility of neurobehavioral effects. In a Mexican study,
children in areas where pesticides were extensively used performed more
poorly on coordination and memory tests. But these are very different
conditions from those seen when a dilute solution of 2,4-D is
occasionally used on a lawn by trained applicators. On the other hand,
home gardeners who purchase such chemicals and use the improperly can
put themselves and others at risk.
It would be great if we could get away from using pesticides. No
exposure to pesticides means no exposure to their risks. At home, we
can manage this. After all, a few dandelions on the lawn are not life
threatening. In fact, quite the opposite. They can be made into a
nutritious salad. But we cannot feed 6 billion people without the
appropriate use of agricultural chemicals. So we do have to put up with
risks, both real and imagined, because on a global scale they are
outweighed by the benefits. And just what was the dastardly chemical
that was being sprayed on the golf course that caused the reaction in
the golfers? Good old H2O! Fear itself can sometimes be hazardous.
-----
#5 Pesticides 2.doc

Pesticides are nasty chemicals. They have to be. You don't beat off
the myriad insects, weeds and fungi which look upon our food supply as
their food supply with sweet smells and pleasant tastes. You do it by
poisoning them. Hopefully, without poisoning ourselves.
Pesticides were born out of necessity. The cultivation of crops has
always been characterized by a relentless battle against pests, a battle
which required farmers to take up chemical arms. Thousands of years ago
the Sumerians learned to dust crops with elemental sulfur and the
ancient Romans drove insects from their orchards by burning coal tar.
The discovery of the toxicity of lead and arsenic compounds led to the
extensive use of lead arsenate in agriculture, without much concern for
its effects on human health. After all, producing enough food to feed
the growing population was the prime goal.
Nicotine, pyrethrum and rotenone extracted respectively from tobacco,
chrysanthemum and derris plants joined the chemical stockpile by the
19th century. Malathion and chlorpyrifos, typical organophosphates,
were born out of research into poison gases during WW II, and the rapid
advances in chemistry in the post-war era introduced synthetic
pesticides such as DDT, benzene hexachloride and dieldrin. Insects
shuddered, fungi floundered, weeds wilted and agricultural yields
boomed. And at least in the developed world, worries about lack of food
began to be replaced by concerns about pesticides. Rachel Carson's
³Silent Spring² alerted us to the possible effects of pesticides on
biodiversity, and we heard the faint rumblings of epidemiological
studies linking occupational pesticide exposure to health problems.
Analytical chemists, armed with their gas chromatographs and mass
spectrometers, heightened our fears by revealing that it was not only
farmers or agro-chemical producers who were exposed to pesticides, we
all were! Residues of these chemicals were found on virtually
everything we ate. Apples, for one, were tainted with Alar, a plant
growth regulator sprayed on trees to prevent the fruit from falling
prematurely. This chemical had cruised under the public radar until
1989 when the popular TV program ³60 Minutes² lowered the boom by
introducing a segment on Alar with a picture of an apple bedecked with
the classic skull and crossbones as a reporter enlightened us about the
³fact² that ³the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is
a substance sprayed on apples.² People responded by flushing apple
juice down the drain and removing apples from children's lunch boxes.
But the fact is that the ³fact² that Alar was the most potent carcinogen
in our food supply was not a fact. True, one of the breakdown products
of Alar, 1,1-dimethylhydrazine, did induce tumours when fed to mice in
huge doses, an effect that regulators were well aware of when approving
Alar for commercial use. The carcinogenicity study was questionable,
they maintained, and irrelevant as a model for human exposure.
Whether or not Alar ever posed a risk is still debated, but there is no
doubt that it placed the issue of pesticide residues in food on the
front burner. Toxicologists, agronomists, physicians and
environmentalists all waded in with their opinions, along with hordes of
emotionally-charged consumers who were clearly out of their depth in
such a complex discussion. Bruce Ames of the University of California,
one of the most respected biochemists in the world, was quick to point
out that we are exposed to all sorts of toxins, both synthetic and
natural, on a continuous basis and that more than 99.9% by weight of
pesticides in the average diet are naturally occurring compounds that
plants produce to defend themselves against insects and fungi.
Potatoes, for example, synthesize solanine and chaconine, compounds
which like some synthetic pesticides inhibit the activity of
cholinesterase, a crucial enzyme. But we don't shun potatoes because
they harbour these natural pesticides. According to Ames and other
experts, the body doesn't handle natural pesticides differently from
synthetic ones, so there seems to be little justification for all the
hand-wringing over remnants of synthetic pesticides in our food supply,
usually measured in parts per trillion. Take a football field, pile it
with sand to a height of some eighteen feet, mix in one single grain of
red sand, and search for it. You'll be searching for 1 ppt!
Of course, some will argue that there is nothing we can do about the
natural toxins, and their presence does not justify a cavalier use of
synthetic pesticides. True, but our use of pesticides is anything but
cavalier. Regulatory agencies demand rigorous studies before a
pesticide is approved. This involves determining the maximum dose that
causes no effect in a test animal and dividing it by a safety factor of
at least 100 for human exposure. Furthermore, when the risk of
pesticide residues is assessed, the supposition is that the food
contains 100% of all legal residues and that people eat these foods for
seventy years. That sounds comforting, especially when we learn that
more than 70% of fruits and vegetables have no detectable pesticide
residues and only about 1% of the time is the legal limit exceeded, a
limit that already has a hundred-fold safety factor built-in. Of
course, produce should still be washed, although more for removal of
bacteria than pesticides. A 30 second rinse significantly reduces both
water soluble and insoluble pesticides.
Undoubtedly debates about the validity of using animal models to
determine human carcinogenicity, about whether or not there is a
threshold effect for carcinogens, and about the possibility of trace
residues of pesticides which may be harmless individually but not when
they team up, will continue. So will the use of pesticides. By the
year 2030, ten billion people will be coming to dinner. But without the
sensible use of pesticides they will be going home hungry. Would a
pesticide-free world be better? For people who have to handle
pesticides occupationally, and for the environment, yes. For the
consumer, no. Yields would be significantly reduced, and in light of
the overwhelming evidence of the ability of fruits and vegetables to
protect against cancer, public health would be compromised.

-----

#6 Pesticides are designed to kill.doc

Pesticides are designed to kill. Of course what they are designed to
kill are the insects, the fungi, the rodents and the weeds that compete
for our food supply, that carry disease or tarnish our green space. But
they can also kill people. And, unfortunately, that isn't a rare
occurrence. The World Health Organization estimates that there are
roughly three million cases of pesticide poisoning world wide every
year, and close to a quarter million deaths! Astoundingly, in some
parts of the developing world, pesticide poisoning causes more deaths
than infectious disease. How? Certainly, people do die from a lack of
proper protective equipment, or because they can't read the instructions
about diluting the chemicals properly. But the real tragedy is that the
main cause of death due to pesticides is suicide!
Believe it or not, about a million people in the world do away with
themselves every year. More than three quarters of these are in third
world countries where life can be so miserable that the alternative
seems more attractive. In Sri Lanka, suicide is the number one cause of
death in young people, and in China more young women kill themselves
than die from other causes. Pesticides are their weapon of choice. In
rural Sri Lanka, pesticide poisoning is the main cause of death reported
in hospitals. There are wards devoted to patients who have tried to
kill themselves with organophosphates, one of the most toxic class of
pesticides. In Samoa, when paraquat was introduced in 1974, suicide
rates went up sharply. They dropped back down when paraquat was taken
off the market in 1982. In Amman, Jordan, poisonings fell way off when
parathion was banned. Obviously, if the use of the most toxic
pesticides could be curtailed in these countries, many lives would be
saved. Sadly, though, these chemicals are often completely unregulated,
with some of the most toxic ones readily available in stores to be sold
to the illiterate farmer who has virtually no chance of using them
properly. Pesticide companies, in some cases, pay their salespeople on
commission so it is in their interest to push product even when it may
not be necessary. In Sri Lanka pesticides are advertised on radio to
the public, often painting an unrealistic picture of magical, risk-free
crop protection. Some sort of joint effort by pesticide manufacturers
and governments is needed to keep the most toxic pesticides out of
developing countries.
In North America our pesticide regulations are far more stringent and
farmers must be licensed to use these chemicals. That doesn't mean we
don't have problems. In North Carolina, for example, roughly 100,000
migrant workers are employed on the tobacco, vegetable, fruit and
Christmas tree farms. Many of them live in dilapidated housing next to
the agricultural fields and their homes and bodies are contaminated with
pesticides. Metabolites of organophosphates commonly show up in their
urine. This is not surprising, given that access to showers and clean
clothes after working in the fields is limited. Even though there may
be no immediate effects of such exposure, there are enough studies
suggesting a link between pesticide use and neurological problems,
developmental delays, Parkinson's disease and cancer to cause concern.
What's the answer? Elimination of agricultural pesticides is simply not
an option. But providing workers with safe housing, clean clothes,
showers and above all, pesticide safety training certainly is.
Of course working in the fields of North Carolina is not the only way to
be exposed to pesticides. Garden supply stores sell a wide array of
such products. They are all ³registered,² meaning that they have
undergone extensive safety evaluation. Risks should therefore be
minimal, if the products are properly used. That, though, is a big
³if.² An often quoted study at Stanford University found a link between
Parkinson's disease and domestic pesticide use. People with as few as
thirty days of exposure to home insecticides were at significantly
greater risk; garden insecticides were somewhat less risky. Because of
the large variety of products available, the researchers were not able
to zero in on any specific ingredients. Another study, this time at the
University of California at Berkley, compared pesticide exposures of
children diagnosed with leukemia to a healthy control group matched for
age and socio-economic status. The families of children with leukemia
were three times more likely to have used a professional exterminator.
During pregnancy, exposure to any type of pesticide in the home
coincided with twice as much risk. But, and an important ³but,² there
was no association between leukemia and pesticides used outside the
house! Yet, I have often seen activists who oppose ³cosmetic² lawn care
chemicals use the leukemia argument to demonize this practice.
Pesticides cannot all be lumped together in terms of their safety
profile. There are tremendous differences between the various
insecticides and of course these differ extensively from herbicides and
fungicides. And of course, one must always remember that associations
cannot prove cause and effect. Physicians, one would think should
realize this. Apparently not all do. In a letter to a medical
publication, a doctor chastised the federal government for allowing
people to be exposed to dangerous substances on their lawn and
buttressed the argument with this example: ³A boy was removed from a day
care three years ago because his parents noticed the lawn was being
treated with pesticides and the child began to suffer health problems
and recurrent pneumonias. He developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia.²
The simple-minded message of course is that the spraying caused the
leukemia, a gigantic and inappropriate leap of faith.
Great caution must be used with insecticides in the home and I think
their use during pregnancy should be totally avoided. But using
insecticides inside a house presents a completely different scenario
from occasionally spraying a lawn with fertilizer and weed killer.
Different chemicals, different exposures, different risks. When
contemplating the use of pesticides, always remember that while there
may be no completely safe substances; there are ways to use substances
safely.
----

Read up, we can start the discussion now.
--

- Billy
"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being
is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the
moment of conception until death." - Rachel Carson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En2TzBE0lp4

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050688.html