Pesticide Health Risks Undeniable
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Pesticide Health Risks Undeniable
Date:
Thu, 5 Dec 2002 07:27:35 -0500
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Wednesday, November 20, 2002 - Ottawa Sun Pesticide Health Risks Undeniable: Docs By Tobi Cohen,
A group of nine local doctors says pesticide use poses a huge health risk and is urging city council to ban its cosmetic use immediately instead of in 2006 as proposed in a staff report.
"The potential for harmful health effects is undeniable," said Dr. John Molot, among three environmental illness specialists speaking at a media conference yesterday.
"Children, even unborn children, are at risk. There's potential damage to the immune system, the hormone system, the nervous system and the reproductive system," he said.
Molot said research has also found links between pesticide exposure and breast cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease and is known to aggravate asthma and migraine headaches.
He said home gardeners and their families show higher rates of tumours while pesticides are being found in everything from living room carpets to breast milk and semen.
"Thinking these things aren't going to happen is probably naive," he said. "People should not have the right to put pesticides in other people’s environment."
Dr. Jennifer Armstrong said the average five-year-old in North America has already accumulated 35% of the federally permitted lifetime exposure to pesticides.
Symptoms of exposure, she said, can include flu-like symptoms in the middle of summer, fatigue, diarrhea and increased allergies.
http://www.canoe.ca/OttawaNews/os.os-11-20-0027.html
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