> Environmental and Health Concerns > Herbicides and Pesticides

Curing Toxic Blindness
by author Elmer Laird

I was in West Africa on an agricultural study almost 40 years ago. Staff at the Canadian High Commission there told me about an isolated village on Ghana’s Volta River. Everyone went blind there at about age 18 as a result of some bug, so adults believed the main reason to have children was to have someone to lead them around after they went blind, thinking it was normal.

Here in Saskatchewan we might have a Canadian version of Volta River disease. We’ve suffered from a similar blindness for over 50 years. With 43 percent of the total cultivated land in the country, Saskatchewan uses more toxic agricultural pesticides (including herbicides and fungicides) than any other province. Now there’s a political development here we can be optimistic about for the first time.

The change in attitude was demonstrated when Lorne Calvert was elected as our new premier on February 8, 2001. Opening the spring sitting of the legislature, he actually mentioned organic farming, which wasn’t even a part of former Premier Romanow’s vocabulary.

I also received a letter from long-time environmentalist NDP MLA Peter Prebble stating, "I support a gradual phase-out of pesticides in the Province of Saskatchewan and I have urged my fellow MLAs to support and prioritize the following measures to:

1. Work with Alberta to clean up toxic dumpsites, eliminate spraying pesticides close to waterways and do everything possible to protect our water. (Water flows from Alberta to Saskatchewan.)

2. Prohibit the use of pesticides around schools, hospitals, parks, recreation areas, government buildings and any place frequented by children.

3. Promote a municipal bylaw (like in Halifax) that prohibits the use of pesticides for cosmetic reasons.

4. Establish organic gardening extension offices in cities to help residents make the change."

Here at Davidson and district, five infants have had cancer in the last year. One baby was born with it. Our new health minister John Neilson stated firmly in a recent letter that, "Department of Health staff have contacted the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency and the Cancer Agency will investigate the situation. Officials from the Department and the Midwest Health District will collaborate . . . "

Sorry, Not Safe

Pesticides were developed for biological warfare in World Wars I and II, after which they were adapted for peace-time uses. We started using pesticides in Saskatchewan in 1949–2,4-D for weed control and DDT for grasshopper control. Since then, testing for safety never has had any credibility.

For example, 2,4-D, the only herbicide used for many years and still widely used, was tested for toxicity only but was said to be not very toxic. Finally in 1978, the South Okanagan Environmental Coalition in Penticton, BC studied it. They said, "phenoxy herbicides and particularly 2,4-D pose a substantial threat to the environment and human health." Extensive research on the effects of 2,4-D on test animals indicate that the herbicide is teratogenic (causes birth defects), carcinogenic and very likely mutagenic (causes genetically transmitted defects).

In another example, DDT was banned in 1961 for all agricultural purposes except growing tobacco because of its toxicity and carcinogenic effects. It was banned for tobacco growing in 1984. DDT has a half-life of 28 years.

In 1977, a number of Saskatchewan organizations under the banner, "Alternatives to Pesticides" held a series of conferences. The head of the federal Health Protection Branch, Dr W.P. McKinley, spoke at one of them. I asked him who was testing the effects of combinations of agriculture chemicals on humans and the environment. He said, "No one." It had been discussed at the World Health Organization meetings "but they couldn’t figure out a way to do it. So we continue to test one chemical at a time."

Prior to 1977, Industrial Biotest Laboratories of Illinois, USA did safety testing for a number of agriculture chemical companies. The US Environmental Protection Agency told them they were going to visit the laboratory on a certain day to examine the files. But when officials arrived, the files had been shredded. Saskatchewan MP Lorne Nystrom reported this to the House of Commons in 1978. That should have been the end of chemical agriculture but the lobby of the transnational drug and chemical companies dominated and won the decision to continue.

It is to be hoped that Prebble’s proposal will get support. It’s for certain that the federal Health Protection Branch doesn’t have credibility in pesticide testing: they still don’t test multiple chemical exposures, saying there’s no accepted science to do so. It will take the combined efforts of all of us to cure the Canadian version of Volta River blindness.

Elmer Laird is a certified organic farmer in Davidson, SK. He is also president of the Back to the Farm Research Foundation.

Source: alive #224, June 2001