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Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
A Weekly News Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives
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May 15, 2008
- Indian government’s “smoking gun” Dow memo
- Fast for world food crisis
- Gulf War Syndrome linked to pesticides
- Lead, pesticides and children’s IQs
- DDT in Antarctic penguins
- Pakistan ponders pesticides
- Moms and judges vs. spray
- EU moves to control endosulfan
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Indian government’s “smoking gun” Dow memo
A group of Dow investors has requested that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigate Dow Chemical’s failure to disclose current impediments to a purported $1 billion investment in India. According to the group’s May 14 press release, a document, obtained by survivors of the Bhopal Chemical Disaster last week via the Indian Right to Information Act, shows that “the Indian government’s Law Ministry has advised the Government that investments by Dow Chemical in India are not immune from court orders, particularly in the matter regarding environmental contamination [in Bhopal] pending in a state High Court. The documents confirm that the Indian government is NOT in a position to waive those potential liabilities, despite a prior request from Dow CEO Andrew Liveris for the government of India to do so.”
shareMORE – Dow Accountability Network | Digg This
Fast for world food crisis
In response to the unprecedented rise in food prices around the world, Agricultural Missions — in coalition with churches, farmers and allied organizations — will be hosting a Fast in Solidarity with the Famished starting May 23. Participants will be fasting for three days in solidarity with the three billion people now living on less than $2 per day. Actions are confirmed already in Louisville, KY and New York City, where fasters will join Rainforest Action Network to protest the Bunge Corporation’s role in destroying Brazil’s natural resources to grow crops of genetically engineered soybeans. The fasters will also be focusing on root causes and economic structures that have led to this tragic and unnecessary crisis, including corporate control over food systems and US trade and agricultural policies that have undermined local food production and destroyed rural livelihoods in the Global South. Organizations endorsing the Fast include Community Farm Alliance, the Oakland Institute, and Pesticide Action Network North America. For the latest information, contact Stephen Bartlett, Coordinator for Education and Advocacy, Agricultural Missions, at (502) 896-9171 or sbartlett@ag-missions.org
shareMORE – Contact Organizers |
Gulf War Syndrome linked to pesticides
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Lead, pesticides and children’s IQs
Exposure to lead in toys and household paint has been linked to impaired intelligence in children. Now an Australian toxicologist suggests that household pesticides may also play a role in slowing neurological development. In a letter to the journal Science of the Total Environment, Macquarie University Professor Brian Gulson says several studies have shown similar effects in children exposed to low levels of organophosphate pesticides and notes that many of the lead studies were “undertaken in communities where the subjects may be exposed to rodents and insects [and] the chemicals used to eradicate them.” Gulson says many researchers tracking lead exposure don’t ask about pesticide exposures. Dr Helen Ritchie, of the University of Sydney’s School of Medical Sciences, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that co-exposure to lead and pesticides is plausible and more research is needed.
shareMORE – PAN’s Organophosphate Campaign Page |
DDT in Antarctic penguins
shareMORE – PAN’s DDT and Malaria Page |
Pakistan ponders pesticides
Dr. Kausar Abdullah Malik, former chair of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, told delegates to a five-day International Training Course on Organic Farming that pesticides have harmed Pakistan’s agricultural production. The Associated Press of Pakistan reports that, after pesticide imports were increased five-fold in 2007 to control cotton pests, cotton production actually fell “due to excessive use of pesticide.” Speaking before delegates from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia, Dr. Kauser declared that it was time for Pakistan’s farmers to abandon chemical pesticides, since “we can grow organic cotton, which has a demanding and expanding market.” Dr. Kausar argued that a transition to pesticide-free agriculture was prudent, since “organic farming makes up the largest growth sector in the agriculture industry” and organic “food sales totaled approximately $12 billion in 2005.”
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Moms and judges vs. spray
plans to appeal both rulings. To follow events and news see PAN’s LBAM page.
shareMORE – PAN’s Light Brown Apple Moth Page |
EU moves to control endosulfan
An April 30, 2008 posting on Europolitics reveals that the European Commission plans to support a draft Council decision to add chrysotile asbestos, endosulfan and tributyl tin compounds to the Rotterdam Convention’s Prior Informed Consent (PIC) list of hazardous substances. An amendment to Annex III to the Convention will be submitted to the Fourth Conference of Parties in late October. The Commission called the proposal “necessary and advisable” to ensure that countries benefit from the protection afforded by the Convention, which allows them to reject imports of dangerous chemicals on the PIC list. The three substances are already prohibited or strictly regulated in the EU and subject to export requirements that are even stricter than those set by the Convention. The Rotterdam Convention encourages cooperation between contracting parties regarding the international trade of hazardous chemicals and encourages ecologically rational use of these substances. Endosulfan is under re-registration review by the U.S. EPA.
shareMORE – PAN’s Endosulfan Campaign Page |
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