Home › PAN Updates<>
in
<>
Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
A Weekly News Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives
See PANUPS archive for complete information.
April 23, 2010
- Help end the pesticide era
- Chipotle to report pesticide use reductions
- CA’s pesticide poisoning bill moves ahead
- Dow’s greenwash ignites protest
- Methyl bromide ban sparks Brit backlash
- PAN ‘bad actor’ off the market
Help end the pesticide era
From our founding 28 years ago, we have never been more positive that global food system reform is possible. You can help. We’re asking you to join us today to help end the Pesticide Era. With support from committed people like you, PAN has won landmark victories–from the local to the international–with science and network organizing. We are poised for more victories in the months and years ahead, but we can only do it with your support. We can have pesticide-free food grown in healthy soil and delivered by farmers and farmworkers who aren’t getting deadly diseases like cancer or Parkinson’s from their jobs. Donate $35 today and add your name to the list of people hungry for food system change.
shareMORE Donate today | Digg This
Chipotle to report pesticide use reductions
shareMORE PANUPS: Chipotle on ‘Food With Integrity’ |
CA’s pesticide poisoning bill moves ahead
PAN senior scientist Dr. Margaret Reeves travelled to Sacramento to testify in support of the new bill, and notes that “what we have now is a prevention program designed to identify and stop exposure before poisoning occurs. However, more than 40 years after the program started we have almost no information about how it is working. We don’t know, for example, how many people are tested, or which pesticides or workplace practices are most often associated with overexposure. We don’t know because no system was ever established whereby state agencies could collect the data to evaluate the program.” Should the new bill pass, the eight state laboratories that currently conduct these tests would be required to report the test results to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation—one of the key agencies responsible for protecting the safety of the state’s agricultural workforce. For more on AB 1963’s background, see Associated Press coverage.
shareMORE California Report Coverage |
<>
Dow’s greenwash ignites protest
<>
“On April 18, musicians, athletes, dignitaries, environmentalists and tens of thousands of everyday citizens in 200 cities, across 81 countries…came out to take part in the Dow Live Earth Run for Water–the largest single-day effort in history aimed at raising awareness and funds for the safe drinking water crisis,” trumpeted PR Wire in a press release from Dow Live Earth. Yet in many of those cities, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Oakland, Santiago, Seattle and Vancouver, activists from the International Campaign For Justice in Bhopal, Vietnam veteran’s Agent Orange groups and others demonstrated, disrupted and demythologized Dow’s sponsorship of the event, demanding that Dow clean up its toxic messes around the world. In Berlin, London, Milan, Stockholm and Chennai organizers either cancelled the events or withdrew sponsorship in response to learning about Dow’s exploitation of the event.
In Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New Yorkers who came expecting a charity run and free concert “found themselves unwitting extras in a macabre and chaotic scene as runners keeled over dead, Dow-branded grim reapers chased participants, and a hundred fake Dow representatives harangued other protesters and handed out literature that explained Dow’s greenwashing program in frank detail.” Children from Kids for A Better Future joined activists in a finish line blockade, chanting “Dow poisons children” and “Dow poisons water”. Some runners were overheard saying “I don’t feel comfortable wearing a Dow logo on my shirt” and that had they realized Dow was the sponsor they never would have signed up. The eco-prankster Yes Men provided the Dow corporate impersonators. Satirizing and disrupting the Live Earth run was “the latest blow to Dow’s greenwashing efforts, the most visible element of which is the ‘Human Element’ multi-media advertising campaign, one of the most expensive, and successful, marketing efforts in recent history,” observe the Yes Men. “It even won an ‘Effie Award’ for the most effective corporate advertising campaign in North America.” “We thought it must be a joke when we first heard that Dow Chemical Company was sponsoring a run for clean water,” said Yes Woman Whitney Black. “Sadly, it was not. One of the world’s worst polluters trying to greenwash its image instead of taking responsibility for drinking water and ecosystems it has poisoned around the world? What an awfully unfunny way to start off Earth Week. We decided the event needed a little comic relief.”
shareMORE Video: Yes Men protest Dow |
Methyl bromide ban sparks Brit backlash
At issue is the production of cricket bats. The rules of the game stipulate that bats be made of willow, and the highest quality willow comes from Essex County, England. But most bats are produced in India using cheap labor, and India requires all imports of willow to be fumigated with methyl bromide prior to shipment. Methyl bromide depletes the ozone layer, and is therefore being phased out under the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement negotiated in 1987 and ratified by 196 nations, including the United Kingdom and India. The regulation (PDF) implementing the phaseout of methyl bromide entered into force on March 19, and English willow exporters were unprepared. “I give our industry 12 weeks to survive,” said Geoff Watling of Anglian Willow Services, although he admitted if bat production were to cease entirely, current stocks would last two years.
“There’s a lot of blame to go around for this ‘crisis;’ it’s unfortunate that the British media has chosen to play to nationalism and finger the EU,” said Pesticide Action Network staff scientist Karl Tupper. “We’ve known for 15 years that methyl bromide’s days were numbered. The specific date for these fumigations to end was set two and half years ago, and applied to all industries, not just the willow exporters. They’ve had plenty of time to adapt, and other industries have successfully transitioned from this chemical. And India is only exacerbating the problem,” noted Tupper. “When it ratified the Montreal Protocol, it committed to ending the use of ozone depleting chemicals, including methyl bromide. It’s hypocritical for the country to be taking such an inflexible position, requiring shippers to use it.”
shareMORE PAN Resource: Alternatives to fumigation |
PAN ‘bad actor’ off the market
shareMORE Maneb’s link to skin cancer |
Bookmark and share this page:<>
<>
<>
<>
<>
<>