Pesticide-free Movement Gains Strength

Group alleges Roundup, other presumed-safe products destroying more than weeds

By Earl Bates
Concerns about community health and the integrity of the region’s ecosystem have motivated a number of local residents to work toward making the Ojai Valley a pesticide-free zone.
An informational gathering, “Pesticide Free Ojai Meeting,” was attended by 40 people at Sacred Space Studio on Monday evening. Many expressed views critical of the usage of chemicals in the environment, some told stories of serious illnesses that they attributed to exposure to substances that were supposedly safe, and some offered information about scientific and medical studies.
“Pesticides are very violent, they are violent to the Earth, they are violent to the wildlife, they are violent to us,” said Ingrid Boulting, yoga teacher and owner of Sacred Space Studio. “We have to realize that everything we put into the Earth has an effect on the ecosystem and we are dependent on a healthy ecosystem for our health, so we have got to stop poisoning ourselves and our planet, period.
“For a long time now it’s come to people’s awareness, not just mine, that there are a lot of people getting sick in this town. Why is the illness rate so high here? We have a very high rate of cancer, little children are getting leukemia, a lot of people have joint pain and problems. I meet a lot of these people because they come to yoga to look for some kind of relief.”
Sacred Space Studio is commonly know as a place for yoga, and according to Boulting, “It’s a place to share ideas, it’s a place to raise consciousness, it’s a place people can come and feel safe to air their views about things and build a community to start to make a difference.”
Matilija Canyon resident Patty Pagala said she was made sick by the chemical herbicide that is currently being used in the attempt to eradicate the invasive arundo, giant reed plants, from the canyon river bottom. “Many people in Ojai are deeply concerned about the negative environmental and health impacts of the spraying of pesticides, not just in the canyon, as they are being sprayed extensively in the orchards in the East End of Ojai. We are coming together to create a pesticide-free Ojai, to bring about public awareness and to work with the city and county to go pesticide free.”
Concerns about the extensive program of application of the herbicide in Matilija Canyon seem to have instigated this movement for a pesticide-free Ojai.
Information from the Ventura County Watershed Protection District states: “Three methods are being used to remove and control giant reed. Each has been chosen for safety and efficacy.” The three methods are: shredding the plants, spraying an approved herbicide onto the foliage of the target plants, and painting the herbicide on cut plants.
The safety and efficacy of the herbicide has been questioned or denied by some observers.
“Glyphosate is what’s being used, which is generic Roundup, that’s what’s going in the water,” said Robin Bernhoft, an Ojai medical doctor with a specialty in the effects of toxic chemicals on human health.
“It’s dangerous stuff. The linkage to Parkinson’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia has come up over and over again, in this country and in Europe and in Japan. I don’t think people should use it at all because it does get into the water.”
According to many widely accepted studies, glyphosate is a safe herbicide.
According to Monsanto, producers of glyphosate herbicides including Roundup, the chemical presents a “low risk to human health.”
“That’s what Monsanto says. Monsanto has had a number of problems with the truth in the past,” said Bernhoft. “The evidence from the groundwater in North Dakota and Denmark is that it does not in fact break down and it does in fact get into the ground water.”
According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety Health, glyphosate is water soluble and the supervisors just ignored this, said Bernhoft. It’s not quite as soluble as table salt, but it’s pretty soluble. Monsanto told the supervisors it was not soluble, that’s a lie.
Could a common product widely reported as safe actually be hazardous?
“Politics,” said Bernhoft. “If you go to the National Library of Medicine and start looking for research on this — scientific literature is not a disinterested business.”
Marsha Angel, who was editor of the New England Journal of Medicine for about 15 years, ultimately quit because she got sick of being fed bogus papers by various drug and pesticide companies, Bernhoft said. For example, Vioxx and rotavirus vaccine were both taken off of the market because they started killing people. Both, in initial publication, were reported in the journal as clean as could be. Later, by means of legal subpoena, it was discovered that the papers ignored the known side effects of the products, making them appear safe.
“The level of integrity is not quite as high as one might wish,” said Bernhoft.
“When you read about a result, you would have to see who funded the study, and that usually correlates with the result,” he said. It might not be readily perceived that complex products may have been presented in a deceptive way. “You have to be fairly sophisticated medically or scientifically to see this.”
An article, “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller” was distinguished as one of the top 25 censored news stories of 2007. The list of censored stories is created by Project Censored, a media research program at Sonoma State University (projectcensored.org).
“Three recent studies show that Roundup, which is used by farmers and home gardeners, is not the safe product we have been led to trust,” stated the article by Chee Yoke Heong. The article cites scientific studies in which Roundup was implicated in mortality in amphibians and cancer and liver damage in animals.
Dr. Bernhoft believes creating a pesticide-free Ojai Valley is something that should be worked toward. There is enough medical evidence that these chemicals are a public health hazard for everybody, at different rates, some people notice it quicker that others. Minimizing the use of them or practically eliminating them would be helpful. “I think it’s a good idea from a public health standpoint, it would be a very good thing for the people of Ojai not to have to deal with these hazardous substances,” he said.
“II think informed consent is as important in politics as it is in medicine, you don’t want to slam-dunk people. I think people need to be able to make an intelligent decision and to do that they need to see the available evidence.”
For anyone interested in reading on the topic, Bernhoft suggested “Our Toxic World” by Dr. Doris Rapp. “Doris goes into a lot of the realities of how pervasive pesticides, herbicides and other pollutants are, and what their medical impacts are.”
The next meeting of Pesticide Free Ojai will be Monday at 7:45 p.m. at Sacred Space Studio, 410-A Bryant Circle. For information, call 646-6761.
According to many widely accepted studies, glyphosate is a safe herbicide.
According to Monsanto, producers of glyphosate herbicides including Roundup, the chemical presents a “low risk to human health.”
“That’s what Monsanto says. Monsanto has had a number of problems with the truth in the past,” said Bernhoft. “The evidence from the groundwater in North Dakota and Denmark is that it does not in fact break down and it does in fact get into the ground water.”
According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety Health, glyphosate is water soluble and the supervisors just ignored this, said Bernhoft. It’s not quite as soluble as table salt, but it’s pretty soluble. Monsanto told the supervisors it was not soluble, that’s a lie.
Could a common product widely reported as safe actually be hazardous?
“Politics,” said Bernhoft. “If you go to the National Library of Medicine and start looking for research on this — scientific literature is not a disinterested business.”
Marsha Angel, who was editor of the New England Journal of Medicine for about 15 years, ultimately quit because she got sick of being fed bogus papers by various drug and pesticide companies, Bernhoft said. For example, Vioxx and rotavirus vaccine were both taken off of the market because they started killing people. Both, in initial publication, were reported in the journal as clean as could be. Later, by means of legal subpoena, it was discovered that the papers ignored the known side effects of the products, making them appear safe.
“The level of integrity is not quite as high as one might wish,” said Bernhoft.
“When you read about a result, you would have to see who funded the study, and that usually correlates with the result,” he said. It might not be readily perceived that complex products may have been presented in a deceptive way. “You have to be fairly sophisticated medically or scientifically to see this.”
An article, “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller” was distinguished as one of the top 25 censored news stories of 2007. The list of censored stories is created by Project Censored, a media research program at Sonoma State University (projectcensored.org).
“Three recent studies show that Roundup, which is used by farmers and home gardeners, is not the safe product we have been led to trust,” stated the article by Chee Yoke Heong. The article cites scientific studies in which Roundup was implicated in mortality in amphibians and cancer and liver damage in animals.
Bernhoft believes creating a pesticide-free Ojai Valley is something that should be worked toward. There is enough medical evidence that these chemicals are a public health hazard for everybody, at different rates, some people notice it quicker that others. Minimizing the use of them or practically eliminating them would be helpful. “I think it’s a good idea from a public health standpoint, it would be a very good thing for the people of Ojai not to have to deal with these hazardous substances,” he said.
“I think informed consent is as important in politics as it is in medicine, you don’t want to slam-dunk people. I think people need to be able to make an intelligent decision and to do that they need to see the available evidence.”
For anyone interested in reading on the topic, Bernhoft suggested “Our Toxic World” by Dr. Doris Rapp. “Doris goes into a lot of the realities of how pervasive pesticides, herbicides and other pollutants are, and what their medical impacts are.”
The next meeting of Pesticide Free Ojai will be Monday at 7:45 p.m. at Sacred Space Studio, 410-A Bryant Circle. For information, call 646-6761.