ActivismAlert, Oakland residents: pesticides/guarantying monsanto profits

[PeaceProgProsp]

with your tax dollars.

I got this in the mail today. THIS MEETING IS TODAY!!!

Subject: Oakland Public Hearings
Tuesday, February 22 at 12:30 and 4:00 pm, Hearing Room 1, City Hall.

I just received this e-mail to today about a hearing Tue about pesticide use in Oakland. Maybe some of you can be there, or calls/e-mails also help.

Andrea
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Today are the public hearings in Oakland at which we need to have a
large showing to have a chance to get the city not to do yet another exemption to their ban on pesticide use. The situation is ridiculous the more we discover about exactly why they are fast-tracking it and not producing an EIR (which is especially out-of-line). One has to wonder whether there is something larger and more sinister behind this than just laziness and misinformation.

One of the council members told us our petition is being ignored because we could have put this together ourselves {...} In any case, our petition certainly has contributed to their increasing discomfort, but if PEOPLE aren't in attendance in numbers TODAY, they will try to slide this thing through.

Technically, there is supposed to be a separate city council vote, but it appears they will decide (perhaps again... see and listen to KPFA interview... www.eastbaypesticidealert.org. click on Oakland and scroll down) based on today's meeting. Or so they seem to be saying.


In any case, they changed the evening meeting to be a 4 pm meeting (wonder why) so we need people at 12:30 and 4 pm and signs outside from maybe noon, on would be great... anyone? It's today (Tuesday). Calls to the city council people would be good, too. And emails, of course. And letters to them and editors after.

Go to the above site for actual tox. profiles AND my fave... for years I've been wanting to get this onto our site... finally we got it.... Check out how Monsanto is saving the Easter Island/ Rapa Nui sculptures from destruction by 5' weeds. So the next time someone says, "What's wrong with Roundup?" you can print out the tox profile and that article! Click on the moai sculpture photo.

Maxina Ventura

(Below is a short piece giving some background)

THERE IS NO QUICK FIX! In 1997 Oakland banned the use of pesticides on city-owned property. Since then, the city has made about 12 exemptions. Bad news. Now there's a push to employ herbicides in the hills, specifically Glyphosate (Roundup) and Triclopyr (Garlon). The resolution will be presented to Public Works and Public Safety on Tuesday, February 22 at 12:30 and 4:00 pm, Hearing Room 1, City Hall. We urge people to speak up for alternatives to renewed dependence on toxics, the same old Monsanto snake oil. After pesticides have been applied, goat-herders wait over a year before they'll let goats graze. Let's not climb the toxic treadmill. Make weeding community service instead..

Recently, City Council Member Jean Quan and the Wildfire Prevention Assessment District held a meeting at City Hall to discuss this latest roll-back. Presenters included: Tom Klatt (UC Berkeley Office of Emergency Preparedness); Nancy Brownfield (IPM specialist, East Bay Regional Parks), representatives from East Bay MUD, and a former president of the California Plant Society. No organization identifying pesticides as poisons was allowed to make a presentation.

I knew we were in for a ride when the Plant Society man asserted, "We need chemicals as one tool in our arsenal...you cannot do it without it," boasting he's been using pesticides for five decades. He doesn't know how privileged he is. At 77, he's of the last generation grown in his mother's womb, living his delicate years without toxic pesticides.

East Bay Pesticide Alert gave panelists and attendees toxicological profiles full of authoritative references. Unfortunately, panelists ignored these profiles. Instead, they parroted words originating with chemical companies: small quantity; least toxic; minimal risk; reasonable; proper; limited; judicious; careful. Now imagine a child in the ER, gasping for air due to pesticide drift; hikers tracking residues home to pets; wild animals dying brutal chemical deaths; native plants dying, inviting non-natives to take over -- the bleak reality of pesticide use.

Pesticide manufacturers want to focus the public's attention on their products' so-called "active" ingredients. But we also need to look at the so-called "inert" ingredients, and the break-down products of both, the metabolites. For instance, a surfactant added to Roundup, POEA, is routinely contaminated in manufacturing by the carcinogen dioxane. One of Roundup's metabolites is formaldehyde, another carcinogen. Triclopyr breaks down into TCP. In lab tests, TCP exposures as small as 0.2 parts per million inhibited the growth of neurons. And TCP appears to accumulate in fetal brain tissue. Tumors in rats and mice, kidney problems in dogs, the list goes on and on (see links to profiles on http://www.eastbaypesticidealert.org/oakland).

But you wouldn't know this from listening to Nancy Brownfield, who just goes by the labels. No wonder every ranger I talk to is agitated by her forcing pesticide use in the Regional Parks.

Proponents of herbicide use say we must poison the environment in order to save it.

But soil health is key to getting rid of fire-welcoming non-natives. Mycorrhizal fungi colonize about the roots of native plants, funneling them nutrients, while starving non-natives of nutrition, tying off the tumor, so to speak. But herbicides inhibit this crucial work. Pesticides are not the answer.

Information is available. No compromising around health! Stop toxic pesticide use.

Maxina Ventura
Chronic Effects Researcher, East Bay Pesticide Alert,
www.eastbaypesticidealert.org
510-895-2312