Reply #7: Wrong: [View All]

[callous taoboy]

http://www.american.edu/TED/mexpest.htm

also:
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1988/10/mm1088_06.html
-snip-
MEXICO CITY--Boca de Lima is a collection of huts scattered among lush green fields in the coastal state of Veracruz. Seven hours by bus north-east of Mexico City, it has no electricity, no running water and one general store. It is far removed from many aspects of modern life, with one notable exception: "Of course we use pesticides," says Alfredo Gutierrez, a farmworker and father of nine. Next door to Gutierrez's home, a man stands in the middle of a lime orchard spraying weeds from a silver canister strapped to his back. The blackened land behind him looks as if it had been hit by a flamethrower. The man, who wears no protective clothing, not even gloves, explains that this is a much cheaper way to kill weeds than hiring someone to do it by hand. No, he doesn't think the pesticide will get into the limes.

Pesticides are big business in Mexico, but controls on the use of many chemicals--including several banned in the United States--are lax, experts say. Still permitted, for example, are DDT, aldrin, clordane, and clorobenzolate. Even pesticides considered scientifically "safe" can be dangerous in a developing country like Mexico, when semi-literate farmers ignore or cannot understand warning labels or instructions for proper use. Too big a dose of a pesticide, or a pesticide applied to the wrong crop, can be fatal.

plus:
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/news/daily_news_archive/2003/05_22_03.htm
Fear of Pesticides Wafting Over Texas
(Beyond Pesticides, May 22, 2003) Plumes of smoke that could contain poisonous pesticides amassed in the skies above Houston last week, according to the Houston Chronicle. The smoke, suspected to be from burning fields and rainforests in Mexico and Central America, has appeared in years past as well. Although the smoke that emerged last week has not been tested for pesticide presence, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) tested the smoke in May 1998 and detected trace amounts of toxic pesticides, some of which are banned for use in the United States.

Many developing nations still use or have only recently stopped use of extremely toxic chemicals which the U.S. has deemed unsafe to use within its own borders. The U.S. ban does not mean that these chemicals are not manufactured in the U.S. or do not find their way into the country. Workers in Mexico burning fields that have been saturated with insecticides and herbicides stir up a toxic mixture that travels into the atmosphere and is carried by winds. TCEQ spokeswoman Adria Dawidczik commented, "We are pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature on this. We can't tell another government how to take care of its agriculture. It's just part of global air pollution. This is the same thing as us getting dust from the Sahara Desert."

From Mother Jones:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1995/01/schrader.html
On a single scorched block in Villa Jua'rez, Sinaloa, Mexico, four young men have leukemia. Another died of the disease last spring.

The cluster of sickness may have nothing to do with the tons of toxic pesticides that flow into every water source available to the residents of this small farm town; it may be unrelated to the four nearby airstrips where farmers load planes with pesticides to spray over the surrounding fields; it may not be linked to the work that brings young men home soaked to the skin with the chemicals they apply to crops.

But while there has been no comprehensive study of the tragedy, you can search far and wide and not find a single doctor who thinks it is anything but the pesticides that are making the young men of this flat, hot valley sick.