>Thankyou for raising this issue Hugh I will see what I can do with it, but I >don't promise to have it dealt to before Elaine gets here. Do you mind if I >copy some your post on this issue to the polititians concerned. > Regards, Peter.
Dear Peter, Yes, you may copy any of my words. I think some major American magazine recently ran a feature on how airlines are forced by law to insecticide planes in several countries, New Zealand being one and Australia another. I think it may have been US NEWS AND WORLD REPORTS about six months or so ago. Passengers are debarked and the plane is then treated. Then when one gets on and stows baggage in the overhead compartments, whoosh, a blast of poison. Likewise try to curl up with one's head tucked into the cracks in a window seat and inhale the blessed bug free aromas! When you're sensitive like I am, and they deliberately give you no warning, it's devastating. Some passengers have sued, of course. But how does one do this effectively across international boundaries like that? Years ago Ward Penwarn from NSW Australia was visiting me and we were going over to visit Galen Hieronymus in Ward's rental car. It was summer and our windows were down as we drew up behind an unmarked truck slowly going along spraying something on the roadside in what was a strong cross wind. The spray was caught by the wind and carried back from the ditch into our car. It was herbicide. I rolled up the window as fast as I could but the car was filled with spray. I was violently ill for two days, being already respirationally callenged, and I wrote the Dept. of Highways as well as the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION letters of protest. Highway officials then visited me, asserting the spray was harmless to humans. "Okay, then," I said. "I want to watch as you spray your kids in your carpeted living rooms." They looked away, demuring. But they said they would put the highway frontage of the farm on their spray route and not spray it if I would keep it mowed. That was okay. I kept it mowed anyway. They were concerned because it was an organic farm that they not be liable for spraying it. BUT, get this, they REFUSED to mark their truck that was spraying the herbicide. "People deserve some warning." I protested. "If we'd had any warning we might have rolled up the windows before we got dosed." But no, they refused to put any warning whatsoever on the truck. Why? Because it was enough of an admission that maybe their herbicide wasn't safe, or might not be safe for everyone, that their lawyers were making sure they didn't create any vents in their armor. The tobacco companies, as you may remember, took a similar stance for forty or more years. They denied there was any connection between smoking and any health problems, even though Seventh Day Adventist medical researchers showed connections back in the fifties. They brushed these asside as religious bias, and it was forty years before they were nailed by the absolutely overwhelming evidence. Sheesh! These guys knew it wasn't safe. They weren't going to deliberately spray their kids the way the army sprayed solders who had lice in WW II with DDT. There's almost no one these days who doesn't know these chemicals are unsafe, but the fictions are still being maintained. It would really be more enlightened for New Zealand, especially since the Greens are part of the ruling coalition, to do away with this byzantine practice. The UK doesn't have it, or Germany, or France, or Holland, or Italy, or Japan with their exrtreme reliances on agriculture. It's a paranoia that isn't worth shortening people's lives and making them suffer over. Just because it doesn't lead directly to corpses in the morgue is no reason to pretend it is safe, and even less reason not to warn people. Best wishes, Hugh Lovel
