Here Vapo-rooter is used as a vehicle for informing people. A later email will show how Al Taylor has used mecoprop in similar fashion, to push hard for reform.
If you can use any of the material, please do. A number of you have contributed to it by supplying input in the past.
I will address Saskatoon City Council this Monday night (July 19) sometime after 8:00pm.
The presentation has to be shortened to 5 minutes, a real challenge!!
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Last year Saskatoon changed from augering tree roots out of sewer lines, to contracting a company to dissolve the roots with a chemical pesticide called vaporooter. I emailed my concerns to you. The City has processed the concerns with respect and intelligence, for which I thank you. The Environmental Committee has now suggested that I should present information to you.
Vaporooter is a combination of 2 chemicals. One is metam. Metam is toxic. It falls under the categories:
“acute toxicity; carcinogen (cancer-causing); it is a developmental or reproductive toxin (it causes developmental problems in children, and affects the ability of men and women to have healthy children).”
Vapo-rooter should not be the exterminator of choice, especially when an alternative exists.
City staff tested water coming out of the water treatment plant and found no traces of vaporooter. And so the use of vaporooter will continue.
I suppose I need to speak to the water sampling, but by addressing it, I lend credibility to the idea that because vaporooter was not detected in the sampling, the decision to use it is sound.
I could ask questions such as, “In what season was the water sampled?” I would not expect samples drawn in October through to May to show traces because vaporooter would not have been used during that time frame.
But we are wasting time. “No trace” is a red herring defence, as you will see.
Vaporooter should not be considered in isolation. It will be more helpful for you to know about other efforts in the Province surrounding the dumping, run-off and leaching of chemicals into water sources. First you should know the “why” behind the efforts. Why are people mobilizing to action?
There is a large body of knowledge about the effects of chemicals on human health. You may know about Agent Orange and its devastating effects on the health of Viet Nam war veterans. Agent Orange is a mixture of 2,4D and 2,4,5T.
Chemicals affect health: they are now found in every river, lake and slough in Saskatchewan. Farmers spray them on crops and into the air. Per acre, we city-folk apply more than the farmers. Rain carries the chemicals into the waterways.
Vaporooter is a new way to put more killing chemicals into the River, which is the water source for everyone downstream. While it is evident that we breathe chemicals in, we are largely ignorant about the other ways in which chemicals enter our bodies. We are also ignorant about what happens when chemicals start to mix together. My experience with mixing chemicals comes from high-school chemistry labs. With controlled quantities and ingredients, powerful interactions occur; what happens when there is no control over which chemicals are mixing together and in what amounts? regardless of whether this mixing occurs in the water or in our bodies?
Ignorance is not a good thing. It should drive us to collect information and solve puzzles.
I said you should know the “why” behind the efforts of other people in the Province to stop the dumping, run-off and leaching of chemicals into water sources.
Recently a memoriam for a teen-age daughter appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. The Mother is a friend of mine. The parents explained the memoriam this way:
“We are calling attention to the fact that individuals need to take responsibility for directing research, legislate carcinogens out of the environment, as well as making personal change. It is very sad that as of last week another one of my daughter’s friends has been diagnosed with cancer. This makes 4 childhood friends who grew up & spent countless hours together at our home south of Saskatoon.”
These are 4 children from a small community, where school-class size is fewer than 20 kids in total. This is not a comprehensive list of the disease in the community, just the cases of 4 friends. A woman in her 20’s walked into the River and drowned herself after also being diagnosed with cancer.
I have no idea about other diseases in the community.
The community draws its water from the South Saskatchewan River after it has flowed through miles and miles of agricultural land.
Common sense dictates that we should not be dumping more poisons, like vaporooter into our water supplies until we at least know what is happening.
This community south of Saskatoon is not the only community seeking to find answers.
At Christmas time I was in my home town, population 650 residents plus farms in the area. This is what came up over kitchen- table talk. I don’t wish to use names:
1. Farmer (XXJoe MagnusXX), funeral Dec. 20, age 63, cancerous brain tumor, cancer widespread, diagnosed in late summer.
2. Farmer (XXDon HeintzXX), prostate cancer metastasized to the bones, age about 68, diagnosed in December, at July 1 is nearing the end.
3. Farmer XXLeland MeierXX), funeral Oct/Nov, age 63, prostate cancer metastasized.
4. Farmer (XXHans ScholerXX), funeral Dec. 30, age 86, lung to brain cancer, diagnosed in Sept.
5. Resident (XXFrank WetzsteinXX), bowel cancer, funeral in Sept.
6. Resident (XXDavid KnorrXX), age 38, treated for extensive bowel cancer.
7. Resident (XXRoxanne LivingstoneXX), malignant brain cancer, late 30’s or early 40’s, undergoing treatment, fighting for her life.
8. Resident (XXBetty ScheidtXX) (Salvador), age 65 to 70, sinus cancer, on-going treatment, fighting for her life.
Too many people in this community suffer from MS and Parkinsons, as well.
I remind you: this is one small community and not a comprehensive list of deaths and disease in it. It’s just what came up around the kitchen table, involving recent incidents.
On June 30th, a dental hygienist was in my mouth. She didn’t know me.
Somehow she began talking about her sister who died from cancer 2 years ago at age 24. She continued, with perplexity, to say that 2 or 3 other young people from her home community had suffered similarly from cancer. And a 29-year-old male has recently been diagnosed with Hodgin’s lymphoma. Small community, high incidence.
The experience of these 3 communities supports what I heard from a medical doctor.
Dr. Stuart Houston knows about the work I do. Last summer he arranged for me to meet a radiologist that worked a year in Regina and then in Saskatoon.
Radiologists see diagnostic x-rays, ultra-sounds, scans, etc. from all departments of the hospital. This radiologist described how they inadvertently discover slow-acting, but nevertheless lethal, cancer as a consequence of looking at an x-ray, for example that has been taken because of a broken arm. In the opinion of this radiologist, there is an epidemic of cancer coming. The culprit is the herbicides and other pesticides. Who knows? the epidemic may already have arrived.
Saskatchewan buys 30% of the pesticides sold in Canada.
That there is definitely a problem is also substantiated by this paragraph from an article in The Montreal Gazette, one week ago, Mon 12 Jul 2004:
“According to Canadian Institute of Child Health statistics, cancer in Canadian children under age 15 increased by 25 per cent during the past 25 years.”
So what is being done?
The Governments stone wall when it comes to chemicals, with one exception.
The Government of Quebec has legislated a ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides. Because the Federal and other Provincial Governments refuse to act, municipalities such as Toronto, Halifax, and Vancouver, have legislated their own by-laws to protect the health of citizens. The number of municipal by-laws adopted has increased to a total of 66 across Canada. When all the current regulations and by-laws come into full effect the total number of Canadians protected from unwanted exposure to synthetic lawn and garden pesticides will grow to close to 11 million or approximately 35% of Canada’s population.
The bylaws will help to lessen the amount of chemicals that enter water supplies in Canada.
Getting back to the communities here in Saskatchewan: the disease rate in these communities is alarming. You are asking how the evidence can be ignored?
If a person from a rural community dies from cancer in Saskatoon or Regina, which is what happens (most patients come to the Cities for treatment) Statistics Canada records the death as having occurred in Saskatoon or Regina. That is an incredible distortion which masks what is happening.
The Government is not going to act. Communities are, of course, not without power, as evidenced by the number of bylaws that have been passed. The failure to assume responsibility when it is your own children, relatives and friends who will suffer from inaction, is a sign of great decay in the society. Communities are beginning to realize that the Government is not going to do the job for them. How can they empower themselves?
There is an inexpensive community self-assessment kit which sets out a scientifically-sound process for data collection and analysis. The community is empowered by becoming informed and by assuming responsibility for solving the puzzle for themselves. Are the deaths too high, is there a problem, and if so, what is it?
We are working toward the establishment of these community-based research projects in rural Saskatchewan. The data collection and analysis won’t take too long, once the groundwork is laid.
Why should Saskatoon City Council know about the situation in rural communities? One reason is that we all pay for healthcare costs which continue to escalate faster than Government revenues. We MUST REMOVE the CAUSES of disease before we are out of money for education. The inane idea that it is okay to “get” the diseases because we will find a cure to fix you, is extremely inhumane, especially when it is children who are the most vulnerable.
We must reverse the trend of putting more chemicals into our water supply.
Vaporooter may seem a small thing, but the small things add up. Not only do they cause known harmful effects, but they mix with other chemicals, the effects of which are not known. The water supply is a shared resource upon which we are all completely dependent. It is regressive, not progressive to use vaporooter to replace augering.
The following is a list of just SOME of the organizations in Saskatchewan that are addressing the use of chemical pesticides, in situations where alternatives exist.
The Mother I told you about earlier said it as well as can be said: individuals need to take responsibility for directing research, legislate carcinogens out of the environment, as well as making personal change.
The water that flows through our sewer lines flows back to the River. It becomes drinking water again for others downstream. We have no business dumping invisible, toxic contaminants into ANY water on this planet.
A number of you are men. Sperm counts in males in industrialized countries are down by 50% since the 1950’s. This is well-known in Europe, not so well-known publicized here. The Dept of Fisheries and Oceans finally conducted research in Canada which was released in January 2003. They concluded that fish downstream from sewage treatment plants are “feminized”.
It’s from the drugs that enter the water through urine, birth control pills, insulin, anti-depressants, who knows what, PLUS chemicals. Hormone disruptors. Saskatoon City Staff said there was no detectable vaporooter in the water coming out of the sewage treatment plant. Feminized fish and sterile men tell you that there are many contaminants in the water that are not detected.