More farms approved in Greenbank, against residents’ wishes!

The following text is a letter I have submitted to the Jimboomba Times today (14/11/13), it’s pretty much a last-ditch attempt to shame those in Logan Council who have refused to help us in making our living environment safe.

 

Once there was a quiet rural residential enclave in the Ison/Begley/Farm Road area of Greenbank.  People enjoyed their acreage lifestyles surrounded by trees and wildlife. There were a few small farms in the area, and residents would often wave to the farmers working in the fields as they drove past.

Then everything changed.  Some of the small farms decided to farm more intensively, and erected greenhouses from fenceline to fenceline, some as close as ten metres from their neighbours’ homes and water tanks.  Residents pointed out that State Government guidelines quite clearly state that minimum buffer areas should apply to protect neighbours from exposure to the tools of these farmers’ trade:  soil fumigants, agrochemicals, fertilizers, dust, and noise.  These guidelines were formulated by farmers.

Residents became concerned when they observed illnesses in their pets, fowl and livestock, and in some cases, their children.  On several occasions, following farm spraying, they discovered dying and dead magpies on their properties and reported this to local media and the Council.  One councillor responded by accusing the residents of killing the birds, saying they were ‘anti-farmer’.  Then the head of a statewide farmer’s advocacy group weighed in, insisting that farming in this area was ‘heavily regulated’.

Residents did their research and discovered that this ‘regulation’ only existed in the form of farmers being aware of the guidelines regarding buffer zones and chemical use.    Whether they chose to comply to avoid impacting on neighbours was not overseen at all.  That we had already experienced so many impacts proved the need for more regulation.

Complaints to Council produced little result.  Then, in 2012, residents celebrated when, following 58 objection letters from nearby residents, a farm on Harvest Rd was refused permission to erect igloos.  Planning’s written decision showed that they recognised that this type of farming could potentially compromise the health and amenity of residents, and the refusal listed the impacts we had reported. 

Fast forward to the last Council election: residents showed up to vote and discovered this section of Greenbank has been moved to a different division!  Then Council proposed Amendment 1C to the former Beaudesert Shire Plan, which would eliminate all public notification of proposed farms, slash the recommended buffer zones from 300 metres to 10, and require no development applications to be lodged.  Residents again objected.

Thompson Rd residents are probably unaware that two large new igloo farms are now about to be established on their street. Here is Planning’s response to queries about the lack of public notification: “An application was lodged at the subject site and during the assessment process Council Officers identified that due to the existing use rights the application was not required.” 

So there you have it. If you want to ‘farm’ in Greenbank you are now free to clearfell, erect igloos with no oversight, and spray chemicals near your neighbours. Our pleas over eight years for these ‘existing use rights’ to be modified to reflect our concerns have fallen on deaf ears. And we are left living in the midst of it.  If this concerns you, now is the time to lodge your objection with Cr Smith, and ask him why he has supported this situation. 

Liz Hall-Downs

Here is his email address:  LaurieSmith@logan.qld.gov.au

UPDATE October 2013 on Amendment 1C

As reported in July, Logan City Council called for public comment on ‘Amendment 1c to Beaudesert Shire Planning Scheme 2007 (Open Field Market Gardens)’.   (Our posts on this, for background, are at the bottom of this page.)

Information on the submission process was sent to 60 local residents, who had already made submissions in the past objecting to the encroachment of intensive agricultural activities on our rural residential lifestyles.  We do not know how many submissions were received this time as, this not being a development application, LCC has not posted the submissions on their website, so we have no way of knowing.   If anyone reading this made a submission and would like to send it for inclusion on this site, please feel free. (Find our email on the Contact Us page.  Of course we will remove any personal details before posting on request.)

To us, this Amendment is simply a way of addressing residents’ oft-stated concerns by simply removing any public notification process and, therefore, our right to object to inappropriate developments in our neighborhood.  Way to go, Logan City Council!  Residents aren’t happy so you just deny us a voice!  One wonders WHY these ‘farmers’, whose dangerous activities have been well-documented on this blog. continue to be aided and abetted by Council in defiance of residents’ wishes.  We are disgusted at this development and ask Council to start representing our interests instead of pandering to commercial interests they continue to claim are ‘non-commercial’ and ‘rural’ uses.

FYI, here are the two submissions we at The Mozzie submitted to Council over this matter.

August 8, 2013

Re: Planning Amendment 1C to BSPS2007

Dear Planning Department,

I am absolutely astonished at LCC’s latest attempt to be appearing to ‘regulate’ agriculture in Logan by proposing these amendments.  

The amendments do little to address existing problems created by farms being located too close to homes, and, in fact, deprive residents of the right to object by getting rid of public notification requirements!  This is undemocratic and completely unacceptable.  We live here and have the right to be made aware of any proposed developments.

The amendment also plays semantics with the words it uses to describe ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Intensive Agriculture’ by introducing a new term, ‘intensive outdoor horticultural production’ that seems designed to muddy the waters between the two types of farming. How interesting,  given that we have seen an open field farm on Harvest Rd erect igloos right up to their neighbours’ fence line with NO development approval, and THEN seek to have these illegally erected structures retrospectively approved years later, with no application for Material Change of Use.  Despite our written objections at the time, Council ignored our concerns and approved these structures.  Given this history, I believe the use of this new term is designed to allow the farms to continue to do whatever they want in our rural residential neighbourhood, with the full support of Council.  Again, this is completely unacceptable.

Buffer zones, as outlined in SP1/92 should be a non-negotiable requirement for ALL farms.  The State Government, and farmers’ and environment groups were instrumental in devising these guidelines, proving they ALL understand the risks to neighbouring ‘sensitive receptors’ if the buffers are not provided.   So what’s wrong with following these guidelines, instead of bending over backwards to aid and abet the worst offenders?   Why do non-resident farmers have such support from Council, while residents do not?  It is little wonder that we residents feel we cannot trust Council to protect our interests when this type of obfuscatory nonsense is trotted out under the guise of ‘public consultation’.

To allow farming in residential precincts on lots as small as 2 acres is simply asking for more of the problems residents have reported. There is no way adequate buffer areas can be provided on such small acreages, which is why such farms should routinely be disallowed.

Further, we all know that Logan’s waterways are in a parlous state, and there is no doubt that here in Greenbank chemically-laden and fertilizer-laden runoff from farms ends up in Crewes Creek, and subsequently the Oxley River, following the regular heavy rain events we experience here.  To state, as the amendment does, that farms must contain their runoff, except when it rains heavily, provides NO protection for neighbours or waterways and is, again, unacceptable. 

Similarly, to have ‘no solution prescribed’ as the Planning Department’s response to the need to ‘ensure chemical spray drift does not reach adjoining premises’ is not good enough.  Planning’s written reasons for refusing the Material Change of Use application for 51-63 Harvest Rd over a year ago acknowledged residents’ concerns in the strongest terms, and supported our right to a safe living environment.    So how about giving up with this fiddling around the edges of an old Planning Instrument from a defunct council and instead write and enforce rules consummate with the Planning Department’s own findings and decisions?

As a resident and ratepayer, I have to say that I have been absolutely disgusted at the campaign waged against residents who have objected to the intolerable situation that has been allowed to develop here in Greenbank by:

(a) slandering us in the local press;

(b) painting us as ‘radicals’ and ‘troublemakers’;

(c) accusing us of being responsible for wildlife deaths that we witnessed and filmed that occurred following several nights of spraying on the adjoining farm

(d) enlisting the support of the CEO of Growcom to attack us in the local press – bearing in mind that we had approached that same CEO in 2011 asking for his assistance in sorting out the issue of impacts, and he did not respond. 

As residents, we have every right to complain about unsafe farming practices close to our homes, and to demand that Council do something about it.   And we have done this, over and over again.  Over 60 residents have expended copious amounts of time and money over 8 long years trying to get some action on this matter.  Unlike Councillors, CEOs and employees of the Planning Department, we are not remunerated for our efforts. 

It’s time we were listened to and our concerns taken seriously.  My neighbours and I have better things to do with our time than continually fight Council, but if this situation continues we will have no choice but to instigate a class action on behalf of the residents to mitigate the effects these practices have had on residents’ health, livestock, amenity and property values.   Obviously, we’d prefer to get on with our lives, so how about Planning doing its job and making such action unnecessary?

Sincerely

Liz Hall-Downs

August 8, 2013

Re: Planning Amendment 1C

Dear Planning Department,

To my mind there are two primary problems this amendment should be trying to address. Firstly, the measures introduced should offer regulations which ensure that any future farming developments do not adversely affect the environment and any ‘sensitive receptors’ living nearby. Secondly, the new regulations should offer some help to the residents and pre-existing farms set up without adequate buffer areas, to mitigate the sorts of problems many of us continue to experience.

As far as future farm development is concerned, the simplest way to solve the issue is simply to ban any further development of farms in the ‘Rural Residential Precinct’. Problem one solved in one swoop. Nice and easy. Barring that, LCC will have to develop a complex set of regulations. To my mind these regulations should adopt the guidelines SPP 1/92 which call for minimum buffer areas around farming activity of 40 metres (if this 40 metres is a heavily vegetated buffer area) and 300 metres across open field. This would necessitate increasing the lot size of future farms, as 8000 sq metres is wholly inadequate to provide for a buffer area.

In addition, farms should not be anywhere near a seasonal creek or existing waterway and under no circumstances should their toxic spill dams be allowed to simply overflow into a creek under a heavy rain event. Trying to develop regulations and implement them to offset such problems as discussed above will be a tangled fraught affair that will probably leave no one entirely satisfied. Again, merely banning any more farms from being developed in the Rural Residential Precinct would sweep away all these complex problems.

As for the pre-existing farms, there are many which already ruin the amenity around them, pollute the waterways, offend their neighbours with dust, odour, noise, put people and pets at risk with spray drift issues and so on. LCC cannot continue to simply pretend these problems don’t exist and label residents with legitimate complaints as ‘radicals’ and fools who don’t understand chemicals. This is egregious nonsense. This problem needs to be addressed yesterday and if not dealt with will absolutely result in a class action suit against LCC in the future for lack of duty of care.

I suggest setting up a liaison committee comprised of a representative of the farmers, an environmental officer from LCC, a lawyer who understands the issues, someone from the planning department etc. Residents could take their complaints to this committee and meet with the farmer in question. Some of the problems could be solved by merely erecting a fence, re-doing reticulation work, dismantling igloos 15 metres from a residence, recreating a dam spillway in another direction and so on. Farmers should not be immune from being forced to cooperate and compromise in the worst case scenarios. This system is not perfect and would not solve all the problems. It would, however, give many affected residents a ‘voice’ where they have had none before, and go some way to solving some of the existing problems. If this committee had a ‘budget’ as well that was allocated to assist farmers and residents to afford fencing, the establishment of vegetated buffer areas, reticulation work etc this would be even more effective. Often the problems boil down to ‘who’s going to pay for it?’ and this would go some way towards greasing the wheels.

The bottom line is that agriculture and intensive agriculture can exist with rural residential properties if there are adequate buffer areas between them. The empirically derived buffer areas as outlined in SPP1/92 are the absolute minimum needed. Anything less will merely aggravate the situation further. Given the terrible state of the waterways in Logan generally any further farming developments will absolutely exacerbate that poor record. Count on it. In addition, given that we still have koalas and probably quolls in rural parts of the shire it seems counter- productive to do anything that would destroy the existing habitat even further. Contrary to what some like to think, farming in this area has no impact on ‘tourism’ whatsoever, but the habitat itself does. I would really appreciate it if LCC could ‘do the right thing’ and protect the health and amenity of their rural residents. Farms belong in good farming territory. Greenbank is not good farming territory. Finally, if LCC is going to continue to allow farms in this precinct, under no circumstances should they be allowed to do away with the public notification process for new farm development applications. This is draconian rubbish and I can’t believe they even suggested it. Get with the program LCC and solve this issue. We are watching you like hawks and we are not going away.

Yours sincerely

Kim Downs

We received a form letter response on August 20, which we have reproduced below.  Note in particular the third paragraph: ‘It will take several months for Council to consider all the submissions. You will not be advised of the outcome of your submission until after Council has determined to proceed further with the amendment.’.

How are we to interpret this? That Council has every intention of proceeding with the amendment, regardless of our objections, and that we, the residents and ratepayers, will not be informed?   Democracy in action, anyone? What a f***ing joke!

In conclusion, we have devoted a year of our lives to this issue, via posting all relevant information on this blog.  It has cost us thousands of hours in unpaid work, and hundreds of dollars in postal and administrative fees.  We are the latest in a long line of residents who have devoted similar amounts of time and resources in trying to get ‘our’ Council to listen to our legitimate concerns and take some action to protect our health and amenity. Council seems determined to push ahead with this steady industrialisation of our living environment in direct contradiction to the desires of the majority of residents.

At this point, we feel we have done all we can.  However, we will continue to share information as it comes to hand. Hopefully others will also find the time and energy to continue this fight, and we give any such motivated person full permission to use any information from this blog for this purpose.  Council’s combative  attitude towards affected residents leaves us despairing for ourselves and our neighbours, and for the fate of our abundant local wildlife.

The only bright light on this horizon is that one Greenbank resident has recently served his neighbouring farmers with a $250,000 lawsuit – the amount, according to expert advice, required to mitigate the impacts they have caused to his property and lifestyle through inappropriate earthworks that have caused dam leakage and structural damage to his home.   We can only hope that this attack on the farmers’ back pockets might make them reconsider their push to turn our neighborhood into one vast chemical-spraying intensive farm.  If any news comes to hand on this matter, we will, of course, post it on this blog.

BACKGROUND – PREVIOUS POSTS ON THIS MATTER FROM JULY 2013

Changes to the Planning Guidelines regarding ‘Agriculture’ in the area that was previously part of Beaudesert Shire have been released for public comment by Logan City Council.  You can read the whole document by clicking the links below.   We believe this draft plan is an obfuscatory document that DOES NOT adequately deal with residents’ longstanding concerns.  Submission deadline to Logan City Council is August 9, 2013.   if you have any rural residential block that is 2 acres or larger adjacent to you, it will be legally allowed to be cleared for ‘Agriculture’ – which, unfortunately for us, has often entailed the use of soil fumigants, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides close to our homes and water tanks.
We have put together a precis of the relevant documents released for comment by Council, and, at the end of the document,  a series of points residents might like to use in their submissions.
Click HERE:  https://safegreenbanknow.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/submission-guidelines.pdf
Further ammunition is contained in the following link, which outlines the grounds for refusal by Logan council’s OWN Planning Department of a development application for an igloo-style intensive agriculture development in Harvest rd in 2011-12.  These same points can be aimed back at LCC as grounds for disputing this new Amendment 1C to the Beaudesert Shire Planning Scheme 2007 (BSPC2007).
https://safegreenbanknow.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/refusal-grounds.pdf
We believe, regardless of whether small farms are open field or protected horticulture, and regardless of whether they are ‘intensive’ or not, if they are using the cocktail of agricultural chemicals non-organic growers use, they MUST provide adequate buffers between their activities and rural residents.  Further, we believe that existing houses should not be subsequently impinged unpon by this type of development.
July 2, 2013.
When we talk to the media, we have no control over how our case is presented and have to trust that we’ve managed to get our point across.  On Friday June 28, a group of Greenbank residents attended a photo shoot for the Jimboomba Times, who had asked for responses to the new latest planning document.  People would be aware of our green ‘eye’ signs which are dotted around the neighborhood on fences and mailboxes.  Well, this time we decided to become full-blown placard-wavers!  And if you are visiting this site for the first time as a result of the JT’s coverage, I guess we’ve been effective 🙂
(July 5 update: see their coverage, and our commentary of it, in the blogpost on the right of this page.)
The issue this site is attempting to address relates to a lack of compliance with the Qld State Government Guidelines regarding buffer areas between farming activities and residences.  Greenbank has been zoned rural residential since the 1970s; problems have arisen as small acreage lots have been turned into farms – either open field or protected horticulture.  As the intensity of farming activity has increased, so too have impacts on existing residents. Exposure to chemical spray drift, dust,  odour, drainage problems, sick and dying wildlife and domestic pets and fowl – these are just some of the issues residents have spoken and written about and sought to have addressed.
We have been attempting to influence Logan City Council to address anomalies in the 3 different Planning Schemes they administer (Yes, THREE!) so that the impacts and resulting dissent caused by the Greenbank situation does not happen again.  A new Planning Scheme has been in the works for some months now, and we’ve been waiting to see if it will embrace <strong>SPP1/92, the State Planning Guideline that specifies minimum distances between farm operations and homes.  Note that these guidelines were formulated by the Qld Government IN CONSULTATION WITH FARMER’S GROUPS (including Growcom, Australian Cotton Growers Assoc., sundry agricultural scientists, etc). </strong>
But they are Guidelines only. ALL ALONG, WE HAVE BEEN ASKING LOGAN CITY COUNCIL TO ADOPT THESE GUIDELINES AS STANDARD.  WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO SEE SOME ATTEMPT BY COUNCIL  TO  MITIGATE THE IMPACTS FROM EXISTING FARMS THAT DO NOT COMPLY WITH THESE GUIDELINES. THIS COULD BE AS SIMPLE AS REQUIRING FARMS TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE FENCING AND  PLANT VEGETATION.
Our point is simple: AMENDMENT 1C DOES NOT ADDRESS the issues we’ve raised, and still leaves residents exposed to the impacts we’ve mentioned.

 

APVMA on Noosa Fish Hatchery findings

This from LACA, thankyou to Kathy Faldt for passing it on.

Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce
The Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce (NFHIT) was established by the Queensland Government in January 2009 to investigate a range of fish health problems at the Sunland Fish Hatchery, including fish deaths and abnormalities. The APVMA was not represented on the Taskforce. The Taskforce made five recommendations to the APVMA in their June 2011 report. The APVMA is responding to these recommendations.
Spray Drift
Off-target spray drift that can accompany the application of pesticides is a concern that sometimes alarms the community and always challenges the agricultural industry to find ways to control it more effectively. The APVMA is responsible for ensuring that off-target pesticide spray drift does not harm human health, the environment or Australia’s international trade.

Adverse experiences and using chemicals safely:  http://www.apvma.gov.au/use_safely/index.php

REPORT OF ADVERSE EXPERIENCES for Veterinary Medicines and Agricultural Chemicals in 2010
A total of 1595 adverse experience reports involving registered veterinary products were assessed and classified and a total of 103 adverse experience reports involving adverse experience involving agricultural products were assessed and classified.
Of these adverse experience reports with ag products 71 per cent involved effects on crops or animals, 19 per cent involved human health issues, 8 per cent involved lack of efficacy, and 2 per cent involved effects on the environment were assessed and classified.
Reporting adverse experiences is the process used to regulate chemical usage. The more reports the more chance of a change.
Slow process this report for 2010 was released July 2013?
http://www.apvma.gov.au/publications/reports/docs/aerp_2010.pdf

Another article about CHLORPYRIFOS in air

Yet more on the dangers of Chlorpyrifos to we ‘sensitive receptors’ (read, ‘human beings’).  Maybe we should send Cr Phil Pidgeon over to California to berate the inhabitants over their use of ‘lawn grub killer’, as he has done here in Greenbank. 😉

Readers will notice that the ‘authorities’ seem to get quite different results than independent testers – whose version would YOU believe?

Reprinted from Beyond Pesticides Blog, http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=11458

State Finds Toxic Insecticide in Air Samples

(Beyond Pesticides, August 7, 2013) California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has detected the highly toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in nearly 30% of air tests that are being conducted in three high risk communities surrounded by intensive agriculture. This result is part of DPR’s 2012 results from its  air-monitoring network (AMN) sampling near the towns of Ripon, Salinas and Shafter, in Kern County.  The state has been running tests for air particles from methyl bromide and 32 other pesticides and breakdown products and measuring the results against screening levels established by DPR. No state or federal agency has set health standards for pesticides in air. While the state believes the levels found present an acceptable risk, critics maintain that the state’s sampling is not representative of peak agricultural exposures and question whether any level of a toxicant in air is reasonable under the law, given the viability of alternative agricultural practices that do not rely on these chemicals.

DPR said no residues were detected in 94.5 percent of the samples it collected, and the levels in the rest were well below thresholds for protecting people from pesticide-related illnesses. The communities in the study were selected from a list of 226 communities in the state based on pesticide use on surrounding farmland and demographics, including the percentage of children, the elderly and farm workers in the local population. In response to the results, DPF’s Director, Brian Leahy said, “This is reassuring news for residents.” He continued, “Our monitoring in 2012 shows that none of the pesticides exceeded their screening levels, indicating a low health risk to the people in these communities. These findings indicate that the state and county restrictions are keeping air concentrations below the health protective targets set by DPR.”

However, Pesticide Action Network (PAN), based in California, raises doubts about DPR’s results. PAN also monitors airborne pesticide residues with its “drift catcher” device and finds levels that put children at risk. PAN believes that DPR sampling was not representative of real agricultural exposures – during and after pesticide application. “DPR sampled in a systematic but not targeted manner, with samples being taken once per week for 12 months,” PAN staff scientist Emily Marquez said. “The most important time to monitor is during the times of peak use.”

A 2010 PAN report  revealed that fumigant pesticides, like chloropicrin, contaminated half of the 57 air samples collected, with average levels of exposure over the 19-day period at 23 to 151 times higher than acceptable cancer risks. Earlier this year, DPR proposed restrictions on the use of chloropicrin, commonly applied to strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, raspberries, and blackberries. The proposed rule would not only increase buffer zones around application sites, but also restrict application acreage, impose notification requirements, enhance emergency preparedness requirements, and prolong the time that chloropicrin-applied fields must remain covered.

Fumigants are highly volatile and prone to drift, with severe implications for human health. Some of the health effects linked to exposure can include headaches, vomiting, severe lung irritation, and neurological effects. Some fumigants are linked to cancer, reduced fertility, birth defects and higher rates of miscarriage.

The pesticides detected the most often were chlorpyrifos and MITC, found at all three locations 28 percent of the time. Pesticides can drift and volatilize, and move over long distances fairly rapidly through wind and rain. Documented exposure patterns result from drift cause particular concerns for children and other sensitive population groups. Adverse health effects, such as nausea, dizziness, respiratory problems, headaches, rashes, and mental disorientation, may appear even when a pesticide is applied according to label directions. DPR’s AMN samples ambient air for multiple pesticides on a regular schedule to expand DPR’s knowledge of the potential health risks of long-term exposure to pesticides and more accurate estimates of health risks based on long-term exposure rather than extrapolation from short-term monitoring data to help them determine if additional protective measures are needed.

Farmers, farmworkers, their families and those living in close proximity to agricultural fields face disproportionate pesticide risks. An average of 57.6 out of every 100,000 agricultural workers experience acute pesticide poisoning, illness or injury each year, the same order of magnitude as the annual incidence rate of breast cancer in the United States. The federal government estimates that there are 10,000-20,000 acute pesticide poisonings among workers in the agricultural industry annually, a figure that likely understates the actual number of acute poisonings. Just last month, farmworkers from across the nation called for stronger protections for farmworkers from hazardous pesticides.

The best way for consumers to prevent use of hazardous fumigants and other pesticides is to buy organically produced food. Support organic farming and protect farmers, farmworkers, and their families and neighbors from toxic chemicals. Organic agriculture does not allow the use toxic chemicals that have been shown to drift and cause a myriad of chronic health effects, such as cancer, endocrine disruption and a series of degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease. To learn more about organic agriculture please visit Beyond Pesticides organic agriculture page.  For more information on organic versus conventional agricultural practices, see Beyond Pesticides’ guide, Organic Food: Eating with a Conscience, urging consumers to consider impacts on the environment, farmworker and farm families’ health –in addition to personal health impacts posed by pesticide residues– when making food choices.

For background on pesticide drift issues, see Getting the Drift on Chemical Trespass and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health study.

DPR is accepting comments on this draft report until September 20, 2013. Please submit comments in writing to: Edgar Vidrio, Department of Pesticide Regulation, Environmental Monitoring Branch, PO Box 4015, Sacramento, CA, 95812-4015, or email: Edgar.Vidrio@cdpr.ca.gov.

Sources: CDPR, Santa Maria Times

Image Source: ucanr.edu

How Authorities try to Convince us that Pesticides are ‘safe’

 Reprinted, with thanks,  from Majia’s blog,  http://majiasblog.blogspot.com.au/

 Sunday, April 14, 2013

Engineering Consent Through Propaganda

Edward Bernays is responsible for encouraging ‘leaders’ to manage the public through public relations, rather than leveling with them about real conditions. See the Century of the Self here and read Bernay’s book, Propaganda, here.

Bernays’ encouraged the titans of industry and presidents to engineer consent using propaganda that appealed to people’s instinctual drives and herd instinct.

Bernays approach was and remains sociopathic, but also very effective, as illustrated by the following anecdote:

Yesterday while at my oldest son’s track meet (for 5 hours) I had the opportunity to chat with other parents.

One parent is a dietician. I asked her opinion about the new sweetner Stevia and her response was ‘all things in moderation.’

Unfortunately for me, that precipitated a rather distressing conversation that re-affirmed my belief that Bernays was correct about human susceptibility to authority and crowd instincts.

She said there was ‘no evidence’ that organic food produces better health outcomes than non-organic food and that the way to deal with pesticides is to eat a range of food so that one doesn’t get exposed to too much pesticides from any particular food.

It all sounds so reasonable if one is ignorant of

1.) how pesticides are actually used, especially in conjunction with herbicides and fungicides

2.) the methodologies used to test the safety of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides

3.) the decades of research showing adverse biological effects for nearly every industry-assured ‘safe’ pesticides

4.) the role of chemical synergies

5.) bioaccumulation processes and biomagnification effects across species

For the dietician I spoke with, disease is ‘genetic’ and the environment is largely irrelevant insofar as contaminants are concerned. So, the items listed above don’t even register as analytical questions to ask about exposure.

Why does she believe that health is determined strictly by genes and lifestyle (narrowly defined)? She believes this platform because it comprises the established medical orthodoxy.

For most medical practitioners what matters are hereditary genes and lifestyle factors, such as smoking, exercise and diet (diet construed narrowly in relation to type of foods consumed with no regard for additives or chemical residues from production). This dogma is a simplistic representation that is both reductionistic and mechanistic.

In truth, diseases can be genetic, but not simply in a hereditary fashion. Genes produce proteins in environments and genetic and epigenetic operations (definition of epigenetics here) are always influenced by those environments. Chemicals and radiation can destroy genes and affect their transcription processes in subtle ways that have not-so subtle implications for many, many diseases (e.g., asthma, cancer, ADHD, autism, Parkinsons, etc).

Since I knew I had the opportunity for one response before being regarded as “pushy and contentious” I merely said that I did not trust EPA and FDA safety protocols because they allow manufactures to conduct their own tests, which are typically performed during very short time periods (e.g., 96 hours to 90 days) in laboratory conditions with animals and do not replicate real world accumulation and do not address effects on developing beings with rapid cell division.

I said real knowledge of the health effects of environmental chemicals requires decades of studies comparing exposure levels and diseases across lifespans.

That was a 60 second sound byte. I knew I had to move on or be regarded as inappropriately rude.

I was very frustrated. Anyone who ‘reads’ and investigates knows that pesticide after pesticide has been pulled from the market for safety reasons. Remember when Dursban was pulled by the EPA in 2000 because it causes developmental delays in children? (see the EPA statement here).

More recently the entire class of organophosphate pesticides (of which Dursban was a member) has been implicated as causing problems in children because they are neurotoxins:

Environmental Health Perspectives ReportsStrength in Numbers: 
Three Separate Studies Link in Utero Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure and Cognitive Development by Kimberly Gray, Cindy P. Lawled  http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1104137

Majia here: Even the mainstream media has published articles on the relationship between pesticides and ADHD, as illustrated here.

The research on herbicides such as Round-Up is even more alarming. For example, see report here and take a look at this article:

ROUND-UP TOXIC TO HUMAN PLACENTAL JEG3 CELLS Richard, S., Moslemi, S., Sipahutar, H., Benachour, N. Seralini, G. (2005). Environmental Health Perspectives http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.7728 [abstract] “Here we show that glyphosate is toxic to human placental JEG3 cells within 18 hr with concentrations lower than those found with agricultural use, and this effect increases with concentration and time or in the presence of Roundup adjuvants. Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient…We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals. We suggest that the presence of Roundup adjuvants enhances glyphosate bioavailability and/or bioaccumulation….”

Majia here: What concerns me is that dietician speaks with authority but she has not read the research that does exist which establishes that pesticides and other chemicals do indeed pose RISKS, especially for developing beings.

No doubt the gap in understanding derives from the orthodoxy of her profession and the medical field more generally.

It is important to point out that this orthodoxy is not simply naive. Rather, the dominant framework is entirely political in that it dominates by excluding and marginalizing dissenting evidence and opinions.

That is where Edward Bernays comes in. He taught leaders of American industry and presidents how to ‘engineer consent’ by appealing to the hard instinct. He described how control could be exercised over entire societies by selecting and grooming authoritative opinion leaders who would herd the masses.

Educated and intelligent people are susceptible to this herding, especially if the authorities in their profession reiterate over and over again the dominant dogma using ‘reasonable’ and ‘scientific’ vocabularies.

In contrast, true knowledge stems from INQUIRY and CRITICAL investigation. It demands investigation of anomalies and disconnections.

We are living in a time of anomalies. Ecosystems around us are crashing and yet still we believe that ‘low doses’ are safe because we fail to recognize the roles of synergy and interdependence, bio-accumulation, and bio-magnification:

Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived. Nature 471 (2011) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7336/full/nature09678.html

[Abstract] Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval, as has happened only five times in the past 540 million years or so. Biologists now suggest that a sixth mass extinction may be under way, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia. Here we review how differences between fossil and modern data and the addition of recently available palaeontological information influence our understanding of the current extinction crisis. Our results confirm that current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record, highlighting the need for effective conservation measures [end]

Majia’s Examples here.

Environmental Chemicals: Evaluating Low-Dose Effects. In Environmental Health Perspectives. By Linda S. Birnbaum, Director, NIEHS and NTP, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action;jsessionid=A5B54007B66F7D4DC1388B53848478B9?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1205179

[excerpt] “Making connections between the exposome and risk assessment is a difficult but important venture (Paustenbach and Galbraith 2006; Rappaport and Smith 2010).

Risk assessments typically examine the effects of high doses of administered chemicals to determine the lowest observed adverse effect levels (LOAELs) and no observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs); reference doses, which are assumed safe for human exposure, are then calculated from these doses using a number of safety factors.

Thus, human exposures to thousands of environmental chemicals fall in the range of nonnegligible doses that are thought to be safe from a risk assessment perspective.

Yet the ever-increasing data from human biomonitoring and epidemiological studies suggests otherwise: Low internal doses of endocrine disruptors found in typical human populations have been linked to obesity (Carwile and Michels 2011), infertility (Meeker and Stapleton 2010), neurobehavioral disorders (Swan et al. 2010), and immune dysfunction (Miyashita et al. 2011), among others.

For several decades, environmental health scientists have been dedicated to addressing the “low-dose hypothesis,” which postulates that low doses of chemicals can have effects that would not necessarily be predicted from their effects at high doses. More than 10 years ago, a National Toxicology Program expert panel concluded that there was evidence for low-dose effects for a select number of well-studied endocrine disruptors (Melnick et al. 2002).

Now, a diverse group of scientists has reexamined this large body of literature, finding examples of low-dose effects for dozens of chemicals across a range of chemical classes, including industrial chemicals, plastic components and plasticizers, pesticides, phytoestrogens, preservatives, surfactants and detergents, flame retardants, and sunblock, among others (Vandenberg et al. 2012)….