FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Written for the No Spray Coalition by Mitchel Cohen, 2652 Cropsey Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11214. Home phone: (718) 449-0037 or hotline: (718) 670-7110. Mitchel Cohen is coordinator of the No Spray Coalition as well as one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against NYC government.)
As the NY City government gears up for its pesticide-spraying season, the No Spray Coalition heads into court to stop it.
In fact, we’re making a Federal Case out of it!
Join the No Spray Coalition in Court
Wednesday, July 28, 2004 10:30 a.m. (Come at 10 a.m. for the Press Conference) 40 Centre Street (at Foley Square) Judge Daniels’ courtroom, Rm. 618 City Hall area, New York City
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The No Spray Coalition Fighting to stop the reckless spraying of pesticides
P.O. Box 334 Peck Slip Station New York, NY 10272-0334
Hotline: (718) 670-7110 Listserve: sprayno at yahoogroups.com Website: <http://www.nospray.org/>www.nospray.org Email: mitchelcohen at mindspring.com
To treat a malaria outbreak in Borneo in the 1950s, the World Health Organization sprayed DDT to kill mosquitoes. But the DDT also killed parasitic wasps which were controlling thatch-eating caterpillars. As a result, the thatched roofs of many homes fell down, and the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckoes, which were in turn eaten by cats. The cats perished, which led to the multiplication of rats, and then outbreaks of sylvatic plague and typhus.
To put an end to this destructive chain of events, WHO parachuted 145,000 live cats into the area to control the rats.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Finally, after being kicked up, down and sideways through the Courts for the past 4 years, the lawsuit filed by the No Spray Coalition (lead plaintiff) and other groups and individuals against the government of the City of New York is being heard. This is an historic occasion, and we need your participation. Fill the Court!
Since the summer of 1999 the New York City government has been poisoning the people and environment with mass aerial spraying of toxic pesticides, allegedly to kill mosquitoes said to be carrying a virus that causes the relatively rare occurences of West Nile encephalitis.
In reality, the City’s ‘cure’ harms far more people than the disease.
And the causes of the disease itself are now being challenged. See, for instance <http://www.geocities.com/noxot>www.geocities.com/noxot, the website by NoSpray researcher Jim West, which challenges the official story and suggests that air pollution caused by oil refinery emissions (especially MTBE) and pesticides have been killing the birds and people said to have died from West Nile Virus.
Of all the counties in NY State, surprisingly it is Brooklyn that is the most pesticided, followed by Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, with far greater amounts of pesticides used overall in NYC (with its sky high asthma rates) than in the agricultural counties or suburbia. (Staten Island is heavily pesticided for mosquitoes, too.)
Last May, the No Spray Coalition joined the Pesticide Action Network, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the Sierra Club at a press conference at City Hall concerning the report: “Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability.”
That report summarizes the most extensive study of its kind ever done, in which the federal Centers for Disease Control found dangerous pesticide residues in 100 percent (!) of the thousands of people tested. The CDC projected that every person in the United States carries dangerous levels of toxic pesticides in their bodies.
Among those pesticides is one, Malathion, that has been much in the news in New York City and, along with toxic pyrethroids, has been the focus of the No Spray Coalition’s work.
In 1999 and 2000, the City of New York and the Office of Emergency Management had, day after day for two months, blanketed the city, its streets, parks, schools and waterways with clouds of Malathion and pyrethroids, from helicopters and trucks. Thousands of people reported that they were seriously sickened by the spraying. Workers who administered the malathion, along with other pesticides to kill mosquitoes, were treated at Mount Sinai Hospital. Doctors diagnosed them as suffering from “pesticide-related illness.”
Now the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has issued its new Comprehensive Mosquito Surveillance and Control Plan: 2004 (see <http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/pdf/wnv/wnvplan2004.pdf)>www.nyc.gov/html/doh/pdf/wnv/wnvplan2004.pdf), in which the City takes a number of troubling positions. We’ll focus on just two of them here:
First: City officials write that they are again considering using adulticides containing the pyrethroids resmethrin (Scourge), permethrin, and sumithrin (Anvil 10+10) -- all mixed with the suspected carcinogenic agent piperonyl butoxide as well as so-called “inert” ingredients. Studies done by the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine have found Sumithrin (Anvil) to be a hormone disruptor with “potential to affect endocrine function in humans and wildlife.” By mimicking the effects of the hormone estrogen, the studies cite these pesticides as potential causes of breast cancer in women and lowered sperm counts in men. In addition to the pyrethroids, this year the City is also considering using the dangerous dibrom, naled, and
a return to MALATHION.
The second statement from the City’s Mosquito Surveillance and Control Plan to which we want to call attention is the following statement: “In 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003
[there were] NO CASES of individuals reporting to emergency departments or seeking care from their physicians for health complaints related to adulticide exposure” from the mass spraying of pesticides.
The City is saying, in writing, that over the last four years not a single person in the entire City was made sick by the pesticide spraying. The No Spray Coalition alone -- our little, all-volunteer group with virtually no financing and minimal resources for getting the word out widely -- received hundreds of affidavits from individuals whose health was destroyed by the spraying of pesticides.
Some of those people testified in open court about how they had been sprayed in the face or over their homes, how their pets had died, and how they had been made severely ill.
We videotaped spraytrucks going down 125th Street in Harlem spraying any and everyone in sight including children and pregnant women. The City is now saying, in its new 2004 Control Plan, that none of this happened, that not a single person the City’s words, not ours was made sick from the spraying of Malathion or the pyrethroids.
The No Spray Coalition rejects New York City officials’ LIES and callous disregard for the health and safety of the people living here, as well as for the environment.
There are many alternatives to the mass use of toxic pesticides, especially the use of natural predators such as dragonflies and bats, and correct (non-aaerial) application of non-toxic bacteria that eat mosquito larvae. Compare that approach to the pesticide spraying, which kills off mosquitoes’ natural predators. That means that following each round of spraying more and more mosquitoes are able to fill-in those ecological niches, and the City administers even more pesticides to kill them!
Alternatives should also include the City’s hiring of a specialist in non-toxic, organic mosquito control, which for some reason the City curiously has failed to do. In addition, such procedures as increasing the frequency of garbage pickups to reduce the rat population and thus the use of rodenticides, as groups such as RecycleThis! have taken pains to point out, have fallen on deaf ears.
The No Spray Coalition calls on the City to:
1) recall its 2004 Comprehensive Mosquito Surveillance and Control Plan;
2) hold public hearings on any new plan it is contemplating;
3) perform full toxicological studies on all deaths (birds, people) said to have been caused by the West Nile Virus, looking at the possibility of other causes of death, such as oil refinery emissions (MTBE) and/or pesticide exposure;
4) Stop recommending the use of the carcinogenic agent DEET, which is especially dangerous for children; and,
5) STOP THE SPRAYING OF PESTICIDES, INCLUDING MALATHION, PYRETHROIDS, immediately.
****************************** The No Spray Coalition is fighting an uphill battle fighting for clean air against the unlimited financial resources of the government and the corporate contractors benefiting from the mass-spraying. As one health writer, Arnold Gore, put it, “Without the No Spray Coalition’s unstinting effort nobody would be bringing this important issue to the attention of the corporate-dominated media that always finds another story to be more ‘newsworthy’. Now they will have their day in Court and the City must take their complaints seriously.”
The No Spray Coalition needs your help. YES, come to Court. YES, hand out leaflets and speak out at public meetings against the new round of spraying this year. And YES, give us the funds we need to continue the fight.
Now that this effort is coming around the home stretch, we need funds to see it through. Please send checks to No Spray Coalition PO Box 334, Peck Slip Station New York, NY 10272-0334
or use your credit card by filling out the coupon on the website at <http://www.nospray.org/>www.nospray.org
As always, thank you very much. Together, we are indeed changing the world.
- Mitchel Cohen, for the No Spray Coalition