Pheromone opponents bring in celebrity medical expert Posted: Friday, Jan 11th, 2008
A handful of citizens upset over last year’s pheromone spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties found a sympathetic voice in Dr. Doris Rapp, a pediatric allergist from Phoenix, during a forum Thursday afternoon in Capitola. The group planned a larger gathering Thursday night in Santa Cruz. “Some people can become desperately ill. There’s no doubt that more and more people are becoming sensitized to chemicals,” Rapp said during the sparsely attended afternoon session at the United Way offices in Capitola. “I think it’s very possible that they can become progressively more ill because each time the spraying occurs, they’re apt to have an increase in their symptoms.” Liz Koch, Way of Life health educator, organized an environmental toxicity training for medical professionals today at 11 a.m. at Bauman College in a bid to back up claims of health effects from the pheromone spraying. “I invited Dr. Rapp because I’m personally very concerned, I feel that people are not aware of what aerial spraying is doing to our health,” Koch said. A Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge in November declined to stop the state from spraying a pheromone substance in the county. The first aerial application to combat the light brown apple moth was completed over roughly a 41.5-square-mile area including Aptos, Soquel, Capitola, Live Oak and Santa Cruz. It was a followup to similar applications in Monterey County, also controversial and contested unsuccessfully in court. It also was a precursor to predicted spraying in the Watsonville area, tentatively to happen in late February or early March. California Department of Food and Agriculture insists the pheromone is safe. When dispersed from airplanes in its manmade form, the chemical — called CheckMate LBAM-F — is expected to confuse male moths and crash the pest’s population, halting its expected spread and the resulting damage to the environment and a host of crops, CDFA has stated. A pheromone is an insect secretion that enables the moths to attracts mates, so use of CheckMate LBAM-F simply confuses the male moths and doesn’t actually kill them, CDFA stated. But CDFA received a total of 330 illness reports since the pest eradication program began last September, CDFA spokesman Steve Lyle reported earlier this month. Rapp conceded that not all illness reports will be legitimate. “Sometimes people are highly suggestible,” she said, “but if you told me that you woke up this morning, and they sprayed last night, and you touch your lymph glands and they were so tender you couldn’t touch your neck, and you have a rash all over, I don’t think that this would be what you would think of if you were having an emotional upset over this. You might have a headache and be tired.” Julia Frick of Seabright said she experienced the aftermath of a pheromone application. “It was like a war zone,” she said, “my partner and I did taste it and feel it, he proceeded to have an asthma crisis that he hadn’t had in 20 years. They tried to tell me that my area hadn’t been sprayed, but I could see the spray in the cobwebs and my bees never came back.” Frick said she has called senators and congressmen to try to halt the next wave of applications. Koch complained that she was being treated like a “white rat on an experimental pheromone.” “The burden of proof is not mine. Why am I the burden of proof? What do I have to do, die?” she asked. Koch insisted the symptoms are real. “Somebody who was directly sprayed like I was knows that something has changed,” she said. Rapp said even commonplace plastics can cause problems with human reproduction, but she admitted that testing to confirm these chemical effects on the human body typically becomes costly, inhibiting research. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued its own findings about CheckMate LBAM-F, stating that the toxicity of pheromones “is so minor that they are exempt from the requirement of a tolerance,” meaning the legal limit of a pesticide’s residue on food. “After reviewing the toxicological data (of pheromones), scientists at the USEPA concluded that ‘based on low toxicity in animal testing, and expected low exposures to humans, no risk to human health is expected from the use of these pheromones,’” Mary-Ann Warmerdam, director of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, and John Denton, director of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, wrote to Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura on Nov. 16. “During more than 10 years of use of lepidopteran pheromones, no adverse effects have been reported.” Rapp urged citizens with health concerns to monitor their own reactions to the pheromone. “I would get myself some white mice,” she said, and urged an experiment where some of the mice were given water exposed to the spray and others were fed on a normal diet. State officials stated that doses of CheckMate LBAM-F are so low — roughly 2.97 ounces per acre — that the ingredients aren’t expected to result in health problems. In their letter, Warmerdam and Denton said state agencies have begun implementing recommendations that the state track health effects from the pheromone spraying as well as the “potential effects of stress” to explore any cause and effect from the applications on human health. CDFA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said without the spraying and other strategies, the light brown apple moth could inflict costs on agriculture and the environment in excess of $100 million in the state of California. ••• The Associated Press contributed to this report. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• (Published in 1/11/08 edition) |
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