Mothra: Why the Schwarzenegger Administration is Wrong About Spraying Californians With Toxic Chemicals

You say you choose to rely on facts. So let’s look at some facts.

Your own publications contradict your claims that the spray is safe. You say it is untrue that the pesticide used last fall has not been tested. In fact, the assessment published by the California Departments of Health and Pesticide Regulation and the California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment clearly says the active ingredient in those pesticides, a synthetic moth pheromone, has never been tested for human exposure. The “thorough review” that you claim those agencies gave the pesticide relied on short-term exposure data for other pheromones, assumed they would be applied only over unpopulated agricultural areas rather than the populous urban areas that will be affected by the LBAM spray, and ignored the other ingredients that made up more than 80% of the pesticide. Those other ingredients include carcinogens, mutagens, and chemicals associated with birth defects and miscarriages, and toxic to aquatic life. Your department repeatedly claims it is “unaware” of those health risks even though they are documented in the toxicology database of the United States’ Institute for Occupational Health and Safety and on Material Safety Data Sheets prepared by the chemical manufacturers.

Now you are touting the “six-pack” toxicology tests being done on the pesticides proposed to be sprayed over our communities this summer. But you fail to mention that these are short-term exposure tests that determine how much of a pesticide or individual ingredient will be fatal to an animal in a very short period of time. These tests will tell us nothing about the actual risks faced by human populations to ongoing exposure from a pesticide that time-releases during the 30-day periods between sprays or about the risks of long-term health problems such as cancer.

At a recent presentation in the Central Valley where CDFA is now trying to shore up its case for spraying Bay Area and Central Coast residents, a farmer who had researched the moth and found it is not a threat asked: “why are you bringing alarm into the Central Valley?”

The only fear being spread is by CDFA, claiming that LBAM is a “voracious” pest that will eat “anything green,” destroy California agriculture, and overrun the Central Valley. You have produced no science, substantial or otherwise, to support these claims. In fact, your own department has said the moth has done no damage to crops or plants in California. Respected scientists have shown that LBAM is just another of the many leaf-roller moths that do no harm in California and that it does almost no damage in other countries and states where it is established and which do little or nothing to control it. The USDA’s own research shows that LBAM will not reproduce in the extreme temperatures of the Central Valley.

For months you told us that the reason there was no crop damage due to LBAM was that it had just arrived last year. But on a recent radio show you admitted that it has been here at least 6 or 7 years. Meanwhile, entomologists across the UC system have been saying all along that it has been here 10-50 years. How many other claims have you made that will be revised when the moth of mass destruction turns out to be just another mild-mannered leaf roller? And, meanwhile, how many more people will have to get sick before your sham science and unsubstantiated denials crumble and the truth is revealed that the LBAM program is dangerous and unnecessary?

We have read a lot in the news recently about interference with the work of government scientists charged with evaluating the safety of chemicals to protect public health. A Government Accountability Office report found that the White House's and other agencies had “delayed or blocked efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to list chemicals as carcinogens,” (San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 30) and that the U.S. EPA has bypassed the results of its own scientists research to instead rely on recommendations of an industry-funded group. Rules changes by the Bush Administration have made deliberations about chemical risk secret so that there is no oversight or open scientific debate. An April 30 Washington Post article notes that this “makes it impossible to see whether agencies are acting in the interest of science or for less noble reasons.” It seems clear similar problems have trickled down to CDFA as you and your staff present cherry picked and misrepresented science to the citizens of California in an effort to rationalize a dangerous program for which there is no justification.

You claim that you are conducting the LBAM program “in an open, transparent manner.” In fact, East Bay residents have for some time been requesting CDFA’s schedule of LBAM presentations and asking that those presentations be balanced to include the scientists whose research counters the state’s unsubstantiated claims. Those residents have received no response.

With all these lies, omissions, abuses of discretion, and failures in transparency to your credit, Mr. Secretary, and with the burden that has been placed on the independent scientists and citizens of California to bring the facts about the LBAM spray to light, the charge of misrepresentation clearly lands at your own doorstep.