California agribusiness has long been working to maintain dangerous pesticide use by heavy lobbying, spending and misinformation campaigns to prevent methyl iodide from being banned in California. But in a recent hearing, as noted in a posting from Pesticide Action Network (PAN):
"The pro-chemical-industry remarks of the Farm Bureau representative... hit a new low when he likened the use of methyl iodide (linked to fetal death, birth defects and cancer) and other fumigants, to "good pre-natal care" for California fields. He found no cause for concern with the fact that the way California approved methyl iodide legalizes exposure at up to 100 times higher than levels their own scientists recommended to prevent fetal death and birth defects."
We’ve been criticized for exaggerating in these drawings from A Community Guide to Environmental Health, when the views of the farmworker in the drawing sound a lot like the Farm Bureau rep quoted by PAN.
Here at Hesperian, we’re not evaluating whether we should add a pesticide sprayer to our “essential tool kit” in our Book for Midwives; instead we’re finishing our work on the Spanish language edition of A Community Guide to Environmental Health, Guía comunitaria a la salud ambiental, due back from the printer on May Day. Email us if you’d like to get an announcement when the book is available for pre-order, and we’ll ship it hot off the press.
In the meantime, you can purchase or download for free A Community Guide in English, as well as a shorter booklet, Pesticides are Poison, available in English or Spanish.
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