Endosulfan

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by Moe, Mar 22, 2010.

  1. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    Hi just wondering what have you heard about "Endosulfan". I saw on TV the current affair commecrial about "a chemical" (Endosulfan) and effects. Since I dont really watch ACA or Today Tonight I read up about it. Its causing birth defects to many animals and livestock around the areas of Noosa where spraying is going on and the fish in the Noosa river are also being born with abnormally high deformities.

    Anyone else care to add to this? Don't know why its not banned in Australia.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosulfan
     
  2. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    G'day Moe

    Good to see you don't watch that crap, however, in order to answer your own question, you may wish to broaden your reading material a little more, and scrutinise the body that authorises the use of this substance in Australia: APVMA

    Of course, you will not find the answer as to why it is 'not banned' in the above, rather just a lot of information about 'reducing the risk'.

    What this issue is really about, is protecting the commercial interests of the producers of this and other poisons. Hard to believe that 'our government' and 'big business' are trying to kill us all, hey? Maybe not...

    Murray Bookchin (under the pseudonym of 'Lewis Herber') first wrote about this kind of insanity in Our Synthetic Environment (1962), just before Rachel Carson released her own work on the same subject, Silent Spring.

    Cheerio, and keep up the good work!

    Marcus
     
  3. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    Oh yeah, corporate interests all the way. Its funny, anything that makes money but is dangerous can be justified in Australia.

    I realised this lately using the example of SCUBA diving. I'm a diver myself, and whenever you do a dive you sign a clause that basically says, "if you die, its your own fault". Many people have died, in fact one recent death occured last week in Melbourne (people trying to cave dive). However, diving is expensive, so I can see that banning it would stop some profits. Same goes for smoking cigarettes. The could save so many more lives if they banned it tomorrow (hell, every other drug is illegal) but the government relies on the tax income. Safety aside, I don't see why i.e. riding a bicycle without a helmet cant apply the "if you die, its your own fault" type rule other than it would loose money.

    Politics aside, i'm going to send a letter the APVMA informing them of my disgust about endosulfan use. Even if they just delete it, every bit counts I guess? If you read this please do the same, this chemical causes nasty deformities in many animals and humans. Have a look at endosulfan deformities on google images, quite shocking.

    Also there was a chemical (unsure of name) recently detected in Tasmania (not sure where) causing mass deaths of oysters where the oyster farmers operate (via run off from rivers). Also if you've heard about this strange Tasmanian devil tumor (strange tumors that stop the devil from being able to chew) - it was found that in areas where the chemical was used a higher percentage of devils had developed this tumor.
     
  4. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    G'day Moe

    Yes, it is a very sad state of affairs. I have just finished watching yet another example being played out; the so-called 'war on drugs': ABC 4 Corners. 16,000 Mexican people slaughtered since the new regime came into office, and for what? The continuation of the capitalist paradigm! It does not matter whether those at the top of the hierarchy wear business suits, or flack jackets - each are both complicit in this atrocity. The death and destruction could be stopped over night if the US legalised, or at least decriminalised, cannabis use. However there is no profit in that. The 'war on drugs' generates more economic stimulus through the production and consumption of weapons than an entire health and education campaign could ever hope to muster. Madness, but that's why we are here, my friend. Trying to shine a light on what is a very dark and insidious form of cancer - capitalism.

    Keep up the good work, Marko.
     
  5. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    oh yeah, for sure. You only have to look at the American alcohol prohibition of the 1930's to see its a doomed cause. The war business is a good business, (for the producers), and it definitely goes hand in hand with chemical production.
     
  6. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    This is the reply I got from the APVMA

    Dear Moe

    Thank you for your email.

    The 60 Minutes program certainly was distressing and yes, claims were made that the problems at her fish hatchery were because of two chemicals: endosulfan and carbendazim. Endosulfan, however, has not been used at the neighbouring macadamia farm for a number of years. Carbendazim has been used but contrary to claims made by Sixty Minutes it is not banned throughout the world. See information on carbendazim and endosulfan.

    Endosulfan is tightly controlled in Australia. It use here has not been associated with human health concerns in places like India where the chemical was mis-used.We have no evidence of human health or environmental harm despite the existence of extensive feedback loops that include residue testing of food.

    When Gwen Gilson's story first became public the Queensland Government set up a special taskforce, the Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce, to investigate and report on the issues. Since its formation the Taskforce has released two interim reports neither of which has been able to find any evidence that chemicals were involved. In its last report it indicated that 'it is highly unlikely that there is a single cause of the observed syndrome but a combination of factors is likely to be operation'. Its final report is due next month.

    According to our legislation, the APVMA can only take regulatory action when there is evidence of harm. We will look at the final report and determine if and what regulatory action will be undertaken.

    Regards

    Dr Simon Cubit
    Public Affairs

    Stupid government, they aren't very thorough unless its public i.e. media covered. The task force must have been set up before any media coverage. The government often does this in many of its departments, if I can use my girlfriend's nursing home as an example. One of her colleges was physically hurting residents of the nursing home, being inappropriate, bullied other staff any many other things. After the government run "task force" came in there, they simply let him off the hook claiming that he was the "OH&S officer and therefore could not have been bullying staff, injuring residents etc".

    I'm going to write a proper reply back to this Dr. Simon Cubit, but I'll use some journal articles from my uni's data base.

    Heres a pretty good abstract outlining the effects of endosulfan poisoning from one of the articles I will use:

    Endosulfan is a widely used insecticide that is associated with a high fatality rate in humans when ingested accidentally or with the aim of suicide. However, the literature concerning human endosulfan exposure is limited to case reports. Thus, we sought to 1) describe the clinical features of patients with acute endosulfan poisoning and 2) identify independent factors to predict patients' outcome. Fifty-two patients who presented with acute endosulfan poisoning between January 2001 and January 2007 were enrolled in this retrospective study. Sixteen (30.7%) of the 52 patients died, and 48 patients experienced seizures. Endosulfan poisoning caused the hypotension and the abnormalities on electrocardiogram at presentation. Over half of the patients developed complications, such as rhabdomyolysis, hepatic toxicity, and hypotension. These complications resolved without sequelae in the survival group. Refractory status epilepticus was the most common cause of death in this series (75.0%). Amount ingested being greater than 35 g of endosulfan was the most found to be an independent variable that predicted patient mortality. Patients with this risk factor must be treated aggressively during the early stage of endosulfan poisoning.

    LOOK at those statistics: Sixteen (30.7%) of the 52 patients died

    48/52 patients experienced seizures!

    This is from a 2009 study, so pretty recent.

    The question is: even if the chemical is "controlled", why risk it? (appart from the loss of corporate profits).
     
  7. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Hey Moe

    I don't watch commercial TV, so am not familiar with the 60 Minutes article. As such, I have no specific comments to make with regards to Cubit's response, which mostly appears to be addressing concerns raised in the story that 60 Minutes ran with. However, the speed at which you received your response, and the general tone in which it is written, makes me think that you have received a pretty standard reply. I'm sure Dr Cubit's admin people have been very busy!

    Concerning your next letter, I'm very heartened to see your passion. Well done! However, if you will take a little advice from an old war horse, can I suggest that you read very widely on the subject in order to give yourself the best chance at presenting your case. The above excerpt is fine, if you wish to make a point about the effects of 'acute poisoning' (they drank the shit, intentionally or otherwise), but if you are trying to make a case about, say for example spray drift, bioaccumulation in soil, and 'feedback' through food, such is hinted at in Cubit's letter, then I feel you are going to have to go international with your literature review.

    All power to you, my friend.

    If you need a hand with the literature review, give me a hoy.

    Markus

    Oh, and in answer to your final question: You have already given your self an answer (in the parentheses) that I would tend to agree with.
     
  8. Jonathan Byron

    Jonathan Byron Junior Member

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    Wait - you don't think prohibition of deadly toxins like endosulfan is a good thing?? Prohibitions are often excellent ideas. No one I know is suggesting we decriminalize murder, even though that prohibition is not very effective. I think spraying millions of pounds of deadly toxins which persist in the environment and which bio-accumulate should be stopped by law.
     
  9. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    Wait - you don't think prohibition of deadly toxins like endosulfan is a good thing?? Prohibitions are often excellent ideas. No one I know is suggesting we decriminalize murder, even though that prohibition is not very effective. I think spraying millions of pounds of deadly toxins which persist in the environment and which bio-accumulate should be stopped by law.

    Sorry, that was in regards to drugs; I'm not sure we should apply prohibition to drugs. Its easier to make money from drugs than it is from murder (theres more drug dealers than hit men). If endosulfan was banned, I really don't see farmers going to any extraordinary lengths to obtain it; thus being a good idea to prohibit it.
     
  10. Noslap

    Noslap New Member

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    Noslap

    Hi Ecodharmamark,
    I noticed, that you are a rabid anti-capitalist and even attempt to look like Fidel Castro/Che Gueverra,
    but:
    1/ That murderous ideology, that cost more than 100 million lives, is thankfully only kept alive in North
    Korea and on the wane in Russia, China, Vietnam and Cambodia and those countries can not wait to become "capitalists" quick enough.
    2/ It was not those "capitalists/big business" that introduced Endosulfan and other dangerous insecticides/pesticides, but the rabid Left-wing/Green movements, after they lost their shining light
    (communism). Those movements claimed, that DDT was causing cancer in humans and also killed
    certain bird-species. Those claims were and still are totally false and I myself and hundreds of millions of people, who have been treated with DDT in the 1940's and 1950's, have never had any detrimental effects. DDT had eradicated malaria and tyhpoid for approx. 98 percent, but since Rachel Carsons'
    flawed assessment of DDT in her book "Silent Spring" and when the chairman of the EPA made the incredible mistake of advising the then U.S. president to ban the production and use of DDT in 1972,
    more, than 110 million people have died from those scourges, mainly in the poor 3rd world countries and mainly among unborn foetuses, babies and infants. Every year some 3 million more die because people in the West consider themselves judges and juries, who can decide who should live and die, as long as it is not themselves. It really smells like the old Communist manifesto, where a clique of Commissars will decide, how much people should earn, what career they should follow etc. etc.
    3/ To suggest that making the use of Cannabis legal, is so passe, as f.e. The Netherlands have proven
    to be totally wrong, by being easy on drug-users, with the result, that after some 43 years, they are
    now frantically trying to correct the mistaken idea, that their plan would stop the growth of criminality.
    Just ask our doctors, what they think of using that "soft-drug" and why is it, that so many people just can not feel happy with themselves, unless they have to use drugs, alcohol and tobacco? It is this obsession with "having a high", that causes this huge problem with the rise in criminality and the producers and sellers would not have a market, if those idiots just could for one moment, consider the havoc they have created and are still creating, like where the money goes from those drugs. Terrorists all over the world, use drug money to purchase arms, which they use to kill innocent people, but people just want to have a good time! Meanwhile, our hospitals are overrun each weekend by thousands of hopeless idiots and if I were in charge, I would refuse them any assistance.
    I am now 76 years of age, have heard so many demagogues promising a better world and/or doomsayers, like Greenpeace, warning us about climate-change and blaming it on us, humans (AGW), while I have learned at high-school, that our earth is some 4.8 billion years old, was been hit by a number of asteroids and 1 big comet 65 years ago, which have caused huge disasters, long before humans trod on her. CO2 is necessary for flora to sustain fauna and during the time of the Dinosaurs, CO2 was much higher and the temperature hotter and those huge beasts were able to grow so tall. Climate-changes will always be with us, but we are too puny, to control our universe and can only clean the air/sea and rivers and hope for the best.
    Regards,
    Nos.
     
  11. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    G'day Nos

    Welcome to the PRI Forum.

    Please feel free to have a look around why you are here, never now what one might learn.

    Cheerio, Marko
     
  12. Jonathan Byron

    Jonathan Byron Junior Member

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    Those claims are not totally false. The scientific community accepts as fact the role that DDT plays in weakening egg shells in raptors. DDT definitely increases certain cancers in lab animals; the epidemiological evidence supports the same idea for humans, although we have not done a double-blind, placebo controlled experiment that involved exposing humans to DDT on purpose. We have exposed various immune cells taken out of humans to DDT, and it is clear that DDT inhibits various immune functions, which is not always good.

    I know people that smoked heavily, they lived to their 90s, and they died of unrelated causes - does this mean that smoking has no detrimental effects? If someone got cancer 20 years after being heavily exposed to DDT, how would you (or they) know it? For this, statistics are more valuable than anecdotal findings of no harm.

    That is an amazing claim! Typhoid is spread by water contaminated by sewage, and by poor food service sanitation. How did DDT nearly eradicate that disease??

    DDT did initially reduce the rate of malaria, but the mosquito vectors developed resistance, and more and more DDT was being used, with less effectiveness.

    DDT is more toxic to many biological controls of the mosquito (birds, frogs, etc) ... they are exposed to higher levels due to biomagnification, and they don't breed as fast as mosquitos ... in the long term, DDT is far more destructive than beneficial.
     
  13. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    The whole thread is to stop using pesticides, as permacultre has demonstrated, it is just not necessary! Simple companion planting or using i.e. chickens can greatly reduce the need for any kind of artificial pest control.

    Pesticides become free radicals in your body, that your body later does not recognize. It then uses the valuable immune system to fight these free radicals, thus weakening our immune response over time.
     
  14. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Quite right, Moe. Your chosen topic is about raising awareness of the ecological destruction (and therefore human destruction, for we as a species, are inextricably entwined within 'the web of life') that substances like Endosulfan cause, and how we can go about halting this practice, and all others like it. However, as we can clearly see from the spray (pardon the pun) given by our friend, Nos, not everyone is in agreement with you/me/us. Denial of the problem is a symptomatic response to the fear caused by the problem. However, and as fearful as it may be (to some), we do need expose the root cause of the problem which is, of course, capitalism: the 'politico-economic system, based on private property and private profit...' (The Penguin Dictionary of Economics (1978) p. 69). Murray Bookchin put it this way:

    ...to separate ecological problems from social problems - or even to play down or give token recognition to this crucial relationship - would be to grossly misconstrue the sources of the growing environmental crisis. The way human beings deal with each other as social beings is crucial to addressing the ecological crisis. Unless we clearly recognize this, we will surely fail to see that the hierarchical mentality and class relationships that so thoroughly permeate society give rise to the very idea of dominating the natural world.

    Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of 'grow or die', is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of 'progress' with corporate self-interest. In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed toward limited goals whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative...


    Source: What Is Social Ecology?

    Indeed then, just what is the 'cure'? The answer is simple, and no, it does not involve communism or socialism, which should prove a comfort to our friend, Nos.

    The answer to the problem, as you have already so rightly pointed out, is permaculture - care for the planet, care for the people, and redistribute the wealth.

    So, now that we can clearly see what the 'cure' is, the next question we need to ask ourselves is how do we go about taking our 'medicine'. One way, but by no means the only way, is to familiarise one's self with the concept of communalism.

    Cheerio, Marko.
     
  15. RichardM

    RichardM Junior Member

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    He means Typhus, which is spread by the body-louse. Also known as gaol fever etc.
     
  16. RichardM

    RichardM Junior Member

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    The chemical concerned (or rather group of chemicals) are Triazine herbicides, such as Atrazine, Propazine etc. They are pre-emergent herbicides which prevent germination of wattles etc in eucalypt plantations; basically, when they plough preparatory to planting seedless, there is a massive germination (upto 1000/sq m) of wattles which effectively out compete the eucalyptus seedlings. The study you refer to was by a chap called Marcus Scammell, and having read it when it was published, my reaction was that it was about the standard I'd expect for a Grade 8 Science project. Scammell was engaged by the local growers several months after they had a die-off of oysters kept on racks in shallow leases in Moulting Bay, an isolated arm, of Georges Bay in St Helens; the oysters grown in deep water in the same location weren't affected.

    The die-off followed a 450mm in 24hr rain event, the biggest flood since 1929 and he concluded that something in the freshwater was obviously toxic - his reasoning? Well there were millions of dead grasshoppers washed up after the flood (which covered 10 sq km of pasture to a depth of around 0.5m) and he decided they must have been poisoned by atrazine run-off - despite the fact that this is a herbicide, not an insecticide and if present would have been there in fractions of a part per billion. Most sensible people would have concluded that they probably drowned, the same as the cattle & sheep that were also washed up and maybe the oysters didn't much enjoy being doused in freshwater for a week or more either.

    I'll try to find a copy of the report. He also mentions the DFT disease but again the evidence for this is so unbelievably tenuous that it's hard to give his daydreams any credibility, especially as the areas where DFT was first observed were in coastal heathland, with no plantations within 20km.

    It was a very very long bow drawn by the oyster growers, looking for someone to blame (& sue) for their misfortune.
     
  17. RichardM

    RichardM Junior Member

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  18. Moe

    Moe Junior Member

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    Jeez, this is getting to be a heated thread.

    I agree with the ideal of being communal. Everyone helps everyone. However, it wont work (as history has shown us) under the current system. I see a resource based economy rather than a monetary economy a solution. Then, the person becomes the asset rather than the material possessions they own. The ideal that the world could go round without money may seem far fetched, but thats what they said about things like Wikipedia. People help because they want to and the whole thing takes care of itself, 99% by volunteers (I think they started to pay one of the guys because he put so much work into it). But thats another can of worms.

    Thank you RichardM, for clearing that up. What I saw was a program on the ABC which talked about some kind of pesticide or herbicide that killed oysters. They tested local rivers for some chemical and then populations of aquatic invertebrates to see how they responded. They found that even low concentrations seemed to greatly reduce invertebrate populations, as well as devil tumor etc. Thats all I remember.

    I just recalled another program which measured concentrations of (i'm thinking DDT however, not sure - definitely some kind of pest/herbicide) in antarctic plankton and phytoplankton. I think this ended up causing damage to whales. If anyone could clarify that would be great.
     
  19. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Better than a boring old tute, hey?

    Moe, that statement is beautiful, sweet music to my ears. I reckon you will love living in Mandala Town (pssst... don't forget to check out our new Communalism website, and do a search on 'chemical', it was one of Bookchin's favourite subjects).

    Cheerio, Marko.
     
  20. RichardM

    RichardM Junior Member

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    The Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) has now been shown, without a doubt, to be transmitted very efficiently through wounds when they fight over a carcass. It's something completely new and they've found that it spreads so easily between individuals because foreign tissue cells from other devils are not recognised as foreign by their immune system, due, it is thought to lack of genetic diversity across the population as a whole. But the fact that this was first observed in the Mt William National Park (which is coastal heath and a long way from any plantations) is not proof in any way shape or form that it's associated with agrochemical use; personally, I don't see how it's even half way to a decent hypothesis, they don't even suggest a possible mechanism, just that we have observed DFTD and they've used herbicides on sites 20km away - with that level of proof, anything becomes a possibility; you can even correlate production of Model -T Fords with sunspot activity if you want. It's a bit like the people I see who've suffered food poisoning and are red hot certain that it was caused by some chips they bought at a takeaway - an eminent microbiologist once pointed out to me that 90% of people who die do so within 8 hours of having eaten something.

    On the DFTD again, and a bit off-topic - there's a ray of hope on the horizon in that populations in the W & NW of the State aren't suffering this disease as yet and spread in this area appears to have stopped or slowed down - there's a suggestion that the Devil population in this area may be sufficiently different genetically to be less prone than those in the East & South.
     

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