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Guest Blog: New Hampshire Pesticide Vote Due Tuesday

Posted by: Posted date: February 27, 2011 In: General | comment : 2

NOTE: Last Tuesday advocates for and against the Child Safe Playing Fields Act in New Hampshire made their arguments. What follows is a recap from Ellen Fine, founder of the Leah Collective.

Witnesses, like Dr. Alex Lu of Harvard who is on an ad hoc committee overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency, testified in favor of HB #495; he promised the committee that if NH passed this law, he would seek funding for studies to study the health of children in this state.

Rep. Smith (LEAD SPONSOR OF #495) and former Rep. Susan Wiley spoke eloquently about the common sense nature of protecting children from pesticides at schools and Rep. Gile (CO-SPONSOR), former Chair of Family Law Committee, added her personal testimony of years of experience in education and how the passage of #495 would make a huge difference in the early developmental stages of children’s lives.

Doug and Patti Wood of Grassroots Environmental Education joined by in-state organic landscapers Brittany Phillips, Tom Kelly and Javier Gil gave legislators and the rest of us an excellent education on the basics of healthy organic approaches that would replace unsafe chemical methods of synthetic lawn care.

Bonnie Curry, medical editor of The LEAH Collective 32-page report on Children and Pesticide Exposure spoke about pesticide exposure and links to the Immune system and cancer, specifically lymphoma. The report, the work of many including lead researcher Kaija Starck, will be available online.

And finally Ellen Fine, Director of LEAH and senior editor of the report, presented information linking pesticides to asthma as a direct response to some legislators on the committee who still mistakenly believe there are no studies linking pesticides to cancer, asthma, ADD/ADHD, neurological and developmental impairment and childhood brain tumors.

These reps on Environment and Agriculture are spending the weekend catching up on some of this reading. It is your job to make sure they PAY ATTENTION.

DEMOCRACY is time consuming. Protecting kids’ health is rewarding and takes lots of time researching articles, presenting testimony and organizing ordinary people like YOU and ME so that together, WE can all make a difference!

If you are moved, please contact members of the Environment and Agriculture Committee. Contact information is on our website, www.leahcollective.org. The vote is THIS TUESDAY, MARCH 1, so they need to hear from you! PLEASE let them know in a polite way that you feel strongly about keeping kids healthy and…

You support #495 HEALTHY LAWNS, HEALTHY KIDS!

Thanks,

Ellen Fine

About The Author

Paul Tukey

An international leader of the green movement, Mr. Tukey is a journalist, author, filmmaker, TV host, activist and award-winning public speaker, who is widely recognized as North America's leading advocate for landscape sustainability and toxic pesticide reduction strategies.

Number of Entries : 1023

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  • http://www.armchairactivist.us Barbara Rubin

    Hi Ellen,

    I’m glad to see this effort continuing. Above all professionals, educators should never settle for anything less than the truth in making important decisions such as the health and development of our charges.

    Sorry I’m unable to join you this year but my testimony from last year, with links to valuable references, can be read here:

    http://armchairactivist.us/2010/02/13/testimony-before-the-new-hampshire-legislature-re-pesticides-in-schools/

    Best of luck to you all,

    Barbara Rubin
    Former educator, disabled by pesticide poisoning
    http://www.armchairactivist.us

  • http://www.armchairactivist.us Barbara Rubin

    The failure of the bill to pass is typical of how industry makes its fortunes. They have ‘reasonable’ people debate it for years while billions in profits pile up in offshore accounts and the exposed citizens lose their income to health costs of treating diseases needlessly resulting from toxic exposures.

    There is no reasonable opposition to keeping farm chemicals out of our lungs when away from agricultural sites. Further, the lack of duty to warn about applications or for the average citizen to be able to trust the information supplied about these products leaves us with a mere illusion of participation in government.

    Democracy doesn’t legislate biochemistry and our children should not be allowed to sacrifice healthy futures to the process of debate. Our teachers should not be suffering so many unusual diseases because they choose to spend their lives in educational settings in which these chemicals are used regularly and without their knowledge/consent. Teachers have a very high incidence of autoimmune diseases and we know that asthma is responsible for the greatest number of lost school days in children. However, the respiratory and immune effects pale when we realize these chemicals work by damaging brain/central nervous system operations required for learning.

    Only litigation will set precedents that legislators cannot ignore for fear of liability. My own suit has been stalled requiring me to file a Bar for non-prosecution of a school pesticide suit. After eight years, discovery is still in process, an unconscionable and needless delay in the prosecution of any suit.

    I am asking any attorney admitted to the New York State Bar who is willing to see such precedents set to contact me through my blog, armchairactivist. The details of my lawsuit are posted in the last part of my article about ‘The Morality of Litigation’.

    Barbara Rubin

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