Conscious Choice: Arctic War is Just Heating Up

April 2005 | Editor’s Note

Arctic War is Just Heating Up

If you didn’t carefully read the news stories about the U.S. Senate Arctic refuge vote, you may think the war to save the Arctic is over. But it’s not. The 49-51 vote that attached the measure to the Senate budget bill made national headlines. However, “the budget is a long and complicated process and conservationists are still fighting hard to keep Arctic drilling out of the final version,” said Kim Novick, Great Lakes organizer for the Alaska Coalition.

A bright spot is that U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has refused in the past to attach the Arctic drilling measure to the House’s version, she said. So don’t give up. Keep the pressure on Congress. Visit www.AlaskaCoalition.org or call 312-795-3744.

Cheers React

On another issue close to my heart, while the majority of you agree that it’s never a good idea to allow babies near pesticides and other toxic chemicals, at least two readers took issue with my Feb. column to keep the pressure on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to permanently close down a proposed study dubbed “cheers: Children’s Health Environmental Exposure Risk Study.”

Here’s a few words on a possible solution: non-toxic pesticides. More on that later. But first, the letters (edited for brevity):

I don’t understand the objection to the study … The researchers were not asking the families to change their use of household products only to detail what they were currently using. Is your objection a conflict of interest because the American Chemical Council was providing funding?
… I am not a scientist but it seems to me that if a study could show parents the dangers of household exposure in common products that parents and communities could be more proactive. What am I missing?
— Pam Weinberger, Chicago

I presume you have lived your whole life in the North. In the South, pesticides are handled very differently … the exterminator visits twice a month and sprays inside all kitchen and bathroom cabinets, along all baseboards in the house and two inches out from the exterior of the house …. Sevin is routinely spread over lawns …. Newspaper articles speak about how much higher cancer rates are for children and pets in Florida (than) anywhere else …. The study was not going to dunk babies in pesticide, just look at where they lived, and how much pesticide the children get into by merely living in Duval County… These children are already living in a pesticide fog. The EPA only wants to know what and how much. I think that’s laudable.
— Pax, Nancy M. McKenna, National Commissioner for Ecology, Secular Franciscan Order

Okay, so we all seem to agree that both insects and toxic pesticides are bad, babies need to be protected and something needs to be done. We only differ on what. The proposed study is not the answer.

Using the South/North logic above is like saying in the North: “Well, We know some families don’t have heat and their babies suffer from frostbite, so let’s spend millions of dollars studying how the babies are exposed to the cold.”

Wouldn’t it be a better to spend those millions supplying heat to those families? Or, fund a job-training program, so they can pay their utility bills? So, instead of spending millions studying how babies are ingesting poisons, wouldn’t it be better to develop non-toxic alternatives, and then supply them alternatives to the families?

Watching babies crawl around in what we all agree is a toxic environment is unethical and abhorrent.

Do you think any of those epa administrators or chemical industry captains are offering up their own babies as test subjects? A high percentage of the families in Duval County are headed by poor, single, minority mothers, according to the 2000 Census.

Finally, if a good chunk of the funds come from the chemical industry, how objective or useful will it be for anything except bolstering the companies’ bottom line by releasing them from any liability or accountability?

In the months ahead we will provide information about non-toxic alternatives. Visit www.pesticide.org or our Aug. 1999 Herbal Pest Control story on our website.

— Marla Donato

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