Horticulture and Forestry Advisory Board Minutes 2007 06 07

Home Browse Search

Horticultural & Forestry Advisory Board Minutes DATE Page 2 of 5 Board Comments: 1. Susan expressed some concerns about Ash trees on Via Appia she would like to add to the agenda for the July meeting. 2. Tim Gilpin, PH.D. be~lan his discussion on pesticide safety by introducing himself and his credentials. He has 30 years of field and lab experience. He got his start with a 2 million dollar grant to study soils for the USDA. He then moved his research into ozone depletion and global warming. His work showed up in SEmate and Congressional hearings. He also worked in a lab that won the Nobel Prize for ozone depletion. He then started studying pesticides and has been called as an expert witness for a trial contesting pesticide safety. Tim gave us an overview of the history of pesticides. He divided the history into the following categories: Pre WW2 During WW2 Post War USDAlEPA U.S. and Canada Pre war pesticide use was basically Arsenic used to kill mice and rats in homes. With Arsenic, people had to be very careful because they could kill themselves if the poison was handled improperly. Tim compared that fact with the pesticidEIS used today because the perception now is that pesticides are safe and people don't always handle them properly. During WW2 chemists were asked to create substances that would kill people quickly. That was the origins of Organophosphates. US and Britain got into chemical production to kill mosquitoes to stop Malaria. Tim explained that the U.S. then thought that they could use pesticides to wipe out the rice patties of Japan, which was the origin of Agent Orange. Post War, Tim went on, chemists wanted to start marketing the pesticides for commercial use and overwhelmed the USDA. The government then created the EPA, which decided to balance their regulation between commerce and safety and left it to the chemical industries to regulate themselves. U.S. and Canada: Canada has 73 cities with complete or partial bans on pesticides, the U.S has zero. Tim went on to explain that one important thing to remember is that the human body is a large ongoing chemical reaction and some chemicals even at the parts per billion level can interrupt certain functions.