Eighth Grade Picnic
Dear Editor: The Blatchley Middle School eighth grade class would like to send out a big THANK YOU to the following individuals and organizations for donating their time and/or money to our end-of-year picnic: Sitka Assembly of God, Sea Mart, Laura Schmidt, Ryan Gluth, all families who dropped off donations at the school office or at the picnic, and all chaperones who braved the rain with us.
Your contributions made our picnic a huge success. We could not have done it without you!
Blatchley Middle School
Eighth Grade Staff and Students
Pesticide Policy
Dear Editor: As a public health nutritionist, sustainable food advocate and micro-grower, I applaud California and Hawaii which both took significant steps over the last month to rein in dangerous pesticides that regularly find their way into the food we buy. If the EPA and FDA are not going to do their
job, states and municipalities need to step up.
In mid-April, California’s Appellate Court sided with the State of California and the Center for Food Safety in labeling glyphosate as a possible carcinogen under Prop 65. “Glyphosate is a broad spectrum herbicide that is widely used in agriculture, parks, home gardens, and residential landscapes. It is the most heavily used pesticide in the world, in large part due to the proliferation of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops that are resistant to glyphosate. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.”
(1) A recent article in the Guardian by investigative journalist Carey Gillam pointed to evidence the FDA has on the pervasiveness of glyphosate in our food supply. It’s also noted that the weed-killer one buys in the home and garden section of local hardware and building supply stores has other chemicals mixed with glyphosate that have only recently undergone testing even though they’ve been on the market close to 40 years. They are even more toxic than glyphosate on its own and are potent killers of human cells.
(2, 3) A recent Earthjustice article shared that in early May Hawaii’s Legislature approved a state ban on chlorpyrifos, a highly dangerous restricted-use pesticide widely used in industrial farming. In addition to phasing out all chlorpyrifos uses by 2023, this comprehensive bill puts in place robust pesticide reporting, prohibits the use of the most toxic pesticides within 100 feet of schools during normal school hours, requires a pesticide drift monitoring pilot study, and beefs up funding for the state’s pesticide enforcement.
Chlorpyrifos has been linked to reduced IQ and attention deficit disorder in children, and is highly toxic to farmworkers, some of whom have been poisoned by it on multiple occasions on Hawaii farms in recent years.
Last year, the EPA refused to ban chlorpyrifos, claiming the science is “unresolved” and decided it would study the issue until 2022.
(4) That seems reckless to me when our children’s and farmworkers’ lives are at stake.
So what’s a consumer to do?
1. Refuse to buy weed killers like RoundUp and apply them to weeds on your property; use super strength vinegar solutions or fire wands to address weed issues.
2. Choose organic foods when your budget can afford them; they have significantly less pesticide residues. Wash fruits & veggies well if they are conventional and peel.
3. Visit https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/ and download the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 guide to pesticides in produce.
4. Send an email to Sitka’s Health Needs and Social Services Commission, Rep. Kreiss-Tomkins, Sen. Stedman and Gov. Bill Walker letting them know you’d like to see policies banning the use of toxic pesticides in Sitka and Alaska.
In health...
Lisa Sadleir-Hart, Sitka,
MPH, RDN, CHES
