San Francisco, May 8-It was standing room only at the County Building in Golden Gate Park Thursday night, as Bay Area No Spray forces held a Town Hall Meeting.

The No Spray folks oppose state plans to conduct aerial spraying around the state, including in the Bay Area, to get rid of the light brown apple moth. Agricultural interests see the moth as a potential cause of crop loss.

But such spraying in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties last fall caused a lot of controversy.

Moderator Kelly McMenimen told the packed house that the meeting was “in the spirit of democracy, getting information to the public that it’s not necessarily getting elsewhere.”

A nine person panel reported on such information.

According to panelist Nan Wishner, of the Albany Integrated Pest Management Task Force, the substance sprayed in Santa Cruz and Monterey consisted of three part chemical cocktail.

One part was Checkmate, a synthetic chemical and registered pesticide that mimics the moth’s pheromone. A natural pheromone causes sexual attraction. State officials claim it’s harmless to humans. But Wishner said no tests of its long term effects have been done.

A second part of the spray consisted of “inert ingredients,” which officials say is harmless too. But some of those used last fall are known to cause cancer and genetic damage. The third part, Wishner said, is a miniscule plastic time release capsule that carries the other two parts.

Mike Lynberg of Pacific Grove said he collected over 600 health complaints after last fall’s spraying, including the near deaths of two children. He reported that airplanes sprayed “from 8 pm until 5 am” on multiple days. “As soon as I walked out the door, I started to get a sore throat and developed a bronchial infection.” Others reported “hundreds of headaches, and chest pains.”

“The state had no one on the ground monitoring, so I set up an email address and a P.O. box so people had a place to report adverse health effects,” he said. Lynberg said he took the data he collected to “the Governor and the Department of Public Health, but they dismissed it. It’s still inexcusable to me.”

Stacia Lansman, a Marin pediatrician, reported that half the particles in the capsules released in Monterey and Santa Cruz were small enough to lodge in the lungs of people who breathed them, “increasing illnesses and hospitalizations.”

Lansman also cited information from a state employed doctor that predicts “45 hospitalizations and 15 premature deaths for each 30 days of spraying.”

“The most at risk are children,” she said, “the elderly, and those with chronic heart and respiratory diseases. So regardless of what they spray, spraying small particles is dangerous.

“Half of adults and children have pesticides in their bodies. This bio-accumulation, over time, causes cancer and endocrine diseases.

“The spraying is medical experimentation on a human population without informed consent.”

UC Davis entomologist James Carey said the spraying is a result of the USDA placing the light brown apple moth on its “black list,” which mandates eradication. But Carey said that the moth has probably been in the US for years, pheromones have never been used in eradication programs before, eradication has not been a successful form of pest control, and is unnecessary.

Alternatives are available, he said, “that won’t expose 7 million Californians to spray.” One is using beneficial insects to keep the moth population down. Carey called the moth larvae “like corndogs to beneficials.”

Helge Hellberg of Marin Organics said his organization was “the first to oppose aerial spray.” He pointed out that huge amounts of pesticides are used by agribusiness in the Central Valley, and generally by consumers.

“The social contract between us and the government has been broken,” he said. Hellberg advocated engagement of opposing forces in this and future issues, to devise “an alternative management plan, some workable model…an opportunity to create a new framework of decision making.”

Penny Livingston-Stark, an organic farmer near Point Reyes, said, “If I get sprayed, we won’t be able to keep the balance of nature we’ve attained. But I don’t think it’s going to happen, because we’re all going to stand up and fight.”

John Russo, also an organic farmer, and founder of Stop the Spray, started a petition last fall that has 26,000 signatures so far calling for a permanent end to spraying.

“If you think about what would happen,” he said, “billions of tiny capsules go into the air, they enter your lungs, in their deep recesses, sit, breakdown, enter your bloodstream, and become part of your being. Our bodies are being violated by others without our permission, because we didn’t consent.We still don't consent. Our work isn't done."

Former Fairfax mayor, and present coordinator of Stop the Spray Marin, Frank Egger, said that the recent moratorium on spraying until August 17 declared by the governor “is like a temporary stay of execution.” The governor said his moratorium was to give more time for testing of the spray to determine its safety, or lack there of.

Egger reported that “the four formulations being tesed [for spraying in CA] have already been declared safe by the EPA. It’s done. We have to stop it.”

Q&A and discussion of ways to stop the spray followed. Suggestions included lobbying local, state and federal officials; taking legal action, or getting officials to do so; and carrying out non-violent civil disobedience.

On Saturday Stop the Spray Marin will have a Mothers March (all are invited) to stop the spray, starting at 9:30 am at the Corte Madera Town Center.

And on May 31 there will be a Stop the Spray walk across the Golden Gate Bridge from 10 am-Noon.

For more info, go to:
http://www.StopTheSpray.org
http://www.CASSonline.org
http://www.sfspraytownhall.org