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Indybay Feature

Biojustice Protest At Syngenta In Gilroy

frogs_1.jpg
Date:
Friday, September 21, 2012
Time:
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
Occupy Monsanto
Location Details:
Syngenta Flowers
2280 Hecker Pass Highway
Gilroy, CA 95020

Syngenta's Atrazine herbicide is found in 94% of U.S. drinking water.

Health harms: Human exposure to atrazine is linked to a number of serious health effects. A potent endocrine disrupter, atrazine interferes with hormonal activity of animals and humans at extremely low doses.

Endocrine Disruption: The science on atrazine's effects on the hormone system continues to grow. It alters the levels of key hormones in rats and can delay puberty. In male frogs, exposure to atrazine causes a kind of "chemical castration," causing them to develop female sex characteristics. Researchers hypothesize that atrazine singnals the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, demasculinizing the frogs.

Reproductive Effects: Because atrazine disrupts hormones, it's not surprising that epidemiological studies find associations between exposure to the herbicide and reproductive effects including increased risk of miscarriage, reduced male fertility, low birth weight, increased chance of any birth defect, and higher incidence of abdominal defects;

Cancer: Evidence for the carcinogenic potential of atrazine is growing — exposure has been linked to elevated risk of breast and prostate cancer. The recent President's Cancel Panel Report notes that atrazine has possible carcinogenic properties. In response to concerns, U.S. EPA is currently re-evaluating atrazine's carcinogenic potential.

Timing of exposure may be more important than exposure levels. Research shows that low levels of exposure during key periods of pregnancy may interfere with healthy fetal development. The third trimester of pregnancy appears to be most critical, says a recent epidemiological study. Synergystic effects between atrazine and other pesticides may also render health harms more severe.
Atrazine in drinking water

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S., and is found in 94% of U.S drinking water tested by the USDA — more often than any other pesticide. An estimated 7 million people were exposed to atrazine in their drinking water between 1998 and 2003.

The highest levels of contamination are in the Midwest where it is widely used on corn fields. USGS monitoring shows drinking water concentrations typically spike during the spring and early summer as rains flush the freshly applied herbicide into streams — and into local water supplies.

Data from the EPA's Atrazine Monitoring Program show that atrazine levels in drinking water can spike above the legal limit of 3 parts per billion in some U.S. water supplies. Although the EPA bases its limit on an annual average (not seasonal peaks), the monitoring results reveal alarming levels of human exposure.

According to NRDC's 2010 analysis of the most recent EPA data, drinking water in 67 public systems had peak atrazine levels above 3 parts per billion (ppb), with one as high as 60 ppb in Ohio. Six water systems had average annual atrazine concentrations that exceeded the EPA limit entirely. And these figures are for treated drinking water — raw water samples contained even higher concentrations. (See also NRDC's 2009 Poisoning the Well)

Atrazine & the environment
Exposure to atrazine does not kill right away. For sensitive species however, atrazine's sublethal effects can be almost as devestating.

Fish and amphibians are most vulnerable. A growing body of research shows that atrazine exposure--even to trace levels of the herbicide--can adversely impact a number of species. Tyrone Hayes and other scientists have conducted research to show that exposing frogs to as little as 0.1 parts per billion can cause severe health effects, including a kind of chemical castration. Atrazine exposure from contaminated surface water is also known to compromise fish and amphibian growth, behavior, immune function, and gonadal development. Hayes recently found that 10% of male frogs reared in atrazine laced water turned completely into females. Strikingly, the level of atrazine used in the study — 2.5 ppb — is less than the EPA limit for drinking water contamination.
Farming without atrazine

There are many viable ways of producing corn and growing food without relying on atrazine. According to recent analyses, dropping atrazine would result in yield losses of less than 1%, much lower than industry estimates.

Farmers in states like Minnesota are using innovative production systems to raise corn without atrazine. Since Germany and Italy banned atrazine in 1991, corn yields and acres of corn harvested have gone up, rather than down. Farm organizations such as the Land Stewardship Project have documented many ways to reduce and eliminate the use of atrazine in corn production.
Added to the calendar on Thu, Sep 20, 2012 12:46PM
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by Occupy Monsanto
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by Occupy Monsanto
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Comments (Hide Comments)
At the close of the Second World War and inside Germany the First Canadian Division pushed to dismantle the German Imperialist Warfare Corporation--I.G. Farben, to be dismantled as a pseudo science and an illegal WMD-- Weapon of Mass Destruction. The U.S. Imperialist Army having Supreme Command, said no it is a billion dollar chemical corporation, and to pacify the people it was name changed to Basf, Bayer, and Hoekest and then its directive united to the American Chemical Corporations which source illegal WMD for the U.S. Military, which are DOW, Dupont, and MONSANTO. From that time to the present those six interlocked directorates have been waging and unjust chemical war against the entire web-of-life of the planets ecological organic balances of life.

It was first noticed by me when the chemical poison industries set and agenda to chemically poison the right-of-ways in Canada. In these unjust, illegal actions they included three poison chemicals used by the U.S. Imperialist Military Aggression against Indo-China (1956-1975), such as 2-4-D, 2-4-5-t, Round-up ready, and various so-called Rainbow Poisons--ie Agent Orange etc.

This huge U.S. Illegal Aggression left five million killled out right, and five million chemically poisoned acutely and chronically so much so that to this day the genetic structure of the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians are still suffering from its devastating effects.

To make a long lonely story as short as possible, when I travelled across two western provinces of Canada, British Columbia, and Alberta and leafleted the farmers, ranchers, workers and students, politicals, and military about this ill conceived plan of the U.S. government and chemical poison Corporations, I found the media scoundrels were not responsive enough, so I went directly to the Canadian Armed Forces and exposed this plot to steal the public treasury tax-payer money, and poison Canada's playing fields, railway, hydro, and high-way right of ways with Chemical poisons, that have a persistent long life and seep into the food-chain poisoning plants, animals, and people, the web of ecological organic life in Canadian Right -of- ways. Thats not to mention polluting the air, land and water also.

The response of the peoples (Natives Included) was to rush to meetings and to the offended areas and push the poisoners out.

The Canadian Armed Forces fought against the chemical poisoning war against Canada (1939-1945), and and now recently within the years (1993-2000) the entire program was cancelled Canada Wide.

The way to true liberation is to scrap the U.S. Imperialist War Machine, and its Manufactury so all the rest of the world can then dismantle their war machines, and double democracy by putting the former destroyers to working for a living, rather than destroying the Canadian and American web-of-life.

To elect women equally thus to 'Gender Parity' as women are more responsible to creation of life than Imperialist Man, and to non-pollution solutions such as re-tooling to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power. Monsanto and Dow-Hooker, was the biggest purveyor of Rainbow Poisons on the list of weapons against Canada's sovereignty and independence, as well as against the Indo-Chinese People.

MONSANTO is now fraudulently posing as a expert in modern agriculture even though it is in truth a chemical warfare corp. against the ecolgical balances of life on the planet, while denighing the peasant-farmers the power to select and and grow seeds of their own discretion.

It extorts farmers and places leins on their properties if any of their monopoly capitalist techno dominator seeds are found growing there-- reguardless of how Monsanto's seeds got there, such as wind blown. etc. MONSANTO should be dismantled, and the monies extorted from farmers and workers be returned to the people it has duped and exploited.

Workers of the world unite!! End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. You yet have a world to win. Canada's First Div. says that.
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