The point of the programme is that unsafe chemicals are still being used within our environment without our realising and that we are continuing to imbibe them whether through breathing the air, eating produce grown near where they've been distributed, drinking water seeping through from contaminated groundwater or directly by the people spraying the chemicals and their families who are then exposed to the chemicals as well.
Ten kilometres of chemical drift are occurring on to market gardening properties affecting the sex of the crops, causing two cobs to form and other types of plant deformities. When flowers and fruit form this is a particularly volatile time of impact.
One company had announced it was going to review the use of the chemical back in 1995 but as still taking action on the matter 11 years later. The stories of Australian men back in the 1970s spraying both 2,4-D and agent orange (that was banned) on to crops and weeds without protective masks, footwear and clothing who are deceased or dying from dioxin poisoning still all theses decades later are horribly shocking but must be seen, to convince us of the power of the chemicals industry and how we are still today so compliant in their every day administration.
Am watching this programme whilst typing, therefore some details need to be verified by watching the programme back on I View (given that I'm typing this in somewhat of a hurry).
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/?series=2303988#/series/2303988.
One really insidious aspect is the lack of information about the source of 2,4-D and insufficient testing and regulation abut the presence of dioxin, and the fact that toxicity can be minimised with enough care and attention. What is astonishing is that the substances supplied by China, and being tested by 4 Corners representatives are allegedly of higher toxicity levels than were being used 20 years ago!
Go to the ABC - 4 Corners link above to watch back this compelling and shocking story.
If this is not sufficient food for thought to get more of us growing our own, or eating organic food, I don't know what is.
Now I just finished reading a very interesting article by Elizabeth Finkel - here is the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/organic-food-exposed/
The real question Elizabeth is I wonder how much crop rotation, Integrated Pest Management and benign nitrogen fertilisation is practiced by broad acre farmers within Australia. We most certainly see a lot of algal blooms (oxygen imbalance) in our waterways caused by run off of fertiliser from local pastures and farms. This is certainly evidence of our land being out of balance. If I had more time, I would do more research on this.
So I wonder whether the CSIRO would agree