Dear editor:
"Soon the fumes seeped into her home through the air conditioner and (Bonnie) Wirtz wound up in an emergency room, coughing and bewildered and worried about the health of her 8-month-old son," from Time Volume 190. She was stricken by a pesticide called chlorpyrifos, which the agriculture industry uses on everything from cotton to oranges. A growing body of scientific evidence links the pesticide to health problems in children. The poison affects everything it touches, from bees to humans.
In 2015, when he was 3, "Wirtz's little boy was diagnosed with a developmental disorder that affects functioning of the brain. It was this kind of episode that pushed the EPA that same year to propose banning the chemical altogether for most uses."
(Could this toxin be the cause of the rise in births of autistic children in the U.S.?)
Since the Environmental Protection Agency's founding in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, the agency's primary task has been to keep people safe from toxic pollutants and every president for 47 years has followed suit ... and then along comes Scott Pruitt, Trumps' new EPA head.
Justin Worland's article for Time goes on to say: "In March, less than a month after speaking with the CEO of Dow Chemical, the primary maker of chlorphyrifos, Pruitt reversed course, delaying a decision on the pesticide until 2022. Pruitt's close ties to the industry have raised questions about whose interests the agency is protecting. Since he took office, more than a dozen EPA regulations have been killed or put under review, from fuel-efficiency standards to regulations on the disposal of coal ash to restrictions on toxic metals like arsenic in waterways."
From Nicholas Kristof's article for The New York Times, printed in "The Week": "The fruit and vegetables you and your kids eat may be contaminated with a nerve gas originally developed by Nazi Germany. It's a pesticide called chlorpyrifos, made by the Dow Chemical Co., and studies have found that it damages the brain, reduces IQs and has been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson's disease." The EPA banned "the nerve gas pesticide for indoor residential use 17 years ago and was finally preparing to ban it for our agricultural and outdoor use this year. But after Dow donated $1 million to President Trump's inauguration committee, the EPA reversed course."
A computer search will tell the reader all the bad news, but a more positive outlook is to have faith in good old American ingenuity: some youngster will come up with a harmless insecticide made of something like the peppers of Mexico or China. Then the money crops would be peppers instead of pot.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Lynn Simmons
Hot Springs
Editorial on 11/25/2017