Posts by Rosemary McDonald
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This study looks at workers from southern Brazil
and from what I've read, conditions for workers in the NE are poorly monitored.
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Access: Zika and microcephaly: things to…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Will be an even bigger battle to ban these chemicals when the TPPA is ratified
A ban would be just about impossible.
What would be good is that the rules and regulations that already apply to the use of agrichemicals were actually enforced. They are not.
Under TPP....like all the other so called 'environmental protections'...if actual enforcement were demanded by the public...companies would then think "sue"...because they could accurately argue that enforcement was was a new thing.
Reading 9,999,999 articles about Brazil, especially the North East...the deforestation, horticulture, aquaculture, beef farming, mining and heavy industry...all done exploiting poor workers with little or no protection and regulation....I get a picture of an experiment allowed to run riot....
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Access: Zika and microcephaly: things to…, in reply to Susan Snowdon,
If anyone has any good information on current use of this fungicide in NZ I would be interested.
Oh...and Grandma's favourite rose spray....from Kiwicare, no less...but I see it has been 'discontinued', for obvious reasons.
Replaced with a brand new product...Plant Health Rose Force....why do they go for such powerful sounding names?
I am not for a minute suggesting that Benomyl/Carbendazim is related to the microcephaly found in the latest spike in Brazil. If it were pesticide related, I'd be looking closely at insecticides...known neurotoxins.
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Access: Zika and microcephaly: things to…, in reply to Susan Snowdon,
It has certainly not been for sale for domestic use through garden centres for a very long time. I can’t see it available for commercial use. I think it was banned after the evidence for birth injuries became clear
1. Carbendazim for sale at RD1.
2. Safety Data Sheet for Mycotak
3. List of HSNO classifications
4. Determination of benomyl (as carbendazim) and carbendazim in water...
5. Carbendazim is the metabolite of benomyl
6. Benomyl, according to Wikipedia
Over the next few weeks this chemical will be loaded into helicopters and dispersed widely and with little or no controls, regulation or enforcement. The advertisement for Mycotak states that there is no withholding period for carbendazim...
yet for another carbendazim based product, made by a different company...
It is an offence for users of this product to cause residues exceeding the relevant MRL in the New Zealand (Maximum Residues Limits of Agricultural Compounds) Food
Standards.
WITHHOLDING PERIODS: Stonefruit - DO NOT use after start of petal fall, Apples - 7 days, Cucurbits - 7 days, Grapes - 7 days, Raspberries, brambles, strawberries - 1
day, Lettuce - 21 days, Beans - 14 days, Field & Glasshouse Tomatoes - 3 days, Wheat & Barley - 60 days, Onions - 14 days. Ryegrass Seed Crop - Allow 14 days between last
application and harvest (cutting). Allow 35 days between last application and introduction of stock for grazing.If anyone has any good information on current use of this fungicide in NZ I would be interested.
Depends on what you mean by "good".
The official line is that there is no issue with the use of this product in NZ.
I beg to differ,
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Access: Zika and microcephaly: things to…, in reply to linger,
mutagenic pesticides banned elsewhere
I was going to bring that up....one report I read from a pesticide awareness group from 1999 had the rate of reported miscarriage among agricultural and horticultural workers in the Pernambuco region as 73%...The stats for reported birth defects (sorry Hilary, its not a nice term) were strange. Some of the 'defects' reported by mothers were not actually defects. And some of the so called 'normal' babies actually had significant defects.
linger...here in NZ there is still widespread use of a significantly mutagenic fungicide...a benomyl derivative. Benomyl has been linked to babies born without eyes...http://www.ecochem.com/ENN_costillo.html
The mutagenic fungicide used widely in New Zealand is 2-methyl-benzimidasole carbamate. Research into effects of Benomyl almost always include carbedazim. Throw benomyl into the air and it will probably have converted to carbendazim by the time it hits the ground. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10633176
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Speaker: A Better Man, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I don’t get it personally,
Neither do I Hilary, neither do I.
(Our hero was out for a duck, btw, again)
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The Scientist reports...
A review of four years’ worth of medical records finds far greater numbers of microcephaly cases from before the ongoing Zika virus epidemic than had been officially reported.
and references this Lancet article which suggests that..
Although there is evidence of an increased number of cases of microcephaly in Brazil, we show that the number of suspected cases relied on a screening test that
had very low specificity and therefore overestimated the actual number of cases by including mostly normal children with small heads. We recommend that national
and international agencies should refrain from reporting suspected cases and speed up investigation to report on confirmed cases with laboratory or radiological evidence. It is also important that health workers measure head circumference in all newborn babies using standardised anthropometric techniques, and report results in mm. -
It's Our Future have put out a new bulletin to those on the mailing list.
For those who follow interweb trends
First, top related queries were “what is tppa”, “tppa facts”, etc. This implies that the people doing most of the searching don’t know much about the TPPA (and that the government, which ostensibly represents the will of the people, has done a fairly poor job of informing them about such a huge issue).
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Access: Zika and microcephaly: things to…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Latest theory seems to be that
....the rate of microcephaly now being seen in Brazil is about the same rate as in the USA....
Very interesting blog from an actual virologist.
Possible Association Between Zika Virus Infection and Microcephaly — Brazil, 2015
Reads as though some great data may finally show us a hint of an association between Zika virus (ZIKV) infection and microcephaly disease. Right?
Nope. There are none. At least none that could approach satisfying that title which highlights that it is not just the popular media who can generate misleading titles (headlines in their case).
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There's a part of my brain that makes very weird connections between seemingly random...things.
Read the title "Hooten's Zombie Apocalypse" and flashed back to a MSM headline that I had chosen to ignore...