Posted on 04/15/2008 3:30:31 PM PDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp
The vision of airplanes rumbling slowly over San Francisco, spraying a pesticide mist on parks and playgrounds, has now mobilized one of the most effective lobbying groups in the world.
Moms.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture's plan to eradicate the light brown apple moth with aerial spraying over the city this summer was already in an uphill fight. But when 100 or so mothers and kids showed up at City Hall on Monday afternoon with signs like "Keep Your Spray Off My Baby," it was clear that the battle had entered a new phase.
"Nothing gets people more irate than a government institution spraying their kids from a plane," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment. "It's a bad movie. And nobody wants to be in that movie."
Lynn Murphy, a mother of two, was at Monday's rally, somewhat surprised to be chanting "Stop the Spray" along with everyone else.
"I don't consider myself an activist," said Murphy, who lives a few blocks from Golden Gate Park, where the most moths have been found so far in the city. "But when it comes down to your children and protecting your family, it seems so much more urgent. I never thought I would be talking to my 4-year-old and telling her that we are going up to the state Capitol to talk to politicians."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
What opinions of mine did you find trite? I posted the thread, and I’ve been countering attacks left and right ever since. I’ve hardly voiced any opinions at all. You only seem to be interested in name-calling.
How about you explain your distrust of vaccinations. Just curious where you’re coming from.
I was thinking of the new HPV vaccine that they want to give to girls who are not even sexually active. I’m totally against that.
Whatever, moth-hugger.
Is that the best you can do? LOL
Sweetie I am the biggest thorn in the side of government that you can imagine. I spend all my days fighting the liberals from San Francisco who want to due stupid things like ban life-saving chemicals and pesticides that they don't understand.
An MSDS safety sheet deals with concentrated levels of a chemical and what might happen if you drink it or get it on your hands. You can't apply that information to a severely diluted application.
If you are afraid on that basis, then you should be terrified of sea water which is horribly toxic and full of heavy metals and other nasty chemicals when undiluted.
Life-saving chemicals and pesticides! You've got a way with words. No wonder you're in the government.
BTW, are you in a spraying area? Oh, I forgot, you don't care. You'll be out there dancing on the rooftop when they buzz you.
Are you in the Bay Area? Is your city going to get sprayed? Would you mind if it did?
I am not helping them. I get up every morning thinking of ways to make government smaller and how to get rid of bureaucrats and their idiotic bureaucratic programs that make life difficult for families, businesses and farmers (such as stupid policies and laws that make it harder to spray pests).
So, you’ve got no problem with the government spraying San Francisco once a month for 10 years, if it comes to that? There’s nothing more to say. We’re on opposite sides.
If you've done the research on pesticides in foods, good for you. I'll happily eat my organic foods, if that's all right with you. And you can continue to eat your non-organic foods. (See, no mention of pesticide-laced foods.)
I'm concerned about the aerial spraying. That's what my thread is about. I think our exchange is over, and if not, it should be.
No.
Not "silly" you; "paranoiac" you.
The issue people are having with you isn't the issue you posted; it's YOUR frantic, Chicken Little, running about in a panic attitude ABOUT the issue you posted. Had you opined in something less than OMG!! mode, you might have had the level-headed discussion you were looking for, and nobody would be framing you as a Lib. A cornerstone of Conservative thought is the value of fact-based discussion, as opposed to fear-based emotional hype. If the facts point definitively to the existence of something that is fearsome, we will hype THAT appropriately, but we will do so on the basis of FACT.
As it stands, your emotional display only serves to reinforce notions about the looniness of folks we used to refer to as "granolas", and traditional ideas about the benefits of patriarchy.
Perhaps it hasn't occurred to you, but you CAN discuss topics like this WITHOUT making that "Geronimoooo!" leap from the Cliffs of Insanity. IF you do that, I think you'll find the results MUCH more to your liking. Try simple, unprovocative opinion statements like, "I've found that xylitol is an excellet substitute for processed sugar." Or "Does anyone know where I can find toxicology data on Nasticide-XXX??" In short, please BEGIN with REASONED discussion if it is resoned discussion that you seek, and do not complain about being treated as an irrational, emotional person if that's how you've been posting.
The Good Book has it right: you reap what you sow.
If you keep the bugs off of it, that is.
My "emotional" remark where I say the idea of spraying San Francisco once a month for ten years is 'beyond horrifying'?
Your language was not that of a calm, collected person seeking to reason out the details of the issue.
You began by marginalizing the significance of the presence of this moth; brushing it aside with the casual observation that it hasn't done any damage. Sorry. you don't get to say, “that's not important,” without also saying why, because anyone who actually reads the linked article will discover that the moth -- if it spreads east over the Altamont or up the delta, or north into the Wine Country, or south into Gilroy, Salinas, and beyond -- constitutes a very serious threat to the agricultural enterprises in this state. This moth that isn't worth spraying for could potentially cost agriculture in this state billions of dollars, and who knows how we'd be rid of it if it got well established in active growing regions.
Your favorite organically grown veggies won't likely be very tasty after this moth works them over, and the price for the ones that escape will be higher. Perhaps much higher.
Frankly, I consider that threat to be of sufficient magnitude that I'd be willing to put a relatively small area of this state through some discomfort now to prevent a huge area of the state being infested with a serious agricultural pest; spend a little bit up front to prevent far greater long-term damage to this state's economy; an ounce of prevention every square mile, once monthly for a few years is well worth it if it will prevent this moth from getting a foothold in California. It might be easy to think that those agricultural concerns out there in the farmlands don't impact you, but if they take a financial hit you'll suffer at the cash register every time you pay for groceries, and not-so-conservative Legislators in Sacramento will be peeking into your pocketbook in search of tax revenue to replace what the ag business used to pay.
The picture just isn't so simplistic as you'd like it to be; there's a whole lot more in the balance than just some occasional dust from the sky during the wee hours of the morning. Yeah, that could be an issue, but — there again — you haven't specified any reasons why; you simply assert — in a complete vacuum — that it is “beyond horrifying”, and conclude in a continued absence of facts that “the health implications are enormous.”
Thoughtful conservatives not prone to jump at media hype are left more than a bit cold by all of this. “Beyond horrifying”? How so? “Enormous” health implications? Of what sort, and what severity? The questions beg for answers, but you make no effort to enlighten anyone by providing substantiating evidence in either of these areas. You only provide links to non-credible websites cluttered with voices more hysterical than your own.
Now, none of this is to say you CAN'T be right; you may well be, but grace us all with some supporting data from unbiased sources. Cold facts and an absence of panic is what we need, here. Others have brought up the Material Safety Data Sheet for the specific compound being sprayed. Among the information in that document you might find a rational basis for your as-yet-unfounded assertions, but rather than refer to the MSDS and tell us what horrifying thing it says, you seem to expect everyone to accept that this spraying plan is “beyond horrifying” without that information. Why? Is the MSDS not scary enough?
If this compund is that bad, that same MSDS would contains information about exposure limits. Does it? If so, what are those limits, and will the spraying expose anyone to higher amounts? If so, how many people are at risk for such overexposure, and over what time period?
See, these are the kinds of things level-headed people post when they seek a rational discussion of something. They're called “facts”, and I'd dissuade you from making further assertions unless/until you provide a few that support your claims. And do include references to your sources.
That you are convinced of your claims, is obvious, but you fail to be convincing to anyone else if, instead of presenting evidence that can convince, you repeatedly emphasize how convinced you are. Fine. You're VERY convinced. We get that. Now, please explain the factual reasons why. If you present a sound argument with real facts undergirding your claims, you may well be taken as seriously as you originally hoped that you would.
To that end...
Tetradecen-1-yl-acetate MSDS
aka
tetradecenyl acetate
NFPA HEALTH=1, FLAMMABILITY=0, REACTIVITY=0
Oral 50LD (50% lethal dose) for rats: 17,600mg/kg of body weight. [YIKES!!]
Do you realize that means in order to kill half the rats in the test group, they had to force feed them 17.6 times their own body weight of this stuff. Under those conditions, the cause of death was more likely clogged intestines than material toxicity.
Putting that in human terms... If you weighed 114 pounds, you would need to ingest a ton of this stuff -- a whole 2,000 pounds -- to have your chances of survival reduced to 50/50.
These kinds of data are what you needed to kick off with, but you didn't. Actually, this information just isn't scary enough to support your initial claim that a monthly spraying regimen would be "beyond horrific". so, you either need to find credible data that is, or stop using language that seeks to make others as edgy and panicky about this as you seem to be.
Please don’t send out stuff like a shotgun. Nothing in this post is of concern to me. You want to reply to me do it.
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