Saturday, December 19, 2009
Chemical Company Failed.
The New Zealand government and the Dow chemical company failed to warn New Zealanders of the dangers of the health effects on humans from Ivan Watkins Dow chemicals used as pasture and defoliant sprays used in the 50s 60s and 70s. Without divulging this information on the chemical risks on humans. The New Zealand government and Ivan Watkins Dow made the users and the human exposure more dangerous. Even though as far back as 1965 the Dow Chemical Co in the US called dioxin, a contaminant in their chemicals one of the most toxic materials known causing not only skin lesions, and also liver damage. At the Ivan Watkins Chemical Plant at Paritutu New Plymouth in the 60s tests and techniques were being used to drastically cut the amount of dioxin in the defoliant during manufacture. The waste wash from which was disposed of through open drains from the chemical plant down onto the local surf beach Paritutu back beach adjacent, and later through the cities sewer system out to sea. Ivan Watkins Dow now named Dow AgroSciences has to date not explained what happened to the dioxin residue extracted from these tests and techniques. Ivan Watkins Dow was at the time a New Zealand government contractor, giving them immunity from any prosecution or civil lawsuits against them.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
New Zealands Vietnam
Here in New Plymouth New Zealand the home of the Dow Chemical Plant that manufactured the ingredients that made Agent Orange for export. Have the same problems as the US from their past Dow chemical plants products linked to a higher multiple cancers, birth defects and other conditions. Not only did New Plymouth Dow Chemical Plant make defoliants tons and tons of which was in the from of pesticides DDT and 666 or BHC (mixed isomers) herbicides 2,4.D and 2,4,5-T sprayed all over New Zealand clean green country side to kill things like grass grub in the 50s 60s and 70s. The plant also washed its chemical by products out though storm waters onto local beaches and through the cities sewers out to sea They also burnt their chemical by products out into the atmosphere over the city as well as burring it in local public and private dumps around the New Plymouth and Taranaki region. Because of this New Plymouth as well as the rest of New Zealand has some of the highest death rates per population in the world from chemical related cancers.
Yet as in the US the New Zealand authorises and Dow have for years denied this ever happened and still today try to hide or wash over the facts that are put in front of them.
Rusty Kane
New Plymouth
New Zealand
Yet as in the US the New Zealand authorises and Dow have for years denied this ever happened and still today try to hide or wash over the facts that are put in front of them.
Rusty Kane
New Plymouth
New Zealand
Scatching the Surface.
Dioxin, a chemical now considered the most toxic ever created by man, the defoliants are linked to a higher risk of multiple cancers, birth defects and other conditions that are contributing to a dramatic increase in financial compensation for U.S. veterans and their families.
Service-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans have surged 60 percent since 2003, reaching $13.7 billion last year, and now account for more than half of such payments the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides to veterans of all wars. The average compensation payment for Vietnam vets is 41 percent higher than that for World War II veterans and 35 percent higher than for those who served in Korea. Those disability checks do not include the billions spent on health care for Vietnam veterans.
The price tag is only expected to escalate as scientists learn more about the effects of dioxin, as veterans are stricken late in life and as the children of veterans discover they are sick. In September, three more diseases were added to the list of illnesses for which the VA provides compensation -- an expansion the agency estimates will affect roughly 200,000 veterans and cost billions of dollars annually.
Meanwhile, untold numbers of Vietnamese -- including many who weren't even alive during the war -- also suffer from maladies associated with the defoliants. Tens of thousands more are at risk today from dioxin that remains in the environment at dozens of former U.S. military bases.
Yet in the 30 years since Agent Orange was recognized publicly as a potential health threat, the federal government has established a record of neglect.
U.S. veterans seeking compensation for their illnesses face delays and a maddening bureaucracy. Adding to their frustration, the federal government never has gotten to the bottom of Agent Orange's full impact, failing to follow through on requests for large-scale studies on how defoliants may have affected veterans' health.
In Vietnam, children sing songs of the devastation caused by Agent Orange and government officials wonder how the U.S. can avoid fully addressing the health and environmental havoc wreaked by the chemicals, even as the two nations foster stronger trade and military ties.
Since the countries normalized relations in 1995, Congress has allocated just $6 million for herbicide-related issues in Vietnam, even though Vietnamese officials say addressing them will take tens of millions. The Ford Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has made Agent Orange a focus, has provided $11.7 million.
With assistance from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Tribune spent a month traveling to eight provinces throughout Vietnam, conducting nearly two dozen interviews with civilians and former soldiers who say they were exposed to the defoliants.
The newspaper used a database of every spraying mission, mapping software and a GPS device to help corroborate their stories. And in the U.S., the paper researched thousands of pages of government documents and traveled to the homes of veterans to gauge the impact and measure the cost in both dollars and human misery.
Some scientists remain skeptical that Agent Orange and other defoliants directly cause diseases. But with hundreds of independent studies completed in the years since the war ended, there is strong evidence that people exposed to the herbicides have a higher risk of contracting illnesses such as soft tissue sarcoma and non- Hodgkin's lymphoma. The number of medical conditions linked to the defoliants continues to grow.
The lingering controversy over the herbicides on both sides of the Pacific Ocean provides a sobering reminder of the often unforeseen consequences of war at a time when the country is fighting protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We do not know the answer to the question: What happened to Vietnam veterans?" said Jeanne Stellman, an epidemiologist who has spent decades studying Agent Orange for the American Legion and the National Academy of Sciences. "The government doesn't want to study this because of international liability and issues surrounding chemical warfare. And they're going to win because they're bigger and everybody's getting old and there are new wars to worry about."
A deadly defense
The U.S. military began spraying herbicides in South Vietnam in 1961, as the Cold War raged and America seemed beset on all sides by the threat of communism. Vietnam, a sliver of a country hugging the South China Sea, was split in half, with communists controlling the north. Led by nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, the communists sought to reunite the country by toppling the U.S.-backed Republic of Vietnam in the south.
The greatest asset of the armies fighting the U.S. may have been the landscape of South Vietnam. Triple-canopy jungles cascading down mountainsides, patchworks of rice paddies and dense forests covered a battlefield where the line between enemy and civilian was often blurred.
The verdure allowed North Vietnamese forces to harass, resupply and melt back into the thick vegetation while surviving on food grown by local supporters.
The U.S. countered with chemical defoliants aimed at destroying the natural fortresses protecting the enemy. Over 10 years, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces released nearly 20 million gallons of herbicides in Southeast Asia, enough to blanket Lake Michigan four times. The vast majority of the missions took place in South Vietnam, but border areas in Cambodia and Laos were also sprayed.
Though Agent Orange was the most widely used herbicide, there were actually a half-dozen "agents," including White, Blue, Purple, Pink and Green. About 65 percent of them were contaminated with TCDD, a highly toxic form of dioxin, while more than 1 million gallons of Agent Blue contained arsenic.
The U.S. military stopped using Agent Orange in 1970 after a study for the National Institutes of Health showed that a chemical found in some of the compounds caused birth defects in laboratory animals. Soon after, the U.S. surgeon general halted the domestic use of that chemical, a dioxin-tainted compound known as 2,4,5-T.
Some limited spraying continued in Vietnam for another year, but only with agents that did not contain dioxin. The herbicide program, known as Operation Ranch Hand, stopped in 1971, four years before the war officially ended.
'We're a mess'
Nearly four decades later, on a quiet street in Brownsburg, Ind., Carrie Price-Nix and Amanda Price Palmer have resigned themselves to a life of prolonged fatigue and permanent disability. They've had 41 surgeries between them in the past 20 years, including five brain operations, two spinal cord surgeries and one hysterectomy.
Their father, Stephen Price, was an Air Force mechanic who served at the U.S. air base in Da Nang in 1967. Even today, the site is contaminated with levels of TCDD that are as much as 365 times higher than what the World Health Organization deems safe.
Price died in April 2008 after fighting leukemia, diabetes and chloracne, all of which are associated with the herbicides used in Vietnam. He began receiving full disability compensation from the VA in 2005, after waiting two years for his claim to be approved.
His daughters both have Chiari malformation, a structural defect in the base of the brain associated with spina bifida, which the VA recognizes as a defoliant-related birth defect in the offspring of male veterans.
Price filed a claim with the VA for Price-Nix in July 2002. Three and a half years later, she was approved for partial compensation. By that time, her bladder had shut down, and her father was dying.
Palmer, who has similar health problems, has spent six years seeking compensation from the VA. "They're waiting for you to die," her sister said. Last week, the agency denied Palmer's claim, ruling her illness is not related to spina bifida.
The deterioration of Palmer's abdominal muscles forces her to remove her feces manually. Price-Nix has a pacemaker-like device to regulate her bowels and must catheterize herself daily.
"We're a mess," Palmer said jokingly. Then the sisters began weeping as they pondered the reality that there is no recovery from their conditions.
See video of the sisters discussing their family's health issues
Far away from Brownsburg, in central Vietnam's Quang Binh province, Do Thi Hang, 19, suffers from symptoms similar to the sisters'. She has regular seizures caused by the fluid that accumulates in her brain. She can't walk and has trouble controlling her bowels.
Her parents have never been given a specific diagnosis because of Vietnam's underdeveloped health care system, but Hang's ailments mirror those of people suffering from spina bifida.
As a soldier fighting the U.S., Hang's father, Do Duc Diu, 58, was stationed for four years at an abandoned U.S. air base called A So, located in a valley where parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail wound along the Laotian border. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sprayed more than 400,000 gallons of herbicides in the Aluoi Valley, formerly known as A Shau.
New studies show that areas where the U.S. military stored chemicals on the A So air base are still contaminated with dangerously high levels of TCDD.
Since the war ended, Diu and his wife, Pham Thi Nuc, have had 15 children. Twelve died before the age of 3, all from illnesses similar to Hang's, Diu said. Their small graves sit atop a sandy hill behind Diu's home where he goes nearly every day to burn incense.
"I can say that I have no future, no happiness," he said.
Invisible wounds
The compensation U.S. veterans now receive for herbicide-related illnesses was gained only after a long, hard-fought battle in which the lines between science and politics were often blurred.
Part of the problem was that veterans were returning home with invisible wounds. Their fight to receive recognition and compensation for their war-related illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, opened the door for veterans of all wars.
"The better care that troops get now is owed to their Vietnam brothers," Stellman said.
New scientific studies, dogged investigations into political interference in government-sponsored studies and a $180 million settlement in a veterans' class action suit against chemical companies paved the way for the Agent Orange Act of 1991.
Among other provisions, the legislation created a list of "presumptive illnesses" for which Vietnam veterans could be compensated. It directed the National Academy of Sciences to review studies on the chemicals found in the herbicides and, every two years, recommend additions to the list. Diseases or birth defects are recommended if exposure to defoliants is more likely than not to increase a person's risk.
Since then, the VA has added 15 diseases as well as 17 birth defects in the children of female veterans.
But veterans groups say as many as a dozen more illnesses could be associated with the herbicides, as could numerous birth defects in the offspring of male vets.
One reason for the slow pace in adding diseases is that the VA relies on outside research on workplace exposure and industrial accidents instead of conducting a broader epidemiological study on veterans, which Congress first asked for in 1979. For years the agency said it could not study the impact of the herbicides on veterans because it had no way of measuring their exposure.
But that excuse is no longer valid, according to Stellman, professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of public health.
With her husband, Steven, an epidemiology professor, she compiled a comprehensive database on spraying missions and used it to develop an exposure model that has twice been blessed by the Institute of Medicine, an independent panel of medical experts whose recommendations on health policy help guide the VA's decision-making.
The VA said in 2003 it would take the model under advisement. The agency is still evaluating it.
"I'm surprised that it hasn't been pursued more energetically," said Dr. David Savitz, a physician at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who chaired the institute's review panel.
In September, the VA announced a broad, three-year study on Vietnam veterans' health, but it won't look specifically at defoliants like Agent Orange. Coming more than three decades after the war ended, the plan has many veterans believing the government is simply waiting for them to disappear.
"The mantra of the VA is delay, delay, delay until they all die," charged Paul Sutton, a Vietnam veteran and former chairman of Vietnam Veterans of America.
Retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary of veterans affairs, has acknowledged the adversarial relationship between the VA and former soldiers. A Vietnam veteran who was wounded in combat, Shinseki has vowed to be more of an advocate for those who serve the country.
Members of Congress say much of the foot-dragging on studying Agent Orange is tied to the bottom line.
"I don't think they really want to know the answer," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "The (financial costs) would be so high that they'd scare the hell out of everybody."
Source Chicago Tribune
Agent Orange's lethal legacy
Service-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans have surged 60 percent since 2003, reaching $13.7 billion last year, and now account for more than half of such payments the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides to veterans of all wars. The average compensation payment for Vietnam vets is 41 percent higher than that for World War II veterans and 35 percent higher than for those who served in Korea. Those disability checks do not include the billions spent on health care for Vietnam veterans.
The price tag is only expected to escalate as scientists learn more about the effects of dioxin, as veterans are stricken late in life and as the children of veterans discover they are sick. In September, three more diseases were added to the list of illnesses for which the VA provides compensation -- an expansion the agency estimates will affect roughly 200,000 veterans and cost billions of dollars annually.
Meanwhile, untold numbers of Vietnamese -- including many who weren't even alive during the war -- also suffer from maladies associated with the defoliants. Tens of thousands more are at risk today from dioxin that remains in the environment at dozens of former U.S. military bases.
Yet in the 30 years since Agent Orange was recognized publicly as a potential health threat, the federal government has established a record of neglect.
U.S. veterans seeking compensation for their illnesses face delays and a maddening bureaucracy. Adding to their frustration, the federal government never has gotten to the bottom of Agent Orange's full impact, failing to follow through on requests for large-scale studies on how defoliants may have affected veterans' health.
In Vietnam, children sing songs of the devastation caused by Agent Orange and government officials wonder how the U.S. can avoid fully addressing the health and environmental havoc wreaked by the chemicals, even as the two nations foster stronger trade and military ties.
Since the countries normalized relations in 1995, Congress has allocated just $6 million for herbicide-related issues in Vietnam, even though Vietnamese officials say addressing them will take tens of millions. The Ford Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has made Agent Orange a focus, has provided $11.7 million.
With assistance from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Tribune spent a month traveling to eight provinces throughout Vietnam, conducting nearly two dozen interviews with civilians and former soldiers who say they were exposed to the defoliants.
The newspaper used a database of every spraying mission, mapping software and a GPS device to help corroborate their stories. And in the U.S., the paper researched thousands of pages of government documents and traveled to the homes of veterans to gauge the impact and measure the cost in both dollars and human misery.
Some scientists remain skeptical that Agent Orange and other defoliants directly cause diseases. But with hundreds of independent studies completed in the years since the war ended, there is strong evidence that people exposed to the herbicides have a higher risk of contracting illnesses such as soft tissue sarcoma and non- Hodgkin's lymphoma. The number of medical conditions linked to the defoliants continues to grow.
The lingering controversy over the herbicides on both sides of the Pacific Ocean provides a sobering reminder of the often unforeseen consequences of war at a time when the country is fighting protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We do not know the answer to the question: What happened to Vietnam veterans?" said Jeanne Stellman, an epidemiologist who has spent decades studying Agent Orange for the American Legion and the National Academy of Sciences. "The government doesn't want to study this because of international liability and issues surrounding chemical warfare. And they're going to win because they're bigger and everybody's getting old and there are new wars to worry about."
A deadly defense
The U.S. military began spraying herbicides in South Vietnam in 1961, as the Cold War raged and America seemed beset on all sides by the threat of communism. Vietnam, a sliver of a country hugging the South China Sea, was split in half, with communists controlling the north. Led by nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, the communists sought to reunite the country by toppling the U.S.-backed Republic of Vietnam in the south.
The greatest asset of the armies fighting the U.S. may have been the landscape of South Vietnam. Triple-canopy jungles cascading down mountainsides, patchworks of rice paddies and dense forests covered a battlefield where the line between enemy and civilian was often blurred.
The verdure allowed North Vietnamese forces to harass, resupply and melt back into the thick vegetation while surviving on food grown by local supporters.
The U.S. countered with chemical defoliants aimed at destroying the natural fortresses protecting the enemy. Over 10 years, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces released nearly 20 million gallons of herbicides in Southeast Asia, enough to blanket Lake Michigan four times. The vast majority of the missions took place in South Vietnam, but border areas in Cambodia and Laos were also sprayed.
Though Agent Orange was the most widely used herbicide, there were actually a half-dozen "agents," including White, Blue, Purple, Pink and Green. About 65 percent of them were contaminated with TCDD, a highly toxic form of dioxin, while more than 1 million gallons of Agent Blue contained arsenic.
The U.S. military stopped using Agent Orange in 1970 after a study for the National Institutes of Health showed that a chemical found in some of the compounds caused birth defects in laboratory animals. Soon after, the U.S. surgeon general halted the domestic use of that chemical, a dioxin-tainted compound known as 2,4,5-T.
Some limited spraying continued in Vietnam for another year, but only with agents that did not contain dioxin. The herbicide program, known as Operation Ranch Hand, stopped in 1971, four years before the war officially ended.
'We're a mess'
Nearly four decades later, on a quiet street in Brownsburg, Ind., Carrie Price-Nix and Amanda Price Palmer have resigned themselves to a life of prolonged fatigue and permanent disability. They've had 41 surgeries between them in the past 20 years, including five brain operations, two spinal cord surgeries and one hysterectomy.
Their father, Stephen Price, was an Air Force mechanic who served at the U.S. air base in Da Nang in 1967. Even today, the site is contaminated with levels of TCDD that are as much as 365 times higher than what the World Health Organization deems safe.
Price died in April 2008 after fighting leukemia, diabetes and chloracne, all of which are associated with the herbicides used in Vietnam. He began receiving full disability compensation from the VA in 2005, after waiting two years for his claim to be approved.
His daughters both have Chiari malformation, a structural defect in the base of the brain associated with spina bifida, which the VA recognizes as a defoliant-related birth defect in the offspring of male veterans.
Price filed a claim with the VA for Price-Nix in July 2002. Three and a half years later, she was approved for partial compensation. By that time, her bladder had shut down, and her father was dying.
Palmer, who has similar health problems, has spent six years seeking compensation from the VA. "They're waiting for you to die," her sister said. Last week, the agency denied Palmer's claim, ruling her illness is not related to spina bifida.
The deterioration of Palmer's abdominal muscles forces her to remove her feces manually. Price-Nix has a pacemaker-like device to regulate her bowels and must catheterize herself daily.
"We're a mess," Palmer said jokingly. Then the sisters began weeping as they pondered the reality that there is no recovery from their conditions.
See video of the sisters discussing their family's health issues
Far away from Brownsburg, in central Vietnam's Quang Binh province, Do Thi Hang, 19, suffers from symptoms similar to the sisters'. She has regular seizures caused by the fluid that accumulates in her brain. She can't walk and has trouble controlling her bowels.
Her parents have never been given a specific diagnosis because of Vietnam's underdeveloped health care system, but Hang's ailments mirror those of people suffering from spina bifida.
As a soldier fighting the U.S., Hang's father, Do Duc Diu, 58, was stationed for four years at an abandoned U.S. air base called A So, located in a valley where parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail wound along the Laotian border. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sprayed more than 400,000 gallons of herbicides in the Aluoi Valley, formerly known as A Shau.
New studies show that areas where the U.S. military stored chemicals on the A So air base are still contaminated with dangerously high levels of TCDD.
Since the war ended, Diu and his wife, Pham Thi Nuc, have had 15 children. Twelve died before the age of 3, all from illnesses similar to Hang's, Diu said. Their small graves sit atop a sandy hill behind Diu's home where he goes nearly every day to burn incense.
"I can say that I have no future, no happiness," he said.
Invisible wounds
The compensation U.S. veterans now receive for herbicide-related illnesses was gained only after a long, hard-fought battle in which the lines between science and politics were often blurred.
Part of the problem was that veterans were returning home with invisible wounds. Their fight to receive recognition and compensation for their war-related illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, opened the door for veterans of all wars.
"The better care that troops get now is owed to their Vietnam brothers," Stellman said.
New scientific studies, dogged investigations into political interference in government-sponsored studies and a $180 million settlement in a veterans' class action suit against chemical companies paved the way for the Agent Orange Act of 1991.
Among other provisions, the legislation created a list of "presumptive illnesses" for which Vietnam veterans could be compensated. It directed the National Academy of Sciences to review studies on the chemicals found in the herbicides and, every two years, recommend additions to the list. Diseases or birth defects are recommended if exposure to defoliants is more likely than not to increase a person's risk.
Since then, the VA has added 15 diseases as well as 17 birth defects in the children of female veterans.
But veterans groups say as many as a dozen more illnesses could be associated with the herbicides, as could numerous birth defects in the offspring of male vets.
One reason for the slow pace in adding diseases is that the VA relies on outside research on workplace exposure and industrial accidents instead of conducting a broader epidemiological study on veterans, which Congress first asked for in 1979. For years the agency said it could not study the impact of the herbicides on veterans because it had no way of measuring their exposure.
But that excuse is no longer valid, according to Stellman, professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of public health.
With her husband, Steven, an epidemiology professor, she compiled a comprehensive database on spraying missions and used it to develop an exposure model that has twice been blessed by the Institute of Medicine, an independent panel of medical experts whose recommendations on health policy help guide the VA's decision-making.
The VA said in 2003 it would take the model under advisement. The agency is still evaluating it.
"I'm surprised that it hasn't been pursued more energetically," said Dr. David Savitz, a physician at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who chaired the institute's review panel.
In September, the VA announced a broad, three-year study on Vietnam veterans' health, but it won't look specifically at defoliants like Agent Orange. Coming more than three decades after the war ended, the plan has many veterans believing the government is simply waiting for them to disappear.
"The mantra of the VA is delay, delay, delay until they all die," charged Paul Sutton, a Vietnam veteran and former chairman of Vietnam Veterans of America.
Retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary of veterans affairs, has acknowledged the adversarial relationship between the VA and former soldiers. A Vietnam veteran who was wounded in combat, Shinseki has vowed to be more of an advocate for those who serve the country.
Members of Congress say much of the foot-dragging on studying Agent Orange is tied to the bottom line.
"I don't think they really want to know the answer," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "The (financial costs) would be so high that they'd scare the hell out of everybody."
Source Chicago Tribune
Agent Orange's lethal legacy
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Fewer babies, more cancer... is anyone listening.
THE POISONING OF NEW ZEALAND still has not been addressed.
This old news story still rings true today..
Outbreaks of rare diseases and tumours are appearing in clusters around New Zealand, close to chemical factories. Why doesn't the Government want to investigate? SIMON JONES discovers what the authorities don't want you to know:
Walk down any street in New Plymouth and you will probably hear a mixture of coughing and spluttering. Look inside any school and there appears to be more special needs children than is the norm for a city the size of New Plymouth. It's often been said that everyone knows someone with a serious disease, whether it be cancer or multiple sclerosis.
Bad luck? Possibly, but for the last 15 years a group of residents have turned scientists to uncover what they say is a national health scandal - and one which, despite the government and media's persistent attempts to ignore, won't go away.
They may sound like conspiracy theorists in overdrive - and there is little in the way of official evidence and health statistics to back up what they say. But here is the frightening thing: If, in this real-life game of Fact or Fiction?, only 10 percent of what the residents say is true, we have a huge health scandal on our hands - the magnitude and implications of which are unimaginable.
The story centres around one of the city's major employers, the Ivon Watkins Dow Plant.
Since the early 1960s, and up until 1987, it manufactured the 2,4,5T herbicide - which contains the deadly dioxin also used to form Agent Orange - a weapon of huge destruction in the Vietnam War.
In New Zealand and around the world 2,4,5T is used to kill scrub, gorse and blackberry. In Vietnam, with concentrations of dioxin much higher, it had the same effect - to the extent where it devastated the country's crops and caused major health problems amongst veterans, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, while creating learning difficulties amongst the vets' children.
Is it just coincidence that many in New Plymouth - and in areas around New Zealand, where this herbicide was extensively sprayed, complain about the same health problems?
For years governments, both here and overseas, turned a blind eye to the damaging effects of dioxin, refusing to admit that there was any link between Agent Orange and health problems suffered by vets.
Yet recently, in a draft report leaked to the Washington Post, the US government upgraded dioxin to a 'human carcinogen' - in other words a substance which is a major cause of cancer, as well as birth defects and infertility.
Only a pending lawsuit by New York restaurant owners, who claim the link to cancer will scare away customers, has blocked publication of the report.
The US Environmental Protection Agency notes that emissions of dioxin have plummeted from peak levels in the 1970s, but still pose a significant threat to some who ingest it - mostly in food, especially food of animal origin.
John Moller, the president of the Vietnam Veterans Association, says it is ironic that some of the 3,800 Kiwi vets who served during the war came home to find that they were still partly exposed to chemicals associated with Agent Orange either by living in New Plymouth or areas where the herbicide was sprayed.
"The New Zealand government says that because of the few figures involved and the time span it is not worth running tests on veterans now.
"That's rubbish because the government has given $200,000 to the nuclear test veterans association for research and legal fees. Their exposure happened before Vietnam and their figures are much smaller.
"The government has buried its head in the sand for too long," he says. "For example, when an enquiry was finally instigated, they took samples from native forest but not the Pine forest where 2,4,5-T was heavily used.
"The problem with dioxin exposure is that there is a 30-year envelope. The historical effects are only beginning to come through now."
The US government invented 2,4,5T in 1941 to be used as a weapon of war against Japan. Later, with concentrations lower, it is intended to control unwanted vegetation, most of which is found in Taranaki, Northland and Gisborne.
The manufacture of 2,4,5-T is said to have started in New Zealand around 1962 and by 1970 the number of birth defects in New Plymouth doubled and the number of cases nationwide started to rise.
Because of international health concerns 2,4,5-T production was halted around the world - with the exception of one factory, the Ivon Watkins Dow Plant in New Plymouth which persevered until 1987. The plant is still in operation today but only produces pesticides.
Levels of dioxin found in 2,4,5-T were reduced through the late 70s and 80s as Ivon Watkins responded to health concerns, yet residents say the effects of intense manufacture in the 1960s are etched on the faces and, more importantly, the glands and livers of local people now.
Time for some statistics. The average level of dioxin in Agent Orange was around 198 parts per million. In New Plymouth, at the peak of production, the average level in the manufactured product was around 95 parts per million - around half that of Agent Orange. By 1987 the level of dioxin was down to 0.1 or 0.05ppm following heightened awareness about the potential health problems.
Initially residents and workers were happy with health assurances from company bosses, particularly with the way waste was disposed through burning. But only recently have secret dumps been found around the city, dumps which residents say have infected soil and water.
In 1986 the Ministry of Environment held an official inquiry into dioxin contamination after 300kg of vapour accidentally leaked from the plant. Yet, interestingly, company bosses admitted that over 250kg of vapour was normally discharged as a result of the normal process anyway.
The enquiry team concluded that there was no evidence of major contamination in New Plymouth or of any major health risk Yet residents say that part of the information used in that research was based on American studies which have since found to be fraudulent. This is where the issue becomes more complicated. In 1949 an explosion at the Monsanto chemical plant in Nitro, West Virginia, exposed many workers to effects of 2,4,5-T. Thirty years later Monsanto scientists and an independent researcher, Dr Raymond Sunkind, compared death rates amongst workers exposed to 2,4,5-T to those who hadn't been exposed. When no differences between the two groups were found, Monsanto claimed that dioxin did not cause cancer. Evidence of inaccuracies were only exposed in the late 1980s when a group of Missouri citizens sued Monsanto for alleged injuries suffered during a chemical spill caused by a train derailment in 1979. While reviewing documents obtained from Monsanto, it was held in court that during the early studies, scientists omitted five deaths from the dioxin-exposed and put them in the unexposed group. Given that, and the leaked report to the Washington Post, it's small wonder that the residents are now calling for a new inquiry.
It's easy in stories like this to get bogged down with statistics and hearsay. But it's only when confronted with the truth about health problems in New Plymouth that people start listening.
Take, for example, the case of Ross Lawrence, 43, who lived within a stone's throw of the plant and worked there as a storeman between 1980 and 1985. He contracted non-hodgkins lymphona and Hepatitis C in 1998 - one year after his wife, Patricia, 41, was diagnosed with breast cancer. To add salt into the wounds, the 17-year-old family dog, Ena, died of cancer last year and both Ross's children suffer from a mixture of skin complaints and bleeding noses.
It's only when you hear stories like Lawrence's that the word "coincidence" becomes a little bit too stretched.
"I came home from Pakistan where I was working on an oil rig in 1997 to look after my wife," said Ross. "Shortly after I went to the doctor after complaining about flu-type symptoms only to be told that I had cancer and Hepatitis C. Isn't it strange how three of us could get cancer in one household?"
An extensive course of chemotherapy seems to have thankfully cleared the cancer, and after having her glands removed, his wife managed to keep both breasts. But the trauma also brought its psychological toll. The stress and strain of illness coupled with the loss of his $100,000-a-year job effectively ended their marriage.
"This could have cost my life," says Lawrence, "and it probably will in the end because Hep. C never goes away. They should be made accountable. How many other people have died of cancer without knowing the cause? How many other people are going to die?"
Ross Lawrence, like other employees, had few concerns at the time of working at the Ivon Watkins Plant. "We knew about the dangers of 2,4,5-T, but it was such a safety orientated company. They held regular safety meetings and did everything by the book.
"We were told that the waste was incinerated at temperatures which were so high that there would be no residue because everything would be dissolved. It was only when dumps containing the waste were found that I really started to worry," he adds.
"There is still a cover-up going on. If you walk the streets of New Plymouth people wouldn't know. Most didn't know what the factory made. The local paper, the Daily News prints little on the subject. And the local MP doesn't want to know."
Now Lawrence is actively working on the local rigs but campaigns with others to lift what they say is a veil of secrecy over this health scandal.
Another leading the campaign is Andrew Gibbs, who helped set up the Dioxin Investigation Network. Recently Gibbs sent one sample of blood and a sample of breast milk to America to check for traces of dioxin, the particular type of which is called 2378 TCDD which is the most toxic type known to man. Gibbs claims previous blood tests have been worthless because 2,4,5-T passes through the system so quickly it leaves no trace. The difference here is that they would also be testing for its residual, 2378 TCCD.
When they sent the samples to the US, taken from his partner, Iris, and her sister, Lesley, they went missing for four days. Despite being clearly marked for an Atlanta laboratory, they ended up in Los Angeles. More than 160 days later, they are still waiting for the results.
"In Vietnam they have found levels of 30 to 108 parts per trillion in blood," he said. "Levels in Maori women around the Bay of Plenty, where the herbicide was extensively sprayed, have already been found to be up around 26.7ppt. As of yet we still don't know what the blood levels are in New Plymouth."
Gibbs says even burning the waste didn't destroy it. Instead waste streams left residue in the soil, on washing hanging out to dry and on barbecues. "We ate it, breathed it and wore it. When the Yanks burnt it off after Vietnam they burnt it off 80-90 miles down wind from Johnson Island.
"We burnt ours downwind on the whole town of New Plymouth. In the 1987 enquiry they said they found no evidence of dioxin in people or soil. But what they had was a 1,500 ppt safe level. The highest recorded in Vietnam was 808 ppt. In New Plymouth we've already levels up to 310 ppt." His views may be ignored by health officials in New Zealand, but they have found credence in America. George Lucier, director of the National Toxicology Programme, and author of the Environmental Protection Agency report, says there is no avoiding dioxin.
"Even penguins in Antarctica have dioxin in them. No-one sets out purposely to make dioxin. It is an unwanted side-product that you get from burning. Anytime you combine heat, chlorine and organic material, there is the possibility of making dioxins."
Lucier says scientists did not quite understand how dioxin damaged the body, but did know it acted on a universal mechanism controlling cell functions.
Dioxin attaches, or binds tightly, to the AII receptor - a kind of cellular doorway found in virtually all cells in the body. Once there, it changes the function of hundreds of genes. It will either stimulate gene expression of suppress it.
Dioxin exposure has been linked to many different tumours, especially non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, respiratory cancers, soft tissue sarcoma and prostate cancer. One Italian study of dioxin in children found hormonal changes.
"When they have children, most or all their kids are girls, not boys," says Lucier. "Dioxin affects pathways that are involved in normal growth and differentiation, so it can cause birth defects," he adds. "It can effect sperm counts."
Regional comparisons for cases of multiple sclerosis and non-hodgkins lymphoma are hard to find, if not impossible to get. The Ministry of Health says there are too few cases nationwide to offer a meaningful regional breakdown. The only figures are available are from the Cancer Mortality Atlas published as far back as 1982 which says that lymphosarcoma is 'particularly severe' in New Plymouth, while the number of male deaths from Hodgkin's disease was 'particularly high'.
Yet, there are regional disparities in other areas too. While New Plymouth is almost three times the national average for Hodgkins Disease, Waipawa is five times. While New Plymouth has three times the national average for lymphosarcoma, Strathallan in South Canterbury has seven times.
There are 14 known cases of multiple sclerosis in New Plymouth suburb of Paritutu, where the plant is based. The figure may sound small, but compare that to Australia where the rate is 40 per 100,000. That should give Paritutu just 2.4 cases.
During the 1986 governmental enquiry, Ministry of Health principal toxicologist Michael Bates defended the higher rates.
"It's normal to get quite a variation everywhere for all cancers. One area might have a predominantly old group of people for example. But in many cases no-one is exactly sure why." Yet since 1980 the birth defects rate in Taranaki has been about 50 per cent higher than the average for the rest of the country. While it's fair to say regional disparities also occur in other areas for different types of diseases and abnormalities, Taranaki usually falls victim to all of them.
50-year-old Roy Drake also lives close to the plant. In 1988 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He now finds it almost impossible to walk and is close to blind.
Being homebound has meant that Drake has spent a lot of his time studying the effects of Dioxin, looking at international studies from around the world.
"If you look at any major chemical plant anywhere in the world you will find massive rates of the same sorts of diseases. Here in New Plymouth, Down's Syndrome and Spina Bifida are going through the roof.
"Our local school has 1200 kids and in 1999 they advertised for ten special needs teachers. I've found out in one Kindergarten alone there are four kids with cancer.
"People of New Plymouth are very illiterate to it all. That's because there has been a huge cover up. Imagine the legal implications of this. The damages would run into billions.
"Half of my friends are dead or have brain tumours. Not many people live to a ripe old age round here. They all die five or ten years short of their time. I am very angry and cannot understand why this has been ignored for such a long time."
Drake says even his caregivers are riddled with disease. "I've had one who had sugar diabetes, two with strokes. The girl currently looking after me has cervical cancer.
"For years we have been wearing clothes with dioxin on them. When we put a plate in the cupboard it is there, although you can't see it. There's no getting away from it around here."
Drake thought the new Labour government, with its Green allies, would order a fresh enquiry following new American evidence on the damaging effects of dioxin. Instead, he says, they are happy to sweep the issue under the carpet. In June of this year Health Minister Annette King refused calls for a new enquiry, relying on conclusions found in 1986 - interestingly a report delivered under the previous Labour Government.
"While I appreciate the ongoing concerns about the health of people living around New Plymouth, from the advice I have received from Ministry officials, I am satisfied that the monitoring and investigation carried out around IWD previously were adequate to show that significant exposure of the local population did not occur."
King went on to say that a study of targeted groups who believe they have been exposed would be too expensive and difficult.
"The residents present prior to that time may have moved and would need to be traced for testing to be meaningful," she said.
"A detailed analysis of the health data relating to the Taranaki region would be needed before any conclusions relating to the relative rates of cancer, birth defects, or other diseases such as MS, could be meaningfully compared. I understand such a process could be carried out but it is difficult to see what would be gained by doing so now."
Not surprisingly, Andrew Gibbs disagrees. He says they are looking for recognition and help. He points that areas like Gisborne, where 2,4,5T was sprayed has almost identical ratios of motor neurone disease as Vietnam - isn't it time we were at least prepared to look at the situation again?
Yet it seems the government is blinded by issues on the grounds of cost. The residents of New Plymouth say they have already paid a high enough price for dioxin contamination, including many lives. Their search for truth and a sympathetic ear goes on - but so far, few people are willing to listen.
http://www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/01-05-16c.htm
Surge in Child Cancers
New Zealand children are being struck down by cancer at steadily increasing rates.
19 MAY 2001
By CHRISTINE LANGDON
Childhood cancer rates climbed 50 percent between 1990 and 1997, Health Ministry statistics issued to Green Party MP Sue Kedgley show.
A provisional 153 cancer cases were recorded in children under 14 years in 1997, up from 104 in 1990.
The increase comes as birth rates in New Zealand are falling. There were 56,532 in the year to March 2001, 6 percent below the 60,331 recorded a decade earlier.
Ms Kedgley and health experts called yesterday for authorities to closely study the steady rise in child cancer cases in the 1990s.
"We need to look as a society at why children, even at very young ages, get cancer, which normally develops over many years," Ms Kedgley said.
Reporting new cancer cases to the Health Ministry's register became mandatory in 1995, but the ministry believes about 97 percent of cases were being recorded in the early 1990s.
Between 30 and 45 children a year died from cancer in the 1990s.
Leading cancer epidemiologist John Dockerty, of Otago University, said earlier studies had shown significant increases in childhood leukaemia between the mid-1960s and 1990, but the latest statistics for all cancers needed closer examination.
"I don't think we should dismiss this sort of thing. We need to look at it carefully and see what it is telling us," he said.
"We don't know whether it is related to demographic changes in the population or whether there is some kind of environmental risk factor that has been increasing."
Ms Kedgley wanted a closer look taken at environmental risks, including the possibility that mercury in dental fillings and chemicals in pesticides could penetrate a mother's womb.
"I want to know what the ministry is doing to try to understand why there has been a 50 percent increase in children being diagnosed with cancer, and to study the increase in number of children dying," she said.
Child Cancer Foundation chief executive Kay Morris said New Zealand needed a dedicated national child cancer registry, which was expected to be set up soon.
The Health Funding Authority formed a national child cancer steering committee last year, which had made the registry a top priority.
"Until that happens, it is all just guesswork," Ms Morris said.
Mr Dockerty said research into the causes of cancer in New Zealand was restricted by the small population. "Statistically speaking, you can't learn a lot."
It was more valuable when looked at with overseas research, he said.
Local research was being done. So far, studies have pointed to the benefits of breastfeeding in lowering the risk, and found that the risk is higher for the children of single mothers and children in poorer families.
This old news story still rings true today..
Outbreaks of rare diseases and tumours are appearing in clusters around New Zealand, close to chemical factories. Why doesn't the Government want to investigate? SIMON JONES discovers what the authorities don't want you to know:
Walk down any street in New Plymouth and you will probably hear a mixture of coughing and spluttering. Look inside any school and there appears to be more special needs children than is the norm for a city the size of New Plymouth. It's often been said that everyone knows someone with a serious disease, whether it be cancer or multiple sclerosis.
Bad luck? Possibly, but for the last 15 years a group of residents have turned scientists to uncover what they say is a national health scandal - and one which, despite the government and media's persistent attempts to ignore, won't go away.
They may sound like conspiracy theorists in overdrive - and there is little in the way of official evidence and health statistics to back up what they say. But here is the frightening thing: If, in this real-life game of Fact or Fiction?, only 10 percent of what the residents say is true, we have a huge health scandal on our hands - the magnitude and implications of which are unimaginable.
The story centres around one of the city's major employers, the Ivon Watkins Dow Plant.
Since the early 1960s, and up until 1987, it manufactured the 2,4,5T herbicide - which contains the deadly dioxin also used to form Agent Orange - a weapon of huge destruction in the Vietnam War.
In New Zealand and around the world 2,4,5T is used to kill scrub, gorse and blackberry. In Vietnam, with concentrations of dioxin much higher, it had the same effect - to the extent where it devastated the country's crops and caused major health problems amongst veterans, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, while creating learning difficulties amongst the vets' children.
Is it just coincidence that many in New Plymouth - and in areas around New Zealand, where this herbicide was extensively sprayed, complain about the same health problems?
For years governments, both here and overseas, turned a blind eye to the damaging effects of dioxin, refusing to admit that there was any link between Agent Orange and health problems suffered by vets.
Yet recently, in a draft report leaked to the Washington Post, the US government upgraded dioxin to a 'human carcinogen' - in other words a substance which is a major cause of cancer, as well as birth defects and infertility.
Only a pending lawsuit by New York restaurant owners, who claim the link to cancer will scare away customers, has blocked publication of the report.
The US Environmental Protection Agency notes that emissions of dioxin have plummeted from peak levels in the 1970s, but still pose a significant threat to some who ingest it - mostly in food, especially food of animal origin.
John Moller, the president of the Vietnam Veterans Association, says it is ironic that some of the 3,800 Kiwi vets who served during the war came home to find that they were still partly exposed to chemicals associated with Agent Orange either by living in New Plymouth or areas where the herbicide was sprayed.
"The New Zealand government says that because of the few figures involved and the time span it is not worth running tests on veterans now.
"That's rubbish because the government has given $200,000 to the nuclear test veterans association for research and legal fees. Their exposure happened before Vietnam and their figures are much smaller.
"The government has buried its head in the sand for too long," he says. "For example, when an enquiry was finally instigated, they took samples from native forest but not the Pine forest where 2,4,5-T was heavily used.
"The problem with dioxin exposure is that there is a 30-year envelope. The historical effects are only beginning to come through now."
The US government invented 2,4,5T in 1941 to be used as a weapon of war against Japan. Later, with concentrations lower, it is intended to control unwanted vegetation, most of which is found in Taranaki, Northland and Gisborne.
The manufacture of 2,4,5-T is said to have started in New Zealand around 1962 and by 1970 the number of birth defects in New Plymouth doubled and the number of cases nationwide started to rise.
Because of international health concerns 2,4,5-T production was halted around the world - with the exception of one factory, the Ivon Watkins Dow Plant in New Plymouth which persevered until 1987. The plant is still in operation today but only produces pesticides.
Levels of dioxin found in 2,4,5-T were reduced through the late 70s and 80s as Ivon Watkins responded to health concerns, yet residents say the effects of intense manufacture in the 1960s are etched on the faces and, more importantly, the glands and livers of local people now.
Time for some statistics. The average level of dioxin in Agent Orange was around 198 parts per million. In New Plymouth, at the peak of production, the average level in the manufactured product was around 95 parts per million - around half that of Agent Orange. By 1987 the level of dioxin was down to 0.1 or 0.05ppm following heightened awareness about the potential health problems.
Initially residents and workers were happy with health assurances from company bosses, particularly with the way waste was disposed through burning. But only recently have secret dumps been found around the city, dumps which residents say have infected soil and water.
In 1986 the Ministry of Environment held an official inquiry into dioxin contamination after 300kg of vapour accidentally leaked from the plant. Yet, interestingly, company bosses admitted that over 250kg of vapour was normally discharged as a result of the normal process anyway.
The enquiry team concluded that there was no evidence of major contamination in New Plymouth or of any major health risk Yet residents say that part of the information used in that research was based on American studies which have since found to be fraudulent. This is where the issue becomes more complicated. In 1949 an explosion at the Monsanto chemical plant in Nitro, West Virginia, exposed many workers to effects of 2,4,5-T. Thirty years later Monsanto scientists and an independent researcher, Dr Raymond Sunkind, compared death rates amongst workers exposed to 2,4,5-T to those who hadn't been exposed. When no differences between the two groups were found, Monsanto claimed that dioxin did not cause cancer. Evidence of inaccuracies were only exposed in the late 1980s when a group of Missouri citizens sued Monsanto for alleged injuries suffered during a chemical spill caused by a train derailment in 1979. While reviewing documents obtained from Monsanto, it was held in court that during the early studies, scientists omitted five deaths from the dioxin-exposed and put them in the unexposed group. Given that, and the leaked report to the Washington Post, it's small wonder that the residents are now calling for a new inquiry.
It's easy in stories like this to get bogged down with statistics and hearsay. But it's only when confronted with the truth about health problems in New Plymouth that people start listening.
Take, for example, the case of Ross Lawrence, 43, who lived within a stone's throw of the plant and worked there as a storeman between 1980 and 1985. He contracted non-hodgkins lymphona and Hepatitis C in 1998 - one year after his wife, Patricia, 41, was diagnosed with breast cancer. To add salt into the wounds, the 17-year-old family dog, Ena, died of cancer last year and both Ross's children suffer from a mixture of skin complaints and bleeding noses.
It's only when you hear stories like Lawrence's that the word "coincidence" becomes a little bit too stretched.
"I came home from Pakistan where I was working on an oil rig in 1997 to look after my wife," said Ross. "Shortly after I went to the doctor after complaining about flu-type symptoms only to be told that I had cancer and Hepatitis C. Isn't it strange how three of us could get cancer in one household?"
An extensive course of chemotherapy seems to have thankfully cleared the cancer, and after having her glands removed, his wife managed to keep both breasts. But the trauma also brought its psychological toll. The stress and strain of illness coupled with the loss of his $100,000-a-year job effectively ended their marriage.
"This could have cost my life," says Lawrence, "and it probably will in the end because Hep. C never goes away. They should be made accountable. How many other people have died of cancer without knowing the cause? How many other people are going to die?"
Ross Lawrence, like other employees, had few concerns at the time of working at the Ivon Watkins Plant. "We knew about the dangers of 2,4,5-T, but it was such a safety orientated company. They held regular safety meetings and did everything by the book.
"We were told that the waste was incinerated at temperatures which were so high that there would be no residue because everything would be dissolved. It was only when dumps containing the waste were found that I really started to worry," he adds.
"There is still a cover-up going on. If you walk the streets of New Plymouth people wouldn't know. Most didn't know what the factory made. The local paper, the Daily News prints little on the subject. And the local MP doesn't want to know."
Now Lawrence is actively working on the local rigs but campaigns with others to lift what they say is a veil of secrecy over this health scandal.
Another leading the campaign is Andrew Gibbs, who helped set up the Dioxin Investigation Network. Recently Gibbs sent one sample of blood and a sample of breast milk to America to check for traces of dioxin, the particular type of which is called 2378 TCDD which is the most toxic type known to man. Gibbs claims previous blood tests have been worthless because 2,4,5-T passes through the system so quickly it leaves no trace. The difference here is that they would also be testing for its residual, 2378 TCCD.
When they sent the samples to the US, taken from his partner, Iris, and her sister, Lesley, they went missing for four days. Despite being clearly marked for an Atlanta laboratory, they ended up in Los Angeles. More than 160 days later, they are still waiting for the results.
"In Vietnam they have found levels of 30 to 108 parts per trillion in blood," he said. "Levels in Maori women around the Bay of Plenty, where the herbicide was extensively sprayed, have already been found to be up around 26.7ppt. As of yet we still don't know what the blood levels are in New Plymouth."
Gibbs says even burning the waste didn't destroy it. Instead waste streams left residue in the soil, on washing hanging out to dry and on barbecues. "We ate it, breathed it and wore it. When the Yanks burnt it off after Vietnam they burnt it off 80-90 miles down wind from Johnson Island.
"We burnt ours downwind on the whole town of New Plymouth. In the 1987 enquiry they said they found no evidence of dioxin in people or soil. But what they had was a 1,500 ppt safe level. The highest recorded in Vietnam was 808 ppt. In New Plymouth we've already levels up to 310 ppt." His views may be ignored by health officials in New Zealand, but they have found credence in America. George Lucier, director of the National Toxicology Programme, and author of the Environmental Protection Agency report, says there is no avoiding dioxin.
"Even penguins in Antarctica have dioxin in them. No-one sets out purposely to make dioxin. It is an unwanted side-product that you get from burning. Anytime you combine heat, chlorine and organic material, there is the possibility of making dioxins."
Lucier says scientists did not quite understand how dioxin damaged the body, but did know it acted on a universal mechanism controlling cell functions.
Dioxin attaches, or binds tightly, to the AII receptor - a kind of cellular doorway found in virtually all cells in the body. Once there, it changes the function of hundreds of genes. It will either stimulate gene expression of suppress it.
Dioxin exposure has been linked to many different tumours, especially non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, respiratory cancers, soft tissue sarcoma and prostate cancer. One Italian study of dioxin in children found hormonal changes.
"When they have children, most or all their kids are girls, not boys," says Lucier. "Dioxin affects pathways that are involved in normal growth and differentiation, so it can cause birth defects," he adds. "It can effect sperm counts."
Regional comparisons for cases of multiple sclerosis and non-hodgkins lymphoma are hard to find, if not impossible to get. The Ministry of Health says there are too few cases nationwide to offer a meaningful regional breakdown. The only figures are available are from the Cancer Mortality Atlas published as far back as 1982 which says that lymphosarcoma is 'particularly severe' in New Plymouth, while the number of male deaths from Hodgkin's disease was 'particularly high'.
Yet, there are regional disparities in other areas too. While New Plymouth is almost three times the national average for Hodgkins Disease, Waipawa is five times. While New Plymouth has three times the national average for lymphosarcoma, Strathallan in South Canterbury has seven times.
There are 14 known cases of multiple sclerosis in New Plymouth suburb of Paritutu, where the plant is based. The figure may sound small, but compare that to Australia where the rate is 40 per 100,000. That should give Paritutu just 2.4 cases.
During the 1986 governmental enquiry, Ministry of Health principal toxicologist Michael Bates defended the higher rates.
"It's normal to get quite a variation everywhere for all cancers. One area might have a predominantly old group of people for example. But in many cases no-one is exactly sure why." Yet since 1980 the birth defects rate in Taranaki has been about 50 per cent higher than the average for the rest of the country. While it's fair to say regional disparities also occur in other areas for different types of diseases and abnormalities, Taranaki usually falls victim to all of them.
50-year-old Roy Drake also lives close to the plant. In 1988 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He now finds it almost impossible to walk and is close to blind.
Being homebound has meant that Drake has spent a lot of his time studying the effects of Dioxin, looking at international studies from around the world.
"If you look at any major chemical plant anywhere in the world you will find massive rates of the same sorts of diseases. Here in New Plymouth, Down's Syndrome and Spina Bifida are going through the roof.
"Our local school has 1200 kids and in 1999 they advertised for ten special needs teachers. I've found out in one Kindergarten alone there are four kids with cancer.
"People of New Plymouth are very illiterate to it all. That's because there has been a huge cover up. Imagine the legal implications of this. The damages would run into billions.
"Half of my friends are dead or have brain tumours. Not many people live to a ripe old age round here. They all die five or ten years short of their time. I am very angry and cannot understand why this has been ignored for such a long time."
Drake says even his caregivers are riddled with disease. "I've had one who had sugar diabetes, two with strokes. The girl currently looking after me has cervical cancer.
"For years we have been wearing clothes with dioxin on them. When we put a plate in the cupboard it is there, although you can't see it. There's no getting away from it around here."
Drake thought the new Labour government, with its Green allies, would order a fresh enquiry following new American evidence on the damaging effects of dioxin. Instead, he says, they are happy to sweep the issue under the carpet. In June of this year Health Minister Annette King refused calls for a new enquiry, relying on conclusions found in 1986 - interestingly a report delivered under the previous Labour Government.
"While I appreciate the ongoing concerns about the health of people living around New Plymouth, from the advice I have received from Ministry officials, I am satisfied that the monitoring and investigation carried out around IWD previously were adequate to show that significant exposure of the local population did not occur."
King went on to say that a study of targeted groups who believe they have been exposed would be too expensive and difficult.
"The residents present prior to that time may have moved and would need to be traced for testing to be meaningful," she said.
"A detailed analysis of the health data relating to the Taranaki region would be needed before any conclusions relating to the relative rates of cancer, birth defects, or other diseases such as MS, could be meaningfully compared. I understand such a process could be carried out but it is difficult to see what would be gained by doing so now."
Not surprisingly, Andrew Gibbs disagrees. He says they are looking for recognition and help. He points that areas like Gisborne, where 2,4,5T was sprayed has almost identical ratios of motor neurone disease as Vietnam - isn't it time we were at least prepared to look at the situation again?
Yet it seems the government is blinded by issues on the grounds of cost. The residents of New Plymouth say they have already paid a high enough price for dioxin contamination, including many lives. Their search for truth and a sympathetic ear goes on - but so far, few people are willing to listen.
http://www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/01-05-16c.htm
Surge in Child Cancers
New Zealand children are being struck down by cancer at steadily increasing rates.
19 MAY 2001
By CHRISTINE LANGDON
Childhood cancer rates climbed 50 percent between 1990 and 1997, Health Ministry statistics issued to Green Party MP Sue Kedgley show.
A provisional 153 cancer cases were recorded in children under 14 years in 1997, up from 104 in 1990.
The increase comes as birth rates in New Zealand are falling. There were 56,532 in the year to March 2001, 6 percent below the 60,331 recorded a decade earlier.
Ms Kedgley and health experts called yesterday for authorities to closely study the steady rise in child cancer cases in the 1990s.
"We need to look as a society at why children, even at very young ages, get cancer, which normally develops over many years," Ms Kedgley said.
Reporting new cancer cases to the Health Ministry's register became mandatory in 1995, but the ministry believes about 97 percent of cases were being recorded in the early 1990s.
Between 30 and 45 children a year died from cancer in the 1990s.
Leading cancer epidemiologist John Dockerty, of Otago University, said earlier studies had shown significant increases in childhood leukaemia between the mid-1960s and 1990, but the latest statistics for all cancers needed closer examination.
"I don't think we should dismiss this sort of thing. We need to look at it carefully and see what it is telling us," he said.
"We don't know whether it is related to demographic changes in the population or whether there is some kind of environmental risk factor that has been increasing."
Ms Kedgley wanted a closer look taken at environmental risks, including the possibility that mercury in dental fillings and chemicals in pesticides could penetrate a mother's womb.
"I want to know what the ministry is doing to try to understand why there has been a 50 percent increase in children being diagnosed with cancer, and to study the increase in number of children dying," she said.
Child Cancer Foundation chief executive Kay Morris said New Zealand needed a dedicated national child cancer registry, which was expected to be set up soon.
The Health Funding Authority formed a national child cancer steering committee last year, which had made the registry a top priority.
"Until that happens, it is all just guesswork," Ms Morris said.
Mr Dockerty said research into the causes of cancer in New Zealand was restricted by the small population. "Statistically speaking, you can't learn a lot."
It was more valuable when looked at with overseas research, he said.
Local research was being done. So far, studies have pointed to the benefits of breastfeeding in lowering the risk, and found that the risk is higher for the children of single mothers and children in poorer families.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Better Save Than Sorry.
It is great to here the toxic tip site at Marfell Park get the all clear. With a recommendation from the independent expert Graeme Profitt that council should have a management plan in place to control such excavation works in future. It is good NPDC manager of community assets Anthony Wilson take heed of his recommondations. If he had in the first instance the Marfell community would have been a lot happer. Instead of now having concerns and being sceptical of NPDC management of any possible future health risks. And know wonder when the NPDC community assets manager said due to incomplete historic records it thought the waste was only buried further up the valley. You would think the NPDC policy would be to be better save than sorry when dealing with any known or suspected dump sites in around New Plymouth. As Marfell Park has proved one if not all the known sites have the potental to contain harmful toxic waste. even the ones tested and deemed save.
Rusty Kane NZ
Rusty Kane NZ
Not Our Mess 2
Why should the New Plymouth ratepayers pay towards the clean-up cost of the Marfell Park toxic dump. Lets not forget that the government were heavily involved in subsidising Dow in the early days to manufacture the chemicals in the first place. So the governments offer of $25.000 and Dow's offer now Dow Agrosciences of $50.000 is just farcical. Dow knew the dangers of their chemicals to humans. Yet still manufactured dioxin based chemicals at their Paritutu New Plymouth plant with NZ Government knowledge for another 10 years after the US Government had stopped its use and manufacturing of it in the USA, because of its known health effects on humans. Dow New Plymouth continued to dump its chemical waste by-products into our municipal dumps landfills and out to sea through our sewers and our waste water systems. So its fair to say the community and the ratepayers of New Plymouth have for decades already paid dearly for this environmental mess many times over with their health and in council repair costs on its chemically damaged sewer and waste water pipes. And are still today paying for the consequences of being exsposed. The New Plymouth community are the victims not the perpetrators. To suggest the community pay more through their rates is a total insult to our community. Who first paid with their taxes in government subsidies to Dow to posion them, and are now asked to pay to clean it up through their rates. At the very least the Nerw Plymouth community deserves a Ministerial government apology, and Dow Agrosciences needs to take ownership of its community responsability and in partnership with the government fully compensate the community for the damage and costs accured from its past chemical manufacturing and known past and present chemical exsposures.
Rusty Kane NP
Rusty Kane NP
Monday, August 10, 2009
WHAT DOW KNEW SURPRISE SURPRISE
ITS COMMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK NOW... DOW KNEW AND COVERED IT UP..
Chemical companies, US authorities knew dangers of Agent Orange
Agent Orange victims march on Le Duan Boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 Sunday to commemorate the first Orange Day in Vietnam.
Those responsible for exposing Vietnamese citizens and US troops to toxic defoliants kept silent about known health implications, a review of documents finds.
US chemical companies that made Agent Orange and the government and military authorities who ordered its spraying on Vietnam knew the human health toll it could take, according to official and unofficial documents detailing the history of the deadly defoliant.
A review of the documents related to the use of Agent Orange – a dioxin-laden herbicide – in Vietnam, including decades-old declassified papers from the companies that manufactured it and the government and military that used it, provides compelling evidence that those in charge also concealed evidence of the devastating effects it could have on people.
Mum’s the word
A declassified letter by V.K. Rowe at Dow’s Biochemical Research Library to Bioproducts Manager Ross Milholland dated June 24, 1965 clearly states that the company knew the dioxin in their products, including Agent Orange, could hurt people.
In reference to 2,4,5,-trichlorophenol and 2,3,7,8, -tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (components of Agent Orange), Rowe stated:
“This material is exceptionally toxic; it has a tremendous potential for producing chloracne and systemic injury.”
Rowe worried the company would suffer if word got out.
“The whole 2,4,5-T industry would be hard hit and I would expect restrictive legislation, either barring the material or putting very rigid controls upon it.”
So he said the company should keep quiet about the toxicity: “There is no reason why we cannot get this problem under strict control and thereby hopefully avoid restrictive legislation ... I trust you will be very judicious in your use of this information. It could be quite embarrassing if it were misinterpreted or misused ... P.S. Under no circumstances may this letter be reproduced, shown, or sent to anyone outside of Dow.”
Dow played its cards right, never getting in serious trouble. The spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam went on for another six years.
Dow did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment on the Agent Orange issue.
‘Undisputed’
In the latest case of US veterans trying to sue Dow and Monsanto for their cancers related to Agent Orange exposure, Supreme Court Documents related to a petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Daniel Raymond Stephenson, et al., petitioners, v. Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto Company, et al., respondents, further implicates the companies in cover-ups and misinformation.
The petitioners state that the companies knew their dioxins, such as those used in Agent Orange, were harmful and lied about it while concealing information, including the fact that several factory workers had fallen sick after exposure to dioxin.
Several key facts “remain undisputed,” according to the document:
“Respondents never shared the information in their sole possession about health risks attributable to dioxin,” it said.
“Respondents used proprietary, defective manufacturing processes that dangerously contaminated 2,4,5- T with dioxin.” That is, the chemical companies could have manufactured their products without dioxin, as other companies had done, but the process was slower and more expensive, so they chose a more dangerous method.
The companies “secretly tested their products for dioxin and hid its extreme toxicity from the military,” according to the petitioners.
The petitioners stated that the companies had been hiding information during the ongoing court process: “Respondents also misrepresent today’s medical understanding of the injuries caused by exposure to dioxin. Instead of telling this Court that the NAS/IOM has found that numerous cancers have been related to exposure to dioxin-contaminated 2,4,5-T (ingredient in Agent Orange) they quote a twenty-year-old Second Circuit opinion to say: ‘Even today, . . . no . . . evidence that Agent Orange was hazardous to human health.’”
The petitioners said the companies had misrepresented the health effects with “patently false” assertions that none of their workers had gotten sick from dioxin poisoning.
Inside job
Though numerous studies have uncontroversially demonstrated the devastating effects of dioxin exposure on humans, the companies that manufactured Agent Orange have gone out of their way to offer their own unique perspective.
Through 2004, Dow and Monsanto funded several friendly studies by Dr. Alvin L. Young to show that the exposure of US ground forces to Agent Orange should be of minimal health concern.
Young’s schizophrenic reports go back and forth from saying that dioxins are not harmful to saying they are harmful and his largely debunked studies have drawn the scorn of prominent members of the scientific community.
“Young is paid by the chemical companies,” Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, a retired senior/advisor at Hatfield Consultants, told Thanh Nien Daily. “I don’t believe a word he says.” Hatfield Consultants is a research leader in the field of contamination from dioxin herbicides in Vietnam.
Not overly concerned
Though reports point to the fact that chemical companies like Dow and Monsanto knowingly hid evidence of dioxin-related medical problems from the government, the declassified 1990 Zumwalt Report suggests that US military experts knew that Agent Orange was harmful at the time of its use.
The report quotes a 1988 letter from Dr. James R. Clary, a former government scientist with the Chemical Weapons Branch, to Senator Tom Daschle. Dr. Clary was involved in designing tanks that sprayed herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, according to the report.
Clary told Daschle:
“When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960’s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the ‘military’ formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the ‘civilian’ version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had, we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.”
Chemical warfare: calling a spade a spade
Supporters of the US’s Agent Orange Campaign prefer to call it an “herbicide program” rather than chemical warfare. But official documents reveal that the US Senate knew its real name.
In US Senate Congressional Records dated August 11, 1969, a table presented to senators showed that congress clearly classified 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (main components of Agent Orange) in the Chemical and Biological Warfare category.
The table also includes Cacodylic Acid, a main component of Agent Blue, another chemical sprayed on Vietnam to kill plants, in the official Chemical and Biological Warfare category. The table describes it as “an arsenic-base compound... heavy concentrations will cause arsenical poisoning in humans. Widely used in Vietnam. It is composed of 54.29 percent arsenic.”
As Vietnam War Scholar and US Veteran W.D. Ehrhart put it concisely in a Thanh Nien Daily interview last week: “It would be hard to describe Agent Orange as anything other than a chemical weapon. Dioxin is a chemical.” So is arsenic.
Chemical companies, US authorities knew dangers of Agent Orange
Agent Orange victims march on Le Duan Boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 Sunday to commemorate the first Orange Day in Vietnam.
Those responsible for exposing Vietnamese citizens and US troops to toxic defoliants kept silent about known health implications, a review of documents finds.
US chemical companies that made Agent Orange and the government and military authorities who ordered its spraying on Vietnam knew the human health toll it could take, according to official and unofficial documents detailing the history of the deadly defoliant.
A review of the documents related to the use of Agent Orange – a dioxin-laden herbicide – in Vietnam, including decades-old declassified papers from the companies that manufactured it and the government and military that used it, provides compelling evidence that those in charge also concealed evidence of the devastating effects it could have on people.
Mum’s the word
A declassified letter by V.K. Rowe at Dow’s Biochemical Research Library to Bioproducts Manager Ross Milholland dated June 24, 1965 clearly states that the company knew the dioxin in their products, including Agent Orange, could hurt people.
In reference to 2,4,5,-trichlorophenol and 2,3,7,8, -tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (components of Agent Orange), Rowe stated:
“This material is exceptionally toxic; it has a tremendous potential for producing chloracne and systemic injury.”
Rowe worried the company would suffer if word got out.
“The whole 2,4,5-T industry would be hard hit and I would expect restrictive legislation, either barring the material or putting very rigid controls upon it.”
So he said the company should keep quiet about the toxicity: “There is no reason why we cannot get this problem under strict control and thereby hopefully avoid restrictive legislation ... I trust you will be very judicious in your use of this information. It could be quite embarrassing if it were misinterpreted or misused ... P.S. Under no circumstances may this letter be reproduced, shown, or sent to anyone outside of Dow.”
Dow played its cards right, never getting in serious trouble. The spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam went on for another six years.
Dow did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment on the Agent Orange issue.
‘Undisputed’
In the latest case of US veterans trying to sue Dow and Monsanto for their cancers related to Agent Orange exposure, Supreme Court Documents related to a petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Daniel Raymond Stephenson, et al., petitioners, v. Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto Company, et al., respondents, further implicates the companies in cover-ups and misinformation.
The petitioners state that the companies knew their dioxins, such as those used in Agent Orange, were harmful and lied about it while concealing information, including the fact that several factory workers had fallen sick after exposure to dioxin.
Several key facts “remain undisputed,” according to the document:
“Respondents never shared the information in their sole possession about health risks attributable to dioxin,” it said.
“Respondents used proprietary, defective manufacturing processes that dangerously contaminated 2,4,5- T with dioxin.” That is, the chemical companies could have manufactured their products without dioxin, as other companies had done, but the process was slower and more expensive, so they chose a more dangerous method.
The companies “secretly tested their products for dioxin and hid its extreme toxicity from the military,” according to the petitioners.
The petitioners stated that the companies had been hiding information during the ongoing court process: “Respondents also misrepresent today’s medical understanding of the injuries caused by exposure to dioxin. Instead of telling this Court that the NAS/IOM has found that numerous cancers have been related to exposure to dioxin-contaminated 2,4,5-T (ingredient in Agent Orange) they quote a twenty-year-old Second Circuit opinion to say: ‘Even today, . . . no . . . evidence that Agent Orange was hazardous to human health.’”
The petitioners said the companies had misrepresented the health effects with “patently false” assertions that none of their workers had gotten sick from dioxin poisoning.
Inside job
Though numerous studies have uncontroversially demonstrated the devastating effects of dioxin exposure on humans, the companies that manufactured Agent Orange have gone out of their way to offer their own unique perspective.
Through 2004, Dow and Monsanto funded several friendly studies by Dr. Alvin L. Young to show that the exposure of US ground forces to Agent Orange should be of minimal health concern.
Young’s schizophrenic reports go back and forth from saying that dioxins are not harmful to saying they are harmful and his largely debunked studies have drawn the scorn of prominent members of the scientific community.
“Young is paid by the chemical companies,” Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, a retired senior/advisor at Hatfield Consultants, told Thanh Nien Daily. “I don’t believe a word he says.” Hatfield Consultants is a research leader in the field of contamination from dioxin herbicides in Vietnam.
Not overly concerned
Though reports point to the fact that chemical companies like Dow and Monsanto knowingly hid evidence of dioxin-related medical problems from the government, the declassified 1990 Zumwalt Report suggests that US military experts knew that Agent Orange was harmful at the time of its use.
The report quotes a 1988 letter from Dr. James R. Clary, a former government scientist with the Chemical Weapons Branch, to Senator Tom Daschle. Dr. Clary was involved in designing tanks that sprayed herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, according to the report.
Clary told Daschle:
“When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960’s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the ‘military’ formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the ‘civilian’ version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had, we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.”
Chemical warfare: calling a spade a spade
Supporters of the US’s Agent Orange Campaign prefer to call it an “herbicide program” rather than chemical warfare. But official documents reveal that the US Senate knew its real name.
In US Senate Congressional Records dated August 11, 1969, a table presented to senators showed that congress clearly classified 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (main components of Agent Orange) in the Chemical and Biological Warfare category.
The table also includes Cacodylic Acid, a main component of Agent Blue, another chemical sprayed on Vietnam to kill plants, in the official Chemical and Biological Warfare category. The table describes it as “an arsenic-base compound... heavy concentrations will cause arsenical poisoning in humans. Widely used in Vietnam. It is composed of 54.29 percent arsenic.”
As Vietnam War Scholar and US Veteran W.D. Ehrhart put it concisely in a Thanh Nien Daily interview last week: “It would be hard to describe Agent Orange as anything other than a chemical weapon. Dioxin is a chemical.” So is arsenic.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Not Our Mess..
Not our mess.
It is great to see local National MP Jonathan Young and Nick Smith get stuck in to the debate on Marfell Park chemical clean-up. And for their Governments pleadge to give financial support to assist with the clean-up and ensure that the Marfell dioxin contaminated ex-dump and playground be made safe. But to suggest that ratepayers should help pay towards the clean-up is just ridiculous. Lets not forget that the government were heavily involved in subsidising Dow in the early days to manufacture the chemicals in the first place. So the governments offer of $25.000 and Dow's offer now Dow Agrosciences of $50.000 is just farcical. Dow knew the dangers of their chemicals to humans. Yet still manufactured dioxin based chemicals at their Paritutu New Plymouth plant with NZ Government knowledge for another 10 years after the US Government had stopped its use and manufacturing of it in the USA, because of its known health effects on humans. Dow New Plymouth continued to dump its chemical waste by-products into our municipal dumps landfills and out to sea through our sewers and our waste water systems. So its fair to say the community and the ratepayers of New Plymouth have for decades already paid dearly for this environmental mess many times over with their health and in council repair costs on its chemically damaged sewer and waste water pipes. And are still today paying for the consequences of being exsposed. The New Plymouth community are the victims not the perpetrators. To suggest the community pay more through their rates is a total insult to our community. Who first paid with their taxes in government subsidies to Dow to posion them, and are now asked to pay to clean it up through their rates. At the very least the Nerw Plymouth community deserves a Ministerial government apology, and Dow Agrosciences needs to take ownership of its community responsability and in partnership with the government fully compensate the community for the damage and costs accured from its past chemical manufacturing and known past and present chemical exsposures.
Rusty Kane
New Plymouth
New Zealand
It is great to see local National MP Jonathan Young and Nick Smith get stuck in to the debate on Marfell Park chemical clean-up. And for their Governments pleadge to give financial support to assist with the clean-up and ensure that the Marfell dioxin contaminated ex-dump and playground be made safe. But to suggest that ratepayers should help pay towards the clean-up is just ridiculous. Lets not forget that the government were heavily involved in subsidising Dow in the early days to manufacture the chemicals in the first place. So the governments offer of $25.000 and Dow's offer now Dow Agrosciences of $50.000 is just farcical. Dow knew the dangers of their chemicals to humans. Yet still manufactured dioxin based chemicals at their Paritutu New Plymouth plant with NZ Government knowledge for another 10 years after the US Government had stopped its use and manufacturing of it in the USA, because of its known health effects on humans. Dow New Plymouth continued to dump its chemical waste by-products into our municipal dumps landfills and out to sea through our sewers and our waste water systems. So its fair to say the community and the ratepayers of New Plymouth have for decades already paid dearly for this environmental mess many times over with their health and in council repair costs on its chemically damaged sewer and waste water pipes. And are still today paying for the consequences of being exsposed. The New Plymouth community are the victims not the perpetrators. To suggest the community pay more through their rates is a total insult to our community. Who first paid with their taxes in government subsidies to Dow to posion them, and are now asked to pay to clean it up through their rates. At the very least the Nerw Plymouth community deserves a Ministerial government apology, and Dow Agrosciences needs to take ownership of its community responsability and in partnership with the government fully compensate the community for the damage and costs accured from its past chemical manufacturing and known past and present chemical exsposures.
Rusty Kane
New Plymouth
New Zealand
Ratepayers landed with clean-up bill
Ratepayers landed with clean-up bill Taranaki Daily News 15/07/2009
New Plymouth district ratepayers will be left with the bulk of the bill for the Marfell Park chemical clean-up despite a Government payout.
Environment Minister Nick Smith said yesterday nearly $25,000 would be made available from the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund for further testing at the site.
The investigation comes after drums containing dioxin were uncovered at the park in May by stormwater workers, sparking concern from nearby residents.
Dioxin was a by-product of chemicals manufactured by the Ivon Watkins-Dow company from the early 1960s until 1987. Dow AgroSciences last month donated $50,000 to the New Plymouth District Council for the clean-up.
However, the Taranaki Daily News understand the total bill for the clean-up, to be paid by the district council as landowner of the park, will be closer to $180,000.
Dr Smith yesterday visited the park with New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young and Taranaki Regional Council representatives.
He said that the Government was paying for the cost of the consultants to design the testing programme that began on Monday.
"We are recognising that Taranaki does have a particular problem in this area, but at this stage the level of funding that's required is not out of order for what the regional council and New Plymouth District Council can be expected to contribute," Dr Smith said.
"Marfell Park came out of left field, it was a bit of a nasty surprise ... but the community need a reassurance that this site and this playground area is safe."
That assurance should be provided with the result of the tests due out by the end of August, Dr Smith said.
The Marfell incident had shown up a weakness in Government policy over who should foot the bill for contaminated sites, the minister said.
"The problem here is that it seems Dow or its predecessor acted quite lawfully in that there was no restrictions on what could be dumped in the old landfill."
It was difficult to ping companies who acted lawfully, Dr Smith said, however the Government was looking into the issue.
Dr Smith did not think there was grounds to investigate other former dumps in the area unless new information of concern came to light.
"I don't think there is much more that the city and regional council can do beyond keeping a watching brief ... at the moment it's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack."
New Plymouth district ratepayers will be left with the bulk of the bill for the Marfell Park chemical clean-up despite a Government payout.
Environment Minister Nick Smith said yesterday nearly $25,000 would be made available from the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund for further testing at the site.
The investigation comes after drums containing dioxin were uncovered at the park in May by stormwater workers, sparking concern from nearby residents.
Dioxin was a by-product of chemicals manufactured by the Ivon Watkins-Dow company from the early 1960s until 1987. Dow AgroSciences last month donated $50,000 to the New Plymouth District Council for the clean-up.
However, the Taranaki Daily News understand the total bill for the clean-up, to be paid by the district council as landowner of the park, will be closer to $180,000.
Dr Smith yesterday visited the park with New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young and Taranaki Regional Council representatives.
He said that the Government was paying for the cost of the consultants to design the testing programme that began on Monday.
"We are recognising that Taranaki does have a particular problem in this area, but at this stage the level of funding that's required is not out of order for what the regional council and New Plymouth District Council can be expected to contribute," Dr Smith said.
"Marfell Park came out of left field, it was a bit of a nasty surprise ... but the community need a reassurance that this site and this playground area is safe."
That assurance should be provided with the result of the tests due out by the end of August, Dr Smith said.
The Marfell incident had shown up a weakness in Government policy over who should foot the bill for contaminated sites, the minister said.
"The problem here is that it seems Dow or its predecessor acted quite lawfully in that there was no restrictions on what could be dumped in the old landfill."
It was difficult to ping companies who acted lawfully, Dr Smith said, however the Government was looking into the issue.
Dr Smith did not think there was grounds to investigate other former dumps in the area unless new information of concern came to light.
"I don't think there is much more that the city and regional council can do beyond keeping a watching brief ... at the moment it's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Monday, June 29, 2009
Green Party Press Release..
Marfell Park remains open despite dangers
Monday, 29 June 2009, 9:37 am
Press Release: Green Party
Marfell Park remains open despite dangers
27 June 2009
Marfell Park remains open despite dangers
New Plymouth's Marfell Park remains open to the public and without warning signs despite test results made public this week indicating the likelihood of widespread toxic contamination.
"Protecting our children from any further risk of exposure to the toxic chemicals in Marfell Park should be the top priority," said Green Party Toxics Spokesperson Catherine Delahunty.
"Amazingly, not only is the Park still open to the public, but there are not even signs warning of the risks.
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"The Park must be closed to the public and fenced off immediately - a wait-and-see approach is just too dangerous."
Council testing of soil from Marfell Park detected a range of chemicals, not just the three chemicals initially identified and associated with the recovered drums.
"The evidence points to more widespread contamination than initially reported," said Ms Delahunty.
"Despite overwhelming public concern and many meetings of Councils and the District Health Board, the Park remains open to unsuspecting families," said Ms Delahunty.
The only fence is one erected to prevent children playing on the stock-pile of clean soil that will be used to recover the playground.
"Even the most simple and common-sense protection measure of putting up warning signs has not occurred.
"I urge the Council to adopt a safety-first approach until further testing is done to identify the scale of the contamination. It's much better to be safe than sorry."
While the additional chemicals identified are within acceptable levels in soil, they are unlikely to be associated with the recovered drums, pointing to other sources of contamination from the dump under the Park, Ms Delahunty said.
Two weeks ago, the Taranaki Regional Council notified positive tests for three chemicals containing dioxin. The tests showed levels that are some of the highest ever found.
The soil analysis, released to the public this week, showed levels of chlordane, dieldrin, pentachlorophenol, fenchlorophos and indicators of DDT.
"Most of these chemicals are now banned due to their extreme toxicity, and some are members of the notorious "dirty dozen" club of lethal chemicals," Ms Delahunty said.
Monday, 29 June 2009, 9:37 am
Press Release: Green Party
Marfell Park remains open despite dangers
27 June 2009
Marfell Park remains open despite dangers
New Plymouth's Marfell Park remains open to the public and without warning signs despite test results made public this week indicating the likelihood of widespread toxic contamination.
"Protecting our children from any further risk of exposure to the toxic chemicals in Marfell Park should be the top priority," said Green Party Toxics Spokesperson Catherine Delahunty.
"Amazingly, not only is the Park still open to the public, but there are not even signs warning of the risks.
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"The Park must be closed to the public and fenced off immediately - a wait-and-see approach is just too dangerous."
Council testing of soil from Marfell Park detected a range of chemicals, not just the three chemicals initially identified and associated with the recovered drums.
"The evidence points to more widespread contamination than initially reported," said Ms Delahunty.
"Despite overwhelming public concern and many meetings of Councils and the District Health Board, the Park remains open to unsuspecting families," said Ms Delahunty.
The only fence is one erected to prevent children playing on the stock-pile of clean soil that will be used to recover the playground.
"Even the most simple and common-sense protection measure of putting up warning signs has not occurred.
"I urge the Council to adopt a safety-first approach until further testing is done to identify the scale of the contamination. It's much better to be safe than sorry."
While the additional chemicals identified are within acceptable levels in soil, they are unlikely to be associated with the recovered drums, pointing to other sources of contamination from the dump under the Park, Ms Delahunty said.
Two weeks ago, the Taranaki Regional Council notified positive tests for three chemicals containing dioxin. The tests showed levels that are some of the highest ever found.
The soil analysis, released to the public this week, showed levels of chlordane, dieldrin, pentachlorophenol, fenchlorophos and indicators of DDT.
"Most of these chemicals are now banned due to their extreme toxicity, and some are members of the notorious "dirty dozen" club of lethal chemicals," Ms Delahunty said.
Greens demand closure of Marfell Park.
Greens demand closure of park ... TDN 30/06/09
Marfell Park must be closed immediately to ensure the safety of the community, says the Green Party's spokesperson, Catherine Delahunty.
"The park must be closed to the public and fenced off immediately.
"A wait-and-see approach is just too dangerous," Ms Delahunty said.
The call is in response to the find by New Plymouth District Council contractors in May of drums containing toxic chemicals, including dioxin, were uncovered during the excavation of a stormwater trench.
However, the Taranaki Regional Council yesterday continued to reassure residents that there was now no health risk after both the drums containing toxic chemicals and the soil surrounding them were removed.
That stance is supported by independent contaminants consultant Graeme Proffitt, who has been brought in by the TRC to deal with the contentious incident.
Following behind-door community consultation last week, Dr Proffitt's report on what should happen now with the park is due to be released next Monday.
But Ms Delahunty urged the council to adopt a safety-first approach until further testing was done to identify the scale of the contamination.
To date, testing of soil from the park had detected a range of chemicals, not just the three initially identified and associated with the recovered drums, she said.
"The evidence points to more widespread contamination than initially reported," she said.
The soil analysis released last week showed levels of chlordane, dieldrin, pentachlorophenol, fenchlorophos and indicators of DDT.
"Most of these chemicals are now banned due to their extreme toxicity and some are members of the notorious `dirty dozen' club of lethal chemicals," Ms Delahunty said.
While a fence had now been erect to prevent children playing on the stockpile of clean soil to be used to re-cover the playground, there should be warning signs.
"Despite overwhelming public concern and many meetings of councils and the [Taranaki] District Health Board, the park remains open to unsuspecting families.
"Even the most simple and commonsense protection measure of putting up warning signs has not occurred."
TRC environment director Gary Bedford responded that the area was safe for the public to use. All relevant information on the find and the clean-up could be found on the TRC website, he said.
"The information we have provided addresses why we have acted in the way that we have."
Last week, after the Taranaki District Health Board was briefed by the TRC, the board's principal health protection officer, David de Jager, said that the TDHB was happy with the action being taken by the TRC.
The 16 questionnaires returned last week following a letter drop to about 230 homes in the Marfell area had expressed genuine interest and concern, Mr Bedford said.Dr Proffitt's brief was to engage with the community and come up with a site assessment and investigation plan that could provide answers for the community, Mr Bedford said.
"The basic question is whether the park is safe for neighbours and residents."
Dr Proffitt's report would be publicly released next Monday after it was put past both key agencies and community representatives "to make sure we have got it right", Mr Bedford said.
Marfell Park must be closed immediately to ensure the safety of the community, says the Green Party's spokesperson, Catherine Delahunty.
"The park must be closed to the public and fenced off immediately.
"A wait-and-see approach is just too dangerous," Ms Delahunty said.
The call is in response to the find by New Plymouth District Council contractors in May of drums containing toxic chemicals, including dioxin, were uncovered during the excavation of a stormwater trench.
However, the Taranaki Regional Council yesterday continued to reassure residents that there was now no health risk after both the drums containing toxic chemicals and the soil surrounding them were removed.
That stance is supported by independent contaminants consultant Graeme Proffitt, who has been brought in by the TRC to deal with the contentious incident.
Following behind-door community consultation last week, Dr Proffitt's report on what should happen now with the park is due to be released next Monday.
But Ms Delahunty urged the council to adopt a safety-first approach until further testing was done to identify the scale of the contamination.
To date, testing of soil from the park had detected a range of chemicals, not just the three initially identified and associated with the recovered drums, she said.
"The evidence points to more widespread contamination than initially reported," she said.
The soil analysis released last week showed levels of chlordane, dieldrin, pentachlorophenol, fenchlorophos and indicators of DDT.
"Most of these chemicals are now banned due to their extreme toxicity and some are members of the notorious `dirty dozen' club of lethal chemicals," Ms Delahunty said.
While a fence had now been erect to prevent children playing on the stockpile of clean soil to be used to re-cover the playground, there should be warning signs.
"Despite overwhelming public concern and many meetings of councils and the [Taranaki] District Health Board, the park remains open to unsuspecting families.
"Even the most simple and commonsense protection measure of putting up warning signs has not occurred."
TRC environment director Gary Bedford responded that the area was safe for the public to use. All relevant information on the find and the clean-up could be found on the TRC website, he said.
"The information we have provided addresses why we have acted in the way that we have."
Last week, after the Taranaki District Health Board was briefed by the TRC, the board's principal health protection officer, David de Jager, said that the TDHB was happy with the action being taken by the TRC.
The 16 questionnaires returned last week following a letter drop to about 230 homes in the Marfell area had expressed genuine interest and concern, Mr Bedford said.Dr Proffitt's brief was to engage with the community and come up with a site assessment and investigation plan that could provide answers for the community, Mr Bedford said.
"The basic question is whether the park is safe for neighbours and residents."
Dr Proffitt's report would be publicly released next Monday after it was put past both key agencies and community representatives "to make sure we have got it right", Mr Bedford said.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Childrens Playground Finally Fenced off.
Local authorities finally fence off Marfell Park toxic dump site.
Taranaki Regional Council has advised the New Plymouth District Council that the area is still a workplace and must be secured, Large holes remain in the ground.
Residents believe the regional authority initially concealed the extent of the toxic chemicals found at the site of a children's play ground. And say the contaminated area should have been fenced off weeks ago when the contaminated drums were found.
Taranaki Regional Council is now finally doing a investigation plan with authorities and community leaders for the New Plymouth park where contaminated drums were found.
Remnants of nine drums containing organophosphate insecticide and dioxin from the old New Plymouth Paritutu IWD chemical plant now Dow Agrosciences were unearthed last month at Marfell Park, which used to be a city dump.
Testing detected contaminants at a level that campaigners say is the highest ever found in New Zealand.
Regional council spokesperson Gary Bedford says investigations will involve sampling to look for any evidence that toxins remain, and the plan should be ready in about a week.
Taranaki Regional Council has advised the New Plymouth District Council that the area is still a workplace and must be secured, Large holes remain in the ground.
Residents believe the regional authority initially concealed the extent of the toxic chemicals found at the site of a children's play ground. And say the contaminated area should have been fenced off weeks ago when the contaminated drums were found.
Taranaki Regional Council is now finally doing a investigation plan with authorities and community leaders for the New Plymouth park where contaminated drums were found.
Remnants of nine drums containing organophosphate insecticide and dioxin from the old New Plymouth Paritutu IWD chemical plant now Dow Agrosciences were unearthed last month at Marfell Park, which used to be a city dump.
Testing detected contaminants at a level that campaigners say is the highest ever found in New Zealand.
Regional council spokesperson Gary Bedford says investigations will involve sampling to look for any evidence that toxins remain, and the plan should be ready in about a week.
Taranaki Regional Council said...
The Latest on Marfell Park
More toxic chemicals than officials previously admitted were unearthed in a New Plymouth playground last month.
Earthworks uncovered the remnants of nine drums in Marfell Park.
The Taranaki Regional Council said it found dioxin in two of the six samples tested.
But the full results, which have still not been issued by the council, show all six samples contain dioxin and four are contaminated with organophosphate insecticide.
The council says it focused on the worst dioxin contamination and none of the chemicals pose a current risk.
But dioxin campaigner Andrew Gibbs says officials keep trying to hide the extent of the problem.
More toxic chemicals than officials previously admitted were unearthed in a New Plymouth playground last month.
Earthworks uncovered the remnants of nine drums in Marfell Park.
The Taranaki Regional Council said it found dioxin in two of the six samples tested.
But the full results, which have still not been issued by the council, show all six samples contain dioxin and four are contaminated with organophosphate insecticide.
The council says it focused on the worst dioxin contamination and none of the chemicals pose a current risk.
But dioxin campaigner Andrew Gibbs says officials keep trying to hide the extent of the problem.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Dam Disgrace..
Thje People's Choice Party Press Release 10/06/2009
Rusty Kane Party Leader and Mt Albert Candidate.
Its a dam disgrace..
Taranaki Regional Council environmental quality officer Gary Bedford comment saying the drums of toxic chemicals uncovered at the children's playground at Marfell Park New Plymouth were not a health risk. When the dioxin by product contained in them is the most toxic chemical known to man. Is deplorable. These same blasé comments from him and other community leaders in the past have never been helpful to those who have been effected and have taken their issues of the whole Paritutu IWD chemical dumping and exposure seriously. Taking their complaints to these very people who are entrusted to protect public health to no avail. Those “Shel be right” it didn't happen, its in the past, get over it comments from officials have for years denied those effected from being taken seriously in the community and getting proper medical care for their illnesses. Now lets get this straight the dumping of chemicals from the old IWD plant did happen in many places around New Plymouth and Taranaki at that time and yes many New Plymouth residents were exposed to air blown chemical partials in and around the area of the old IWD chemical plant now Dow Agrow Sciences plant at Paritutu. The Government Dow and local authorities have known this for years, have denied it and to date still have not apologised or compensated those effected. And for those who still boo hoo these comments, get on your search engines and type in Dioxin. And you will find we are not alone the Dow Corporation is and has polluted many countries land rivers and streams with their chemical by products.
"The People's Choice Party"
PO Box 41002, St Lukes, Auckland 1346 topps@kol.co.nz
Contact: Rusty Kane
Phone: 06-758 7688
Postal address: PO Box 5111, New Plymouth 4343
Email: rusty.kane@gmail.com
Rusty Kane Party Leader and Mt Albert Candidate.
Its a dam disgrace..
Taranaki Regional Council environmental quality officer Gary Bedford comment saying the drums of toxic chemicals uncovered at the children's playground at Marfell Park New Plymouth were not a health risk. When the dioxin by product contained in them is the most toxic chemical known to man. Is deplorable. These same blasé comments from him and other community leaders in the past have never been helpful to those who have been effected and have taken their issues of the whole Paritutu IWD chemical dumping and exposure seriously. Taking their complaints to these very people who are entrusted to protect public health to no avail. Those “Shel be right” it didn't happen, its in the past, get over it comments from officials have for years denied those effected from being taken seriously in the community and getting proper medical care for their illnesses. Now lets get this straight the dumping of chemicals from the old IWD plant did happen in many places around New Plymouth and Taranaki at that time and yes many New Plymouth residents were exposed to air blown chemical partials in and around the area of the old IWD chemical plant now Dow Agrow Sciences plant at Paritutu. The Government Dow and local authorities have known this for years, have denied it and to date still have not apologised or compensated those effected. And for those who still boo hoo these comments, get on your search engines and type in Dioxin. And you will find we are not alone the Dow Corporation is and has polluted many countries land rivers and streams with their chemical by products.
"The People's Choice Party"
PO Box 41002, St Lukes, Auckland 1346 topps@kol.co.nz
Contact: Rusty Kane
Phone: 06-758 7688
Postal address: PO Box 5111, New Plymouth 4343
Email: rusty.kane@gmail.com
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