Frank Nicklason
Dr Bleaney’s recently published chemical audit of St Helens’ water supply can no longer be ignored.
THE letter (Mercury 15/5) by St Helens GP Alison Bleaney relating the pesticide spray drift onto the George River, ( TT: George River pesticide spray )and therefore into her communities’ water supply, must be heeded and then acted on by our public health authorities.
(The pesticides were being used to support the establishment of a broadacre pulpwood plantation at Priory near St Helens).
Professor Paul Winchester (clinical paediatrics) of the Indiana School of Medicine in the US. recently reported a strong association between increased pesticide levels and pre-term birth. He presented his research findings at the annual scientific meeting of the Paediatrics Academic Societies’.
At the corresponding meeting last year Professor Winchester had revealed an association betweeen pesticide use and birth defects.
Pesticides are known to cause endocrine disruption and can distort the sexual development of the foetus.
Summing up his work, Professor Winchester stated “As a neonatologist I am seeing a growing number of birth defects and preterm births and I think we have to face up to the environmental causes.”
Pesticides are used in Australia with, if anything, looser controls than in the U.S.A.
The 1994 Australian Drinking Water guidelines state that ‘if pesticides are detected in a drinking water supply, then remedial action should be taken’.
Although associations do not prove causality, in this case the health of the unborn is at stake and we must be guided by the precautionary principle.
Dr Bleaney’s recently published chemical audit of St Helens’ water supply can no longer be ignored.
Dr Frank Nicklason
West Hobart
