Dr David Obendorf
In my experience the resource hungry (nay, starved to emaciation & weakness) phalanxes of State Government responsible for environmental monitoring have not been encouraged by their political gatekeepers (i.e. the Ministers of the day) to be proactive or anticipatory in relation to new & emerging threats to the sustainability or well being of these vulnerable marine and land-based resource industries. The long-held process is to wait for the diseases or the toxic ‘shit’ to hit the public fan and then go into damage & media control.
If only, if only, we just had a few courageous investigative researchers and journalists plus some public servants who would speak out about the self-censorship of science that is systemic in this Sate.
If you are stimulated to write to the Minister responsible, I anticipate that David L will say all this ecotoxicology monitoring is either an specific Industry or a Commonwealth responsibility and will direct your concerns elsewhere. But in essence what he’s really saying is he (and the Government) don’t want to know whether or how we have contaminated Tasmania’s ecologies, its animals, its soils, its water and its people. Regrettably for these elected elites, keeping the populace ignorant is political bliss!
Dr Alison Bleaney
Australia’s limited testing in 2004 of PBDE concentrations in humans (pooled breast milk to give a national concentration of chemical) put us below US and above EU in the scale of contamination.
This article from Canada is really of concern, as it will affect our kids and grandkids.
Surely we must start getting a handle on what the actual level of pollution is around us and attempt to determine what impact this has. Only then can we decide whether it is reasonable to continue to voluntarily add to this. Is this not ‘sound science’?
