The truth-telling of Alison Bleaney …

The Australian
WHEN fisheries veterinarian Matthew Landos got his first look at the double-headed fish embryos in a Queensland hatchery, he had no idea he would soon team up with a Tasmanian doctor worried that the widespread use of agricultural and forestry chemicals was making her patients sick.

“In hindsight it makes perfect sense. If exposure to agricultural chemicals could cause deformed and dying fish, as the evidence suggests, of course the chemicals had the potential to trigger serious health problems with other animals, including people,” says Landos, who runs a consulting practice called Future Fisheries Veterinary Services and is a research associate and honorary lecturer with the University of Sydney. Read more here
And: Triazine herbicides linger for twice as long as experts expected

Dr Frank Nicklason …
Matthew Denholm’s article (above) in the Weekend Australian (April 11-12) quotes Tasmania’s Director of Public Health Dr Roscoe Taylor’s statement that “the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Chemicals Authority (APVMA, formerly the National Regulatory Authority) should rethink it’s stance that triazines are not capable of disrupting human endocrine systems”.

Triazines are extensively used in Australia in establishing tree plantations and in some broadacre agriculure.

Dr Taylor is right.

The APVMA was presented evidence by the world authority on the subject, Professor (of Integrative Biology) Tyrone Hayes from the University of California, when he visited Australia in 2007.

Professor Hayes visited Tasmania again in March 2009 and presented, to a audience of senior clinicians and public health specialists at the Royal Hobart Hospital, compelling scientific evidence of the harmful effects of Atrazine (and other triazine herbicides) on animal and human reproductive health, through induction of the enzyme aromatase, which effectively causes chemical castration.

Professor Hayes also presented epidemiological studies which suggest Atrazine had a role in inducing breast and prostate cancer in exposed populations.

Dr Frank Nicklason (Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians)
West Hobart,
Tasmania 7000

PS: A DVD of Professor Hayes’ presentation is currently being edited.