The Precautionary Principle – does it operate in Tasmania?

The Tasmanian community was looking for reassurance from the Tasmanian River Catchment Water Quality Initiative1(TRCWQI) that the way pesticides are being used and their off-target migration is acceptable in the light of continuing international scientific findings of adverse effects especially to human health e.g. obesity, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, hormonally related diseases, Parkinson’s disease, and cancers.

Tasmania’s use of phenoxyacetic acid herbicides – MCPA and 2,4-D – and their detection in the DPIW quarterly monitoring program2 (Pesticide monitoring in water catchments) highlights the need to use a precautionary approach to pesticide and other chemicals in Tasmania’s drinking water catchments.

The DPIW pesticide monitoring in water catchments spreadsheet summary summarizes cumulative pesticide detection data from January 2005 to February 2011.3

The endocrine disruptors – simazine and atrazine – are also commonly used herbicides found in raw river water by the monitoring programme. Both herbicides have longer half lives, in the cooler Tasmanian climate, compared to other States. The APVMA recognises their presence in Australian waters as ‘ubiquitous’.

Only 4 of the Tasmania’s 33 catchments do not have plantations and plantation acreages are increasing rapidly (TRCWQI, Report 1). The need to very carefully examine the use of aerial spraying of pesticides, particularly all the endocrine disruptors and persistent organic pollutants 4 in Tasmania, is of great importance, especially with the comment from Forestry Tasmania (TRCWQI, Report 3):
“All instances of detections (of pesticides) are associated with aerial operations. There has been no reason determined as to why this occurs.” 1

The need to protect water catchments from all chemicals which may have a detrimental effect in the ecosystem is of paramount importance.

Currently an open dialogue regarding the phasing out of chemicals capable of inducing and modifying disease is not occurring in Australia. The national regulator responsible for registration of these chemicals is ultimately responsible. In my view this failure to critically assess the mounting scientific evidence goes against all principles of preventative (precautionary) approaches to human and environmental health, let alone social justice.

Yet again, the problems encountered with loopholes in rules and regulations and the difficulty in implementing preventative measures seem at times insurmountable due to the approach taken by the regulators and their obvious difficulty in dealing with complex, ‘real time’ situations.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s top scientist says today’s environmental problems require a “seismic shift” in the way EPA works. Paul Anastas wants to put the principles of sustainability at the center of EPA science, instead of more narrowly focused on “how much harm can people and nature tolerate,” as is done now.5 Australian regulators need to take this same “seismic shift” and ensure that chemicals are safe before they are allowed to be used.

As Pete Myers, the author of Our Stolen Future succinctly states6: “Current regulatory practices give chemical manufacturers the benefit of the doubt. Substances can be removed from the market only if their health impacts can be demonstrated with scientific certainty. This burden of proof needs to be shifted. If plausible doubt can be justified about the safety of chemical compounds, their use should be allowed only if the manufacturer can prove they represent no inappropriate threat to human or ecosystem health. This is especially important for endocrine disrupting chemicals because increasingly it appears that aspects of their modes of action make it very difficult for epidemiological science to demonstrate causality with certainty. On the contrary, epidemiological studies of endocrine disruption in humans are biased toward finding false negatives.”

The Break O’Day Catchment Risk Group has submitted to the 2005 Review of Code of Practice of Aerial Spraying; this review has yet to be completed.

In 2011, spraying of pesticides in drinking water catchments continues unabated with no changes made to pesticide use or application.

It is surely time to address these issues.

1 http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/SSKA-7JA425?open
2 http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/CART-69STWK?open
3 http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/summary-of-tas-dpiw-pesticide-river-monitoring-program/show_comments/
4 http://endocrinedisruption.com/ http://ntn.org.au/2006/11/15/pesticides/
5 http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=11-P13-00008&segmentID=3
6 http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/corerecs.htm

Downoad summary: 3-11_Pesticides__-DPIW-Tas_Rivers_Alison_Bleaney(2).xls

Dr Alison Bleaney
Break O’Day Catchment Risk Group
Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pollution_Information_Tasmania
3 March 2011