Tim Poupore | Apr 18, 2018


Our Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Paula Stewart, has recently said her role is to educate municipalities on the possible human health risk of spraying Dow Chemical’s Clearview poison to manage Wild Parsnip. I think she has it backwards.

If there is risk in a vegetable she should start there. She should be able to quantify the risk and give us a range of options to protect ourselves. Unfortunately there is no documentation on the impact of parsnip because Health Units and hospitals keeps no such records. She needs to push for better record keeping so we can respond to reality, not anecdotes.

In her presentation to Councillors she says that parsnip burns can be easily avoided by washing after contact with the sap, but how are residents supposed to find that out? We need better instruction from her on best practices to keep ourselves safe.

She says the risk in spraying Clearview is minimal because there’s no research evidence that it’s harmful. What she neglects to mention is that while Dow claims Clearview’s two active ingredients are safe, the mixture itself has never been tested. What has been tested is the adjuvant Gateway which Dow does warn is highly toxic and possibly carcinogenic. Gateway is added to Clearview before spraying, but this cocktail hasn’t been tested either, not by Dow, the PMRA, Health Canada or Dr. Stewart. You know what else they haven’t tested? My well. Somehow all this lack of testing means it must be safe to spray.

Dr. Stewart abdicates responsibility by saying she’s only acting on what she’s told. She washes her own hands while relying on Councillors to tell us to wash ours. We deserve, and demand, better.

 

Tim Poupore

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