My name is Bill Hawthorne, and I represent maacenter.org, a leading web resource for asbestos exposure and mesothelioma cancer information. Our organization is dedicated to increasing awareness of the terrible health consequences of asbestos exposure through the distribution of the best informational materials and public outreach efforts.

I found your site through a search and decided to contact you because of its high environmental and green agricultural presence which is extremely important in our movement. Your viewers are extremely savvy and motivated. The promotion of how buildings should now be built using sustainable green products to avoid asbestos and mesothelioma as well as the awareness of past buildings and preventative steps in avoiding asbestos exposure are extremely important. My goal is to get a resource link on your site/blog or even to provide a guest posting to be placed.

I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to check out our website. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Bill Hawthorne
bhawthorne@maacenter.org
MAA Center is now on Twitter – follow us @maacenter

Cheers,
Jennifer

K. Jean Cottam’s passion is to be admired. I’ve seen her several times in the Guelph Mercury letters section, but I’ve never met her. I hope I do someday. I googled her, and found lots of references to letter-writing activity on pesticides, along with a blog entry from horticultural writer Art Drysdale noting she identifies herself as a PhD, but doesn’t say what she studied. A quick search turned up a back cover of a book jacket called Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers that says author Kazimiera Janina Cottam is an expert military translator and writer, a PhD in history from the University of Toronto. Not sure if it’s the same person.

I also googled international environmental consultant Dean M. Stanbridge of Milton, but all I could find was a reference to him being a technical consultant to a magazine called Pest Management Professional. Maybe we’ll hear more from him regarding his international activity. Environmental consultants in Ontario are bound to be a hot commodity this spring, with the new pesticide ban.

In any event, citizen journalism exercises such as yours are supposed to give citizens the opportunity to exchange views. You’ve done so. Congratulations.

What kind of “science” are we talking about? The kind of science that exonerates every pesticide–the kind of science that amounts to nothing more than a primitive, self-interested religion! As to Dean M. Stanbridge of Milton, obviously with strong ties to the chemical industry, it is not surprising that he took a strong exception to the Ontario ban. It speaks volumes–not in his favour–that he was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Bush. I happen to be honorary Canadian observer on the Pesticide Working Group based in Washington, D.C. and do know that under Bush it were politicians who called the shots at the EPA, rather than scientists. The EPA was altogether too friendly with the industry at that time, similarly to the predicament of Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency today. How dare the attackers of independent science call it hearsay and rhetoric. It is up to members of this industry to smarten up, adjust and prosper! To say that public health in Ontario will deteriorate because of the ban is to perversely call white “black”. The vast majority of the so-called “traditional” pesticides didn’t exist prior to WWII when lawns were maintained in an appropriate condition using non-toxic methods of lawn maintenance on the basis of healthy soil, currently neglected. The doomsday scenario presented by spokesmen for the industry has no basis in fact and previous experience.

Interestingly enough, Jason Flint, the author of the recent letter from Health Canada’s PMRA to Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, is former General Manager, the Industrial Biotechnogy Association of Canada (IBAC), which illustrates the “cosy” relationship between Health Canada and the industry, with senior employees “commuting” between federal government and industry.

The Ontario ban has nothing to do with political correctness, but everything to do with the Ontario government being compelled to step into the regulatory void at the federal level, in order to protects Ontario citizens against unwarranted cancer risk, endocrine disruption, neurological disorders, neurodevelopment problems and damage to immune and reproductive systems linked to the unnecessary exposures to pesticides.

What is this supposedly science-based regulation that is being promoted? This is nothing but making the interests of the industry paramount regardless of their impact on public health in Ontario, especially the health of young children whose life expectancy due to their unnecessary toxic exposures is estimated to be shorter than that of the older generations.

A comparison between exposures to the danger of leaking car fluids and the inhalation of pesticide residues by the general public, especially young children, is entirely inappropriate.