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The federal Environmental Protection Agency fined Vector Tobacco Inc. $65,040 for allegedly misusing six pesticides and then failing to keep workers from getting sick, the EPA announced yesterday.
Vector Tobacco, a subsidiary of Vector Tobacco Group of Durham, N.C., has since moved out of the state, agricultural officials added.
The company allegedly misused pesticides 93 times by failing to follow label directions at its research facility in Kekaha in 2005 and 2006, according to the EPA.
However, "Vector Tobacco cooperated and received a settlement with the EPA without admitting the EPA's allegations," said company spokesman Jonathan Doorley.
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The discovery in the US that tobacco smoke contains carcinogenic pesticides did not surprise the Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking, which demands that the Health Ministry recognize tobacco products as "drugs" and requires that manufacturers list all their harmful ingredients on a printed insert in each packet.
Council chairman Amos Hausner was referring to news just issued by the Colorado School of Mines that previously undetected pesticides in tobacco smoke were discovered by its researchers and published online in the American Chemical Society journal, Analytical Chemistry.
Hausner, the country's leading expert on tobacco legislation and control, told The Jerusalem Post that radioactive ingredients have already been identified in tobacco products. "These don't come naturally in the tobacco leaf; the farmers spray them with pesticides. This is just a symptom of the problem that even though cigarettes and other tobacco products are put in the mouth, the Health Ministry and no other government ministry checks their contents. Only the manufacturers know what is in them, and they are not required to report them to the public."
All cigarette types tested showed the presence of the three pesticides in the tobacco smoke, with flumetralin ranging from trace levels up to 37 (± 9) ng/cig, pendimethalin ranging from trace levels up to 10.4 (± 0.6) ng/cig, and trifluralin ranging from trace levels up to 47 (± 17) ng/cig. Acute toxicity information is presented for the three pesticides.
If the nicotine doesn't get you, the pesticides just might. That's the upshot of a study by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, who say they have found previously undetected pesticides in tobacco smoke.
Using electron monochromator-mass spectrometry, the scientists found three pesticides – suspected of being toxic to the human endocrine system as well as carcinogenic – in a wide sampling of experimental and commercial cigarette smoke samples.
The three nitro-containing pesticides, including flumetralin, commonly used in tobacco farming, survive the combustion process.
Flumetralin, a suspected endocrine disrupter already banned for use on tobacco in Europe, belongs to a class of chemicals that may be active at miniscule levels, the researchers say.
Endocrine disrupters can produce adverse effects on early development, reproduction and other hormonal processes. . . .
None of the three pesticides has been previously reported in either the mainstream or sidestream smoke from current U.S. tobacco.
"No information exists for long-term low-level inhalation exposures to these compounds," said Voorhees, "and no data exists to establish the possible synergistic effect of these pesticides with each other, or with the other 4,700-plus compounds that have been identified in tobacco smoke."
Americans' exposure to secondhand smoke has decreased dramatically, and lead blood levels in children continue to drop, according to a government report released Thursday. . . .
These were some of the main conclusions of the Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, which was conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding characterized the document as the "largest and most comprehensive report of its kind ever released anywhere by anyone" and one which represents "a giant step forward in our ability to understand the relationship between exposure to various chemicals and potential health effects."
AITAROUN: Israel has poisoned hundreds of thousands of square meters of tobacco plants by spraying agricultural pesticides on fruit trees in a grove in Israel bordering the village of Bint Jbeil.
More than 400,000 square meters Aitaroun's tobacco crops - central to South Lebanon's economy - were affected by the pesticide spray, which left thousands of seedlings yellow and deformed and prompted tobacco growers to stage a protest demanding compensation.
Aitaroun's Mayor Salim Mrad, who is also an agriculture engineer, said he had been inundated with complaints from farmers about damage to their crops.
"A week ago, our Israeli enemy started spraying pesticides on the border between us, using sprayers working on high pressure. The damage was increased by the strong eastern winds that carried the pesticides toward Lebanese land," said Mrad.
Mrad said Israeli farmers used glyphosate, an organic pesticide that is absorbed by leaves and rapidly moves through the host plant, damaging or destroying surrounding plants.
As a condition of eligibility to receive price support, all pesticide products used in connection with the production of burley tobacco must be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.
This includes all plant regulators, defoliants and desiccants. Also, pesticide products must be applied in accordance with label directions.
Action to withhold price support on tobacco treated with non- approved EPA pesticides or when pesticides are not used in accordance with label directions, was made necessary because their use threatens the domestic and export markets for tobacco.
Like hundreds of other Huichol Indians who migrate into the heart of western Nayarit state for the three-month harvesting season, De la Cruz and his family live literally off the land, sleeping, bathing, and eating among the tobacco plants.
That means daily exposure to the tons of pesticides and other chemicals that are dumped on the plants, at the instruction of the US and European tobacco companies -- including Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. As a nonfood crop, tobacco is subject to less stringent pesticide laws than vegetables and fruits.
Nayarit, Mexico's tobacco region, has the country's most pesticide poisonings; government figures report an average of nearly 300 cases and several deaths per year, among a population of 1 million.
Activists say those numbers do not represent the extent of the problem, since most victims never see a doctor. . .
The tobacco companies, who determine which chemicals are used, say local landowners are ultimately responsible for protecting their workers.
We finance [tobacco growers] and give them all the chemicals. But realistically, our supervisor can't be with them all day. At the end of the day, they are free to decide how to treat their workers, where to get them from and what to give them.Matas Gomez, who directs Philip Morris's operations in Nayarit, Mexico, on the effects of tobacco pesticides on agricultural workers.
Federal regulators are overlooking the massive use of pesticides on tobacco, congressional auditors reported Thursday.
In a report that looked at how agencies assess risks and monitor residues of pesticides on tobacco, the General Accounting Office said no one comprehensively considers the adverse health effects of the use of pesticides on tobacco.
For every other product treated with pesticides and consumed by people or animals, the government assesses the health consequences of the pesticides used, sets safe limits on pesticide residues and routinely tests residue levels to assure compliance. Tobacco products have largely managed to escape all three of these layers of oversight, the GAO said.
Tobacco pesticides include some of the most dangerous pesticides used in the United States, the GAO said. They can cause acute poisoning, cancer, nervous system damage and birth defects. . .
Citing the GAO findings, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter Thursday to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, urging him to support federal regulation of tobacco products, including authority to measure and regulate the use of pesticides and other additives.
The letter also went to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.
European Union, copying the US etc, plans to ban what it calls "tobacco ads"...but the ban is as fraudulent as the ads it targets. In fact, the ban benefits the broad cigarette cartel...and Big Oil. . .
By banning ads and smoking, officials are protecting big oil and pharmaceuticals, the makers of so many tobacco pesticides. They are protecting the chlorine industries. They are protecting the cigarette manufacturers from charges that go far beyond just selling natural plant products. . .
Perhaps the biggest giveaway that this is a massive fraud, to cover up what some might describe as mass-murder, is that even though over 100 countries have signed the POPs Treaty, in Stockholm, to globally phase out dioxins and 11 other of the worst Persistent Organic Pollutants, dioxin is STILL permitted in smoke from chlorine-contaminated cigarettes!! . .
It is also helpful to note that many of the diseases said to be "smoking-related" (smoking of WHAT?) are known already to be symptoms of dioxin exposures...yet tobacco itself hasn't been yet studied for such things. It is just a bit premature, then, to indict tobacco for anything. It is far past time, however, to ban dioxins in cigarette smoke, and to get to the business of compensating victims...and indicting the perpetrators.
A long-awaited federal study on possible links between pollution and high rates of breast cancer on Long Island has failed to show any connection between the disease and pesticides that were once widely used on the island. It also found only a very slight correlation between cancer rates and exposure to other pollutants, like car exhaust and cigarette smoke.
The findings of the National Cancer Institute study, to be released today, come as a sharp disappointment to local advocates for breast-cancer research and to politicians who pushed Congress to approve the seven-year, $8 million study. . .
The study found no increased rate of breast cancer among women exposed to the pesticides, but found that exposure to chemicals like car exhaust and cigarette smoke appeared to elevate a woman's risk of breast cancer by 50 percent.
Marilie D. Gammon, a University of North Carolina epidemiology professor and the study's lead author, said the 50-percent increase was too modest to declare a clear causal link. Research on cigarette smoking and lung cancer, by comparison, has shown increased cancer rates of between 900 and 1,900 percent.
PESHAWAR: Khan Faraz, acting chairman, Pakistan Tobacco Board, visited tobacco growing areas in Charsadda and Mardan districts on April 24, 2002.
He was accompanied by Ali Gohar, deputy director (Marketing) of the board, said a press release on Saturday.
During inspection of the crops in fields, it was observed that the growers were engaged in hoeing, inter-ploughing and earthing up.
The crop was shaping well.
However, in some fields, the attack of bud-worm was observed.
The growers were advised to use recommended pesticides i.e. Tamaron, Lannate, Azodrin, Grip, etc. to control the insect/pest attack.
I was born in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, in Mexico. The Huichol Indians live in the Mexican part of the Sierra Madre Occidental . . .
During part of the year many Huichol families migrate to work as daily laborers in the tobacco fields of the state of Nayarit, along the Pacific Coast. That is the main tobacco production area in Mexico.
In 1983 a group of people founded in Guadalajara AICAW a non-profit organization to help the Huichol Indians. AICAW means Asociacion para la Investigacion, Capacitacion y Assistencia Wixarika. . . We noticed that people started to visit the clinic with diseases that had been previously quite rare among the Huichols: a few cancer cases, children with congenital malformations, etc. . . I was horrified: the Huichols were working in sub-human conditions, without any information about the pesticides, without any protection. . . This video "Huicholes and pesticides" was produced in 1994 . . .
the fate of the Huichols is common to all the indigenous agricultural workers obliged to migrate from their land to work on the big agri-industrial properties in the North East of Mexico and in the USA. . .
A few limited initiatives have started from the state and the tobacco companies like the program "Clean fields" ("Campo limpio") to collect the empty cans of pesticides. The BAT subsidiary, La Moderna, has declared that they have reduced their use of pesticides but they have not provided any documents about it. The agricultural corporations and the government have just started a program, "Florece", to bring to school the children of the daily workers: the first experience involved 150 children, a very small number considering all the children who work in the tobacco fields. . .
The pesticide trade is based on two principles: business and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because most of the countries that produce pesticides allow exporting dangerous products that are not authorized at home. It is the case for the USA, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland: the big producers. . .
I believe that the anti-tobacco groups if they care about the health problems caused by tobacco are hardly concerned with the health problems caused by pesticides for the people working in the tobacco fields. . .
I want to emphasize the situation of the children of the migrant workers families in the tobacco fields. They are the most vulnerable to the pesticides and the most affected.
A few of the substances had been measured in previous surveys. For two of them -- tobacco smoke and lead -- there have been substantial drops in exposure in the past decade. Bloodstream cotinine, a breakdown product of nicotine, fell by 75 percent in the average nonsmoking adult, from 0.20 nanograms per milliliter of blood in the 1988-91 NHANES survey to 0.05 nanograms in 1999.
"I've never seen any environmental measure change four-fold over 10 years. It's dramatic," Jackson said.
The decline reflects the drop in exposure to second-hand smoke through indoor smoking bans and decreased smoking overall. However, higher-than-average levels of cotinine continue to be seen in blacks, men and people over 20. [This graph only]
This document gives us an idea of the laxity of procedures in application of pesticides to tobacco in developing countries. This (Philip Morris) document reveals that not only was very little if any attention paid to the safety of the workers applying the chemicals, but also little if any monitoring of the application of the pesticides to the tobacco itself. With an unregulated, monitored and uninspired product that people regularly take into their bodies, a situation such as this could be a problem.