This past spring a local community newspaper printed a letter from a person purporting to be concerned with what she claimed were the proliferation of spray signs on local lawns. The newspaper, which contains almost as many advertisements as the Toronto Sun, made no comment. They should have. This was an excellent example of "junk science", as revealed so well in a series of articles in a more reliable source, The National Post, of about the same period.
The thrust of the letter was the claim that our parents dug weeds out of lawns, the implication being that they did not rely on "chemicals". The truth is that as far back as the Egyptian Book of the Dead we have written proof that humans were resorting to vermin control. The Ancients, unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon your point of view, relied more upon religion and magic for pest control. Pliny suggested a cure for caterpillars was that "a menstrual or nubile virgin with bare breast and unbound hair" circle three times around a caterpillar-infested garden hedge. The beasts would then fall to the ground dead. In today’s Toronto, this would be politically incorrect, if nothing else.
Geoponika, a 6th-century A.D. work, shows that olive oil waste, oil tars and sulphur were burnt beneath vines to fumigate them. Tobacco was used for pest control in Europe even before its recreational use became popular in the 16th century.
American pest-control expert C.V. Riley observed that aceto-arsenic of copper, or Paris green, poisoned people when used for paints and wallpapers. This started its use in the late 19th century after the French started using it also. Initially, they found it useful to stop people from stealing their grapes as it made them sick. A waste product from the aniline dye industry was also used to the same effect.
Hydrocyanic acid came into use as a fumigant in 1886, developed by D.W. Coquillet for use against scale insect of citrus. Lead arsenic was introduced in 1892.
It is often believed quite erroneously that advanced pesticides are the product of the 20th century. Certainly they were recognized as being of use as pesticides at this time, but they had been around for longer.
DDT, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane, was first synthesized in 1874 by Otto Ziedler. In 1939, Paul Muller, working in the Ciba Geigy laboratories in Switzerland, rediscovered it and won a Nobel Prize in 1948.
BHC or Gamma Lindane, benzene hydrochloride or hexachlorocycle-hexane, was first synthesizedzed by the great British scientist Michael Faraday in 1825. Its most active form, the gamma isomer, was discovered by T. van Linden in 1912, hence the name lindane in his honour when it was discovered as an insecticide simultaneously in England, France and Spain in 1941-42.
Assuming by "our parents", the local lady letter writer means a generation ago, or 25 years, it is perhaps not fair to cite the German agrochemical industry that has been so diligently setting up factories for peace loving countries such as Libya and Iraq. Still it is interesting to note that as far back as 1944, German chemist Gerhardt Schrader introduced the new class of organophosphate pesticides with the discovery of parathion. Actually, this was derived from the Nazi chemical warfare work on neurotoxins, a nice array of poisons that interrupt the nerve signals to the brain.
Modern chemicals may have accelerated insect resistance, but by no means commenced it. As far back as 1908, a population of San Jose scale, Quadraspidiotus perniciosis was discovered to be resistant to lime sulphur, now often touted as an "organic" or "natural" spray. In 1916, California red-scale resistance was reported to hydrocyanic acid. The following year codling moth was reported as having resistance to lead arsenate. Within two decades, seven economically-important insect species were known to be resistant to first-generation insecticides.
Arsenic is very persistent. It is a sobering thought that our ancestors used it widely. What happened to the packages they purchased it in? There must be many a casual garbage dump buried under Toronto backyards and in ravines with such pesticidal waste in it. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, what does your garden grow?" They didn’t have to post spray signs.
--City Gardening Newsletter, June, 1999.
Greenpeace activists, masters at the slick turn of phrase, have had the tables turned back on them by editorial writers at the National Post.
"Greenpeace, Europe’s most self-righteous multi-national corporation, has been found guilty of peddling junk science, again," began a recent Post editorial.
Noting that Geenpeace had its applications for charitable status rejected by Revenue Canada, the Post said ..."Greenpeace can’t be blamed for trying--what profitable corporation wouldn’t want to be exempted from taxes? And these eco-capitalists know what they’re missing. They’ve had tax-free status in Canada--twice before, in fact--but that privilege was revoked when they kept violating the Income Tax Act."
According to the editorial, ..."a look at Greenpeace’s finances--filed before their charity status was yanked--shows that Greenpeace is much closer to Amway than to the Salvation Army.
"With over half of Greenpeace’s resources pocketed by fund raisers and managers, it’s remakrable that Greenpeacenicks have money left for placards."
The obituary of Waldo Semon, who held a patent for bubble gum, developed vinyl and helped create synthetic rubber during the Second World War, must be a bitter pill for Greenpeace.
The obit, published world-wide, hailed Semen who accomplished so much in his life time before dying of natural causes--at age 100!
Semon worked for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., where one of his first assignments was to make a rubber adhesive from polyvinyl chloride. Instead, he found a way to make PVC into a flexible, elastic material that became widely used in the plastic industry.
Among the many U.S. patents he had earned by the time he reached retirement age in 1963, was one for bubble gum, earned in 1995.
Semon’s legacy to unborn generations will long outlast that of any environmental activist. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
Time Magazine published a strongly-worded retraction subsequent to a recent article on plastic softeners on March 29, 1999: ..."Time regrets that our effort on concerns about plastics did not include the observations of scientists and public health groups that have found no significant risk of human health effects from the use of plastic softeners. We should have made it clear that the fears about ill effects are countered by strong evidence to the contrary."
TLC, which earlier broadcast a televised interview with an ex-KGB director, who talks about how the KGB used Greenpeace to further its objectives in western countries, will be aired again on July 10.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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