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Safety standards that do exist end at the borders of exporting countries. Pesticides that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has judged too dangerous for domestic use, pesticides which are unsafe unless used under strict supervision, and pesticides never evaluated by EPA are routinely shipped from US ports. Many of these chemicals are bound for destinations in the developing world, where it has long been established that prevailing conditions-a lack of protective equipment, unsafe application and storage practices, inadequate training of pesticide applicators-increase their hazards. Since 1990, the Foundation has published reports documenting this trade--the only source of this information that is available in the public record. Over the years, partnerships and information exchanges have developed with a wide range of non-governmental groups, journalists, government agencies, researchers and concerned citizens throughout the world. Project staff have presented their findings in hearings in both houses of the US. Congress. They have participated as non-governmental observers in intergovernmental negotiations for two treaties aimed at reducing or eliminating trade in hazardous pesticides--the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) treaty, also known as the Rotterdam Conventions and the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty, also known as the Stockholm Convention. The following reports are available online. All are in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. If you don't have the Acrobat Reader program already installed on your computer, click here to download it from the Adobe web site. (The program is free.) Exporting Risk: Pesticide Exports from US Ports 1992-1994 Click here for a map showing primary destinations. Exporting
Risk: Pesticide Exports from US Ports 1995-1996 Pesticide Exports from US Ports, 1997-2000 (published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health). Hard copies of some of these reports may be available. For details, write to the project director at carl.smith@fasenet.org. Want
to help? Click here to find out how
you can support this project. |
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The Precautionary Principle In practice, environmental "protection" often means acting after the fact--in some cases after a toxic substance has permeated air, water, soil and the food chain. A growing number of environmental scientists are calling for governments to take preventive steps to prevent environmental damage, even in the absence of complete scientific |
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evidence. This concept is referred to as the
"precautionary principle." The Foundation's senior editor recently acted as editor for a special series of papers on the precautionary principle, published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health. Contributors to "The Precautionary Principle and Environmental Policy: Science, Uncertainty and Sustainability" include scientists, physicians and policy experts from the US, Europe and Asia. Copies of this volume are available at no cost to government officials, researchers, public interest groups and others working in the field of environmental policy. Write to carl.smith@fasenet.org for details. (Note: If you are making a request, please include your complete address.) |
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Detoxification In the last 50 years, man-made chemicals and drugs of abuse have spread throughout the world at almost inconceivable rates. In the United States alone, it has been estimated that six trillion pounds of industrial chemicals are used each year-a rate of nearly 12 tons for every man, woman and child in the country. The abuse |
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| of prescription and street drugs is epidemic, worsened in many Eastern Bloc regions by the social upheaval following the end of the Cold War. In developing countries, where 90 percent of earth's pregnant women and children under 15 live, hazardous chemicals-including pesticides banned in the developed world-are used and stored as if they had no potential to harm. Only a small percent of the approximately 70,000 chemicals in current use have been fully evaluated to determine their long-term ability to cause adverse effects on human health. But the final destination of many is not air, soil or water, but the internal environment of the human body. Residues of chemicals and drugs accumulate in body tissues, particularly adipose (fat) tissue. An increasing body of research links the presence of these residues to health effects including cancer, immune suppression, reproductive difficulties and nervous system damage. In addition, chemicals stored in the fat of pregnant women may cross the placental barrier, exposing the developing fetus and embryo. Evidence is emerging that even a single such exposure can result in permanent damage that may not be evident until adulthood. Despite the magnitude of these problems, and the urgent necessity to reduce body burdens of foreign chemicals, only one procedure to eliminate chemicals from the body has been developed, widely implemented in clinical and field settings throughout the world, studied and reported on. The detoxification regimen developed by L. Ron Hubbard has been established to be both safe and effective. Papers documenting its use to reduce body levels of foreign compounds such as PCBs, DDT, HCH and residues of cocaine and marijuana have been published by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, the American Public Health Association, the National Institute for Drug Abuse, UNESCO, the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health and others. Since 1981, FASE staff and associates have participated in a number of research projects related to this detoxification program. FASE has assisted in the organization of two international conferences related to chemical contamination and human detoxification, one in Los Angeles, California and one in Stockholm, Sweden. At these events, hundreds of healthcare professionals, drug rehabilitation specialists, government officials and others met to discuss the growing number of problems resulting from chemical exposures--whether radioactive disasters such as Chernobyl or the abuse of prescription drugs--and the appropriate role of detoxification in their treatment programs. The proceedings of the first conference offer a detailed overview of the detoxification program and its applications, along with summaries of published papers. Click here to download this publication (pdf format). Further information on this subject can be found at the web site of the International Academy of Detoxification Specialists. |
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