I have spent the last three years arguing that the fight over genetic modification is unnecessarily divisive, and that the fight does nothing to expand local agriculture or ensure that our communities are safe from pesticide drift.
Invoking the ire of many of my friends, I supported the mayor’s veto of bill 2491 because I agreed that it was his administrative duty to ensure a legally defensible bill.
I feel strongly that we need to support the seed companies because we need an "all of the above" approach to feeding our planet, we need the economic diversity that they provide, and we need to encourage all forms of Kaua’i agriculture. When a Kaua'i kid can get a PhD and come home to a well paying agricultural job on the west side-- we all win.
And, I have consistently argued that we shouldn't let the loudest or the angriest voices dominate the dialogue.
Which is why I was really impressed with the draft report of the JFF—as it presents an objective bridge between the divide that has erupted on Kaua’i over the last few years.
The report clearly cited the slowly accumulating evidence that chronic pesticide exposure leads to ill-health; that exposure can come from many sources other than agriculture; and that while the west side has major health concerns, we don't have enough data to even attempt to dig through the various potential causes (socioeconomic conditions, lifestyle, ethnicity, etc).
And the most important finding of the report is that the current environmental and health data is glaringly insufficient.
And so their recommendations to the state-- further testing, buffer zones based off of that testing, and an expansion of the good neighbor policy-- are obvious conclusions.
Every year around this time, I sit down and double check my business bookkeeping with my bank account. It takes about forty hours of mind-numbingly boring work. I am careful when I do my accounting, so I never find errors. But, I do it anyway. Not because I'm hoping to find a mistake, or because I like wasting time-- but because the fall out from a potential problem is much greater than the cost of double checking.
By following the recommendations of the JFF, we can both support our seed companies, yet have the assurance that surrounding communities are not being exposed to pesticide drift. And we can begin to move beyond the divisive debate over genetic modification.
I encourage everyone to both read the draft report and the statement released yesterday by moderator Peter Adler.
Full disclosure-- my dad, Dr Lee Evslin, was one of the volunteer members of the JFF and one of the authors of the chapter on health. While I am proud of the work that he has done on the JFF, I want to be clear that I do not speak for him.
For more information on the rationale behind the recommendations-- here is the opening of the introduction to the recommendations that my dad gave at the JFF's public presentation on April 4th.
My role in tonight’s presentation is to review a summary of the task force’s recommendations.
Invoking the ire of many of my friends, I supported the mayor’s veto of bill 2491 because I agreed that it was his administrative duty to ensure a legally defensible bill.
I feel strongly that we need to support the seed companies because we need an "all of the above" approach to feeding our planet, we need the economic diversity that they provide, and we need to encourage all forms of Kaua’i agriculture. When a Kaua'i kid can get a PhD and come home to a well paying agricultural job on the west side-- we all win.
And, I have consistently argued that we shouldn't let the loudest or the angriest voices dominate the dialogue.
Which is why I was really impressed with the draft report of the JFF—as it presents an objective bridge between the divide that has erupted on Kaua’i over the last few years.
The report clearly cited the slowly accumulating evidence that chronic pesticide exposure leads to ill-health; that exposure can come from many sources other than agriculture; and that while the west side has major health concerns, we don't have enough data to even attempt to dig through the various potential causes (socioeconomic conditions, lifestyle, ethnicity, etc).
And the most important finding of the report is that the current environmental and health data is glaringly insufficient.
And so their recommendations to the state-- further testing, buffer zones based off of that testing, and an expansion of the good neighbor policy-- are obvious conclusions.
Every year around this time, I sit down and double check my business bookkeeping with my bank account. It takes about forty hours of mind-numbingly boring work. I am careful when I do my accounting, so I never find errors. But, I do it anyway. Not because I'm hoping to find a mistake, or because I like wasting time-- but because the fall out from a potential problem is much greater than the cost of double checking.
By following the recommendations of the JFF, we can both support our seed companies, yet have the assurance that surrounding communities are not being exposed to pesticide drift. And we can begin to move beyond the divisive debate over genetic modification.
I encourage everyone to both read the draft report and the statement released yesterday by moderator Peter Adler.
Full disclosure-- my dad, Dr Lee Evslin, was one of the volunteer members of the JFF and one of the authors of the chapter on health. While I am proud of the work that he has done on the JFF, I want to be clear that I do not speak for him.
For more information on the rationale behind the recommendations-- here is the opening of the introduction to the recommendations that my dad gave at the JFF's public presentation on April 4th.
My role in tonight’s presentation is to review a summary of the task force’s recommendations.
I am going to start this review of the recommendations by very briefly answering a question. I am answering from my perspective as a physician member of the taskforce.
The question raised is: Why is the task force making ANY recommendations if there is no proof that there is any harm to humans or wildlife?
As Kawika made so clear in his summary, we could not prove or DISPROVE that there has been harm to human health or to wildlife on the Westside due to pesticides or due to any other environmental toxin. The reasons for our inability to prove anything include the following:
1. There has been almost no testing of the environment, meaning minimal organized testing of air, soil, water and dust and no reported testing of metabolite levels in humans and/or wildlife.
2. The number of people on Kauai and particularly the number of people on the Westside is so small that most of the health data we could find could not meet the criteria of being statistically significant. Meaning that although we did find somewhat elevated levels of developmental delay in children, ADHD in children, renal disease requiring dialysis in adults, and other adverse health statistics, the small numbers involved do not allow one to say with any certainty that these numbers are not just due to random chance.
3. Even if for some reason we could find a number which was statistically significant, for example; obesity on the Westside compared to the rest of the state might just meet the criteria of being statistically significant, BUT without evidence of toxins in the environment or evidence of toxins in living tissue one STILL can not say with any certainty what may have caused this condition. Obesity obviously has many causes and only recently has obesity even been associated with environmental toxins.
4. Final point, which is made repeatedly throughout our report, the health data, is very incomplete, much is out of date, and some may be actually incorrect.