Crozier/Maiangowi family devastated by pesticide poisoning in Scottsdale, Arizona
write to the President for justice
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Three of uncounted thousands suffering because of dursban poisoning
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October
30, 2000
U.S. President William Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, District of Columbia 2050
Dear
President Clinton:
A
lawless plague is disabling millions of Americans in their homes. I write to ask
you to bring the perpetrators to justice.
I
have written to Al Gore. Carol Browner. Janet Reno. Joe Lieberman. Ted Kennedy.
John McCain. Arizona Governor Jane Hull. Arizona Attorney General Janet
Napolitano. Scottsdale Mayor Sam Campagna. Each of them chose not to help my
family. Each of them knows that millions of people are going through what we are
going through. I hope you will choose to enforce U.S. law and end this atrocity.
Each
year 100,000 people move to Arizona. They want jobs. They want rewarding career
opportunities. They want a healthy climate. They want homes where their children
can play and laugh and learn and grow in health.
They
don't want or expect their children to be gassed by nerve poisons—brain
poisons—in these homes. Yet this is precisely what is happening, and it is
happening without the consent or even the knowledge of the victims.
Each
new home built in Arizona has 400 to 500 gallons of liquid termiticides sprayed
under its concrete foundation slab. The builder does this just before pouring
the slab. If you build and sell a home in Arizona, you must soak the ground
under it with termiticides. If you don't, you are breaking the law.
Once
the home is built, poisonous termiticide fumes start seeping into its living
spaces. Pathways for these poisons include expansion joints, holes for plumbing
pipes, and cracks in the concrete slab. With time, the cracks worsen because of
seasonal changes in temperature, expansive soils or groundwater pumping, and the
concentration of nerve gases breathed by the occupants increases.
None
of this is necessary. Other pest control methods exist, methods based on sodium
borate or barrier sand, for example. They’re as effective as pesticides,
cheaper, and much safer.
After
termiticides drove my family from our Scottsdale home, a Phoenix TV reporter
talked to the people who had saturated it with poisons. They told her about the
400 to 500 gallons of brain poisons under each new home in Arizona and they
said, "It's all safe." As you know, it is illegal under U.S. law for
any employee of a pest control company to state that termiticides are safe.
Thousands of viewers, surely including some public service officials, saw the
report on TV and heard the quote, "It's all safe." Public service
officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reviewed my family's case
and read the quote, "It's all safe." When
will the U.S. government file charges against our poisoners?
The
home's previous owner invited these poisoners into the home nine times. During
the first four visits they sprayed 370 gallons of Dursban TC under the slab.
During the next three visits they sprayed 276 gallons of Tribute into the
interior walls. Then they sprayed an unknown quantity of PT-270 Dursban into the
master bedroom's ceiling. Then they sprayed 100 gallons of Dragnet into the
exterior walls.
They
drilled and sprayed and drilled and sprayed and when they were done the home was
saturated top to bottom with chlorpyrifos, fenvalerate, permethrin, ethyltoluene,
trichloroethane, trimethylbenzene and xylene. The previous owner’s wife died
24 months after the poisoners started to contaminate the home, so he sold it to
us. Arizona real estate law requires sellers to tell buyers if there are any
hazardous materials in the property. But the previous owner did not tell us
about the pesticides in the home.
Take
a look at the specimen label for Dursban TC. My copy (EPA-accepted 05/20/97)
states: "After application, the applicator is required to check for leaks.
All leaks resulting in the deposition of termiticide in locations other than
those prescribed on this label must be cleaned up prior to leaving the
application site. Do not allow people or pets to contact contaminated areas or
to reoccupy the contaminated areas of the structure until the cleanup is
completed. . . . All holes in commonly occupied areas into which material has
been applied must be plugged. Plugs should be of a non-cellulose material or
covered by an impervious, non-cellulose material."
Material
safety data sheets and specimen labels for the other termiticides in the home
contain similar language. All these documents have the force of U.S. federal
law. U.S. public service officials are familiar with our case. They know that
our poisoners broke the law and then denied responsibility for all the
destruction they had caused. These officials have read our environmental
engineer's report and our medical records and the 400 pages of case
documentation on our website. When will
the U.S. government enforce the nation's laws and file criminal charges against
our poisoners?
One
of my wife's laboratory samples contained dimethyl thiophosphate, DMTP. This is
not a metabolite of any of the poisons the poisoners told the Arizona Structural
Pest Control Commission they had put in the home. It is a metabolite of such
organophosphates as temophos, fenchlorfos, Metasystox, malathion and methyl
parathion.
It
is illegal for an employee of a pest control company to use a pesticide and not
report its use to the proper public service officials. Did the poisoners
deliberately put malathion or some other undocumented poison into the home? Did
they negligently fail to empty and rinse malathion from a container before
refilling it? When will the U.S.
government investigate and take enforcement action against these offenders?
* *
*
Our
case isn't unusual. It's just better documented than most.
Of
the millions of victims of pesticide violence in America, a few know exactly
when and how they got poisoned. These acute poisoning victims feel symptoms
minutes to days after exposure. They're the ones the poisoning reporting centers
mostly hear about.
Subacute
pesticide poisoning victims—including my wife and son—develop over weeks or
months symptoms such as asthma, headaches, nausea, vomiting, inexplicable and
crippling physical and mental fatigue, memory loss, attention deficit disorder,
irritability and worse. A fortunate few find a doctor familiar with pesticide
poisoning to diagnose and treat them, but most don't.
Chronic
pesticide poisoning victims—breathing air that may contain hundreds of
nanograms of chlordane, Dursban, diazinon and “inerts” per cubic meter—get
leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast cancer, Parkinson's and scores of other
diseases after years or decades of exposure. Epidemiologists can calculate upper
and lower bound probabilities that pesticides caused a particular patient's
illness. This doesn’t help patients. Most of them sicken or die without ever
knowing why.
If
you learned that an enemy was stealthily and methodically contaminating tens of
millions of American homes with brain poisons in concentrations too low to be
detected by smell but high enough to cripple people’s cognitive abilities,
trigger adverse neurobehavioral changes, and cause an epidemic of immune system
disorders, you would mobilize every serviceperson from Seattle to Miami in
response to this danger. It would be the worst secret terrorist campaign in U.S.
history.
* *
*
The
pesticide plague raises many issues. Whether people in California, Texas,
Florida, Georgia and other areas at high risk for termite infestation are being
poisoned as Arizonans are. Why pesticide companies lie to people about the
benefits and costs of pesticide-based pest control methods compared with less
toxic pest control methods. How much of the health insurance care vs. cost
dilemma could be eliminated by eliminating pesticides. How much crime and poor
performance in school is attributable to children’s exposure to pesticides in
the years their central and peripheral nervous systems are developing. Why the
responsible personal choices of so many—to not smoke, to exercise, to eat
healthy food—are undermined by something they are powerless to make a choice
about. Why Arizonans—despite a booming economy—have a lower life expectancy
than a billion people in 70 countries (the life expectancy in Arizona is 71.2
years, compared with 76.2 years in the U.S.).
These
are crucially important issues. But this letter is about law enforcement. You
need to let our poisoners know that their right to evade responsibility for
their actions is less important than my son’s right to a long, happy, healthy
life. He’s still sick. If you do nothing, you’re telling him that it’s
okay to hurt someone. You’re telling him that people who mess up other
people’s lives don’t have to clean up their messes.
If
someone poisoned your daughter, you would smite them with the full power of the
law. James is no less precious to me than Chelsea is to you.
Mr.
President: enforce America's laws. Let people know that it is as evil for
Americans to destroy human tissue with chemicals as with bullets. Punish our
poisoners. Establish justice for the victims of pesticide violence.
Very
truly yours,
Joe
Crozier
Courtesy
copies to newspapers
http://www.poisonedinparadise.com/
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