March 21, 2001
Special Media Compilation: Whale researcher says Navy's new sonar can kill + New Navy Sonar System Can Kill, Maim Sea Mammals, Advocates Say + Permit to kill whales and dolphins in LFAS tests is likely to be issued unless opponents succeed in stopping this through the Federal Register 45 day review process beginning this week + Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPA - Dioxin has gone from being a 'possible' to a 'known' human carcinogen + Children - The silent victims of global greed + Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report on PBS (next March 26) uncovers how our health and safety have been put at risk and why powerful forces don't want the truth to be know
Dear media person
Here is another compilation of remarkably important topics which deserve a much wider exposure, for those things matter to everyone. First, another military scheme threatens to severely disrupt or even kill marine mammals, which all humans have now come to cherish, allegedly to detect new quieter submarines while in fact there is a really different purpose behind this exotic military technology. I've compiled below some essential information on this issue. Secondly, the pervasive toxic pollution of our entire world willfully and knowledgeably perpetrated by the chemical industry is being finally exposed for what it is: a crime against humanity and all of nature.
Those two critically important issues deserve your and everyone's attention.
(More personal comments in CAPS below.)
Those two critically important issues deserve your and everyone's attention. (More personal comments in CAPS below)
Thanks for your consideration of those issues for possible news and in-depth reports.
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
P.S. If you have never paid a visit to the website of the Earth Rainbow Network (ERN) above, you may want to give it a look. You will find there the archives of the very diverse material compiled and sent to the Earth Rainbow Network emailing list (1800+ people in 50+ countries) from February 4, 1999 up to now, a total of 302 twelve-page long emails (3624 pages) which you can search using the onsite search engine. Try "LFAS" for instance...
To be added to the ERN e-list, simply ask me at globalvisionary@cybernaute.com
THE FOLLOWING IS YET ANOTHER CONFIRMATION THAT THE US NAVY EXPERIMENTAL LOW FREQUENCY SONAR SYSTEM IS TO BE BLAMED FOR THE HARM AND DEATH OF FAR TOO MANY WHALES AND DOLPHINS AND POSES A DIRECT THREAT TO SEVERAL OTHER MARINE SPECIES IF THE NAVY CONTINUES TO IGNORE THE PROTESTS AND GO AHEAD WITH ITS DEPLOYMENT IN SEAS AROUND THE WORLD. PLEASE HELP MAKE EVERYONE AWARE OF THE URGENT NEED TO BLOCK ANY FURTHER TESTINGS AND EVENTUAL DEPLOYMENT OF THIS LETHAL TECHNOLOGY. WHAT COULD BECOME A WORLDWIDE ACOUSTIC HOLOCAUST MAIMING AND KILLING THOUSANDS OF GENTLE, INTELLIGENT, SENTIENT BEINGS MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT EVER HAPPENS! (See also below the Reuter article published today and entitled "New Navy Sonar System Can Kill, Maim Sea Mammals, Advocates Say")
From: "DJ" <dmar1@uswest.net
Subject: Fwd: Whale researcher says Navy's new sonar can kill
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001
Whale researcher says Navy's new sonar can kill
By CHRISTOPHER DUNAGAN, The Sun of Bremerton, Wash.
BREMERTON, Wash. (March 8, 2001) http://www.nandotimes.com) - Oceans off the Bahamas seem lonelier this winter as whale researchers scan the water for the beaked whales they have been studying for years, a scientist says.
At least some of the whales were caught in a Navy exercise nearly a year ago, and now Ken Balcomb fears many whales were killed by sonar.
Balcomb, who divides his time between Washington state's San Juan Islands and the Bahamas, has spent years identifying beaked whales. Now, the only ones he sees are strangers - probably visitors from other areas.
Balcomb, of the Center for Whale Research, is normally a reserved and cautious scientist. Recently, he sent a strongly worded letter to the Navy warning that the proposed deployment of a new low-frequency sonar system could have devastating effects on whales throughout the world.
The Navy has acknowledged that sonar may have contributed to the deaths of seven whales in the Bahamas. The whales beached themselves last March 15 during an exercise involving five ships.
A natural phenomenon, called a "surface duct," may have transmitted greater volumes of sound to lower depths, according to a report.
The National Marine Fisheries Service suggested that the whales may have become disoriented by the sound and died due to beaching. Balcomb is calling for better analysis.
"Considering the observed damage to the whales that stranded and died and the short time period between stranding and death, the NMFS statement that the whales died from stranding is patently absurd," Balcomb said in his letter. "The whales that we observed swimming toward shore and stranding were only the temporary survivors of an acoustic holocaust that can be likened to fishing with dynamite."
Balcomb contends the Navy has not adequately considered how loud noise from sonar may resonate within air chambers located in the whales' skulls.
"The killing is largely due to resonance phenomena in the whales' cranial air spaces that are tearing apart delicate tissues around the brain and ears," Balcomb said in his letter.
"This is an entirely separate issue from auditory thresholds and traumas that the Navy has fixated upon."
Balcomb's letter uses mathematical equations to describe the relationship between the size of air spaces and the resulting resonance.
He also questions whether the Navy has proposed adequate precautions with its new low-frequency sonar, which he says can create resonance frequencies.
"The Navy has consistently tried to de-link the low-frequency active sonar with the normal sonar," he said. "If you really investigate resonance, you will see there is a common denominator."
Joe Johnson, who leads a team studying the environmental impacts of low-frequency sonar, said laboratory studies were done to measure resonance effects on rats, mice and guinea pigs.
It takes a fairly steady tone to create resonance, he said. Frequency change and sound levels used in the low-frequency sonar system are not great enough to cause injury in whales, although they may cause behavioral changes.
"Based on everything we've seen," he said, "this is not going to have an impact on the species." If in doubt, Johnson said, consider that the large whales - blue whales and humpback whales - generate the same volumes and frequencies as the Navy's low-frequency sonar.
Balcomb, a former Navy man himself, said he is disappointed that the Navy has not provided adequate answers to the Bahamas incident.
"We are not talking theory stuff here," Balcomb said in an interview. "The Navy can throw up all kinds of theoretical reasons why it didn't happen. But it happened. There has to be something wrong with the theory. I'm trying to get them to look at the resonance issue."
The Navy's new system, towed by a ship, uses a series of speakers to produce low-frequency sounds that can travel hundreds of miles. Reflected waves are used to locate other ships.
The system would not be deployed close to shore, the Navy says, and operational procedures reduce the chance of a whale being nearby during transmission.
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
New Navy Sonar System Can Kill, Maim Sea Mammals, Advocates Say
From Reuters
BOSTON--A new U.S. Navy sonar system that uses loud low-frequency sound waves to detect submarines at great distances came under renewed fire Tuesday from environmentalists who said it could hurt or kill marine mammals.
The National Marine Fisheries Service said it was seeking comment on the system--which could be deployed this year--and on the steps the Navy has proposed to minimize its impact on whales, sea turtles and other marine life that could be hurt by the underwater sound blasts.
The new system shoots sound waves through the water and reads the returning echoes to find submarines. It has been under development for years and several environmental groups have sued to halt the deployment.
Michael Jansy, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the sound waves carried so far through the water that they could harm whales and dolphins hundreds of miles from the ship broadcasting the sound waves.
Whales and other marine mammals depend on their hearing to communicate over large distances and navigate their seasonal migration routes, scientists believe. Studies have shown that whales exposed to sonar often flee the sound, NRDC said in its statement. A Navy spokesman said the new system was needed to counter quieter enemy submarines and said steps had been taken to protect marine mammals.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
---
AND HERE IS WHAT CHERYL MAGILL, A LONG-TIME CAMPAIGNER ON THIS ISSUE, HAD TO SAY ABOUT ALL OF THE ABOVE
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001
From: Cheryl Magill <shootdaguy@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Whale researcher says Navy's new sonar can kill
Hi, Jean!
We always welcome your distribution of information and appreciate the fact that you have so many caring and well informed readers. Thank you for choosing to distribute the information regarding the article about Ken Balcomb's statement in his letter to Joe Johnson. As you know, Dr. Balcomb wrote that letter in response to the publication of the Final EIS for the SURTASS LFA Sonar system.
I have a copy of the FEIS, and it thicker than two Metropolitan Area phone books. It is comprised primarily of the submitted comments of those criticizing the deployment of this system. It is mostly a documented protest. These submissions are reduced to about 25% of their original image size. Petitions are reduced in size too, and the entire presentation is a scrunched-up version of the massive response generated in opposition to the deployment of this potentially devastating technology.
But that won't necessarily stop the US Navy & government officials who may choose to disregard public opinion.
The release of the information about the MMPA Permit is expected to be published in the Federal Register any day now. I would hope that upon its release you could publish at least a portion of that information.
To see a copy of Dr. Balcomb's letter to Joe Johnson and to read in detail his description of what happens to a marine mammal which is experiencing these sonar pressure waves, please go to these URLs:
http://manyrooms.net/bahamas.html
http://manyrooms.net/balcomb.htm
http://www.geocities.com/shootdaguy/rooms/outlinec.html
The greater question also is the one which Dr. Balcomb raises about the disappearance of the Cuvier's Beaked Whales in the Bahamas. What about other stranding situations? What was the health of the remaining population after sonar damage had caused animals to strand along the shore?
So far as we know, more energy and effort has been spent to deny responsibility and to deny that harm was done. To date, we remain unaware of any effort made on the part of the Navy to study the health of remaining populations in areas where sonar damage is thought to have occurred.
Best regards,
Cheryl A. Magill
Stop LFAS Worldwide!
CHERYL ALSO SENT THE FOLLOWING TODAY:
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001
From: Cheryl Magill <shootdaguy@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: I suppose you already received this Cheryl "FW: Taking and Importing Marine Mammals"
Dear Jean,
I have a web page for the Federal Register notice of proposed rule making concerning SURTASS LFA Sonar at this URL: http://manyrooms.net/lfaproposedrule.htm
And, yes, this is the posting which I said was expected any day. With completion of the Final EIS and this notification, SURTASS LFA Sonar finally has several key elements in place which will be needed to attain approval to deploy.
There are some measures we could ask people to take, and one would be to submit comments in the manner described in the Federal Register Notice. Another is to tell a friend about the LFAS issue and the significance it has to them personally. Bookmark the URL and send copies to others. In fact, I am encouraging people to address small groups by inviting friends to some tea or coffee or over to their homes to discuss these proposed extreme measures of blasting away at all the marine life in 80% of the world's oceans. The greatest challenge is making more people aware and in getting them prepared to respond.
In my mind, the proposal to use SURTASS LFAS is an unconscionable act and those who now pursue this goal are absolute extremists. Never in the history of the world has such harmful acoustic power been introduced excepting possibly one incident in a location formerly known as Jericho. We who oppose such radical assaults on marine life and urge precaution are the conservatives on this issue. While I don't often coach polarities, we must remain charged on this point. We who oppose LFAS are asking everyone to be conservative towards the marine environment. We want to conserve the acoustic functionability of the oceans. We want to conserve all opportunities for peace.
Jean, I hope you will continue to inform your readers about LFAS and about this acoustic anarchy. I look forward to bringing to your readers more specific suggestions in the near future.
Thank you, as always.
Cheryl A. Magill
Note from Jean: WHAT YOU'LL FIND AT http://manyrooms.net/lfaproposedrule.htm MENTIONED ABOVE IS A 39 PAGES DOCUMENT DETAILING THE PROCESS WHEREBY THE U.S. NAVY WILL BE AUTHORIZED - IF THOSE OPPOSING THEIR SCHEME DO NOT SUCCEED IN STOPPING THEM - TO KILL AND HARASS A CERTAIN "NEGLIGIBLE" (!!) NUMBER OF WHALES AND DOLPHINS ANYWHERE IN THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS ALONG THE U.S. COAST FOR A DURATION OF 5 YEARS WHILE THEY WILL "TEST" THEIR SONAR SYSTEM - AND IN CASE OF A FULL LFAS DEPLOYMENT IF AN ARMED CONFLICT BREAKS OUT, NONE OF THIS "PERMIT TO KILL" PROCESS WILL APPLY AND ALL ACOUSTIC HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE IN THE OCEANS. PEOPLE HAVE UP TO MAY 3, 2001 TO MAIL (NO EMAIL IS ACCEPTED) THEIR COMMENTS TO THE NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - address given at the URL above). YOU'LL ALSO FIND A "Summary of Request" BY THE U.S. NAVY AND A "Description of the Activity" AND THE REST OF IT IS A LONG LIST OF OPPONENTS' COMMENTS AND THE INVARIABLY DISMISSIVE REBUTTAL BY THE NOAA OF WHATEVER ARGUMENT IS MADE TO PREVENT THIS FOLLY FROM HAPPENING.
THIS BELOW IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT - EVEN WHALES AND DOLPHINS WORLDWIDE (ACCORDING TO THE CURRENT ISSUE OF TIME MAGAZINE) ARE NOW CONTAMINATED WITH DIOXIN, PCBs AND OTHER TOXIC CHEMICALS. SAME THING FOR EVERY SINGLE HUMAN ON EARTH! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO IGNORE THIS VERY HOT ISSUE INDEED, NO MATTER WHAT THE INDUSTRY MAY SAY TO TRY FURTHER KEEPING THE TRUTH UNDER THE LID.
From: "Alberto H. F. Machado" <amachado@ism.com.br>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001
Published on Monday, March 12, 2001 in the San Francisco Chronicle
Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPA
Dioxin has gone from being a 'possible' to a 'known' human carcinogen
by Mark Hertsgaard
ONE OF EVERY thousand high-risk Americans could develop cancer from the toxic chemical dioxin, according to a landmark study the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to make official. Even more worrisome, the study warns, are dioxin's effects on the thyroids and immune systems of children. Ten years in the making, EPA's dioxin study is a political hot potato for the Bush administration. Issue the study, and the administration angers its allies in the chemical, paper and other dioxin-producing industries, who will surely face calls for stricter regulation. Bury the study, and environmental activists will cry coverup, further damaging the administration's shaky credibility on the mom- and-apple-pie issue of environmental protection.
How President Bush and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman handle this dilemma is important in its own right. But their decision will also shed light on the administration's policy toward the international treaty on persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, that 122 nations, including the United States, negotiated last year. The treaty, which calls for eliminating dioxin and other toxics "wherever feasible," will be signed in May in Stockholm by environmental ministers of signatory countries. Will Whitman be among them? There is irony in all this for Bush, for the dioxin study was initiated in 1991 during his father's presidency. What's more, Bush Senior and his EPA chief, William Reilly, ordered the study at the specific behest of the chemical industry, which complained that environmentalists' calls for limits on dioxin were based on hype, not sound science. But now that the study is near completion, it is unwelcome in corporate boardrooms. "Industry pushed for this study as a way to stall tougher regulations," says Rick Hind of Greenpeace, one of 411 groups that recently wrote Bush, urging the study's release. "Dioxin has gone from being a `possible' to a `known' human carcinogen, and the risks of cancer have increased tenfold."
Dioxin first attracted public attention during the Vietnam War; it was the contaminant in the defoliant Agent Orange. The chemical's reputation worsened in the 1980s, when it caused the evacuation of the Love Canal neighbors in upstate New York. Dioxin is formed whenever chlorinated compounds are burned. It remains ubiquitous because it is a byproduct of so many industrial processes. Production of PVC plastic - the plastic used in water pipes and credit cards - is a leading source of dioxin. So is the operation of waste incinerators, steel plants and paper mills that use chlorine as a bleaching agent. Every person on Earth has dioxin in his system. The chemical lodges in the fatty tissues of animals that consume contaminated water and plants; it also accumulates through the food chain. Humans who eat lots of fatty foods or fish therefore end up with the highest body burdens. Exposure is especially high for people, often poor or nonwhite or both, living near industrial facilities (46 percent of the nation's public housing projects are situated within a mile of toxic factories, according to a University of Texas-Dallas study.)
So, will the EPA study see the light of day? In truth, its contents are no secret. A working draft is on the agency's Web site, and the media has reported on it. But the study has no legal standing until the EPA formally approves it. Taking that step would oblige the EPA to incorporate the study's findings into its regulations, and therein lies the rub. Bush and Whitman have records of skepticism toward regulations that restrict corporations' freedom of action. As governor of New Jersey, Whitman removed approximately 1,000 chemicals from a "right to know" law that required companies to inform residents about toxics used in their communities. Whitman disparaged the law as bureaucratic overkill, claiming it listed such trivial items as lipstick. But sodium hydrosulfate was also on the list, and in 1995 it caused an explosion at a factory in the town of Lodi that killed five workers and caused evacuation of 400 residents.
Criticizing regulation is easy in the abstract, but real people can end up paying a terrible price for lack of proper regulation. It's terrible and unnecessary, for the costs of changing production patterns are often overstated. In Europe, bleaching of paper has been virtually eliminated without economic pain, an experience that doubtless fueled governments' enthusiasm for the POPs treaty. Here in the Bay Area, the governments of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Marin County have passed resolutions calling for the elimination of dioxin wherever possible. Bush and Whitman can score points with voters, who overwhelmingly support environmental protection - if they reconsider their skepticism of regulation, release the dioxin study and sign the POPs treaty. The chemical and paper industries may not be happy, but surely that should matter less than the health of the American people.
Mark Hertsgaard is the author of "Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future" (Broadway Books) and a columnist for the Blue Ridge Press syndicate. He lives in San Francisco.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
HERE ARE SOME OF THE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF ALL THIS POLLUTION - ESPECIALLY THE CONTAMINATION OF DRINKING WATER, A GROWING WORLDWIDE PROBLEM KILLING EVERY YEAR 10 MILLION CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 5, WHICH COULD BE RESOLVED WITH A MERE 1.2% OF WHAT IS SPENT ON WAR EVERY YEAR.
From: http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-16g.html
Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
Children: Silent Victims of Global Greed
Every hour of every day, children die all over the world because of short sighted political choices that keep toxic substances steadily flowing into our air, water, and food and keep the world's water supplies clouded with human waste. You don't hear about them on the evening news, all these dead children. They are just considered the necessary consequences of progress and the unequal distribution of wealth in our world.
The numbers of deaths each day are staggering and rival any natural disaster or plague. The largest single cause of preventable deaths results from the millions of people who use polluted drinking water around the world. Over four million children under the age of five die each year from diseases resulting just from unsanitary drinking water.
That number increases dramatically if you include those poisoned by industrial wastes contaminating water worldwide.
The people of the United States are not immune. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in the mid-1990s that 53 million people in the U.S., about 20 percent of the population, have been drinking water that is contaminated with feces, radiation, lead, or other poisons.
Two to four million children each year die from diarrhea caused by diseases transmitted in polluted drinking water. This is nearly one fourth of all child deaths in the world.
This is not a necessary consequence of living in a country that is less technological than the United States. These senseless deaths are the direct result of the greed of the government leaders in the more developed countries who choose to increase their profits rather than clean up water supplies and build the necessary sanitation systems.
Diarrhea from bad drinking water is the leading cause of death in the world for children. In developing countries, infectious diseases, many of which are caused by polluted drinking water systems, account for 42 percent of all deaths compared to 1.2 percent in the more developed countries.
The World Health Organization estimates that each year, over 10 million children under the age of five die of mostly preventable infectious diseases. That's 27,000 every day!
Diseases that come from unsafe drinking water cause 40 percent of these senseless deaths. Sixty percent of rural families and 25 percent of urban homes around the world lack safe water. This contaminated water is wreaking havoc on the world's oceans and impacting fisheries.
The industrialized countries stand by and watch as this worldwide tragedy goes on every moment of every day. Most leaders would say it would cost too much to fix this global problem.
In fact, providing clean water is not all that expensive. For example, a joint program of the Indian government, the United Nations Children's Fund and local nongovernmental organizations supplied water to 550 million Indians by providing 2.2 million hand pumps. The annual cost was $4 per person.
Contrary to what you may hear from politicians, there is plenty of money available in the world to stop this tragedy. The World Game Institute estimates that all of the world's people could be provided with enough water to meet their personal needs for an investment of $10 billion per year for 10 years. Their figures assume an investment of about $50 per person for water, sanitation materials, and training.
This is about 1.2 percent of the world's total annual military expenditures, or about one percent of what is being spent on illegal drugs in the world each year. It is also about 15 percent of what the people in the U.S. spend each year on alcohol and tobacco. Many billionaires in the U.S. alone could write a check for this amount today and not feel the loss.
The World Game Institute goes on to say that if you assumed that providing clean water would save only one million lives per year - the actual figure could be more like 10 million - the total savings to the world would be $990 billion per year. The pay-back on the investment would occur in less than four days.
Yet the rhetoric of our political leaders is designed to make us believe that solving problems such as this is impossible. We are made to feel hopeless and helpless, doomed to work in underpaid, unsatisfying jobs to earn enough to provide the bare minimum for our families. How can there be time or money to help those unfortunate enough to be born outside of the United States?
There must be time spent and there must be money spent on these global problems. If we allow our leaders - and ourselves - to choose to ignore these issues, what kind of statement are we making about the priorities of our lives?
What could possibly be more important that providing something as fundamental as clean water to the people of the world? Is any company's annual report to their stockholders worth a mountain of bodies of dead infants?
The silence and acceptance must end, today. I don't know how much more of this our souls can bear.
RESOURCES
1. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Demand that they fund clean water efforts throughout the U.S. and the world. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
2. South Africans suffer intensely from drinking water problems. Learn about their plight from the South African Environment Project at: http://www.saep.org/subject/water/water.html
3. The U.S. bombing of Iraq's power plants and infrastructure during the Gulf War destroyed the country's water purification and distribution system and may be responsible for the deaths of over 500,000 children. Track this through Voices in the Wilderness at: http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/
4. Follow the work of Echoes of the Ancestors, Inc., a non-profit group headed by African scholar and activist Malidoma Som*, at: http://www.malidoma.com/Malidoma/
5. See some examples of U.S. water contamination incidents at: http://www.all-natural.com/water.html
6. The Rotary Doctor Bank is one of the many humanitarian organizations trying to do something about water issues in lesser developed countries. See their efforts at: http://www.rotarydoctorbank.org/99i/db_99_3a.htm
7. See UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2000 report at: http://www.unicef.org/sowc00/
8. Legalized water pollution continues around the world in the form of fluoridation. Marketed by some health professionals as a preventative for tooth decay, studies have shown that the incidence of dental problems is fluoridated populations is no different from that of non-fluoride users. Yet cities around the world use toxic waste from the fertilizer industry in the form of hexafluorosilicic acid and its sodium salt, disodium hexafluorosilicate. These chemicals are derived from phosphate fertilizer industry and contain impurities which are known to cause cancer. Stay in touch with this issue through Citizens for Safe Drinking Water at: http://www.nofluoride.com/
[Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. He can be found marveling at all the suffering that takes place amidst the grand abundance of our Earth. Send your thoughts and ideas to him at jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com]
TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT ON PBS
On Monday night, March 26th, your local public television station will air a groundbreaking investigative report on the chemical industry.
In TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT, correspondent Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones uncover how our health and safety have been put at risk and why powerful forces don't want the truth to be known. This investigative report, accompanied by a PBS.org Web site, is based on a massive archive of secret industry documents as shocking as the "tobacco papers."
TRADE SECRETS provides everyone working on toxic chemicals and environmental health issues a tremendous education and outreach opportunity. To help maximize that opportunity, the Environmental Health Fund, the Environmental Working Group, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice and Women's Voices For the Earth are launching Coming Clean, a project aimed at cleaning up the chemical industry's contamination of our food, our bodies and our environment.
Coming Clean is working with groups across the country to organize local communities.
TRADE SECRETS viewing events. For more information about how you can organize a viewing event in your community, please contact Ann Long at annlong@shentel.net, Charlotte Brody at cbrody@chej.org, Bryony Schwan at swan@wildrockies.org or Monica Rohde at mrohde@chej.org.
I ALSO RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING ABOUT THIS PBS BROADCAST
Subject: Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report on PBS
Must-See TV (Gather The Friends...)
A Few Thoughts from Jeffrey Hollender,
President of Seventh Generation
http://www.seventhgen.com/
On March 26th at 9:00 pm, it's going to rock the boat. And we all ought to be there when it does. That's when PBS will air "Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report" (be sure to check your local listings for the exact air date and time on your PBS station). Now any time Bill Moyers looks into something it's worth our time. But in this case, it's worth more than that because he's investigating the very thing I've been waiting for years for a journalist of his caliber to investigate: the chemical industry and its hidden toxic legacy.
It promises to be a ground breaking program, one that at long last gives the chemical industry the glaring attention it so richly deserves. And I think even people like us, people who are already generally aware of the deadly practices and products foisted upon us by chemical companies, will be stunned by Moyer's revelations. I say this because the program is based on interviews with historians, scientists and physicians, and on a massive uncovered archive of secret industry documents that Moyers and producer Sherry Jones say rivals the now legendary "Tobacco Papers" for sheer, appalling shock value. What those papers apparently reveal is an industry that has put our health and safety at very dangerous risk and marshalled powerful forces in a largely successful effort to hide the truth at any cost. I urge you to watch this program. And more importantly, I urge you to gather others to watch it with you. While you and I will most likely tune in (I definitely will), we're already aware of the problem and its seriousness.
But that's not the case with the majority of Americans. Indeed, research shows that most believe they're being quite adequately protected from chemical hazards by industry and government alike. That's hardly the case, and a respected journalist like Bill Moyers is just the person to make the point. That's why it's so important that the program be seen by more than the "converted". I want it to be seen by everyone, especially those who are largely or wholly unaware of the situation. It might be a tough sell, but I think it's worth every effort each of us can make to make sure that all our friends and neighbors, no matter how politically uninvolved or environmentally unaware they might be, tune in and watch this historic broadcast.
To that end, the Environmental Health Fund, the Environmental Working Group, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, and Women's Voices For the Earth are launching Coming Clean, an effort dedicated to organizing community viewings of the upcoming Moyers Report and doing whatever we can to ensure that after March 26, there are more people in more communities working to stop the chemical contamination of our food, bodies and environment. I hope you'll consider hosting a Coming Clean viewing event. (For more information about Coming Clean, contact Charlotte Brody at cbrody@chej.org or Sharyle Patton at spatton@igc.org, or visit http://www.comeclean.org or our own site at http://www.seventhgen.com). Whatever you do, make sure you're watching PBS on or about March 26th. And make sure everyone you know is watching with you. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Thanks to Bill Moyers, we're about to get one of our biggest and best weapons yet in the fight against a poisoned planet.
You may also find the following of interest to you:
Hard to Swallow Genetically modified 'golden rice' may be the killer app of biotech: a technology that shuts liberals up. by Brooke Shelby Biggs Mar 15, 2001
Available from: http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/commentary/opinion/newshole.html
