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Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 15:34:35 -0500
To: "Iowa Discussion, Alerts and Announcements"                  <[log in to unmask]>,
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From: Paul Rebers <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Fly Swatters Save Lives & Audubon red-winged blackbird
           'Poisonings' link
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Thanks,  I'm going to send this to Colorado.  My daughter-in-law, and
grandsons are in Berthoud, CO.

At 11:15 AM 08/29/2001 -0500, Ericka wrote:
>Fly Swatters Save Lives
>
>The next time your trigger finger itches to spray a fly into oblivion or
>your aesthetic sense prompts you to give your lawn a chemical bath, consider
>a recent study at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Researchers
>there compared 496 newly diagnosed Parkinson's disease patients with 541
>people who did not have the disease.
>
>Their main conclusion was that exposure to home and garden pesticides
>significantly increases the chance of contracting this debilitating and
>incurable neurological disease, which afflicts more than 500,000 Americans,
>including Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox.
>
>According to the study, people exposed to insecticides in the home are 70
>percent more likely to develop Parkinson's than those who have not been
>exposed; exposure to garden insecticides increases the risk of contracting
>the disease by 50 percent.
>
>Among herbicide users, the odds rise according to the number of days the
>products have been used. In the study, fungicides posed no hazard. "At this
>time, no specific guidelines regarding avoidance of pesticides can be
>given," says Dr. Lorene Nelson, a neuroepidemiologist and the leader of the
>research team. "But this is an area of public health importance that needs
>to be pursued with additional studies." --Sydney Horton
>----------
>http://magazine.audubon.org/fieldnotes/fieldnotes0007.html
>Poisonings
>
>Each spring vast flocks of red-winged blackbirds descend on the plains of
>South Dakota, gathering among the cattails and reeds in roosts that can be
>500,000 strong. Their morning flights create rippling black clouds as the
>flocks set off in search of food. Unfortunately, farmers complain that in
>the fall the redwings devour a significant amount of the region's sunflower
>crop. In Minnesota and the Dakotas, they say, the birds cost them between $4
>million and $11 million a year.
>
>George Linz, a biologist with the federal National Wildlife Research Center,
>maintains that by reducing redwing breeding populations in South Dakota in
>the spring, the agency may limit the damage the birds inflict on the
>sunflower crop when they migrate north in the fall.
>
>To that end, Wildlife Services--formerly known as Animal Damage Control--has
>poisoned nearly a million redwings since 1994. This year the agency had
>intended to kill 2 million redwings by baiting small plots near their roosts
>with rice laced with DRC 1339, a poison that causes kidney and heart
>damage.
>
>But the program has been halted, at least for this year, thanks in part to
>the National Audubon Society's efforts to publicize the issue. For the first
>time in six years, a poisoning permit was denied. "The U.S. Department of
>Agriculture has not shown that piles of dead blackbirds increase the
>farmers' prosperity," says Perry Plumart, a senior policy adviser in
>Audubon's Washington, D.C., office. "Is the goal to poison blackbirds just
>to poison blackbirds?"
>
>Plumart also warns that the program could poison species that are causing no
>problems, and that many of them are on Audubon's watch lists. Kevin Johnson,
>an environmental contaminant specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
>Service, adds that any grain eaters, including sparrows and finches, are
>susceptible. Linz counters that according to his research, there is very
>little danger to nontarget species, in part because many of them do not
>migrate to the areas as early as the blackbirds do.
>
>Although this year's poisonings have been stopped, Wildlife Services wants
>to poison 2 million birds a year from 2001 through 2004. --Dan Whipple
>
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