MOST residents of Gilsons Road are not happy. Newcomers to the tiny Queensland community near the Noosa River thought they’d moved into paradise, only to be brought to earth by long-time residents who suspect agricultural chemicals sprayed on the nearby macadamia plantation may be poisoning them, their animals and the fish at the local hatchery.
“We didn’t know about the problem when we moved to Gilsons Road,” Karen Jeske says. “We’ve learned most things via the press,” she adds, contradicting claims by Queensland Health that health specialists have kept residents up to speed.
Her neighbour, Janelle Laing, agrees. “We’re not getting any answers out of the government bodies,” she says.
“They’ve made no inquiries into our health. We’re finding it difficult to get any help from anywhere,” adds Laing, who’s particularly concerned as she and her husband, Graham, are expecting a visit from their eight-months pregnant daughter.
Over a year on from media stories about double-headed fish embryos at her hatchery, owner Gwen Gilson is furious with the lack of action on local complaints of a suite of human health problems. They claim these range from gastrointestinal and bladder complaints, skin disorders and migraine to suspected cancers.
Although unproven, Gilson, like her neighbours, fears the cocktail of agrichemicals the grower uses — and is permitted to use — to keep insects, moulds and assorted pests off his trees are getting into the tanks and creek that supply their household and drinking water, and with disastrous consequences.
Gilson is following her doctors advice, “Don’t drink the water”, and importing household water as well as water for the hatchery. She also is considering purchasing protective gear to wear when the farmer sprays, as recommended by the state pathologist who analysed dead and deformed fish from her hatchery.
“My fish have died only after spraying. My horse and dog have died after spraying. My chickens and animals are deformed and they’re forced to drink the contaminated water,” Gilson wrote this week in an email to the regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, querying the listing of certain agrichemicals.
Residents have repeatedly asked Queensland Health to assess the risk they face. That’s fair enough, University of Sydney cancer epidemiologist Bruce Armstrong claims. “If I’d been personally involved in the [hatchery] investigation I would have ensured that a field officer went down and spoke to all the residents in close proximity to the hatchery,” he says, acknowledging their anxiety.
The concern isn’t surprising. Following reports in January last year of the deaths, deformities and abnormalities at Gilson’s hatchery, the Queensland government established a 21-member taskforce of government, industry and two independent scientists to investigate. Although no findings have been released, veterinarian reports provided to the taskforce, and obtained by Weekend Health, conclude the fish health problems are consistent with exposure to the types of agrichemical likely used to treat the trees.
And as reported in Weekend Health last December, team member and NSW-based fish veterinarian Matt Landos claims a series of controlled trials he conducted linked fish abnormalities to spraying, as did a separate trial by Queensland officials.
Still, the taskforce wasn’t authorised to look at human health. That, despite a story in The Australian in January last year revealing that all four households backing on to Cooloothin Creek and the plantation claimed they’d experienced a cancer death or a cancer diagnosis since the plantation changed its spraying equipment and practices about five years ago. All but one, Denise Weaver, have moved away.
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Given the growing body of scientific reports linking agrichemicals identified in the water samples and allegedly used by the grower — his spray logs haven’t been shown to the taskforce scientific subcommittee — Landos criticises Queensland Health’s performance. He says its efforts are of such a “woeful standard” they can’t rule a health risk in or out.
