What don't we know?By phill PARSONSNo detectable levels of chemicals have been found in the water supplies of the rival capitals reports the Mercury. DPIWE will step up testing we are told. What don’t we know? Chemicals can recombine, different chemical require different tests and a failure to detect may only reflect a greater dilution. So what are the definitions of poisoning? Acute is a single dose causing symptoms to present, chronic a build up over time causing symptoms to present and secondary poisoning is of people or targets not involved causing symptoms to present. No symptoms means you weren’t poisoned this time. Water is a marvellous medium, the greater the volume the greater the dilution, so that if a water supply does have a toxic chemical enter into it the larger the volume of water in storage the greater the amount needed to be detectable. And then there is the second element. Water moves on, through every system and out to that classic dumping ground the sea. We are now told that at the helicopter crash site 29kg of the artificial pyretherum was lost, at the toxic level of 4grams per 1000 litres it is enough to make 7,250,000 litres acutely toxic to oysters. Less may not present symptoms in the oyster but it may present at the next level up the food chain for farmed oysters. Making a mockery of au naturale. How a poison will behave in the body and what symptoms will present are dependent on the level and number of doses, other chemicals present in the water or the body or ingested later if they recombine with chemicals stored in body fat. Once flushed from the catchment a chemical spill will not show up in any tests. I must ask here what actions were taken to clean up the crash site as that is another means of preventing chemicals from a splill showing up in any tests. I understand that chemicals soaked into the soil. Are there no spades and shovels in Tasmania? However, there are other means of testing current or past poisonings: * The general levels of symptoms and the illnesses associated with them in the population. This is the classic way to determine what the symptoms and illnesses are. Laboratory animals are used in this cruel process. * We are told that certain cancers are at the higher level of incidence in the population. Why is that? What has the State government done to determine the reasons and act on that knowledge. * Testing the individuals presenting with symptoms for any residues. Nothing may be found in such tests. Having done its work the chemicals may have left the body. However with 100 residents in and around St Helens it would seem a study is warranted. They may have little in common besides their doctor, then again the finger may be pointed. Thus we can be assured that no study will be done by this government. I challenge the Fourth Estate to tell us, in a series of well researched articles, what are the cancers above and below the national levels; where have the ill resided? Further, I challenge them to thoroughly investigate this issue. To ferret out every systemic failure and to get the changes necessary to prevent a repeat of the events that left the oysters of St Georges Bay dead, people on the East Coast ill and Tasmania’s hard won clean and green image in tatters.
phill Parsons, Elizabeth Town
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Tuesday, September 28, 2004 |