Tuesday, 27 April 2004 - 12:04 AM JST

To WESTRALIA.NET,
Background on Armstrong Report/Kimberley APB Agent Orange sprayers:
An ABC program 'Earthworms' presented by Peter Hunt first alerted me to the dangers of organochlorines. Our house had been sprayed compulsorily due to a building extension.
I was 6 months pregnant. (Well worth re-listening to, same ignorance shown by peak medical body still in evidence today.)
When our baby was born blind and with tachy cardia, I remembered Peter Hunt's comments re. organochlorines sprayed in houses, connected with cancers and birth defects. Research on this led to confrontation with the WA Health Dept. by a large group of women with pesticide babies.
*** was Health Commissioner. He and his team rebuffed and rebutted all our efforts to warn the public, particularly pregnant women, not to have their houses sprayed. As HC he would issue no such warning. As you'll hear on the tape, Dr. Ian Nisbet was incredulous that this was still even an issue in Australia. We were proved correct, they were banned in Australia in the 1990's once stocks had been depleted.
The same players in this bureaucracy headed by the same man, even though no longer their Health Commissioner, are using the same outdated arguments to deny Carl Drysdale and the APB workers justice. The choice of *** to head the Govt Report on the APB workers must have been seen as fait d'accompli to derail the poceedings.

Also on the panel of the Armstrong Report is ******. He headed the ****** Report which the NH&MRC commissioned to look into organochlorines in the 1990's. Thorough scientific research existed but they did it all again and came to the same conclusion.
I rang ****** last year and asked him what he was doing about the fungicide Benlate.
(Du Pont don't manufacture it any more. Its constituent, benomyl, has been linked with children being born with no eyes, anophthalmia and microphthlamia. Australia stills sells it over the counter, well, they do in WA. Widely used on grapes, is used on post harvest rockmelons, strawberries, etc. Our birth defect registry omitted these anophthalmic birth defects until questions in parliament saw them reported in the Birth defect Registry 2000. 120 anophthalmis and microthalmic babies born in WA in twenty years. Thirteen in 1998, when most of the world had banned Belate. The youngest I am aware of here is 5 months.)
****** answered, 'we've looked into it and we don't see a problem'.
As part of the panel, he didn't see too much of a problem with the Kimberley weed sprayers either. He ignored the liver problems, chemical burns requiring skin grafts, heart attacks - these chemicals are known to affect the heart, etc.etc.
The panel did, however, find it necessary to consult 5 psychiatrists, probing the psychiatrists' professional knowledge on whether these sick and dying workers have PTSD. All 5, nameless psychiatrists, who have not only not seen the APB workers but probably live in another state, seem to be a bit bewildered in what they are rquired to do!
We have had the same bureaucratic players for twenty years acting as if information on these chemicals is not readily available, that all the effects of these chemicals are not known or not proven. The very professionals paid to be researchers and watchdogs to safeguard Australian health are the ones who are minimising the dangers of these chemicals, who are advising Governments not to act responsibly when dealing with the the aftermath of toxic exposure. Consequently, more and more Australians are affected.
Marie Ryan
Mothers of Pesticide Babies Group