Agriculture Pollution Causing Breathing Difficulties and Other Problems?
Pollution, Not Pollen.
NZ has one of the highest rates for asthma, hay-fever and sinus trouble in the world. Yet people still do not make the connection between the heavy use of herbicides such as RoundUp, and insecticides such as common old snail bait and ant killers, as being the trigger for their miserable conditions.
Of course, pollen can cause hay fever and other maladies – but pollen is a short-lived trigger which is not going to damage your immune system for the long-term, unlike the chemical poisons being distributed around the environment, which can cause long-term harm.
Flu Vaccines and Antibiotics: We can now be fairly sure that vaccination antibiotics have a weakening effect on the immune system, making one prone to sinus and breathing difficulties, as well as eczema – a lady in my town had to be hospitalized after getting her flu injection. She has had asthma ever since, with very debilitating effects. This lady had never had asthma before this bad reaction to a flu injection.
Flu injections are optional in NZ, and I believe that people’s health is generally better off, overall, without them. They can make one more vulnerable to such life-threatening diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, as well as breathing difficulties, rheumatism and arthitis.
However, in many cases, we do not have any control over some allergies and breathing difficulties, because their cause is out of our control. Farmers, householders, and council people can willy nilly spray any number and amount of very toxic poisons around our environment, and this affects the air we breathe, and, consequently, our health.
It is common in New Zealand for people, and their doctors, generally, to blame ‘the pollen’ for their asthma, hay-fever and sinus trouble.
I wonder when and how this fallacy was first promoted as an indisputable fact. Was it a ploy cleverly devised by the makers of agricultural chemicals, so that their products would remain on sale unchallenged? The ‘pollen’ myth seems to have been happily latched onto by farmers and house-holders all over the country, so they need not question the often harmful products which are so conveniently used to kill their garden pests and weeds.
In the town where I have been living for two years, ‘the pollen’ is a common daily topic of discussion right now. It is spring-time, and so ‘the pollen is flying’ – the reason for their breathing difficulties and snotty noses, they think.
But there are many reasons the air here is polluted in the spring-time, and these, I think, are the reasons so many people here are sick with asthma, hay fever, and sinus troubles. The excessive pollution in this town is also the reason, I believe, that so many people here get cancer, arthritis, shingles and other skin troubles, and other degenerative conditions.
Topdressing with super-phosphate is done on the farmlands surrounding the town, and so we cannot help breathing in super=phosphate-nitrate dust. This increases breathing difficulties and other health problems.
Herbicides on crops is done aerially and by tractor on the outskirts of town, and these chemicals permeate the air we breathe – another addition to the toxins in the air here, which cause a myriad of health problems.
Around November last year, I almost drove into a helicopter spraying chemicals on crops just on the outskirt of the town. It was crossing the road above my vehicle, spraying out poisonous chemicals as it zoomed overhead.
RoundUp herbicide, and other unknown herbicides, are poured by council on all our grass verges around the town, including around our housing complex. From around Sepember onwards, this spraying project is stepped up from around once a month to around every two weeks. Herbicides such as RoundUp have a deleterious effect on the health, commonly causing breathing difficulties such as asthma and digestive upsets. It can also affect blood pressure and excacerbate heart ailments. And I find it causes a shingle-like rash on the legs for people who do a lot of walking on sprayed pavements about the town.
But A Big Thankyou to our local council for considering my request not to spray around my house and garden. I have been allowed to plant an orchard of heritage apple trees, with the promise that the grass verge around the garden will not be sprayed. This is a huge step forward, I feel.
We have a milk-factory right in the town which began making milk-powder around 6 weeks ago. Residue from this process is evident. Overnight, cars only a few hundred yards away from the factory become coated with a white milky powder – yet, astoundingly, my neighbours, born and bred here, say that this white powder is pollen. Some of their family members work in this factory, so I guess they do not want to question whether or not the factory is polluting the area.
Gardeners here just love to stock up on snail-bait and ant-killers. These two commonly used products are very bad for the health. I have had recent experience of just how harmful some brands of snail-bait really are. Last week, my neighbours on both sides of my flat poured around a whole packet each over their little gardens. Overnight, many snails and worms were killed, and I worried about the birds eating these poisoned snails. Ant-killer was also put out onto the deck of my neighbour’s place, which is only around 20 feet from my own door.
The effect of these poisons on my own nervous system was profound. My movements suddenly became jerky and unco-ordinated, my joints very sore and weak, and pains were noticed in the bones. It caused pronounced breathing difficulties, over and beyond the effect of the agricultural chemicals already in the air. I think I would have been diagnosed with asthma, had I gone to a doctor. A visit for a few days, away from the town to Auckland, cleared the problem.
Funny how these days, at certain times of the year when agricultural spraying is done, the city can be a kinder place on the health than the New Zealand countryside. We should be keeping bees on the roof-tops of our city buildings, and growing organic foods there too, as they do in Germany. My sons who live and work in Berlin and Mainz have told me about their flourishing bee-hives and roof-top vege gardens.
Both my neighbouring friends have chronic health problems. One gets asthma and hay-fever regularly at this time of the year. This friend blames the pollen, of course. From trees which are 100’s of metres away. The dairy factory is closer than the trees, but neither the dairy factory nor the air-borne sprays are considered at all as a cause for her current breathing problems.
The other neighbour, who does not use ant-killer, but does use snail-bait from time to time, has digestive problems and mysterious weakness. I think the snail bait, which is right outside his door, is one of the main reasons for his ill health. Recently he was taken to hospital with chronic pain in the gut. I explained how the snail bait affects my own health, and how the stuff, like |RoundUp, kills the healthy bacteria in the gut, which causes stomach problems, gut pain, and cramps. He listened, and said, ‘Maybe that’s the cause of my feeling sick’. He has decided not to continue using snail bait.
Funnily enough, I was down at the shop tonight, where my neighbours buy their gardening products, including snail bait. Someone ahead of me was buying snail bait. The young girl serving her said ‘Oh – snail bait. Gosh – It always gives me stomach pains, even from handling this stuff here’.
I said I had just been very sick from my neighbours’ using it. She understood me, but the lady buying the snail bait did not look so pleased to hear our stories. You could tell she was going to use it anyway, regardless.
Finally, we have a grain factory in our town, perhaps only 200 metres away from our houses. It is often busy, noisily grinding away at night, and I imagine there will be dust escaping into the air from this plant.
Some people are beginning to listen to my arguments about the pollution in the air here, which will be contributing to their health problems. But there is so much educating to be done. This is an agricultural town which supplies farmers with their chemicals and machinery for efficient farming practice, and it might take years, if ever, for environmental and health issues to take precedence over profit and convenience.
NB One last note: Our biggest supermarket, a flash new shop, is situated right next door to the town’s stock-yards, which attract hundreds of flies in the summertime, mainly because of the smell of animal poo. As well, the stock trucks’ dumping site for effluent from the poor animals which are trucked here, is also next door to the supermarket, perhaps only 20 to 50 metres away. You would think this should be considered to be a health risk by anybody with an ounce of common sense. Who approved this?