Tag: brodifacoum

Brodifacoum Pesticide Killing Birds In New Zealand

Toxic Chemicals:

New Zealand Parklands Being Poisoned

This article was first published in 2010.  I removed it to another website, but decided to republished it on this website, since I have been writing lately about the effects of poison drops in the Kaikorai Valley area, Dunedin.  I know the local council have supported the use of 1080 drops in the past few months, and have suspected that sudden faintness, bone pains, general debilitation and sick pets is the result of these 1080 drops.  I do not know whether the council here is using brodifacoum, but this is another deadly poison, and, like 1080, gets into our water and our food eventually.

Our ‘clean, green’ image, promoted by Tourism New Zealand, and one which many Kiwis fondly relate to, is a fallacy.

New Zealand has a history of rampant chemical abuse which goes back to the days of DDT, which is still in our soils.  Then followed the herbicides 2,4D,  and 245T, which was used here long after it was banned in the rest of the educated world.

Sadly, not much has changed: Here we are in the 21st century, with the new super Auckland City Council in charge of us up here at Orewa, in the Whangaparoa, ex-Rodney Council region. This new council of Auckland City has approved a massive drop of Brodifacoum – 30 tonnes of the stuff, to be exact – to be aerially dropped over the region of the Shakespear Sanctuary.

This is not really a surprise either, considering the compliance of the Auckland City Council over the aerial poisoning of Auckland, which took place around 2002-2005.   This poisoning, done to get rid of the elusive apple moth, we were told, was, I believe, a crime against humanity.  They carried on with their campaign, spraying a deluge of apple moth spray over much of Auckland, until finally, Victoria University in Wellington proved that the spray WAS damaging the health of Aucklanders.  This was the moment when they were forced to stop their campaign.

Why couldn’t our own university in Auckland tackle the problem?  Well, the answer is that it was a politically sensitive issue:  The Auckland newspaper, “The New Zealand Herald”, was actually supporting the spraying programme by refusing to publish our on-going objections to the spray.  The same newspaper blatantly ran full page advertisements to support the campaign, driven by MAF, as if the apple moth poison, and these seriously ‘concerned’ people,  were seriously going to make our lives better.

The University of Auckland did nothing to come to our aid, when all the time, they had the records of student health over the period, which would have indicated the increased health problems suffered by students subjected to this poison.

Well, the Brodifacoum drop on Shakespear Park will hopefully not be on the scale of the apple moth poisoning, but it surely is a danger to all life, all the same.  And it is a shame that people on the Whangaparoa Peninsula have not banded together, to make as loud a noise a possible,  to try to stop the poisoning.

It seems most people on the whangaparaoa Peninsula are not even aware of the proposed Brodifacoum drop, or, if they are, they have been seduced into believing that it will not harm them.  Either that, or they just don’t care.

I have seen only one letter in our local paper, “The Rodney Times”, which objected to the Brodifacoum drop.  I made a response to this letter, to endorse the writer’s objections to the use of Brodifacoum, but my letter has not been published.

Merrilyn’s new book is available on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.ca/Cancer-And-Good-Health-Notebook-ebook/dp/B01DHMH6DG

Poison Free New Zealand: I find it interesting that most of the submissions against the spray, which were presented at a council meeting in December, 2010,  come from many different places over New Zealand.   I think the organization Poison Free New Zealand, and its co-ordinator Paul Cohen,  are conjointly  responsible for these far-reaching submissions.

The New Zealand Deer-Stalker ‘s Association has also spoken out strongly against the use of the poison Brodifacoum.

One submission against the Brodifacoum drop even comes from a Kiwi who is living in France. However, there is a  single voice which speaks out against the spray, which comes from the Whangaparoa Peninsula itself.

The major concerns of the people who oppose the aerial Brodifacoum drop are that:

Brodifacoum poses a major health risk to people, animals, birds and fish in the vicinity of the drop.

Brodifacoum poison is not selective, and will kill all creatures which ingest it.

Brodifacoum also poses a threat to the wider environment, as Brodifacoum, like DDT, gets into the food chain. It does not break down easily.

Brodifacoum is a rodenticide which is a common ingredient in rat and mice poisons.

Brodifacoum causes internal haemorrhages, and these haemorrhages cause death because of resultant heart failure, or respiratory failure. These outcomes are well documented. (Kirkwood et al 1994)

One submission states that the American Bird Conservancy have cited several studies which indicate that secondary poisonings are common. A secondary poisoning is when poisoning occurs from eating flesh of an animal already contaminated with a poison, such as Brodifacoum.

The American Bird Conservancy believes that the poison Brodifacoum could be dispersed by insects which are not affected by Brodifacoum, but which harbour the pesticide within and outside their bodies. Thus insects could be carriers of the poisoned bait.

In the New Zealand Herald today and yesterday, we have been given beautiful posters of the birds of the Hauraki Gulf. This can’t be concidence, methinks. The Brodifacoum drop is about to begin:

The promotions of council so far have failed to tell us about the poisoning due to happen at Shakespear Park. Their intentions to drop 30 tonnes of Brodifacoum is being played down, and instead of warnings about the imminent poisoning, we get given these lovely posters.

One advertisement I read on a local bus just over a week ago asked for donations to protect our Shakspear Park and its birds……It gave the impression that the Auckland City Council were doing everything to look after our precious park. No mention on this ad that they are about to poison the area with rodenticide which will harm the very birds that they say they are trying to protect.

Presumably, donations received to the Auckland City Council will actually be paying for this dreadful carnage.

One writer has said that Brodifacoum has been detected in a range of game animals further up the food chain, for example, in pigs and deer, and goats, which will make the eating of wild animals unsafe.  This is one reason that the New Zealand Deer Stalker’s Association have objected to the Brodifacoum drop.

But Brodifacoum has also been found to affect bird life. The New Zealand native avian species affected is large: The list includes weka, moreportk, black billed gull, saddleback,and New Zealand robin. Imported species such as chaffinch, mynah, magpie and blackbird are also vulnerable. (Eason et al 2001)

After the Rangitoto drop of Brodifacoum, thousands of pilchards died, all in the same time frame. Our authorities have declared that there is no relationship to the poison used on Rangitoto, as they said they did not find significant amounts of Brodifacoum in the fish.

However,  just because scientist cannot find traces of the poison, this is no proof that the fish have not suffered a toxic reaction:  It is now an established fact that some species will have adverse reactions to some poisons from exposure to miniscule amounts which cannot even be detected: This has been shown with bees, in studies which have determined the cause of bee colony collapse disorder as being exposure to miniscule amounts of nicotinoid substances which did not even show up under scientific investigation.

The reality is that all birds, all animals in the area will be affected in the long term And so will people.

People who live in the area are likely to suffer sore, burning eyes, and skin rashes in some cases. But, since Brodifacoum gets into the food chain, the long-term and wide scope of its effect cannot be underestimated. Its effects will be far reaching.

The US EPA Rodenticide Mitigation Decision of May 2008 clearly classifies Brodifacoum as a ‘PERSISTENT ORGANIC COMPOUND’ (POC).

The effect of using Persistent Organic Compounds, according to this American report,  is that they “bio-accumulate along terrestrial food chains”.  It states that “repeated use of POC’s, including second generation anticoagulants, is unwise and discouraged”.

The effects of Brodifacoum have been equated to the effects of DDT,another POC which has a damaging effect on the health, and  a long-lasting effect in the environment and the food chain.

(see US EPA Rodenticide Mitigation Decision, May, 2008)

Is Brodifacoum Poison Affecting Humans And Killing NZ Seagulls

Toxic Chemicals:

Thirty Tonnes of Brodifacoum Dropped on Whangaparaoa Shakespear Park, New Zealand.

This article was previously published by Merrilyn in 2012.

DSCO 1545Seagulls in Danger:  Photo by Merrilyn on Holly’s camera, 2012.

And since this drop, thousands of seagulls have been picked up dead off our shores up here.  2500 dead seagulls  within one week have been picked up off our local beaches, near where the Brodifacoum was dropped, and a total of 10,000 dead seagulls has been given for the general area, including Muriwai Beach, which is not very far away ‘as the seagull flies’.   This will be a very conservative figure.  How can they count all the seagulls who have died?.

DSCO 1552Photo by Merrilyn on Holly’s camera, 2012.

The authorities have reported through the local paper (NO big coverage about this big event, with its potentially disastrous consequences, on national television)  that the 10,000 dead seagulls picked up were a result of a storm.  But the Brodifacoum poisoning on such a huge scale must surely be the real reason.  Seagulls can detect when storms are on their way, and it is not usual that they get caught up in these storms.  Also – the storm that was predicted for our region north of Auckland in the Whangaparaoa did not arrive.  So these seagulls did not die because of a storm.

We were assured in a local newspaper article that ‘technology’ was so improved and sophisticated now, that NO Brodifacoum would be accidently dropped in the sea or on the beaches. A blatant misrepresentation of the facts.

The following week, after one of these poisonous drops, a picture appeared in the local paper of workers picking up Brodifacoum pellets from the local beaches. These workers were paid by MAF to pick up accidental drops of poisonous pellets off the beach.  Many of these escaped pellets would have been eaten by seagulls before the pellets could be retrieved.  Many pellets would also have landed in the water where they could never be retrieved.

Now with such a huge drop of Brodifacoum poison – 30 tonnes in the one area – you would expect that the health department would be interested in the effects on the people of the region, especially since so many people live close to the poisoned site.  But – in many countries overseas, this poison has already been banned, or restricted.  So its bad effects ARE  ALREADY DOCUMENTED.  This is why our health authorities are turning a blind eye to the after-effects of using this poison on such a large scale.  Nothing but silence now, and the pretence that all is well.  Meanwhile,  I bet the doctor’s are doing a roaring trade on the Whangaparaoa-Rodney Coast, as will the drug companies, from all the people who will be visiting the doctors for prescriptions to fix the many and various health problems people will be suffering as a direct result of Brodifacoum poisoning.

Merrilyn’s book is available on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.ca/Cancer-And-Good-Health-Notebook-ebook/dp/B01DHMH6DG

Someone, somewhere, will be profiting enormously, to the tune of MILLIONS of dollars, because of the sale and the use of this Brodifacoum poison in New Zealand.  Thirty tonnes on Whangaparaoa Shakespear Park, and goodness knows how much all over the rest of the country.  The thing is that it is not necessary to use poison.  There are plenty of less harmful ways of managing the pests of the forests without using chemicals such as Brodifacoum.  But big business interests push this poison forward as being the cheapest and quickest way to cure the problem, and so our gullible politicians say “YES’ to it.  Even the Green party has endorsed the use of this poison, so I read somewhere.  Astounding – other countries have experienced disastrous consequences from using Brodifacoum, but New Zealand has to learn for itself.

I wonder whether they might even have sneakily used it on the reserve only few hundred yards down the road from where I live, such are the reactions that I am experiencing to this poison.

I have been told that many seagulls died in Kapiti as well – also blamed on a storm.  But Brodifacoum poisoning, I remember reading somewhere,  has also been done in parks and on islands in that region, as well as in other parkland areas of New Zealand.  So these seagulls down at Kapiti, also,  have likely died from the result of eating Brodifacoum poison.  The local paper said a couple of weeks ago that 100,000 seagulls have died over the past month, because of storms, they say,  in various areas of New Zealand.  This will be just an estimate on the lower side, I should imagine.  But it is still a pretty horrific figure.

What a terrible thing.  As if we can’t see that ‘the Gods are angry’:  All the earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes and volcanic eruptions all over the world are surely a sign that we need to alter our ways.  Our earth is rebelling to show its anger about the way we are poisoning our planet.  And, unbelievably,  still it goes on.

Every bad thing we do against nature, or each other, has an affect.  And so, by dropping 30 tonnes of Brodifacoum, which is used in rat poisons, to kill opossums, rats and rabbits, you can expect an enormous chain reaction which will, eventually, have an impact upon the wider environ and its people and wild life.  Brodifacoum in such a large volume will also affect climate to a degree, as well as all life including people, because the gases coming from the poison, and from decomposing birds and animals which have eaten it, will affect the senstive ozone protection in the sky, and so forth…

Well, my health has been severely affected by the Brodifacoum poisoning just a few kilometres away from where I live.  Sure – there has been a virus about – but it was the Brodifacoum poison, I believe, which weakened my immune system dramatically, so that I could not fight off the virus easily.  This fact has been proven with bees – It is a fact now, that bees are dying of a virus because their immune systems have become weakened by toxic agricultural chemicals, the main one being nicotinoids.  Scientists have shown that bees who were not exposed to this poison, did not succumb to the virus, and their hives stayed healthy.  But the bees whom the scientists had exposed to MICRODOSES of the nicotinoid poison, which could not be detected by scientific means in the bees afterwards, all succumbed to the virus which killed them.

So – microdoses of poisons DO affect life, as the microdoses of homeopathic medicine has proven, and as these scientists have proven with their experiments on bees.

Anyhow – back to getting the flu, and relating the ongoing symptoms to Brodifacoum. – It started with getting very wet and cold  one night.  I walked back from Red Beach in the driving rain one night,  which was probably the ‘storm’ we were warned about,  and got a dose of flu followed by bronchitis.  But this lasted about a month, with a distressing asthmatic-type cough that seemed to come back on any old day.  There was intermittent high fever, with profuse sweating – clothes had to be changed several times a day on some days.  Severe bone pain accompanied what I thought was ‘flu’ – but I began to suspect that something else was going on, because the bone pains with a streaming nose, even now,  still return on certain days, with what I can now discern to be, since the flu symptoms have gone, as allergy symptoms related to Brodifacoum.

Allergy to Brodifacoum.  These include a running nose, and slightly burning nostrils and lips, with sore eyes, blurred vision at times,  intermittent bone pain, intermittent neck pain at the base of the skull,  intermittent headache, and a sore throat with glands which are swollen on some days. There has also been an ongoing  bladder infection which was especially bad this past fortnight, after the last drop of 10 tonnes. I have realized that the Brodifacoum microdoses have caused the balance of  acidophilus bacteria to be affected, causing candida:  Digestion is impaired, as well as bowel function. The effect of the Brodifacoum is very weakening.  It can make you feel depressed and lethargic, because it affects the nervous system and the muscle strength.

The effect of this poison in the air (and has it got into our water already?) is even stronger in effect than taking a homeopathic remedy – except that this is NOT the remedy we have chosen.  The effect of the presence of this Brodifacoum in our environment, even though it will be in microdoses,  and probably not discernable to any ‘test’,  is undoubtably having a physical effect on the human body.

I did wonder about the Brodifacoum poisoning affecting my health, when I did not get better.  The sickness co-incided with the three 10 tonne drops of Brodifacoum.   And my friend Bernhard in spirit, told me to take Thuja, which is an anti-poison homeopathic remedy – very useful to counteract the effects of bad vaccinations, and sensitivity to things such as rat poison.

Now I have worked it out – because I feel better when I leave this otherwise beautiful environment, to head down to the ‘big smoke’ of Auckland.  Auckland air is currently better than our Orewa/Whangaparaoa air.  On returning here, the sore glands, sore throat and the coughing all return.

I could not decide this for sure beforehand, when I had the flu, as I was too sick to go anywhere.  But now that the virus has been overcome, I am well enough to travel again.  There is no doubt that our air, even in Orewa, is being affected by this poison about 5-8 kilometres away.  At night, when the air is still, especially when there is a fog,  the symptoms become worse, with persistent coughing, bone pains, and the rest. I can smell the poison.  I have another friend who is experiencing the very same symptoms, and who also relates these to the Brodifacoum poison down the road. But we are  sensitive – not many people will be aware of the poison to the same degree, however, it will be affecting many people just the same.  I feel sorry for those people who live very close to where the poison was dropped on Shakespear Regional Park.

The weather has been absolutely lovely lately – summer is here already, it seems – however, I am looking forward to the rain which should arrive on Wednesday 31st August 2011, as this should dispel some of these toxic vapours affecting my health.  the Brodifacoum fumes are currently in our air at Orewa.  Meanwhile, I am taking calcium ascorbate powder, which is a non-acidic form of vitamin C, to counteract the effects of the poison. The dosage I am using is between 1000 mg to 2000 mg a day.  I have been taking this for the past three days now, and the symptoms are markedly improved.  I am also taking the occasional dose of homeopathic Thuja.  Still, this does not stop the irritation to the lungs, eyes and nose, from the stuff present in the air.  Dear Lord, Please bring on the rain……….

Note:  Other factors which will be contributing to the prevalence of viruses of many kinds at the moment will be the effects of radiation from Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and from the dumping of  radioactive material, from Japan,  into the Pacific and onto the deserts of south  Australia  recently.  I have eaten fish and chips a few times in the past month.  I think that ocean fish are  slowly becoming contaminated with radiation from these sources.  Radiation, even in small amounts, like Brodifacoum, weakens the immune system so that we are  made more vulnerable to viruses and infectious diseases.

The poison problem is compounded for me at the moment because of insecticide, or herbicide,  which I smelt all around the vicinity of the big supermarket when I passed by it last night, in Orewa.  This is only a hundred yards away from my house. This localized poisoning could have been done by council, but I suspect it was the supermarket spraying poison around to get rid of cockroaches and ants, because it was a Sunday, and councils do not work on
Sundays.  If only people would use natural insecticides such as the homeopathic and organic products which are available, instead of these highly toxic substances which should not come anywhere near food storage places, or places occupied by people.