The Control of Pesticides in the European Union and Australia
The Australian Situation - by Alison Bleaney

The Australian community needs reassurance that the way pesticides are being used and their off-target migration is acceptable especially in the light of continuing international scientific findings of adverse effects.

The need to protect water catchments and raw drinking water from all chemicals which may have a detrimental effect in the ecosystem is of paramount importance. That communications regarding the reduction of disease-inducing and modifying chemicals is not occurring by those that regulate for the use and application of these chemicals, goes against all the arguments for preventative approaches to human and environmental health, let alone social justice

As Pete Myers succinctly states in his book "Our Stolen Future" http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/corerecs.htm

‘Current regulatory practices give chemical manufacturers the benefit of the doubt. Substances can be removed from the market only if their health impacts can be demonstrated with scientific certainty. This burden of proof needs to be shifted. If plausible doubt can be justified about the safety of chemical compounds, their use should be allowed only if the manufacturer can prove they represent no inappropriate threat to human or ecosystem health. This is especially important for endocrine disrupting chemicals because increasingly it appears that aspects of their modes of action make it very difficult for epidemiological science to demonstrate causality with certainty. On the contrary, epidemiological studies of endocrine disruption in humans are biased toward finding false negatives.’

The CSIRO is working with the Australian Federal and States and Territories Governments to introduce a desk-top tool (Pesticide Impact Rating Index (PIRI)) that it proposes will assist with the predictive risk assessment with pesticide use. Unfortunately the PIRI 'explicitly' excludes risks to humans and concentrates instead on the environmental risks, but it admits the toxicity impact of a range of pesticides on key aquatic species is not known. It also does not consider ANY sub-lethal effects (and gives no weighting to endocrine disruptors) but uses a LD 50 for any given species and not the most sensitive species in that ecosystem.

The problems encountered with loopholes in rules and regulations and the difficulty in implementing preventative measures seem indeed at times insurmountable due to the approach taken by the regulators (Federal and State) and their obvious difficulty in dealing with complex ‘real life’ situations.

There is a need for regulatory control of "poisonous chemicals" (pesticides) that cover both the regulation for their use and the application and movement off-site in a protectionary fashion.

It is no longer acceptable to allow the application of poisonous chemicals (pesticides) and to then turn one’s back on the consequences after the point of application.

We need to ensure that regulators enforce and police regulations which are put in place to protect the public and the environment.
MORE INFO : http://www.dea.org.au/node/272

Water quality issues in North East Tas....

Launceston Examiner  26-8-08 pg 27
http://northerntasmania.yourguide.com.au/home.asp

Concerns expressed over water
BREAK O'Day Council yesterday expressed concerns over the quality of
the region's drinking water at a specially convened water and sewerage
reform meeting:
http://northerntasmania.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/human-interest
/concerns-expressed-over-water/1253675.aspx