This article is in response to study that was due to appear in the New England Journal of Medicine and was partly reported by the Associated Press and reprinted in "Health / Medicine" - Boulder Camera 5/8/97 and other news papers around the country recently. Blaming the roaches, and not the chemical poisoning of our children, illustrates a lack of common sense. "The nasty, lowly cockroach has been found to be the leading cause of severe childhood asthma in the country's poorest city neighborhoods, where asthma is worst." (Daniel Q. Haney, Associated Press.) This statement is not correct, and such statements are used for the sole purpose of advertising the chemical industry.
The role of chemical poisoning of children in those cockroach infested neighborhoods is deliberately left out in the so-called study to imply the usefulness of pesticides in solving the problem. The broken, dysfunctional plumbing; the collection of paper boxes inside generally crowded rooms; the garbage around buildings; the perfect indoor temperatures; these are ideal environmental factors for high density breeding of cockroaches. Inner cities can become havens for cockroaches, and a perfect market for chemical pesticide dumping.
Regular use and misuse of chemical pesticides in poorer neighborhoods results in a high proportion of children in those areas becoming highly allergic and asthmatic. Studies, possibly by chemical industry researchers, have blamed the wide spread symptoms on the children breathing cockroach feces and body parts. It never occurs to the authorities and pesticide researchers that most of the health problem may be due to the chemical poisons that are heavily used in those areas. Roach infestations are bad enough, but pesticide poisoning makes the situation worse.
Noticing that "asthma is on the rise in cities and suburbs alike, but especially bad in the inner cities, with rates often double those found elsewhere" without noticing the wide spread overuse and misuse of chemical pesticides, is denial of the facts. Nobody is going to be surprised to find that the study was funded by the chemical industry, through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This article will most certainly be used in pesticide sales promotion, as it was intended to be.
The fact is that children who had a lot of cockroaches in their bedrooms used a lot of pesticides, so they were poisoned more and got sicker. This biased and useless study was set to continue the indoctrination of Americans against insects in general in order to expand the sale and misuse of pesticides. However, it is not the roaches, it is the structures and the general conditions of poverty that are the problem. The solution lies in social restructuring of our society. As each new chemical is introduced into the home, the "nasty, lowly" cockroaches reorganize their systems to survive or even consume and thrive on the poisons. They improve on their defense mechanism to take care of the chemical structures. The effect of this cycle has been the need to develop more potent pesticides to deal with the problem of resistant roaches, all in vain.
In fact, there are no real pest problems in urban America that require the quantity and kinds of pesticides being used daily in the cities. What we have is loss of basic common sense reasoning brought about by political economic pressure and greed. We have become a culture of pesticide dependence, evidenced by the increased demand for pesticides to "solve" all insect problems. Consequently there are a multitude of pesticides which create an appalling rate of chemical consumption. This results in increased poisoning of children, evidenced by the rate of asthma.
A change of attitude towards sow bugs and earwigs, and knowing more about ants and using them to reduce some of the termites could reduce toxic pesticide consumption in homes and save us from unnecessary toxic chemical exposure. When a government agency or corporate organization building manager demand in their contract instructions for "chemical treatment with liquid residual insecticides in all general offices, meeting rooms, lounges, work areas on all floors". The innocent employees are directly placed in danger of chemical exposure. It is unfair involuntary exposure of workers, exploiting their trust and faith in the abilities of their building and facilities manager to provide them with a safe working environment. Not seeing a single crawling creature in a poorly constructed office building should indicate danger, not cleanliness and safety.
The impulsive decision to use chemicals poses a serious danger of unnecessary accumulation of toxic materials in the home or work place. The real solution is habitat modification and management requiring identification of all of the circumstances that give rise to the pest problems so that changes can be made to the environment and human behaviors to alter those circumstances. Nothing is a pest until conditions allow it. By addressing the problem areas in and around buildings, we can provide a safe and effective form of management that both meets the needs of a pester environment and eliminates exposure to toxic pesticides. By modifying parts of the habitat, one is able to reduce insect or rodent activity and avoid pesticide and its poisoning effects.
Being an insect intolerant and pesticide addicted nation, we always have the imagination of impending horror if pesticides have not been sprayed. That is pesticide addiction. The overuse and oversell of pesticides have resulted in these common but unrecognized conditions in our urban areas. These conditions translate into an increased rate of asthma, especially in the inner cities. Chemical addiction is caused by oversell, overuse and misuse of pesticides. A major part of urban system management must include the psychological "pest" management. Providing appropriate information and education can provide "security", in the same way chemical sprays provide a feeling of "security" for some homeowners.
There is a fallacy that legislators have the powers, through the various government agencies, to control pesticides and their toxic effects on the general population. The truth is that economic interest is the priority of most governments, and the pesticide industry is a major base of our economy. Individuals do have the power to regulate the amount of pesticides in their immediate environment. Once all the "immediate" environments have been regulated by the individuals by avoiding unnecessary dumping, there will be reduced pesticide pollution in the general environment. The pesticide industry's hard sell to American consumers that insects are filth and pesticides are the tools to clean them with then begins to be ignored, and the incidents of asthma reduced in children.
Public health inspections must emphasize habitat modification. The present system of awarding sanitation grades in restaurants based only on the number of cockroaches seen encourages increased chemical dumping. The more building structures resist pest invasions, the fewer chemicals we will need to control them. In public housing, for example, the real key to pest management is an involved manager and environmentally aware, informed tenants who know their responsibilities. In such a situation, habitat management is a more realistic goal than so-called pest extermination.
If we want to reduce asthma we have to reduce overuse and misuse of pesticides; and the best way is to reduce demand by the consumers. Regulations becomes unnecessary where demand for unnecessary chemical dumping no longer exists.
Okech "Ken" Ogwaro, Ph.D.
ECO-CARE International
Telephone/Fax: (661) 397-8883
E-mail: ecocareinter@earthlink.net