Toxic Naled Spraying Over Miami: The Beginning Of Chemical Warfare Against U.S. Citizens
Miami, Florida is now the epicenter of a new chemical war the U.S. government is waging against its own citizens, but you wouldn’t know it to read the daily newspaper there.
Low-flying planes in the early morning pre-dawn light swooped over neighborhoods on Friday, spraying out a dusting of naled, an organophosphate pesticide that officials hope will wipe out the mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.
Naled is the same organophosphate that the European Union has banned as an unacceptable risk to humans. This is the same chemical that is banned from use in the U.S. in dog flea collars for fear that children may come in contact with it, and which is also banned from home use.
The Environmental Protection Agency says that naled can safely be used in small doses, while at the same time it has asked farms and state and municipal governments to “voluntarily eliminate” the use of the organophosphate and others of its family.
But not everyone agrees with that sunny outlook. The streets of Puerto Rico were filled with protesters a few months ago when the Centers for Disease Control proposed using the chemical there to attempt to control mosquitoes. The governor of Puerto Rico forced the CDC to take back its shipment of naled.
And in a horrible bit of dark irony, some studies have shown a link between the use of naled and harm to developing fetuses. In their zeal to attack the nebulous “threat” of the Zika virus, government officials may be harming the very children they purport to be protecting.
“We all have heard of the intention to fumigate Miami with naled, and with all due respect, we are starting to see in Florida a repeat of what we went through: Public servants not reading the science that is in front of them,” writes environmentalist Dr. Elvia Melendez-Ackerman in a letter to Miami officials. She worked to ban naled in Puerto Rico and continues to fight against its use in Florida.
“People don’t know all the risks,” she added. “This degrades into a carcinogen. It’s in the EPA documents.”
For their part, Miami-Dade County officials repeat the party line, that they have been using naled for decades–all the while glossing over the fact that it is normally used in rural areas, not over city streets and suburban houses.
Indeed, organophosphates are estimated to kill around 200,000 people a year in the most horrific way: the chemical attacks the nervous system as sarin gas would, preventing the person’s neurotransmitters from working.
“It’s a painful way to die,” said Emory University exposure scientist Dana Boyd Barr in a 2013 National Geographic story. “You end up suffocating because you are essentially paralyzed.”
All this over a mosquito that may or may not carry a virus that is so mild that most people don’t even know they have contracted it, and which has never been definitively linked to the birth defects seen in Brazil. In a metro area of 20 million people, there have been 56 Zika infections.
Is mass spraying of a toxic poison over residential areas really appropriate?
If you don’t smell a rat by now its probably because your nostrils are filled with naled and you can’t smell anymore.
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https://ppjg.me/2016/09/10/war-declared-in-miami-beach-as-city-begins-air-drop-of-neurotoxic-pesticide-video/
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/pesticide-sprayed-over-wynwood-is-banned-in-europe-may-also-harm-fetuses-8671169