aerial spraying

Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family’s little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah’s entire two and a half acres of poppies… “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah…”It’s my fate,” the child says.

Our collective concern has arisen out of the fact that the light brown apple moth (LBAM) eradication program currently underway in different parts of California utilizes a biochemical pesticide spray that has not undergone formal safety testing by either federal or state agencies, that the spray has never been sprayed on humans before, that the end goal of eradication will likely not be accomplished, and of particular concern, is the lack of an effective adverse effects monitoring system for assessing the potential for adverse human health effects.