Banned Pesticides are Sprayed
SEATTLE, WA.... As formations of unmarked tanker aircraft continue to
criss-cross American skies on a mission authorities refuse to disclose, an
environmental laboratory has identified an extremely toxic component of the
spray drifting over cities and countryside. ENS has learned that samples of
oily fallout collected by farmers, truck drivers and pilots in Maryland and
Pennsylvania were tested by Aqua-Tech Environmental of Marion, Ohio in
September, 1997 and found to contain ethylene dibromide (EDB). An extremely
hazardous pesticide, EDB was banned by the US Environmental Protection
Agency in 1983.
But in 1991, the composition of jet fuel used by commercial and military jet
aircraft in the U.S. was changed from JP4 to somewhat less flammable JP8. A
Department of Defence source says the move "has saved some lives" in air
crashes. Ethylene dibromide is a key component of JP8.
The 1991 Chemical Hazards of the Workplace warns that repeated exposure to
low levels of ethylene dibromide results in "general weakness, vomiting,
diarrhea, chest pains, coughing and shortness of breath, upper respiratory
tract irritation" and respiratory failure caused by swelling of the lymph
glands in the lungs. "Deterioration of the heart, liver and kidneys, and
hemorrhages in the respiratory tract," can also result from prolonged
contact with JP8. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
hazardous materials list: "Ethylene dibromide is a carcinogen and must be
handled with extreme caution." A seven-page summary of this pesticide's
extreme toxicity notes that EDB may also damage the reproductive system.
According to the EPA, "Exposure can irritate the lungs, repeated exposure
may cause bronchitis, development of cough, and shortness of breath. It will
damage the liver and kidneys".
Mark Witten, a respiratory physiologist at the University of Arizona in
Tucson where an official US Air Force study on JP8 was carried out, told
Scientist in March, 1998 that crew chiefs "seem to have more colds, more
bronchitis, more chronic coughs than the people not exposed to jet fuel."
EDB is 6.5-times heavier than air. Unlike normal contrails, the thick white
streamers being sprayed from downward-pointing tailbooms over at least 39
states does not dissipate, but spreads into an overcast that refracts a
purple color in sunlight and appears suddenly as an oily film in puddles and
ponds. Hundreds of photographs and videotapes made by ground observers show
pairs or larger formations of aircraft spreading a white mist that thickens
and drifts toward the ground. More than 200 eye-witnesses - including police
officers, pilots, military and public health personnel - have provided
detailed accounts of aerial spraying in characteristic "X"s and east-to-west
grid patterns, followed by occluded skies - and acute auto-immune reactions
and respiratory infections throughout affected regions.
"I keeps coughing phlegm that tastes bad," 50 year old Mary Young of
Sallisaw, Oklahoma told ENS after an aircraft sprayed her home at rooftop
level one night last January with something that struck the windows like
sand. "My eyes hurt, my joints hurt. I'm not catchin' my breath right. I
can't get rid of this cold. I've had this bad headache - it's not just a
headache. My eyeballs hurt so bad - way in the back - I just wish they would
fall out."
Severe headaches, nosebleeds, shortness of breath, joint pain and a dry
hacking cough "that never leaves" are being reported by countless Americans
jamming hospital Emergency Rooms from coast to coast. While December and
January are traditionally bad months for asthma sufferers, patients, doctors
and nurses across the U.S. report hospital wards filled to overflowing with
bronchitis, pneumonia and acute asthma admissions at up to twice normal
winter rates. Early last month, The News and Observer of Raleigh, North
Carolina reported that respiratory admissions to Durham regional hospital
jumped from the usual 184 patients a day to 247. Ambulance drivers were told
that the hospital was not receiving any more patients.
In New York City, doctors are calling a flood of respiratory cases an
epidemic. "We have people double- and triple-parked in the ER on
stretchers," Dr. Elliot Friedman, associate director of emergency medicine
at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, told the New York Times on
January 31. "And there have been times when upwards of 40 people have been
admitted but are waiting for someone to be discharged," Friedman added.
"This high fever is not typical of other flus," Dr. Sigurd Ackerman, the
president of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center told the Times shortly
after a TV cameraman panned up to frame lingering "X"-shaped contrails over
Times-Square. Dr. Robert Saken, a partner in the Soho Pediatrics Group, told
that newspaper, "It was surprising to me how sick they got and how quickly
it happened." Dr. Ilya Spigland, Montefiore hospital's director of virology,
doesn't know the reason for the sudden epidemic of respiratory cases. It is,
Spigland told the New York Times, "very possible that the increase in
respiratory infections may not be due to the flu." That same day in Lake
Havasu, California, headlines in Today's News Herald announced: "Victims
curse unnamed bug, but can't call it the 'flu'." MD Mary Lou Callername told
the Herald "that a nameless virus is bringing at least 10 patients a day
into her office and driving some into the hospital, but laboratory tests
show only a few are suffering from Type A or other identifiable strains of
influenza."
The previous weekend, after San Francisco resident Curtis Schumann noticed
"sky grids in the making," and Melanie Zucker watched nine contrails being
woven over Berkeley, local TV stations reported Bay area emergency rooms
inundated with flu-like cases. In Seattle - where a resident reports "I've
lived here for 26 years never seeing this number of contrails at once" -
pneumonia patient Lowell Barger told ENS that in the hospital where he was
admitted in late January, "their respiratory ward was overflowing with
people, and they were having to put respiratory patients in other wards." At
that time, a resident of Spokane listening to a police radio scanner told
ENS he heard "many rescue calls for people with breathing difficulties." In
Palmyra, New Jersey, shortly after Lucrecia Moon watched unusual lingering
contrails from a McDonald's restaurant, a nurse reported "many people ill."
In Las Vegas, Nevada, TV news coverage told of area hospitals being filled
with people experiencing breathing problems.
After a resident of Lexington, Kentucky watched helicopters circling the
city for several days, flying low overhead at 3 a.m., "the sky looked like a
giant checkerboard from the planes criss-crossing it, and the air still had
the steel mill smell." According to this eye-witness, "Everyone here is
sick. So far six counties have closed all the schools because all the
students were sick with 'flu-like symptoms'. I've been having headaches, a
sore throat, and an annoying, hacking cough for the past four months and it
seems to get worse after I see these aircraft circling the area." Similar
"chem trails" sightings continue to be reported over Phoenix, Arizona. The
January 28, 1999 edition of Arizona Republic reported that "The incidence of
bronchial problems in Phoenix this month is 237 hospitalizations vs. last
year at 160 or so." At the same time, hospitals in Portland, Oregon;
Marietta, Georgia; Chandler, Arizona, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz, Redding and
Salinas, California - and other cities across the nation - were jammed with
bronchitis, pneumonia and other acute respiratory cases after repeated
spraying and cobweb-like fallout was reported in those regions. "We're
getting sprayed real heavily with the contrails," a south Pennsylvania
resident told ENS. "It's just total saturation."
As overfilled Pennsylvania hospitals were forced to divert respiratory
emergencies to other facilities with bed space, another south-central
Pennsylvania resident, Deborah Kammerer, looked out her window and watched
aircraft "flying and dispersing over the city. It was supposed to be a clear
sunny day. It became more overcast as the day progressed. I observed how the
white trails widened out and settled down creating a haze over everything."
South Florida resident Karen Okenica told ENS she has watched on several
occasions as contrails "criss-crossed or ran parallel to each other. They
did not dissipate but got thicker and stayed in the sky for quite a while."
Okenica says she became frightened after gazing through Nikon binoculars and
noticing an all-white jet with "plumes" coming from the rear of the plane.
In early December, local newspapers reported that Bethesda Memorial and
Delray Community hospitals were full and could not accommodate any more
patients. The January 7 Philadelphia Daily News reported that "Emergency
Room patients overflowed into the hallways at West Jersey Hospital in
Berlin, New Jersey, and ambulance crews were temporarily diverted to other
institutions as a wave of respiratory illnesses swept the area." At Northern
Westchester County Hospital, "there was a 24 hour waiting period to get in."
In Manitou, Michigan, Registered Nurse Kim Korte was driving north on M52,
when she noticed "stripes" in the sky. "It appeared as if someone took white
paint on their fingers and from north to south ran their fingers through the
sky. These contrails were evenly spaced and covered the whole sky!" from
east to west. Within 24 hours, Korte became very weak and feverish. After
her boyfriend told her that "many in his family started coming down with the
same complaints," the RN "started noticing alot of my patients and their
family members were coming down with these symptoms at the same time." On
checking with her colleagues, the former hospital supervisor learned that
other nurses and physicians were complaining "of being extremely busy with
respiratory diagnoses." In Austin, Texas - where Richard Young reports that
"The skies here are filled almost daily with trails crossing each other" - a
school nurse told a worried parent that she had seen over 100 sick children
in a single day.
Where is the mass media's reporting of this mass phenomenon? Indications of
a concerted cover-up came on February 11, when a retired Southern Baptist
preacher named Everett Burton finally succeeded in reaching C-span. After
voicing his opinion on the Clinton impeachment trial, this former minister
told Americans to get a copy of the Constitution and read it to realize what
they have lost. Rev. Burton then advised viewers not to take his word for
what was happening in the US - but to "just look up in the skies as the
planes regularly spray contrails across the skies, spraying people and
making them ill." At this point, Rev. Burton was cut off. The screen flipped
from C-span to the Tennessee state seal, remained silent for several minutes.
Americans are not alone in their anxious bewilderment and suffering. In
England, after lingering contrails and cobweb-like fallout were reported
over London and Birmingham, the BBC reported on January 14 that more than
8,000 people - mostly elderly - died from pneumonia and other respiratory
complications in the last week of December and the first two weeks of
January, 1999. According to the BBC, in early January of this year, more
than 97,100 people in England and Wales were stricken with respiratory
ailments in a single week - almost double the usual rate. Ambulances in the
Greater Manchester and Mersey region were each dealing with more than 1,000
calls every day - almost twice the norm. Norfolk and Norwich suffered such
an unexpected increase in deaths, a refrigerated semi-trailer capable of
holding 36 bodies was pressed into service as a temporary morgue. The ENS
investigation continues.
http://www.health
researchbooks.com/articles/pesticide.htm HOSPITALS JAMMED AS BANNED
PESTICIDE IS SPRAYED FROM THE SKIES by William Thomas
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