Meriel Watts from Waiheke Island, trained in agricultural science before becoming a natural health practitioner and treating people poisoned by roadside sprays. She also co-ordinates the New Zealand branch of Pesticide Action Network, providing technical information to international organisations such as the United Nations.
Listen to one of only two full time, totally dedicated 'volunteer' activists against the chemical spraying of the thousands of kilometers of Auckland's suburban streets and footpaths with dangerous herbicides.
This is another battle for the health of Auckland's families as well as the ecology of the beaches, harbours and marine life, where the chemicals run off after rain.
Present focus:
Stopping the reintroduction of chemical weed management on roadsides and streets throughout the greater Auckland Council area, when for the last 14 years Auckland and the North Shore had a very successful non-chemical management system, and now the focus is getting Auckland Council region back onto non-chemical roadside weed management.
To get chlorpyrifos an insecticide banned in NZ where it is still used in agriculture, horticulture, on livestock and on roses, because prenatal exposures to even low levels interferes with brain development leaving children with neurological and behavioural issues that last a lifetime – like reduced IQ, ADHD, Autism.
http://www.pananz.net/ban-chlorpyrifos.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430152039.htm
Meriel also clearly identifies that right wing corporate governments, still stack the deck in that the rich get richer and the poor slide downhill and that there is no languaging of organic and health (or holistic) practices for the populace on their agenda.
Where once the Greens and Labour had a food chart for buying and consuming healthy food, and that school tuck shops were once cleared of many items considered either junk food or sugar drinks, under the easily stated languaging of 'having freedom to choose' (our own poison) unhealthy food (rubbish) is now back on the National menu.
Note: If we received 'conscious' direction and support from 'conscious' Government and the Department of Health, we would not have huge queues of obese and diabetic youth to middle aged people lining up for hospital beds. Because the way we are tracking very soon unhealthy ill, New Zealanders will implode the National health system, due to the huge costs of taking care of 'unconscious' and ill patients sucking the health system dry.
Like what sort of civilization goes out and sprays poisonous chemicals over their food and then harvests it to eat. These are policies condoned by present 'unconscious' NZ agricultural and health policy advocates and those in power.
Or in the USA, a chemical corporation that has produced a herbicide that causes cancer, as well as a breast cancer fighting drug and they also happen to own the USA's largest for profit cancer clinic in the country. They profit from making and selling a carcinogen, then profit from the drug to treat it and finally it a coup de grâce, profit from the clinic where the people pay to get treated.
How 'unconscious' do we want to become?
Dr Meriel Watts - Contact - merielwatts [at] xtra.co.nz
The Chemicalisation of Society, and halting chemical weed spraying in Auckland Council areas.