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  Tasmania: name your poison September 26, 2004 Reporter :Graham Davis Producer : Nick Rushworth  Last December in the north-east of Tasmania, a helicopter spraying a forestry plantation with pesticide crashed, spilling its load. A month later, the biggest rains on record hit the nearby coastal township of St Helens. Within a week, the oysters growing in the bay at St Helens began to die. Ultimately, ninety per cent of them died. At the same time, the local doctor is seeing scores of patients whose illnesses she can't explain. In this most heavily forested area of the most heavily forested state in the country, fingers are being pointed at the plantation industry and its heavy reliance on herbicides and pesticides. Just what poisons are being sprayed, by whom and in what amounts is almost impossible to find out: what the Tasmanian government doesn't know about their use, the forestry industry doesn't need to tell them since it's been exempted from Freedom of Information legislation. Whether the helicopter crash alone was responsible for the oyster kill or the potential health effects on humans downstream is the subject of fierce debate. What is certain is that evidence of a lot more poison use was found at the site than what was being sprayed the day of the crash. And the potential contamination of the drinking water — as well as threats to human health — are widespread in the state. Sunday's Graham Davis investigates …Transcript JANA WENDT: Last December in north east Tasmania, a helicopter spraying a plantation with pesticide crashed, spilling its toxic load. A month later the heaviest rains on record hit the nearby town of St Helens. Within a week the oysters in George's Bay had begun to die. And the local doctor now has many patients whose illnesses she can't explain. The Tasmanian forestry industry relies heavily on herbicides and pesticides, but what's being sprayed, and in what strength, is almost impossible to find out, because the industry is exempt from freedom of information laws. But the threat to human health is now undeniable. Sunday's Graham Davis has been investigating. GRAHAM DAVIS: This is the Tasmania of the tourist brochures, and why this former mainland couple, like so many others, came to live here. HOWARD CARPENTER: Look at this one. Wow. GRAHAM DAVIS: After a fly-drive holiday, Howard and Michelle Carpenter sold up in South Australia, and settled on a small farm in Tasmania's north east. HOWARD CARPENTER: We were lured in by the clean and green idea of Tasmania, but ... GRAHAM DAVIS: Sucked in. HOWARD CARPENTER: Well, I suppose you could say that. Sucked in. GRAHAM DAVIS: For a while it was the nirvana they'd been seeking. Until suddenly all the trees around them were clear-felled by the Tasmanian forestry giant Gunns. Now neither green nor clean, this is the vista that confronts the couple on all sides. HOWARD CARPENTER: It's not really nice waking up to it every morning. There's - we knew that there would be logging in the area, but we had no idea that it would be total destruction, as you can see around us. It's total clear-fell. GRAHAM DAVIS: Right up to your front and back gates. HOWARD CARPENTER: Certainly is. GRAHAM DAVIS: Yet the destruction of their surroundings is one thing. What rankles more, and understandably so, is that Howard and Michelle have been poisoned. HOWARD CARPENTER: We came here for a better lifestyle and a cleaner atmosphere. And it's just all grown back in our face. GRAHAM DAVIS: One day last month, as they collected wood from their perimeter fence, a helicopter appeared from nowhere and began spraying the adjacent Gunns plantation. To their horror, the spray crossed the boundary and they were doused, Howard more than Michelle because she sought refuge in their vehicle. The chemical was Atrazine - a herbicide with known links to cancer. HOWARD CARPENTER: And it's an almost immediate reaction of ... MICHELLE CARPENTER: Running eyes. HOWARD CARPENTER: ... you know, runny nose, and sore eyes. GRAHAM DAVIS: Straight away? HOWARD CARPENTER: Almost immediately. Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: The Carpenters had the presence of mind to take these photographs. And Sunday has been able to track down the helicopter and find its owner, Daryl Taylor of Tasmanian Helicopters. One of his other pilots was flying that day and is said to be remorseful that he didn't see the couple. His boss maintains any drift would have been minimal but admits it shouldn't have happened. GRAHAM DAVIS: What sort of lasting effect has this had on you? HOWARD CARPENTER: Well, just a feeling of not being well. Like I said to Michelle, it's like a hangover that just won't go away. GRAHAM DAVIS: Having caught the full force of the chemical shower, blood taken from Howard is already showing abnormalities and he's awaiting the result of more comprehensive tests. His doctor complained to Gunns managing director John Gay. He responded in this letter that Gunns wasn't aware of any such incident. Does it surprise you that John Gay, the head of Gunns, would send a letter to your GP saying he knows nothing about this? HOWARD CARPENTER: Well, yes. It does. We've had two managers from Gunns to the house, and they've all been told our concerns. GRAHAM DAVIS: It is - as we'll see - part of a long established pattern of behaviour on the part of Australia's largest timber and forestry company that dominates the small Tasmanian economy. Gunns controls 70 per cent of the state's saw logging industry, exports 95 per cent of the state's woodchips and is the prime force behind something that's became a centrepiece of this election campaign - the conversion of native forests into plantations. To establish those plantations, it uses a combination of pesticides and herbicides to keep native animals, insects and rival plants at bay, much of it sprayed by helicopter. Until now, in the public mind at least, it's the poisoning of native animals with the pesticide 1080, that's been most controversial, the gruesome toll detailed in a story we did last year. DON STEERS: I can't look you honestly in the face and say that it kills every animal outright 'cause it doesn't. GRAHAM DAVIS: Don wasn't allowed to carry a gun, but faced with a dying animal did what he could. DON STEERS: I'd have to bash it to death or I'd get me pocket knife out - it might sound harsh - and I had to cut its throat and that's fair dinkum, that's the God's honest truth. It was just bloody disgusting as far as I was concerned. GRAHAM DAVIS: On Tasmanian Government figures released recently, 97,000 native animals died in this way in one year alone, some of them endangered species. But the squeamish get no comfort from Gunns head John Gay. Well, how do you feel about protected species dying for your business? JOHN GAY: Well, they're - there's too many of them, and we need to keep them at a reasonable level. GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, why are they protected, then? Why are they classed as endangered? JOHN GAY: Well, because the numbers are getting too great. And the ring-tailed possums is a very small proportion of this. It's usually the brush possums that are poisoned, not ring-tails. GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, how can you say that, though, when you concede that this thing kills everything? JOHN GAY: Well, that - that - everything that goes there to eat. But I believe that it is an acceptable practise. GRAHAM DAVIS: It is acceptable? JOHN GAY: Practise. GRAHAM DAVIS: To knock off all the wildlife in the surrounding area so that you can put your tree seedlings in? JOHN GAY: Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: We wanted to ask John Gay this time what his attitude is to the humans who get in the way of his plantations. But no such luck, not from him or anyone of consequence in Tasmanian forestry. Even more extraordinary, neither the Premier, Paul Lennon, nor any of his ministers was prepared to address the issues we're raising today. The best we've got is this defence from our story last year. TASMANIAN PREMIER PAUL LENNON: No, well, let's compare ourselves with the competitors, the Indonesians, the South Americans, the Americans, the Canadians. When you check us out and look at our practices compared with them then we come up very well. GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, we'd want to wouldn't we? PAUL LENNON: Course we would. GRAHAM DAVIS: I mean in Indonesia they're ripping these forests out. PAUL LENNON: But they're our competitors, and any fair comparison shows that Tasmania has amongst the best forest practises applying anywhere in the world. GRAHAM DAVIS: But tell that to the people we'll meet today. Just some of the scores of Tasmanians who've contracted mystery illnesses downstream from forestry activity. Unlike Howard and Michelle Carpenter, they haven't been directly sprayed. But doctor suspect they may be displaying symptoms of long-term exposure to poisons. There's Tamara Richardson, the policeman's wife, with a life-threatening illness, still trying to hold down two jobs. TAMARA RICHARDSON: I have rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. GRAHAM DAVIS: Diseases traditionally associated with older people, aren't they? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yeah. That is the case. GRAHAM DAVIS: And you're only 29? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yeah. Twenty-nine. GRAHAM DAVIS: It's a bit worrying, isn't it? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yeah. We need some answers somewhere. GRAHAM DAVIS: David Bean, who's 39, also wants answers. A school caretaker with two brain aneurisms, joint pains, and memory loss. All unexplained. DAVID BEAN: And they sent me to Melbourne and I've had one of the operations done and waiting on the other one. But I've also had - it's gone. GRAHAM DAVIS: I mean, this is quite a common problem for you, isn't it? DAVID BEAN: Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: You forget what you're going to say. DAVID BEAN: Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: And you forget where you put things and where you're about to go. DAVID BEAN: I sure do. GRAHAM DAVIS: Is this something relatively new? DAVID BEAN: Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: It is. DAVID BEAN: I used to have a really good memory. GRAHAM DAVIS: And then there's Alicia Arnold, a 29-year-old mother of four with another on the way. A mystery cyst in her brain. No explanation for that either. ALYSHIA ARNOLD: What made me go and see my doctor is that I blacked out driving home from work one morning. GRAHAM DAVIS: In the car? ALYSHIA ARNOLD: Yep. In the car. Ran off the road. Thankful I didn't kill anyone else. Thankful I didn't kill myself. GRAHAM DAVIS: All these people have one thing in common - they live in the north-eastern coastal town of St. Helens, also a popular tourist destination. They consume town water sourced from a catchment where chemicals have been used in forestry for many years and still are. When Gunns discovered we were working on this story, I was told any link made between chemical use in the forestry industry and human and animal health would result in legal action. But on the available evidence, that link can't be ruled out. You've been drinking town water all your life, haven't you? ALYSHIA ARNOLD: Yes I have. DAVID BEAN: Yeah, always. GRAHAM DAVIS: We're told there could be something wrong with the town's water supply. Have you been told that? DAVID BEAN: No. GRAHAM DAVIS: And do you believe it when the authorities say you've got nothing to worry about? ALYSHIA ARNOLD: No. Never have. GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you think you're slowly being poisoned? TAMARA RICHARDSON: I'm sure of it. GRAHAM DAVIS: All of you? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yes. I'm sure of it. GRAHAM DAVIS: And their doctors are also speaking out, unable to pin the blame conclusively on chemical use in forestry, but calling for an urgent and comprehensive investigation. St Helens GP, Dr. Alison Bleaney, says she's dealing with more than a hundred cases of unexplained illnesses among the town's two-and-a-half thousand permanent residents. The Tasmanian Government's response has been extraordinary. DR ALISON BLEANEY: They've said I've been scare-mongering, and, you know, upsetting the community perhaps or causing alarm amongst the community. GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you been doing that? DR BLEANEY: No, I don't think so. I've been trying really hard not to do that. GRAHAM DAVIS: How do you feel about being accused of scare-mongering? DR BLEANEY: Well, it just actually makes me a little bit mad. So if they think I'm going to go away, then I'm not. DR STAN SIEJKA: Okay Maggie, if you look straight ahead ... GRAHAM DAVIS: Many of Dr Bleaney's cases have been reviewed by Launceston neurologist Dr Stan Siejka, a patient himself after a recent bicycle accident. DR SIEJKA: The most dramatic ones have had acute onset of symptoms that they've never had before in the form of muscles spasms, abnormalities of their gait and balance, which we refer to as ataxias. And also seem degree of mental change such as their thinking and concentration may not have been as clear as it had been. And also I would say headaches or sleep disturbance. GRAHAM DAVIS: And could these be linked to chemical use do you think? DR SIEJKA: I believe so having read the literature on what the various chemicals that have been referred to in this setting, have all been reported to have neuro-muscular side effects of that type. PROFESSOR RAY LOWENTHAL: Just doing the Eliza technique ... GRAHAM DAVIS: Today comes a call for immediate action, from the state's foremost cancer specialist, Professor Ray Lowenthal, of the University of Tasmania. He's the man who nursed former Premier Jim Bacon through his own fatal bout of lung cancer this year. PROFESSOR LOWENTHAL: I would certainly call on the forestry industry and the government to let us know what the facts are about the use of these potentially dangerous chemicals. And if there is reason to be concerned - if there is significant contamination of the water supply - then obviously chemical use should be suspended until all the facts are known. GRAHAM DAVIS: Right. But no more putting forestry before the health of ordinary people? PROFESSOR LOWENTHAL: I think that's a very reasonable way to put it. GRAHAM DAVIS: And that means grounding the helicopters until the precise facts are known, according to the Tasmanian head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Michael Aizen. DR MICHAEL AIZEN: Until it's clarified there should be a moratorium on aerial spraying. GRAHAM DAVIS: Stop it altogether? DR AIZEN: Stop it until we know what's going on. We know that a lot of these sprays are cancer causing. We know that there are set limits and we know that there are rules for applying these. There's nothing to give us confidence as a public health organisation that the rules are being followed. GRAHAM DAVIS: And that's because the forestry industry in Tasmania regulates itself, and as we showed last year, self regulation can mean no regulation. Debris bulldozed into streams like this against the rules, a breach of the Forest Practices Code we reported and was upheld with a subsequent fine for the public forester, Forestry Tasmania. Incredibly, given the high stakes involved, forestry is exempt from freedom of information legislation. It answers to no-one. DR BLEANEY: There's no accountability in this at present. I mean there just isn't any. It's - they do what they want and that's how it is. GRAHAM DAVIS: Yet all of a sudden, the stakes are that much higher, with an admission from the Director of Public Health, Dr Roscoe Taylor, that gives the lie to Tasmania's clean, green image. As the chief public health officer in this state can you guarantee the safety of Tasmanian drinking water? DR ROSCOE TAYLOR: You see, there are many, many different water supplies within Tassie. We have a lot of small towns, with supplies. And some of those are actually under what we call boil water alerts. We can't guarantee it. The public must boil the water before they're able to drink it. GRAHAM DAVIS: OK, but that's not going to get rid of the chemicals is it? We know that. You agree with that? DR TAYLOR: Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: Will you accept responsibility - liability - if provable effects on public health emerge in recent years? DR TAYLOR: Oh, well at this point in time I can say that I believe that we are managing the system that exists to the best of our ability. GRAHAM DAVIS: All this two weeks out from the federal election. With Green preferences still to be decided in Tasmania, water quality is set to become a big issue. This is a story that will dramatically increase the pressure on Tasmanian forestry; that highly protected and highly secretive industry that now stands accused of poisoning the state's drinking water. It's no longer an argument about saving old growth forests - of saving trees - but of saving people. When Forestry Tasmania says it will take 20 to 30 years to work out the full effects of this on community health, what do you think? FRAN BRADLEY: I think that's disgusting. How - how dare they play Russian roulette with my safety or Alyshia's or my grandkids or anybody else for that matter. If it is affecting these people, they should bloody do something about it now, pardon the French, rather than waiting 20 or 30 years until we find out. GRAHAM DAVIS: The fact is that even 10 years ago 80 per cent of Tasmanian rivers and streams were contaminated with Atrazine, the poison linked to cancer, dumped accidentally on Howard and Michelle Carpenter. According to Dr Peter Davies, the scientist who did the study back in 1994, only a small proportion exceeded official human health guidelines. But Atrazine and its sister Simazine can still be detected in water long after a spraying event. DR PETER DAVIES: In fact in a couple of sites we found - we were continuing to find residues up to two years after spraying events. GRAHAM DAVIS: So after two years of somewhere being sprayed with Atrazine, it's still there? DR PETER DAVIES: It's still there. Yeah. And a lot of chemicals that get used in the environment have, have a degree of persistence. They hang around in the soil and continue to have - exert controls on - on weed growth in crops or in plantations. GRAHAM DAVIS: But since that study 10 years ago, the land converted to plantations has increased almost fourfold - to 207,000 hectares. DR DAVIES: If you were having a continuous application within a larger catchment on different parcels of land and you've got a persistent chemical then it's not surprising that you're going to pick up residues of that chemical over - over quite a period of time. And if there's a drinking water supply further down in the catchment you may well detect it. GRAHAM DAVIS: Certainly, far from being clean and green, Tasmania allows its water to be degraded to levels that would never be tolerated in mainland cities. That's according to Dr Marcus Scammel, a senior scientist for the Sydney Water Board who's examined water quality in St. Helens for both the Tasmanian Government and local primary producers. DR MARCUS SCAMMEL: According to our own drinking water guidelines, no chemical contamination should be found. If it is found, even if it is not at levels that may or are believed to have effects on human beings, some form of investigation to clean that up should occur immediately. GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, so that is a statutory requirement in this country? DR SCAMMEL: That's in our own Australian drinking water guidelines. GRAHAM DAVIS: This contamination of town water is long standing and sometimes reaches alarming levels - so much so that after a big scare in the mid-'90s, the public forester, Forestry Tasmania, stopped using Atrazine altogether. DR DAVID LEAMAN: They had a couple of what you could only call disasters. One was at a town, a town called Lorinna and the other was at Derby. GRAHAM DAVIS: What happened? DR LEAMAN: And in both cases people were basically poisoned. GRAHAM DAVIS: You lived in Derby, didn't you? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yes. Yeah, I did. GRAHAM DAVIS: According to Tamara Richardson, many residents were oblivious to the contamination and kept drinking from the tap. GRAHAM DAVIS: It had such a potent effect in Derby that Forestry Tasmania stopped using Atrazine. Did you know that? TAMARA RICHARDSON: No, I didn't know that at all. GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you know that while Forestry Tasmania has stopped using it, that private concerns like Gunns are still using it? TAMARA RICHARDSON: No, I didn't know that? GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you feel like a mushroom now? Under the circumstances? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yeah, I do now. GRAHAM DAVIS: Kept in the dark and fed ... TAMARA RICHARDSON: Definitely. GRAHAM DAVIS: ... something unpleasant. TAMARA RICHARDSON: Yeah. Not good. GRAHAM DAVIS: But apart from the Atrazine scares in Lorinna and Derby, Simazine has been found this year in the water supplies of Campbell Town and Orford. And then there's St. Helens, where we know more than 100 people are sick with mystery illnesses and many more complain of feeling unwell. DR BLEANEY: I think it's extraordinary that we haven't had a chemical risk analysis for the catchments. I think it's extraordinary that we don't know what's been in - possibly - probably been in the drinking water for the last 10 years. We know that the catchment was contaminated with Simazine 14 - 10 years ago. And since then we have no analysis, no chemical analysis, although they tell us that that's been done. But we've seen no figures. GRAHAM DAVIS: But what is known is cause for acute concern. Georges Bay at St. Helens has been producing some of Australia's best oysters since 1980. But in 1997, the local growers began to notice sickness and death. BARRY STEWART: Oysters are a little bit like the canary in the mine. The slightest little thing to go wrong they'll let you know very quick. GRAHAM DAVIS: Well these ones certainly let you know by dying on you. BARRY STEWART: Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: The growers asked Dr Scammel to investigate the problem. When he asked the government about possible chemical use in the river catchment, this was the story he got. DR SCAMMEL: There was no chemical activity up there. No nothing going on in the catchment is what I was told. GRAHAM DAVIS: That was a lie. DR SCAMMEL: Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: Why did they tell it? DR SCAMMEL: Well, clearly there is a problem up there that they do not want to investigate. GRAHAM DAVIS: And in the way of things in Tasmania, they didn't mind saying so. DR SCAMMEL: We're not going to investigate forestry because anyone who does investigate forestry and who has a job in Tasmania will quickly find themselves unemployed. GRAHAM DAVIS: They said that? DR SCAMMEL: Certainly members of the department said that to me. GRAHAM DAVIS: So this is the primary industry department said this to you, explicitly? DR SCAMMEL: Mm-hm. Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: Forestry's off limit? DR SCAMMEL: Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: But then last December, the pretence was exposed with the crash of a helicopter on contract to an Adelaide-based company while aerial spraying in the St Helens catchment. The pilot survived and again, it was one of Daryl Taylor's craft from Tasmania Helicopters. Eighty litres of the spray mix was spilt. It was a pesticide Alphacypermethrin. But at the crash site, Atrazine and Simazine were also being detected four months later. The chopper had clipped that power line up there, now just 250 metres down the hill here is the South George River. You'd imagine given the magnitude of what had happened that the Tasmanian authorities would act urgently to secure the water supply. Well, not so. Incredibly, it took four months for the Department of Primary Industry to test samples from the crash site. And it took seven months for the Department of Health to check the town's water supply. In the meantime, a catastrophe - a once in a lifetime flood - brought this sorry tale of inaction to a head. The flood, in January, was the biggest in living memory. And even scientists enlisted by the Government to prove the critics wrong, like Professor Paolo Ricci, concede a potential problem. PROFESSOR PAOLO RICCI: With respect of the effect of the flood on the - on chemicals, if the ground is - acts as reservoir of chemicals, then the flood waters may scour - may actually remove the chemical and carry them downstream. JIM HARRIS: Everything came down the river, The river's dirt coloured because it's full of dirt, and in that topsoil - bound to that topsoil - is no doubt the chemicals that have been sprayed three weeks prior. GRAHAM DAVIS: Within seven days, the oysters in Georges Bay began to die - nearly $2 million worth consigned to the scrap heap. As government and forestry tell it, they were killed by fresh water. DR TAYLOR: Well I'm told that it's possible that fresh water alone is an insult to an oyster over a prolonged period of time. GRAHAM DAVIS: Not so says oyster expert Dr Scammel. DR SCAMMEL: Very, very small numbers. We're talking 2, 3 per cent. However ... GRAHAM DAVIS: Certainly not 90 per cent. DR SCAMMEL: Certainly not 95 per cent, no. GRAHAM DAVIS: But were these oysters canaries in the coal mine, the warning of a wider threat to human health from chemical use? Sunday has learnt there were, in fact, two helicopters spraying in the catchment on the day of the crash. They dropped 29 kilos of Alphacypermethrin. Just four grams is enough to contaminate one million cubic metres of water. This from the horse's mouth - the man who does the spraying. Nevertheless you spray it in areas where water run off can carry it into streams and river? DARYL TAYLOR: Oh definitely. GRAHAM DAVIS: You acknowledge that that - that happens? DARYL TAYLOR: That's Tasmania - that is what happens across the world. GRAHAM DAVIS: The rains come and sweep this stuff into streams and rivers. DARYL TAYLOR: Well, the rains come and anything gets swept into the river quite often. GRAHAM DAVIS: The oysters die at the beginning of February, you don't do a test of the water supply until July. DR TAYLOR: We ... GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, what took you so long? DR TAYLOR: Well now hang on. As I said we didn't even get advised about the helicopter crash until quite a bit later in the year. There was, I believe, a failure of communication. As you know, the testing carried out in July didn't show any detectable concentrations of all the chemicals we could ascertain that may have been used in that catchment the last couple of years. GRAHAM DAVIS: Well that stands to reason doesn't it, if you do it seven months after the crash? DR TAYLOR: It depends on the particular chemical concerned. GRAHAM DAVIS: Hang on, you say in your own report, right, that the best time to test for these things is after heavy rainfall. DR TAYLOR: Oh, absolutely. GRAHAM DAVIS: The heavy rainfall was in January. You tested in July. DR TAYLOR: Yes. GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you think you've done your job as the Director of Public Health satisfactorily? DR TAYLOR: Yes I do. GRAHAM DAVIS: But such is the lack of confidence now in the quality of the town water in St Helens that some doctors are saying they wouldn't drink it, and neither should anyone else. DR AIZEN: Knowing what I know from reading the report and with the cocktail of chemicals in the water supply, supposedly at safe levels, I would have second thoughts about drinking that water. GRAHAM DAVIS: Would you drink the water there? DR SIEJKA: Not unless it's my own tank water possibly off -off the roof. GRAHAM DAVIS: What we can tell the people of St. Helens is that animals exposed to Alphacypermethrin show precisely the same symptoms as Dr. Bleaney is seeing in her patients - tremors and problems with balance and coordination. We can also tell them that Gunns has told us they haven't used Atrazine or Simazine in the St. Helens catchment for two years, though we know both can linger in the soil for that long. Was it a cocktail of poisons that came down with the flood? Are people being made sick by a chemical load that's been accumulating for years? Only a full investigation say the experts - a thorough chemical audit of the catchment - will uncover the truth. DR BLEANEY: They're refusing to do it. As the - at present they're saying that they don't see that there's any cause for huge concern. GRAHAM DAVIS: When we approached the forestry industry for comment, we were told it was content to rest its case of the views of its two favoured scientists - Professor Ricci, and Dr. Davies - both of whom have been sceptical that it was really chemicals that caused the St. Helens oyster kill. From today, they may be less favoured as they join the clamour for change. DR DAVIES: The issue of chemical residues potentially entering human water supplies is an issue that needs attention. GRAHAM DAVIS: And is it getting it? DR DAVIES: Not the way that I'd like to see it done. I certainly think it would like - it needs to have an ongoing routine surveillance. DR RICCI: Given the importance of the issue. Given Tasmania is not a very large state. Given the population of Tasmania is fairly small. Given that you already have a high background of a number of cancers for example, then perhaps somebody ought to look at the matter somewhat more seriously. GRAHAM DAVIS: Tasmania has the second highest rate of ovarian cancer in the country. And there's been a 70 per cent increase in 20 years of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - a cancer of lymph glands. Both cancers have been linked to Atrazine. In a statement to Sunday, Gunns said "international research reveals there have been no signs or symptoms of poisoning due to Atrazine in humans". Yet that's just not true, according one of Australia's foremost cancer researchers. PROFESSOR BRUCE ARMSTRONG: Well it's not true if you extend that to consider poisoning to equal the possible capacity to cause cancer. The evidence there is not conclusive, but there is at least some suggestive evidence that Atrazine could increase risk of cancer in humans. GRAHAM DAVIS: There is? PROFESSOR ARMSTRONG: Yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: This is the great fear of the Tasmanian industry. As Forestry Industry Council spokesman, Bruce Montgomery, told Sunday "if this is right, we're dead". The canaries are now crying out elsewhere, with unexplained oyster deaths reported further south from St Helens at both Coles Bay and Little Swanport. But it's the humans with mystery illnesses who really want answers. And they want them quickly. TAMARA RICHARDSON: Show me something. You know, let's fund a study, do a test. And let's see why this is happening. GRAHAM DAVIS: But they're refusing to do that? TAMARA RICHARDSON: Well, that's why I'm here today. GRAHAM DAVIS: You're only 39, aren't you? DAVID BEAN: Thirty-nine years old, yeah. GRAHAM DAVIS: And how do you feel? How old do you feel? DAVID BEAN: I feel like I'm bloody 79. I really do. GRAHAM DAVIS: You're pregnant right now, aren't you? Are you worried about the effects of all of this on your baby? ALYSHIA ARNOLD: Of course. Of course. But I've also been lucky enough to have not been drinking the water while I've been pregnant. FRAN BRADLEY: And to think that here we are thinking we're living in this idyllic place to live, in this tight knit little community and being poisoned. How dare they delay, and not find out? How dare they? Transcript produced by Media Monitors target-monitor-analyse See also Sunday's cover story from last year on Tasmanian forestry, 'Tasmanian Fire Sale'. |
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