Prince Edward Island is home to Anne of Green Gables. The soil is red and the economy is driven by tourism and potatoes. But this pastoral province may be poisoning itself.
There are no visible signs of pollution here. No factories. No smokestacks. Just potato fields, as far as the eye can see. Most of them drenched with toxic pesticides.
There are 7,000 fields covering 110,000 acres. More than a billion kilograms of potatoes are produced every year on this tiny island.
Once-proud potato farmers are now finding themselves under seige, blamed by their neighbours for wreaking environmental havoc on their island.
It's high-tech farming where crops are doused with pesticides every week. Individual farmers can easily spend $100,000 a year just on chemicals to ward off bugs and disease.
Alex Docherty works the same land his great-great-grandfather first sank a plough into 150 years ago.
"Nobody is going to put more spray than they should because of the cost of
it. I value my ground water and my land more than anybody," says Docherty.
The problem is, pesticides don't always stay where they're supposed to, on the crops. When it rains hard, for example, the chemicals can run off into nearby streams and rivers destroying fish and other aquatic life.
There have been at least 26 so-called "fish kills" in recent years and 17 rivers have been declared dead throughout the province, meaning virtually all forms of aquatic life in them have been wiped out.
One fish kill was traced back to chemicals from Docherty's farm.
"It was a beautiful day when I sprayed. I was hardly into the field when a
big, black cloud came in and boom, dropped an inch of rain on us in 15 minutes."
If anyone should be worried about pesticides, it is farmers like Docherty who are regularly exposed to these chemicals. Some of these chemicals have documented links to health problems, such as cancer.
A few years back, when Docherty's wife was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he immediately wondered whether pesticides might have played a role.
"I asked the doctor was it connected and he told me flatly no, that there was no possible connection that he could make... So, if I had even an inkling that I was doing something that caused my wife to be sick or somebody else's wife to be sick, I wouldn't do what I do."
There is intense pressure on farmers, like Docherty, to produce an endless supply of potatoes.
Massive processing plants, built in the late eighties, fuelled an insatiable, worldwide demand for the perfect unblemished potato in order to make the perfect french fry.
As a result, potato acreage on the island nearly doubled and pesticide sales have increased by more than 600 per cent from 1982 to 2000. Farmers say they have to spray pesticides to even qualify for crop insurance.
"You smell it every day. Not a day goes by you can't get a whiff of pesticides blowing through your windows of your truck or across your front yard," says Robin Paynter, an avid fly fisher and conservationist.
After years of environmental damage, the PEI government has only just recently introduced laws to curb the run-off from pesticide-laced fields. They include buffer zones to keep the chemicals away from waterways, restrictions on planting along steep slopes and crop rotations.
In one month alone, enforcement officers with the Ministry of the Environment spotted nearly 100 violations but only a couple of farmers have been charged, with minimal fines of about $200.
For some residents, the enforcement may not enough. Six-year-old Perry Costain has spent most of his life suffering from chronic asthma. He needs seven medications a day just to catch his breath.
To say that asthma runs in this family is an understatement. Perry's mom, Carol, has it too. In fact, all four of her children have suffered from asthma.
"It's pretty scary, when you see your child laying on the examining table in the hospital... Drool coming out of his mouth and he's breathing so hard that his stomach is going under his ribs and his tips of his fingers are purple."
Costain is convinced that pesticides from nearby farms are seriously harming her family.
"What the hell are the fish doing floating around dead? I think the government better get off their asses and take a look around and think about what they're saying, that the chemicals are not hurting us, that they're safe because they're damn well not safe."
Medical studies have found that asthma reactions can be triggered by pesticide exposures. Hospitalization rates for asthma in the province are the highest in the country. In fact according to the latest study, PEI also has the highest asthma death rate in all of Canada.
There is surprisingly little data on the impact of pesticides on humans. Dermatologist, Dr. June Irwin is one of the very few physicians who have conducted independent studies. She has found high levels of pesticides in the body fat of some patients.
"I have heard government authorities saying, 'Don't worry, they're gone by 48 hours.' But they have to go through your kidneys, your liver. Yes, we need to worry."
At an Environment Canada lab in Moncton, scientists examine fish from PEI to determine what killed them.
Of all the chemicals used on Prince Edward Island potatoes, one shows up again and again, azinphos-methyl. It destroys the nervous system and is known to be highly toxic to fish.
W-FIVE has found this is not merely a local issue. The US Environmental Protection Agency has begun to phase out azinphos-methyl on potato crops, claiming it has killed hundreds of thousands of fish in the United States.
The Canadian federal agency that regulates pesticides was warned about the danger of this chemical at least two years ago by Environment Canada, but is just now beginning a phase-out process that will take three years.
Wendy Sexsmith helps run the Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency, Ottawa's pesticide watchdog.
"Every pesticide when they were registered, were assessed for human health and environmental safety, as well as efficacy."
But many of these pesticides haven't been tested in decades. The PMRA are now re-evaluating the products to see if they meet modern standards.
W-FIVE was surprised to learn that Sexsmith's department, gets 25 per cent of its funding from pesticide manufacturers - about 8-million dollars.
But she does not believe receiving funding from the companies that it regulates as a conflict as interest.
"It's not a fee for service, in that it's not a fee for a registration. It's a fee for an application for review and evaluation. We make positive and negative decisions."
Not only that, all pesticide testing is done by the manufacturers and no results can be released to the public without the permission of the companies themselves.
The information that is gathered in the studies is basically secret. It's up to them whether or not they release it. The public doesn't have access to any studies.
"We're not allowed to give out right now without permission from the
registrant... [The] government is looking at changing that, if that's in fact possible," says Sexsmith.
Ottawa is now reviewing the safety of some 400 chemicals used in pesticides across the country. It's a process that will take years to complete. Until then, consumers are being asked to trust the government and the pesticide manufacturers that these chemicals are safe.
10/28/02