Fred Wilcox - Waiting for an Army to Die

Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories is bankrupt, its deserted laboratories a mausoleum to bad faith. And yet, in spite of the fact that the EPA has declared many similar tests “worthless,” one has to wonder how many products are still on the market because of “data” submitted to the EPA for review by manufacturers who trusted the results of “scientific studies” performed by a “reputable” laboratory.

“You know,” Bonnie Hill says, pausing as though she has just remembered a very important and unpleasant fact, “I don’t really think they will bring 2,4,5-T back. They will probably just let it remain where it is, that is, not pass a ban, but refuse Dow’s request to lift the suspension order. I may be fooling myself, but I can’t conceive of them bringing it back after all that has gone on. I think there will be a lot of very angry and very frustrated people if they do. Because the feeling, the level of frustration, is pretty high now because of what they are spraying. You know, Dow loves to say, ‘Oh, these people are against anything; they’re just against all sprays.’ And I sometimes would say, ‘That just isn’t true, we really are trying to look at these substances one by one and trying to consider each in what we think is a fair manner.’ And I think that is still true for a lot of us, but I also think that a lot of people who live here are feeling very frustrated that people are just coming in whenever they feel like it and spraying with helicopters—we don’t know what— very close to our homes . I think there is a misconception among our Oregon legislators, and maybe people in general, that this is happening in pretty remote areas, but that just isn’t true. In fact, just three days ago, just a half-mile from Alsea, a helicopter was spraying as people were bringing their children to preschool. There was a helicopter spraying just across the highway, and people were pretty upset about that. We just don’t know when they are going to spray, and we don’t know who is spraying, and we don’t know what they are spraying. And I just think that’s a right that we should have. We have a right to know what’s going on in our own backyard. They’ve continued the use of 2,4-D around here, even though a Canadian study has shown it to be carcinogenic; and some of the other things they’re using could be equally or even more dangerous than T for all we know. The chemical companies just keep on making products, and we continue to be their guinea pigs.

“Of course, in spite of all the adverse publicity 2,4,5-T has received, there are people who still argue that we—that is, those of us who would like to see it banned for good—are just trying to wreck the economy or some nonsense like that. Right after the EPA’s suspension order was announced, the governor of Oregon released a ludicrous report about how many billions of dollars and thousands of jobs would be lost if 2,4,5-T were removed from the market. But you could ask anyone in Alsea, a community that’s almost 100 percent dependent on the timber industry, about that. I mean, how many jobs are provided by a helicopter coming in and spraying, and how many jobs would be provided by hiring a crew to go out and cut brush. And believe me, people are willing to go out and do that. You know, these professors at OSU [Oregon State University] say, ‘Oh, you’d never get people to do that kind of work,’ but that’s not true, there are a lot of people around here who would be happy to do almost anything right now—they just want to work. The economic justification for using these substances just really isn’t there, and a lot of people think that’s one reason why Dow wanted to terminate the EPA suspension hearings—they really didn’t want to get into the ‘benefit’ section of the hearings because they don’t have any real evidence that this stuff is really beneficial. They just haven’t done the kind of scientific studies they claim to have done to prove that this stuff is really a benefit to our economy.

“And I just want to say another thing. The old-timers around here are opposed to herbicides. First, because they say the forest used to grow back just fine without them, and second, because they say the wildlife has really been affected by herbicides. The bird population, squirrel population, all the little mammals, have just been decimated. And some fishermen say there used to be a lot more trout in some of the streams. Of course herbicide users claim this is not because of herbicides, but because the natural habitat has been destroyed—but that’s nonsense. There’s lots of natural habitat. And the old-timers will tell you—and of course I couldn’t use this in my EPA testimony because it’s all ‘hearsay’—about all the tumors they’ve found in deer and elk they’ve killed around here. Lots of very strange, abnormal-looking growths. And these are people that have lived here all their lives.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the observations of people who have lived in an area all their lives are considered nothing more than hearsay by those who look for a scientific explanation for everything. I went down to hear Dr. Tung, the scientist from Vietnam, when he was speaking in Eugene, and he said something that really struck me. He said that the people have lived in the same area for generations, even centuries, and that they know just what it is , and he said that he, as a scientist, just had to trust that the people knew enough about their surroundings to detect even minute changes. It seems to me we ought to be listening to some of the people around here who have lived in this area long, long before herbicides were ever sprayed here.”

Bonnie Hill and I shake hands and say goodbye, and I walk to the small parking lot where earlier in the day I had spent nearly an hour watching the extraordinary changes in the Oregon weather. For perhaps fifteen minutes the sun would shine, converting the compact car I had rented in Eugene into a mobile solar greenhouse. And then, abruptly, the sky would glower, great dark clouds would swallow the sun, and it would rain. Fifteen minutes later the clouds would vanish behind the mountains, and the rain would stop.

I had spent the previous evening just twenty miles away, at the home of a Vietnam veteran who explained that he had gotten involved in the controversy over herbicides when he read some material that purported to rationalize the use of 2,4,5-T.

“We used to play tapes from loudspeakers,” my host told me, “basically saying that the VC are telling the people that herbicides are making them sick, that the spraying is responsible for their miscarriages and illnesses. And the tapes would say that the VC are lying, they just don’t like the sprays because it makes it hard for them to hide, and that the VC are actually poisoning people’s water so they will believe it’s herbicides that are making them sick. I was young and gung-ho at the time; so I just believed the propaganda we were feeding the people. We heard the Vietnamese complain. They talked about depressions, diarrhea, flus, colds, rashes, spontaneous abortions. But it was a war zone, and we just figured there were a lot of diseases that we had never heard of. Thinking back, I recall being struck by the number of children with cleft palates. And I suffered from the same things over and over, screaming pains in my joints, pains in my gut, blood in my urine, my feet going numb. But the hardest thing to deal with was the sudden depressions that came on you. You just wanted to go out into a field and stick a pistol in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

During a lull in our conversation I stepped outside. It was a clear, rather brisk spring night, and as I stood in the darkness I could hear water gushing, gurgling, flowing, churning. And I thought about a comment one American scientist had made about herbicide spraying. “Pinpoint bombing you might be able to do,” he said, “but pinpoint spraying is impossible.”