Comments on "Trouble in paradise".

There are statements I wish to protest in the Focus article "Trouble in Paradise" by John F. Lauerman published in Environmental Health Perspectives [105:914-917 (1997)]. These statements appear to have been attributed to me, but I can assure you I would never have made them. First, there is the suggestion that I included atrazine among a list of agricultural chemicals used in pineapple cultivation. To my knowledge, atrazine was never used on pineapple fields. It does appear in Hawaiian groundwater, however, as a result of widespread use on sugar cane fields. Second, I would never say that "none of these chemicals have been conclusively linked to adverse health effects," as the article appears to paraphrase me having said. I believe that scientific studies conclusively link all these chemicals, and still more, with harmful health effects in exposed populations. What I recall having said to Lauerman is that it is almost impossible to link, with any confidence, the cancer or other health problem of a given individual with exposure to pesticides. Thus, although a population may experience an increase in cancers or other health problems in the aggregate, the likelihood of a person with a cancer being able to prove to the satisfaction of a court of law that his or her disease was the result of exposure to a chemical is vanishingly small. The state of Hawaii has very serious contamination problems as a result of the application of agricultural chemicals and other pesticide products. I do not wish to have my statements be interpreted in any way as minimizing this problem or my own concern for the health risks that this poses.