Couple in Kapulena May Seek Damages
There was something in the air at the Hamakua farm of Seppe Wiesmueller and Mikki Hastings last June 12 that changed their lives and threatens their livelihood, the couple says.
That day, as in many days before, pesticides were being applied a mile away to give an edge to young eucalyptus trees in their battle against guinea grass. Carried by the winds, the pesticides drifted onto the couple’s 42-acre certified organic farm in Kapulena, near Kukuihaele, and the house where Wiesmueller and Hastings home-school Bianca, Chris, and Johannes, their three children. But this day was different: the chemical smell in the air was overpowering. Both adults broke out in skin rashes and had difficulty breathing.
As the couple had done several times in the past, they called the state Department of Agriculture in Hilo, urging a pesticide inspector to visit their farm. This time, again, something was different. Perhaps it was the urgency in Hastings’ voice, or something as mundane as the schedule of Glenn Sahara, the inspector.
On June 13, Sahara visited the farm, selected a few guava leaves, and send them off to be tested for pesticide residues.
The tests were positive for pendimethalin, the active ingredient in Pendulum, one of two pesticides that were being sprayed that day. (According to Susan Gordon of Forest Solutions, the other was Fusilade, a herbicide whose active ingredient is Fluazifop-p-Butyl.)
As a result, Wiesmueller and Hastings’ company, Island Organics, was denied a renewal of its organic certification. The macadamia nuts, guavas, bananas, vegetables, and honey produced since that day must now be tested and shown free of pesticide residues before they can market them as organic. The lab in Oregon that the Hawai`i Organic Farmers Association (HOFA) uses to test crop samples charges about $500 for each test. Both Wiesmueller and HOFA are asking Forest Solutions, Inc., the company planting the eucalyptus, to pick up the costs of the tests.
On several occasions in July and August, Wiesmueller had called Forest Solutions to attempt to engage the company in discussions over the harm he says has been done to him by their contract spraying. Only in late September, spurred by the intervention of Hawai`i County Councilman Dominic Yagong, did Forest Solutions call the couple to set up a meeting to discuss the matter. Discussions were ongoing at press time.
Wiesmueller’s predicament is just one more of the many new problems that have arisen with the diversification of Hawai`i’s agricultural lands. Pesticides were often applied aerially when these lands all grew sugarcane, but complaints were few then since whole towns were often dependent on the monocrop. Now that the same land hosts a wider array of crops, some of them organic, new types of chemicals are being used and, as in the Wiesmueller-Hastings case, are threatening the success of the organic farmers.
A “War Zone”
Actually, Wiesmueller’s problems go back four years, to the time when eucalyptus trees began to be planted on the Hamakua Coast.
The eucalyptus is a stand-in for sugar cane, which, since the late 19th century, had an iron lock on at times more than 100,000 acres up and down the windward side of the Big Island. In the world market of the late 20th century, Hawai`i had a difficult time competing. One by one, the large plantations have dropped, to the point only a handful on Maui and Kaua`i remain in production.
By the early 1990s, the writing was on the wall for the Hamakua Sugar Company. In 1993, the company, which owed its largest creditor $85 million, filed for bankruptcy and suddenly 30,000 acres of arable land were on the auction block. Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate bought them all in 1994 for $21 million.
PruTimber, a holding company set up by an investment subsidiary of Prudential Insurance, has leased more than 20,000 acres of Hamakua land from Bishop Estate. It also has announced plans to plant eucalyptus on about 12,000 acres of Parker Ranch land above Kalopa State Park in Hamakua, and on some 5,000 acres of former sugar lands in the Big Island district of Ka`u.
Managing operations for PruTimber is Forest Solutions, headed by Guy Cellier. Forest Solutions, in turn, hires various contractors to work in the fields. AgriSpray Services of Hilo has often been used to apply pesticides to fields in preparation for planting.
Initially, helicopters and airplanes applied the pesticides. By early 1997, a group calling itself Friends of Hamakua had organized in opposition to the spraying – and, more generally, to the development of what they fear will be a pulp-timber industry in their backyards.
A watershed event in the Hamakua wars occurred in August 1997. Horse rancher Lynn Nakkim was awakened by the sound of the chopper and saw a cloud of chemical mist rising from a former canefield kitty-corner to her land. The spray floated over Mud Lane and onto fields of Parker Ranch. Nakkim tried calling the Department of Agriculture, but its offices were closed in honor of Admissions Day.
Finally, Nakkim reached Wiesmueller, a friend and fellow member of Friends of Hamakua whose farm was just a couple of miles away.
Unaware he was driving through an area that had just been bathed with pesticide drift, Wiesmueller drove down Mud Lane and spotted the helicopter.
“It looked like a war zone,” Wiesmueller says. At once, he developed a splitting headache, which he attributes to pesticide exposure.
Cellier has claimed that the company instructs its sprayers to observe a 600-foot buffer zone between the areas sprayed and the property boundary and has called Nakkim’s complaint “ridiculous.” Nonetheless, Hamakua Timber – the predecessor to Forest Solutions – has received written warnings from the Department of Agriculture for spraying beyond the lot lines of targeted fields.
Blurred Vision
A year or so later, the battle had moved closer to Wiesmueller’s and Hastings’ home. “By accident, they sprayed over our road,” Wiesmueller recalled in a recent interview with Environment Hawai`i. “A week later, we noticed everything dying, including ironwoods. I had headaches, vision problems, continuous fatigue.” Wiesmueller also says he began experiencing near-crippling pain in his wrists after the spraying started – pain that flares up with each new exposure to airborne spray. Hastings has had similar health problems. A son has experienced swollen lymph glands, Wiesmueller notes.
There was a lull in the spraying at the start of the year. In May, it resumed and on May 11, Wiesmueller began to keep a log. “On 14 different days we could smell the spray and since then we have had almost continuous health problems. We could smell it as far as two miles away,” he told Environment Hawai`i.
On June 12, the spraying was especially noticeable. Hastings called the Department of Agriculture to complain, which responded the following day.
Wiesmueller and Hastings would have to wait weeks for the results of tests on the guava leaf taken by the DOA inspector. As they waited, on June 30, they hosted a delegation from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources that was checking on progress they had made in replanting trees, including koa, on their leased land. (As part of that project, Wiesmueller, Hastings, and their children have planted more than 2,000 trees over the last five years.)
Again, there was a heavy chemical smell in the air that Wiesmueller likens to that of burning plastic. One of the state workers had breathing problems and developed a sudden skin rash, Wiesmueller says.
The following day, the situation was even worse. Wiesmueller was driving his tractor when he became dizzy and started to hallucinate. He counts himself fortunate to have avoided serious injury.
On August 3, the wait was over. The test results from the Department of Agriculture arrived, confirming that the guava trees on Wiesmueller’s and Hastings’ farm had been contaminated by the June spraying. Pendimethalin, the active ingredient in Pendulum, was present in the sample leaf at a level of 20.5 parts per billion. Immediately Wiesmueller and Hastings, who had applied to HOFA to have their organic certification status renewed in mid-June, informed HOFA of the test results.
In early August, HOFA issued a letter stating that it “cannot renew the organic certification status of this farm” owing to the pesticide contamination. Aside from the June 13 incident, HOFA’s certification coordinator Eileen O’Hora-Weir went on to say, “our documentation of Island Organics’ practices indicates that the farm is fully compliant with certified organic standards.”
If Island Organics wanted to market its products as organic, each product would now have to be tested and shown to be free of pesticides. In a letter to Forest Solutions written on Wiesmueller’s behalf, O’Hora-Weir stated that the Oregon laboratory HOFA uses “has advised us that the cost of each sample may run $500 or higher” and suggested that Forest Solutions pay for the tests or compensate Island Organics if it has to sell produce a price lower than that commanded by produce that is certified organic.
Forest Solutions’ Cellier responded on August 22. “The few treatments given to our land over the last three years were part of a conversion process,” he wrote, and “we do not anticipate needing to treat that land again for several years, at least.”
“As you may or may not know,” Cellier continued, “this company hires outside contractors to actually perform operations. As they guarantee their work, I will be informing them of this situation and forwarding your reply to them as well.”
In a later letter, Cellier backed off his earlier statement that no further treatment would be needed on the land “for several years.” “As I stated,” he informed O’Hora-Weir on September 28, “we will not need to broadcast spray in the next few years on those acres. As our crop grows, however, we will need to perform other types of operations on these acres such as line spraying. If Mr. Wiesmueller has concerns about these other operations, which are not broadcast sprayed but applied by other means, he should refrain from driving through the middle of our fields while the operations are underway.”
Cellier, through his assistant Susan Gordon, denied a request for comment by Environment Hawai`i. According to Gordon, because the Wiesmuellers have retained an attorney, “we cannot talk about it anymore.”
April Makalea of Agri-Spray Services in Hilo, the company that has applied the pesticides, said she was aware of Wiesmueller’s complaint but that she did not wish to comment on it.
John Lord, the Prudential Insurance Company officer who oversees timber portfolios from his office in the company’s Boston headquarters, told Environment Hawai`i he was unaware of any complaints relating to pesticide drift in Hamakua.
Inert Ingredients
The state Department of Agriculture tested for active ingredients in the pesticides believed to be sprayed up and down the eucalyptus fields of the Hamakua Coast. The pesticides include Goal, Fusilade, Pendulum, and Round-Up. But the active ingredients – the pendimethalin in Pendulum, or the glyphosate in Round-Up, for example — are not necessarily the chemicals that pose the greatest health threat. “Active” ingredients in a pesticide usually account for a fraction of the overall mix, with the “inactive,” or so-called “inert,” ingredients accounting for the remainder.
But the DOA did not test for the inerts. Bob Boesch, the department’s pesticide branch manager, says that the state just doesn’t have the resources to conduct that kind of investigation. And, in any event, “we don’t second-guess EPA decisions,” he added. The federal Environmental Protection Agency determines whether or not a given pesticide formulation can be sold, and the state DOA role is limited to enforcing the EPA’s regulations on pesticide use.
“Even from ingredient labels, you can’t always determine what’s used,” Boesch continued. “Often, the statement of formula will show a trade name substance, like a grade of petroleum distillates, which will consist of many grades of a fraction [of petroleum] coming off of a cracking plant at a refinery,” with no exact chemical analysis for each component in the mix.
The same idea is expressed in an article on inerts in the Fall 1999 Journal of Pesticide Reform, “Pesticide manufacturers have the freedom to adjust ingredients based on market conditions, availability, and other factors without close regulatory oversight. ‘Pesticide manufacturers play the market on inert ingredients,’ said EPA insecticide product manager Phil Hutton. ‘The inerts vary, and if it’s xylene, or petroleum distillates, or whatever, as long as their chemists or toxicologists think it’s safe, they use it.’ ”
Truth in Labeling?
Inert ingredients can be as harmful as the active ingredients, or even more so. A remark by pesticide specialist Sahara led Wiesmueller to suspect that his own health problems could result from exposure to naphthalene, an inert ingredient found in some pesticide formulations. Naphthalene is used as an inert ingredient in several of the pesticides – Goal, Pendulum, and Fusilade – often applied to areas prepared for eucalyptus plantings.
Manufacturers are required to prepare material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each pesticide formulation. The MSDS for Goal 2XL, manufactured by Rohm and Haas Company, shows naphthalene makes up 7-8 percent of the product by weight. The MSDS for Pendulum 3.3. EC, manufactured by BASF Corporation, indicates naphthalene accounts for some 7.22 percent of the product (an unspecified “petroleum solvent” accounts for more than half). In Fusilade, made by Zeneca, naphthalene is listed as an inert ingredient; the specific percentage is not provided, but is given only as less than 20.9 percent.
The MSDS for Fusilade and Goal list a range of possible health effects resulting from exposure to solvent vapor or mist, such as might be experienced by people downwind of the application area. These include: irritation of nose, throat and lungs; headache; nausea; dizziness; drowsiness; loss of coordination; stupor; central nervous system effects; and unconsciousness – many of the same symptoms experienced by the Wiesmueller-Hastings family.
Chemical Cocktails
To know exactly what Wiesmueller has been exposed to would require an exhaustive list of the several pesticides being used in the area, both the active ingredients and the inerts. As physician Sharon Diamond of Kawaihae explains, he and others living downwind of the spraying have been exposed to “chemical cocktails” where the health effect of exposure to several chemicals at once can be far more serious than exposure to any one of them in isolation. So even if Wiesmueller could obtain an accurate list of all the chemicals that have drifted over his farm, the chances are slim that any study may have been done of the effects of them all in that particular dose and combination.
In addition, Diamond and others describe the possibility that initial exposure creates a sensitivity that exacerbates reactions when the same chemicals are encountered again and again.
“There’s an enormous variability of the human population in its response to given kinds of doses and exposures,” said Diamond, who is herself suffering from health problems that she links to exposure to the pesticide Lindane. “Figuring out THE toxic dose safe for everyone is almost impossible.”
The people who have been promoting the development of commercial forestry on the Big Island “probably do not have a background of knowing about the variability in biotransformation and toxification pathways in the human population,” Diamond says, “and they probably aren’t much aware of how prior and concomitant exposures – so-called cocktail effect compounds – may alter” the reactions of a given person, especially “when he is hit and rehit, cumulatively.”
Two years ago, that may have been the case. But as the spraying has continued, the learning curve is on the upswing.
“We moved from Los Angeles to Hawai`i to raise our children in a clean environment,” Wiesmueller says. “We used to boast about us having the cleanest air and rain on the planet. Now we don’t even want to eat the vegetables out of our own garden.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 11, Number 5 November 2000
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