OTNP November 2025
Good morning lovely people.
I hope you are all feeling well today!
Billy Joel-We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, “Bridge on the River Kwai”
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide.
Children of thalidomide…
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Thalidomide is a chiral molecule, meaning it has two non-superimposable mirror-image forms with identical chemical formulas, just like your left hand and your right hand. These two forms are generally created during manufacturing and called enantiomers. Often R or S are used to differentiate but plus/minus, and L/R are also used to differentiate between the different forms.
(R)-thalidomide: This enantiomer is a sedative and has also been used to treat leprosy and multiple myeloma.
(S)-thalidomide: This enantiomer is teratogenic, meaning it can cause birth defects. It was responsible for the thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s, when pregnant women were prescribed thalidomide as a sedative and their children suffered severe birth being born with undeveloped arms and legs.
Thalidomide Survivors Speak Out https://share.google/LfJpmi4CQ9yUH1ILR
How are you feeling today?
#ChemFreeZones
Many, many, current pesticides have enantiomeric forms. Thalidomide had obvious and very quick biological effects (less than 9 months). If one of the enantiomers of a currently produced pesticide had a more long-term effect (years to decades) it would be very hard to identify that without much better tracking of the chemicals that make up current pesticides than what is currently being done. Virtually anything at all would be better than none at all.
I have a PhD in microbiology and was forced to study a little chemistry😃 particularly as it relates to biology. I have been railing against pesticides for more than 30 years. It is easy for me to criticize the widespread and indiscriminate pesticide use.
1) We spray five times the entire Gulf of Mexico oil spill on this country in pesticides every year.
2) It is impossible to fight the farm lobby. They are too well-funded and the companies too well entrenched.
3) There are more than 20,000 approved US pesticides! And _none_ are adequately analyzed in conjunction with others to understand unforeseen “thalidomide” effects of different combinations.
But, I recognize it is far easier to be negative than to be positive. I started looking for a positive solution. A change I believed would be doable.
I thought we could start generating non-toxic zones where people could choose to live. I decided it might be most effective to start at geographic nodes — with these thoughts:
1 Our national parks could be clean, green, environment machines. And they are not producing food or reliant on the farm lobby.
2 People could get behind protecting not only our children, but natural areas and our endangered species as well.
3 Our big environmental groups, especially the sierra club, audubon society, and world wildlife fund could get behind this idea because of the endangered species connection, and really help push this sustainable idea.
4 Non-toxic regions could spread outward from those nodes.
I felt that the first requirement was to get a full and honest review and accounting of chemical and non-chemical methods being used in the parks. To be able to maintain adequate records, I chose only three parks, Yosemite, Sequoia, and the Everglades.
Those parks were environmentally diverse and geographically dispersed. Also, the fact that they had larger areas meant that they could designate non-toxic portions even if they could not make the entire park non-toxic.
www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/our-toxic-national-parks/
I have run into nothing but brick walls from the park superintendents, their staff, integrated pest management departments, and a few big advertising but small thinking environmental groups as well. (whiskey tango foxtrot sierra club, world wildlife fund, and audubon society, among others). To this date I have received not a single valid credible response from any of them over many dozens of emails and several calls.
In 4 months none of the national park superintendent offices ever officially admitted that they even have ipm (integrated pest management) departments. Now they have started to advertise it like it’s the greatest thing under the sun. These departments are actually quite large, have lots of funding, and seem to me to simply be PR departments for the pesticide industry. I am seriously laughing about how hard the parks are trying to turn what they are doing positive.
While researching the IPM departments in the national parks, I discovered these very large, well funded, connected departments (arms of the pesticide industrial complex) were also working as a group at becoming a _mandatory_ part of pest control for all schools. I was horrified! The ipm system in our national parks has done nothing but block my attempts at communication, hide pesticide use in the parks, break their own restrictions on what they can and cannot spray, where they can and cannot spray, hide their “training” and certification programs, etc, etc. It is as if these ipm depts will only listen and talk to Monsanto/Bayer, Dow chemical, Syngenta and DuPont’s advertising/sales departments. They seem to me the very very worst of big government. And are working hard to be solely in charge of pesticide use in your child’s school.
Obviously it is very difficult for citizens to fight the money in the massive chemical industry. Three Martini lunches by pesticide salespeople and public relations flyers sent to City, County, State, and Federal officials go a long, long way to blind, deafen, and dumb government officials. Citizens rightly have concerns that (despite all the industry advertising) these toxins really are not “drinkable”, and really do cause cancer, and do “harm people and pets;” and maybe even our endangered animals too. However, our citizen concerns mostly go completely unheard.
I believe that there are three little easy things that we _can_ do to give our voices much more volume, start making a difference, and encourage some of our environmental groups to _stop_ being enablers and start walking the walk again.
What can anyone do about the pesticide use in our national parks.
The best to you all my friends!
https://www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/past-ourtoxicnationalparks-posts/