One of the joys, if it can be called that, of returning from a trip of at least a week or so is going through the mail. It feels like clearing out the combination of catalogs, pitches (which you’ve already responded to), and assorted other stuff. It’s easy for the bills to get lost in the pile of mail. Makes you wonder how many trees gave their lives.
Then, on top of it all, much of the stuff you are clearing out tells you to “please recycle” as if clearing out the paper will save the planet by yourself. This past week the EPA decided that saving people or future people is just as good by banning Dacthal (DCPA), an herbicide linked to serious health risks in unborn babies.
You can imagine the outcry from those who claim they want to make sure every unborn baby has a chance to live a healthy life. The biggest threat is to farmworkers who work broccoli and onion fields for us to eat. It’s been banned in the European Union since 2009 where there’s not so much junk mail, saving trees as well.
Prayer for the Day
Bending over with rakes among rows of broccoli,
Farmworkers don’t pull weeds as did their ancestors;
Told that chemistry makes for better living, O Lord,
We must ask, better living for whom: Us – them?
Make us aware, O Holy One, that others often pay the price,
Allowing us to worry about small things like the mail.
In the name of the One who cast the seeds in good earth,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We know intimately the harm that pesticides …can inflict on our bodies and communities. This emergency decision is a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families.
Mily Treviño Sauceda, National Farmworkers Women’s Alliance
DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately. In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems.
Michal Freedhoff, EPA. assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety
Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate;
For the Lord pleads their cause, and despoils of life those who despoil them.
Proverbs 22: 22-23
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