New views of 2,4,5-T danger to be studied

Press, 5 March 1980, Page 3

New views of 2,4,5-T danger to be studied

PA Wellington The Minister of Health (Mr Gair) has asked for a follow-up of the allegations made by a Te Kuiti doctor, Dr Jan Valkenburg, that the births of two deformed babies were possibly linked to their mothers’ exposure to the herbicide, 2,4,5-T, during pregnancy. Mr Gair said yesterday that he had asked his department to arrange for the Medical Officer of Health at Hamilton to approach Dr Valkenburg. Any further inquiries would have to wait until these studies had been made.

However, his advisers Indicated that it was most unlikely from the timing of the facts reported that there would be a direct link between the deformities and exposure to the herbicide, he said.

Dr Valkenburg has linked 2,4,5-T with the deaths of two Hamilton area babies who had “gross deformities.” He has called for another investigation into the effects of the herbicide, “this time done properly.” A Health Department investigation in 1977 into the possibility of a link between birth defects in the Waikato region and 2,4,5-T concluded that there was no evidence to establish a connection.-

Dr Valkenburg said yesterday that two mothers told him they had been exposed to 2,4,5-T in about the fourteenth week of their pregnancies, one from agricultural spraying and the other from roadside spraying. This information had. been

entered in his notes at the time, he said. Subsequently, one of the babies had been born with a heart deformity, and the other with a liver deformity, He was “highly suspicious” that the cause of the deformities was 2,4,5-T, Dr Valkenburg said. One of the babies died in May, 1979, and the other died last January.