Experts call for stricter 2,4,5-T controls

Press, 8 November 1986, Page 1

Experts call for stricter 2,4,5-T controls

By

OLIVER RIDDELL,

in Wellington

The manufacture and use of the pesticide, 2,4,5-T, should continue in New Zealand but only for a limited time until there are much stricter conditions, according to an expert’s report to the Government.

The Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, has made public the report of a Ministerial Committee of Inquiry into possible health effects from 2,4,5-T manufacture at New Plymouth. Eight detailed recommendations were made. Manufacture and use of 2,4,5-T should continue for 12 months, the report said, provided that the dioxin contaminant content in any new product manufactured after June

30, 1987, was reduced to one part per billion. During the next 12 months a detailed research programme should begin.

This would include a one-year study by the New Plymouth manufacturer, Ivon-Watkins-Dow, of the pharmacokinetics (the action of drugs in the

body over a period of

time, including the process of absolution, distribution, localisation in the tissues, transformation, and excretion) of 2,4,5-T in the firm’s employees. This study would include also a selected group of farmers and the families of both groups. The report said this study should be made by scientists not employees of the firm. As soon as possible in the next 12 months, the

firm should identify the sources of domestic contamination of farmers and their families, and develop measures to prevent future contamination.

The Ministerial committee comprised Professor G. L. Brinkman, former dean of the Otago Medical School, as chairman; Professor R. E. F. Matthews,

department of cell biology

at the University of Auckland; and Dr W. B. Earl, reader in the chemical and process engineering department at the University of Canterbury. Dr Bassett said the report tended to confirm an earlier study by the Environmental Council that there was little substantive evidence that the manufacture and use of 2,4,5-T posed a serious health risk to the public.

While the public seemed in little danger from the New Plymouth plant, workers at the plant and those using 2,4,5-T might be in more danger,

he said. Mr Tony Friedlander (Nat., New Plymouth) said he was relieved by the report and it would allay people’s fears.