By Daniel Faulk - Hard Times, February 1983.
During the last days of fall many north coast residents head for their favorite creek, stream, or river to enjoy the outdoors and catch some fish. Sometimes, while wading in a cool stream, the fisherman’s solitude is broken by the distant drone of a motor. Glancing up he might catch sight of a helicopter skimming the treetops. Hanging beneath the helicopter a silver boom reflects the morning sunlight and a faint mist drifts onto the trees. This mist is not your normal north coast fog. It is, however, a common phenomenon. For the past twenty years the U.S. Forest Service and timber companies have contracted with helicopter firms to spray thousands of acres in northern California and Oregon with herbicides.
Retarding the growth of hardwood trees and brush, these chemicals are, according to industry officials, essential for the profitable management of commercial timber. Many publically spirited citizens disagree and argue that herbicide spraying threatens public health and safety.
Lost somewhere in the debate is the fate of those most directly exposed to these chemicals: the workers who apply them, and those who do tree planting and work in areas that have been treated with herbicides.
Take the case of Rich Overholt. Employed by Six-Rivers National Forest to manually apply herbicides, Overholt received a direct blast of 2,4-D to his face. Overholt is now disabled and has difficulty breathing.
When Overholt took his job with the Forest Service he was told that “2,4-D was not dangerous.” His supervisor, he recalled, informed him that “he would have to drink a whole quart or gallon of the stuff” before it would do him any harm. Believing such assurances, Overholt, like many of his fellow workers, took few precautions and often ended up soaked from head to foot with the herbicide. Rich Overholt, late in 1980, accidently squirted a few drops of 2,4-D in his face while working on difficult terrain. Suffering an almost immediate toxic reaction, Overshot’s nervous system is permanently damaged. At twenty three he wonders how well and how long the rest of his life will be.
Another example of how workers are directly affected by the use of chemicals in forest management is the experience of Jack Duncan. A 32 year old forest worker, Duncan has been employed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as a tree planter for the past seven years.
Back in 1981 Duncan and a crew of tree planters were working near Conley Creek in Oregon when a helicopter began spraying herbicides adjacent to the unit being planted. Duncan, testifying in an affidavit taken on November 11, 1981, reported that spray from that helicopter “drifted over us and upon us.” He states that, “All ten of us were exposed to the herbicide—upon our clothes, skin…and we all inhaled the mist.”
If the public is to believe chemical companies and the evangelical users of herbicides, such exposure poses no threat. But the harsh light of truth, at least in the case of Jack Duncan, punctures holes in industry’s rhetoric, “All of my crew and myself,” Duncan testified, “experienced acute symptoms of burning eyes and throat, headache, dizziness, nausea and diarrhea. All have suffered from peripheral neuropathy (loss of feeling in fingers and toes) since the exposure.”
Also of record is that two wives of the exposed workers became pregnant after their husbands’ exposure. Both miscarried.
Jack Duncan’s experience with herbicides is not unique nor are the problems associated with herbicide exposure limited to those workers who are sprayed with the chemical.
In 1978 Marla Gillham conducted a study of thirty forestry workers planting an area that had been sprayed with Krenite six months earlier and with 2,4-D and Silvex almost one year before planting began.
Gillham discovered that one worker after only four hours at the site, experienced severe reactions to chemicals. A blood test revealed that the worker had absorbed 5.5 parts per billion (ppb) of Silvex and over 4 ppb of Krenite. Seventeen other workers also experienced nausea, headaches, bloody noses, and nervous system dysfunctions after only a few days at the site.
Little has changed. In 1983, tree planters are still hired in Humboldt County and in Oregon to plant on sprayed units. These workers are not given a chemical history. They are not told what chemicals have been sprayed and they are not told if chemical
residues still persist at the site. This lack of information keeps labor cheap and plentiful—it also threatens the health and safety of those working in the forest.
One solution would be a demand by forest workers that the chemical history of sites to be planted be provided to each worker at least 48 hours before work at a site is to commence. A more permanent solution would be to use less hazardous means and more workers.