The search for truth by Brenda Sutcliffe.
A collection of papers relative to the link between organophosphate poisoning and ill health in farmers, soldiers and the general public
This booklet contains a small selection of papers collected over many years as part of detailed unofficial study by Brenda Sutcliffe and. her contacts around the world.
Brenda, a retired Civil Servant and sheep farmer for over fifty year’s in the hills of Lancashire, and her family were terribly effected by the use of organophosphate as a sheep dip. Ever since, and during a painfully slow recovery from the effects, Brenda has been one of the most vociferous voices against the use of 0P’s in the UK.
During this time, Brenda has forged links with many useful allies around the world but has not yet been able to persuade anyone in authority to admit the part that 0P’s have played in decimating a large (and not fully quantified) number of farmers, soldiers and the British Beef industry; as well as causing untold damage to the public at large.
The aim of this collection is to bring into the public domain some of the papers and information which is on public record as not existing. The heads of certain international chemical companies, and indeed heads of government, may not like you to know some of the undeniable facts contained in this booklet. Also included are some of the background facts which have led to some of the disasters of the last twenty years and relevant contacts and links for further study and support.
Brenda’s message is one which should be heeded by everyone.
If just one parent is persuaded not
to use OP head lice shampoo through reading this then her efforts have not been
in vain.
The five questions YOU should ask NOAH:
The following are the five questions to put to the National Office of Animal Health (NOAH), printed in the Farmer’s Guardian on July 11th 2003 as part of a letter from Brenda Sutcliffe. You can find the address for NOAH on the links page in this booklet.
Question One
How do we follow the latest instructions on sheep dip by ensuring that the sheep
do not drink or inhale any of the dip wash?
Question Two
When parents use Malathion as head lice treatment, are they told to avoid skin
contact and that death is usually due to respiratory failure?
Question Three
The manufacturers of Crufomate are resisting publishing the hazard fact shed.
Isn’t it the duty of NOAH to do it for them?
Question Four
In view of the fad that the shepherds, the soldiers and the children with head
lice are now being subjected to the use of pyrethroids, shouldn’t they
all be made aware of the symptoms of this form of poisoning?
Question Five
When Ministry vets
were advised not to approach an OP dip by closer than 14 feet, wouldn’t
it have reduced the suicide figures if shepherds had been given the same advice?
CRUFOMATE: An Organophosphate used as treatment for Warble F!y.
There has long been a belief in the farming community that the treatment of animals with chemicals has been the root cause of BSE but to believe something and to prove it are two quite different things. I am now confident that we have proved the theory.
My interest in the organophosphate group of chemicals and the danger they represent, goes back ten years to 1992, when myself and my family were devastated by the compulsory use of organophosphate sheep dips. To learn more I had to make enquiries overseas and I owe a great deal to the E.P.A. Washington who were very generous with their help and information.
I have never seen any difference between what happened to the cattle with BSE and what happened to the poisoned shepherds. When you can’t walk between two gates in a field without falling over, you know you have a problem and when you begin to lose the power of speech and reasoning then you become absolutely sure. The sight of afflicted cattle on T.V. filled many of us with dread.
My scientific background is none existent but it seemed a good idea to start with the Health and Safety Data sheets of all the products relating to sheep dip. The information was astounding and explained why the farmers and the shepherds had never had sight of them until 1993. I then began to coiled data on the compounds used for treatment of warble fly infestations in cattle; Crufomate was the first. This was followed by Coumaphos, Triclorfon and last but not least, Phosmet.
Researching any subject is difficult and costs time and money but when the subject is a closed book it becomes nigh on impossible. The obstacles become even worse when the people who should be helping are becoming more and more obstructive.
I cite The Veterinary Medicines Directorate, The Health and Safety Executive, Local Environmental Health Offices, The Department of Health, and of course the mouthpiece for the chemical companies, The National Office of Animal Health (NOAH).
The shepherds got together and pooled information and what a wonderful group of people they have turned out to be. Black’s Veterinary Dictionary 1973, 10th edition became the focus of much attention. There we discovered the symptoms of Crufomate poisoning if the cattle were overdosed. At the same time we were looking at the Government document APS/1 which stated that if one OP made one ill, then one should never ever use another one.
Pity the cattle couldn’t talk at the time. Over a period of time, some cattle must have been subjected to treatment with four different organophosphates. Finding scientific data on all of the compounds used turned out to be a test of patience and frustration for me. Coumaphos and Triclorfon presented no problem. Crufomate was something else again.
The people I tried to get information from turned out to be either unwilling or unable to help. I suspect the former. After seven years of searching we eventually ran around the house shouting “Eureka”. The Health Authority New Jersey, U.S.A. placed it on their web site. For the benefit off all I will repeat it here.
SUMMARY
Crufomate can affect you when breathed in and by passing through your skin. Crufomate can damage the testes. Breathing Crufomate can cause rapid fatal organophosphate poisoning with headache, sweating, nausea and vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of coordination and death. Repeated exposure may cause personality changes. High or repeated exposure may damage the nerves.
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WHO IS STILL IN ANY DOUBT ABOUT WHERE BSE ORIGINATED FROM?
The BSE inquiry was a complete waste of tax-payers’ money The manufacturers of Crufomate were Dow Agrosciences Ltd. Their submission to the enquiry stated that they had withdrawn from the animal health business about 1980 and had no records of that part of their business prior to their withdrawal. Was this because they saw everything going pear shaped I ask? They now have a copy of the hazard fact sheet, I sent them a copy, and they should waste no time in putting it in the public domain.
There are a number of interesting factors about organophosphates which are not widely known. They were originally designed as nerve gases and then supposedly modified to be used as insecticide. They are extremely efficient at destroying certain enzymes in the blood of all warm blooded creatures, man being no exception. The first enzyme we investigated was cholinesterase. This facilitates messages getting to and from the brain. The expected norm in man varies between 40 and 80 units per 100 mIs of blood. When I was blood tested I had 8.25.
The choilnesterase enzyme will try to put itself right over a period of time but never reaches its starting point. It is essential that blood tests are done within 24 hours of exposure. Discovering that the enzyme Paraoxinase is important to the functioning of the heart muscles was interesting to say the least. The destruction of this enzyme leads to Cardiac Arrest which is usually fatal. The most amazing factor of all the scraps of information is that there are any cattle, sheep, or farmers, left alive in the UK after so many years of enforced abuse.
We need to look carefully at all the Government bodies and agencies which have been involved in this gigantic cover-up.
1. Local Environmental Health Offices supervised the sheep dipping at all farms. Their officers were no better equipped the most farmers. When we collapsed in 1992, there was a blank refusal to help. We needed to remove spent dip from our yard and were told to do it ourselves. When our local councillor called a meeting of local farmers to discover if there were any other victims in the locality, the authority refused to send a representative. They stated;
IF THESE PEOPLE WERE MADE ILL, IT IS THEIR OWN FAULT, THEY WERE GIVEN GUIDELINES.
2. The Health and Safety Executive. They have a great deal to answer for. The Medical Services Document MS17 is their responsibility. When they came to rewrite this paper the draft paper actually mentions the Suicide Impulse of many victims. The fact that hundreds of shepherds have committed suicide after using OP sheep dips hasn’t yet occurred to them.
The MS 17 never reached the farmers and the rewrite was completed without the suicide clause. They later went on to threaten campaigners with libel action and at the same time closed down a wool grading factory at Carnforth because they couldn’t guarantee the safety of the workers from organophosphates poisoning. In 1991 they were in the process of finalising their own research into the health of farmers to the use of organophosphates. The research was devastating. They were aware then that organophosphates degrade through heat and age to become tetraethyl pyrophosphate. They should have been aware that it took only 45 minutes to destroy 20 head of cattle in Texas. Their reaction to this set of devastating research defies belief. They called a meeting. The HSE, the VMD and the National Office of Animal Health all attended on 25.2.1991 and now would you believe THEY HAVE ALL LOST THE MINUTES OF THAT MEETING. IT HASN’T PASSED MY NOTICE THAT IF THEY HAD TOLD THE TRUTH AT THAT TIME MY FAMILY WOULD HAVE BEEN SAVED A GREAT DEAL OF TRAUMA AND MANY HUNDREDS OF FARMERS WOULD STILL BE ALIVE.
3. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is the agency which is supposed to investigate all adverse reactions to veterinary products. They have yet to find a confirmed case of organophosphate poisoning among the farmers who have managed to find their way through the maze of forms. Every report which they have looked at very blandly states that there is insufficient evidence to support the diagnosis. They even managed to ignore the reports from HSE doctors which support or confirm the diagnosis. Papers appear to be lost or destroyed as do medical records.
Marks out of ten for the VMD = Zero.
Whilst the minutes of the 1991 meeting may have been destroyed, the people who were in attendance are still around. They should be called before the select committee on health at the House of Commons and asked for explanation of the research and their own involvement in suppressing this information. The Veterinary Products Committee are responsible for the licensing of all these products. They certainly have a laid-back attitude to the user’s welfare. There is no communication between themselves and the victim’s. Letters to any of these quangos are part of a game called Pass the Parcel. The letter is passed to another Ivory Tower for reply and when you finally get an answer you will have forgotten what the question was in the first place.
The HSE will never implement the 1968 Medicines Act against the chemical companies on the shepherds’ behalf. Section 6 relating to substances at work is quite explicit. The shepherds are entitled to a Police Investigation - always supposing that Murder by Remote-control is still not legal in Britain today.
Brenda Sutcliffe, April 2003
Submission to BSE Enquiry—April 1998
Name: Brenda Sutcliffe: Sheep Farming Background for last fifty years / Retired Civil Servant
IN 1992 myself and my family were diagnosed as suffering from Organophosphate sheep dip poisoning by blood tests carried out at Guys Hospital, London.
The fact that we all nearly died
was seen as an irrelevance by Government departments. No treatment was offered,
or indeed any acknowledgment of our predicament In simple terms, we were to
be ignored to enable Government to cover its tracks - after all, they were responsible
for licensing all veterinary products. In the face of such stonewalling, I decided
to make my own enquiries, and contacted the following establishments for information.
I am extremely grateful for their help:
The World Health Organisation
The Environment Protection Agency, Washington, USA
The University of New Jersey, USA The Pesticide Trust
The Royal Society of Chemistry, London
The Hazards Society London
Plus many private individuals. I am also extremely grateful to Mr Rod Knight (lawyer) of Keith Park & Co. Solicitors (39 Barrow Street, St. Helens, Lancashire) for his support and advice. Mr Knight has copies of all the papers in my Possession.
With the help of the Royal Society of Chemistry I obtained scientific information on all the OP compounds used as Sheep dips, i.e. Diazinon, Propetamphos, Chlorfenvinphos, Carbophenothion and via a third party went on to Crufomate, which he had used as a warble fly dressing. I later explored all the OP’s which had been used in the Gulf War.
What I began to find extremely worrying from this collection of, information was that all 0P’s were cholinesterase inhibitors — the damage caused was cumulative, and research using laboratory animals showed that most were carcinogenic and also responsible for malformations in up to and including the third generation of offspring.
The destruction of the central nervous system immune system and peripheral nervous system was also apparent with most OP compounds.
My next move was to collect as many published scientific papers as I thought were relevant. Copies of the following are enclosed:
1) Poisoning on the Farm by Dr Redhead, published in the Lancet in 1968. This paper explains the importance of the cholinesterase levels in man. It should be borne in mind that Ops were designed to attack the cholinesterase in insects, and will of course have the same effect on cattle.
2) Effects of Chronic Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure on the Central Nervous System by Richard J Korsak and Miles M Sato, published in 1977. This paper is important because it exposes the frontal lobe brain damage suffered by exposed victims.
Environmental Trichlorfon and Cluster of Congenital Abnormalities by Andrew E Czeizel etal,, published in the Lancet in 1993. This paper is devastating in its content, and the fact that it has been ignored in the UK is unbelievable. The effect on the foetus is beyond words.
There are many other papers in my possession, which are of course available to the Inquiry, but I hope to have painted an adequate picture of then effects of OP poisoning on the insect, human and animal species for the present. I move on...
As mentioned above, I received an enquiry about Crufomate. The information on this compound, plus the sight of BSE-afflicted cattle on television, made me aware of the alarming similarities in both our situation and that of the cattle!. To put it bluntly, the human OP victims were going off their heads and off their legsl The cattle were becoming more obvious than the shepherds (more than 900 shepherds have committed suicide since 1984).
Black’s Veterinary Dictionary 10th Edition (1973) provided quite a lot of answers where it describes the effect on cattle treated with Crufomate for warble fly. The VMD deny knowledge of Crufomate but the British Veterinary Association should still have the results of all the testing done on cattle before they gave their blessing to its usage. I have persistently called for the testing of cholinesterase levels in cattle before and after treatment for warble fly. This is unnecessary — it has been done, and the results should be made available to the Inquiry by the BVA as a matter of urgency. The maternal transmission is explained in the following paper:
Reproduction and Growth of Progeny of Female Mice Mated After Treatment With Crufomate — author M A Khan — Research Station Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada; published in the Journal of Scientific Health in 1981. It is interesting to observe that when the first damning scientific papers on a product are published, the chemical companies react in a somewhat vigorous manner — by withdrawing the offending compound and substituting it with something considerably worse.
I consider that I have proved the link between OPs and BSE. What I could never see was a link between BSE and nvCJD, unless nvCJD was some other form of chemical poisoning. Had these two conditions been the same, there would not have been any OP victims left alive to tell the tale. In any case, the Department of Social Security have been paying out Industrial Injury Benefit to OP victims in industry for decades.
There a very few, if any, recorded deaths from chemical poisoning in the UK but there are numerous reported deaths from “glue sniffing”, “inhalation of lighter fuel”, etc. Autopsies on all these deaths would presumably show frontal lobe brain damage, plus failure of the respiratory tract —but I digress. The nearest I have come to identifying nvCJD as a form of chemical poisoning is a version of Pyrethroid poisoning, the symptoms of which are identical to those exhibited by nvCJD victims.
I have requested Mr Rutter of the VMD to forward my findings to SEAC. He has intimated that he has done this, although I have had no response from SEAC. I also passed my findings to Mr Frank Dobson, the Minister of Health, on 23rd February 1998, without receiving any reply to date. I have also sent to the Inquiry, prior to this paper, such scant information on Pyrethroids as is available, in the hope that it may be of assistance to any further victims diagnosed with nvCJD.
Finally, the chemical companies should be invited to submit all research papers to the Inquiry — I am sure they have much more than I do, and some effort should be made immediately to help the thousands suffering shepherds. It is also of extreme importance that every scrap of information relating to Pyrethroid poisoning be made available to the general public as a matter of urgency The fact that these compounds are being used as a head lice treatment for children is appalling.
The BSE Inquiry/statement No 271
Mr David Farrant [not scheduled to give oral evidence]
Dow AgroSciences
Statement of David Farrant to the
BSE Inquiry
IThis witness has not been asked to give oral evidence in Phase 1 of the lnquiry]
Dow Agriculture had an Animal Health division between approximately 1960 and 1981 when the group was disbanded. In that period the division did sell a product for warble fly based on the active ingredient Crufomate with a registered name of Ruelene. However we have no records available from the period and our statement in answer to your questions has been drawn up based on one or two people’s memory of the period. We cannot therefore guarantee the accuracy of the statement.
Agricultural Chemicals
1. Dow AgroSciences has a range of
insecticides, fungicides and herbicides approved by the Pesticides Safety Directorate
for use in crop protection on farms.
2. The products are approved for use on various agricultural crops. We have
no products used on livestock.
3. Full approved product labels, technical training for distribution and Safety
Data Sheets are supplied.
4. The organochiorine molecules have been replaced in many crop situations by
organophosphate products because of the environmental persistence of organochlorine
molecules. The change has been driven by environmental and regulatory authorities
worldwide.
Warble Fly Treatment
5. Dow Agriculture, as the company
was at the time, did have an animal health division and sold a treatment for
warble fly This was approximately 1960 to 1981 when the animal health group
was disbanded.
6. The active ingredient was crufomate.
7. The brand name for the product was Ruelene.
8. Ruelene 25E - the rate used was a 1:3 dilution with water to give a 6% pour
on using 1 fluid oz/cwt bodyweight up to a maximum of 8 fl.oz. Later (late 1970’s)
Ruelene 7R was produced which was a ready to use pour on formulation used at
the same rate as the 25E.
9. The dosage in the UK was the same as in other countries.
10. A regulatory package that met the requirements of all countries at the time
of sale was produced.
11. As far as we are aware no specific studies were undertaken on the effects
of combination treatments.
Contact with Government Departments
12. At the time Ruelene was sold the then Animal Health Group in Dow were in discussions with the government on an eradication programme but we understand Ruelene came off the market before the programme came into force in the UK
David Farrant
Registration Specialist
UK and Eire
Issued on behalf of the witness by:
The BSE Inquiry Press Office
www.bse.org.uk
“The cause of death in poisoning by organic phosphorous compounds is usually
respiratory failure and consequent anoxia but may be cardiovascular in origin.
Four factors (excessive secretion of the respiratory tract, bronchoconstriction,
weakness of the muscles of respiration, and failure of the respiratory centre)
may contribute to respiratory failure In a few instances, death has followed
profound brain damage that occurred, usually early in the course of poisoning,
as a result severe anoxia…..
Some organic phosphorus compounds produce an immediate “CNS depressant” effect, ranging from incoordination to deep anaesthesia following IV injection. At the same time respiration may be affected. A large dosage is required for all compounds for which the effect has been demonstrate and, by necessity all of them are of low toxicity.”
Description from the Royal
Society of Chemistry.