Re: Getting real--Release the Raw Data!

[Sue.Darcey, Pesticide Report <sdarcey@erols.com>]

Thank you Rich, for remembering the pesticide adverse health effects
reports that I and several other reporters and environmental groups
are panting to get our hands on.

EPA -- While I know this stuff is theoretically accessible under
FOIA, please remember that under your current system (not 10 years
from now, when you get this all up on a beautifully crafted, easily
accessible database) it takes quite a few months for the interested
public to retrieve your raw data via FOIA, and that the "few months"
wait has quite a chilling effect on our willingness to track down
information that the public has a right to know about.

That raw data you are keeping locked up in your databases -- such
as the most up-to-date list of pesticide brand names, pesticide
label warnings, identity of pesticide "inert" ingredients --all
the pesticide adverse effects reports, etc. and internal memos on
pesticide health effects that your hardworking staff is assembling
as we speak -- is important, vital information that the public
needs to know about right now, to help protect themselves in the
interim period before you make a final decision to mitigate the
risk of or cancel a pesticide yourself.

And if you free this data, believe me, all the reporters and
researchers and environmental groups who need it to to write stories
and technical reports and to advise their interest groups -- will
definitely take the ball and run with it, no matter how raw, or
sloppy or "out of context" you think the data may be.

Please don't make me go through another two working days like I
just did, making 15 phone calls, 8 web searches and a 2-hour docket
room hunt to try to track down label information and health effects
of a pesticide that Maryland Dept. of Agriculture decided last week
it would use against mosquitos in Columbia and Baltimore, Md.
carrying the West Nile Fever virus.  The people who live there,
and the people in other neighborhoods in the U.S. who may soon find
themselves facing the same health threat, and need ALL the information
about the both the risks of the virus, and the measures that are
taken to suppress it, so that they can participate in their own
health protection.

If you know something, however sketchy it may be, please let us
have access to that information, so that we can practice the
precautionary principle, just in case.

While we have faith that you will eventually work in our best
interests to protect human health and the environment, please give
us the tools we need now, to protect ourselves and the planet.

Sue Darcey, Pesticide Report