From: "L. Eugene Arnold" arnold.6@osu.edu
        University of Ohio,  (Nisonger Center (Office Of Health Sciences)

   To: tom_hanley@ed.gov
        U.S. Office of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services

  CC: steve@getipm.com (Steve Tvedten), YARROWCAN@AOL.COM
 

Tom, I had an additional thought about something you might be interested in, unrelated to the MTA.

I had an interesting phone conversation with Steve Tvedten (see copy list), who claims to have raised the proficiency test pass rate significantly in 350 OH and Mich. schools by eliminating the routine pesticide spraying, which apparently is often done while students are in the building.  He has a system of pest control with ordinary household products that are not toxic to people but deadly to insects.  He claims his system is not only safer, but cheaper and more effective.

The rationale is that officially labeled insecticides are mostly organophosphate chemicals, which are essentially nerve toxins, attacking systems that insects have in common with humans.  I don't know whether you know about the peer-reviewed Mexican study showing the difference in IQ and person drawings between valley children exposed to insecticide contamination of home environment and hill children of the same genome and SES, in the same general community (hill and valley people intermarry), but with drinking water uncontaminated by pesticides.  If you don't have it, I'll find the ref. for you.   Anyhow, it's reasonable to suspect that since the difference between insecticide and homicide with these chemicals is dose, and they act mainly on nerves, that small nonlethal doses might affect the CNS.  Steve Tvedten uses things that attack the insect's exoskeleton or spiracles, both irrelevant to human analtomy/physiology and therefore safe for humans, especially human CNS.

Steve claims that the schools in OH that switched from organophosphates to his pest control system went from proficiency pass rates similar to the rest of OH (50%-75%) to 100% in a couple of years  --and had no pest problem. Unfortunately, he does not have the time or resources to collect data in a systematic controlled manner. Is there any way you could fund someone to collect the needed data to check this out?  He might be willing to put half the requesting schools on a wait list randomly assigned for his consultation, to do a prospective study.

If upheld, this would be a breakthrough finding that might revolutionize the nation's schools.  If it is literally too good to be true, it should be debunked.

Hope you and the U.S. Dept. of Ed. are interested.

      Gene