Anti-pesticide pioneer put human health first
June Irwin was the force behind Hudson’s landmark bylaw, Ann Petersen Anderson writes.
June Irwin, who died June 22 at age 83, left an enduring legacy. The local environmental activism she spearheaded led to legislation against the use of pesticides in urban areas across Canada.
A physician, she was a pioneer in the struggle to protect human health and the environment in the face of large-scale pesticide use, which she described as “a human experiment (with) no records being kept.”
Her campaign began in the 1980s, when she started seeing patients at her PointeClaire dermatology practice with worrisome health problems. She took blood and skin samples, had them tested and soon connected the patients’ illnesses with their exposure to toxic lawn pesticides like 2-4D, which were then in widespread use. She documented her findings and alerted the medical community and government to the health threat, but got no constructive response.
Undeterred, Irwin started an extensive letter-writing campaign to newspapers, municipalities and the government recounting her findings and urging action. She lived in Hudson and attended town council meetings on a weekly basis from 1985 to 1991, pressing the issue as she read out countless documents on the detrimental effects of pesticides.
In 1991, Irwin’s years of persistence finally paid off when Hudson council, with then-mayor Michael Elliott, adopted a bylaw banning all non-essential pesticides on private and public land, a first in Canada. It was quickly followed by other towns pressured by concerned citizens and was the spark that lit the fire.
Irwin was particularly concerned about children who played on public and private lawns routinely sprayed with pesticides. One such child was Jean-Dominic Lévesque-René, then a nineyear-old boy diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who, with Irwin’s support, went on to successfully petition Île-Bizard council to ban cosmetic pesticides. (Lévesque-René has gone on serve as a borough councillor for Jacques-Bizard district.)
In 1993, two lawn care companies, Chemlawn and Spraytech Lawncare, sued Hudson in an attempt to stave off the wave of bylaws threatening their industry. Hudson won twice and the case went to the Supreme Court of Canada. The challenge galvanized the environmental movement to support Hudson, because the outcome would have an effect on the whole country.
In June 2001, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold Hudson’s bylaw. It was a landmark ruling based on the “precautionary principle” — the idea that in the face of scientific uncertainty, it is reasonable to err on the side of caution to protect human health and the environment. It set a standard for environmental legislation, empowered local initiatives and redefined the politics of the environmental movement. “The mouse that roared” was how one article described the effect of this historic ruling.
Irwin said: “Lawn pesticides are an example of people wilfully, though maybe not knowingly, poisoning their neighbours. These are terribly toxic substances and yet, it seemed to me, there was a conspiracy of silence. I’m pleased that, to some degree, we have been able to break through that silence to get the word out.”
June Irwin’s story is documented in Paul Tukey’s film A Chemical Reaction. Tukey, an American from Maine who switched his lawn care business to organic practices due to his own serious health issues, praises Irwin as an international hero for raising the health risks associated with pesticides. “This one woman really was the catalyst for this movement” he said. “There’s no denying she was the first one, in a very public way to stick her neck out there.”
Irwin eschewed accolades, saying it was all about the collective effort, and emphasized the need to remain vigilant about keeping up the pressure because, as she would say: “It can always go backwards.”
Her pioneering work still reverberates as the Quebec government prepares to widen the list of banned pesticides in its updated Pesticide Management Code.