Obit: Ida Honorof, radio host who investigated pesticide contamination

[n2doc]

Ida Honorof, 93; crusading radio host
By Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer
March 18, 2007

Ida Honorof, an environmental crusader who won plaudits for her investigative reports on pesticide contamination of lettuce in the early 1970s, died of natural causes March 5 in Eureka. She was 93.

For 20 years until the late 1980s, Honorof was known as the host of "Report to the Consumer," a hard-hitting weekly radio program on KPFK-FM (90.7) in Los Angeles, where she produced the show as an unpaid volunteer.

In 1973, about five years into the show, she learned from the operator of a pesticide spray rig about chemical burns on an Imperial Valley lettuce crop. She alerted authorities, who tested the lettuce and found residue up to five times the maximum level permitted of the pesticide Monitor-4.

Honorof was not content to report her findings only to KPFK's relatively small audience but drew national attention to the issue when she held a press conference in Chicago with United Farm Workers head Cesar Chavez.

Thousands of crates of lettuce were ordered destroyed, and Monitor-4 was banned.

Her coverage of the dangers of the pesticide earned an Associated Press award for investigative journalism. It was one of hundreds of stories she reported during a lifetime devoted to environmental and consumer action.

more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-honorof18mar18,0,7226426.story?coll=la-home-obituaries

One of the activist journalsits, not a lap dog for the rich and powerful. She also fought the pulp mills in Humboldt county, CA, and the use of DES and malathion.

[KT2000]

1. Her work

affected so many. She deserves medals.
RIP - and thank you.

[NYC]

2. Consumer action. We need more like her.

...Her coverage of the dangers of the pesticide earned an Associated Press award for investigative journalism. It was one of hundreds of stories she reported during a lifetime devoted to environmental and consumer action...

[n2doc]

3. This part is pretty good...

Her persistence and hardball tactics made her well-known in the chambers of local government. She fearlessly hectored local officials and was tossed out of at least one Los Angeles City Council meeting when she pressed her case — against a proposal to add fluoride to the city's water supply — too vociferously. The 1974 incident resulted in her arrest on suspicion of misdemeanor battery after officers said she kicked them in the legs and groin.

A few years later, Honorof was campaigning against the federal government's swine flu inoculation program. For three months she showed up at Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meetings wearing a sandwich board on which she had scrawled, "Demand to know the true hazards of the swine flu vaccine."

The supervisors prohibited protests in the board chambers and ordered her to remove the sign.

"I would start to do so, then they would say, 'No,' " Honorof later recounted, "because it appeared that I was nude" underneath it.

She was wearing a very skimpy miniskirt.