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Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

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You are here: Home / Poison Papers News / Monsanto sold banned chemicals for years despite known health risks, archives reveal

Monsanto sold banned chemicals for years despite known health risks, archives reveal

August 11, 2017 By Allison Wilson

“Monsanto continued to produce and sell toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs for eight years after learning that they posed hazards to public health and the environment, according to legal analysis of documents put online in a vast searchable archive.”

The Poison Papers archive has been analyzed by Bill Sherman, the assistant attorney general for the US state of Washington. Washington state and various west coast cities are suing Monsanto for PCB contamination. Sherman is quoted as saying that Poison Paper documents provide “damning evidence” that was previously unknown to the state.

Due to their extreme toxicity to human and environmental health, by 1979 PCBs were banned in many countries.

“Yet a decade earlier, one Monsanto pollution abatement plan in the archive from October 1969, singled out by Sherman, suggests that Monsanto was even then aware of the risks posed by PCB use.”

To learn more about what Monsanto knew and hid about PCB toxicity read the full article “Monsanto sold banned chemicals for years despite known health risks, archives reveal” by Arthur Neslen on The Guardian (10 August 2017) go to: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/09/monsanto-continued-selling-pcbs-for-years-despite-knowing-health-risks-archives-reveal.

Filed Under: Poison Papers News

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