The Poison Papers

Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

Articles and News

Unsealing the Science: What the Public can Learn from Internal Chemical Industry Documents

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A panel discussion with the people who brought the three new chemical industry documents collections to the UCSF library explored what the documents mean for public health and the perils they faced in making these documents public. Professor Stanton Glantz, who began the library with the first collection of internal tobacco industry documents and explained how the documents have been used to inform litigation, documentaries and public policy decisions. University Librarian and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Information Management Chris Shaffer gave an overview of the Industry Documents Library and introduced the panel. Panelists included Dr. Jonathan Latham, Director of the Bioscience Resource Project, and Gary Ruskin, Co-founder and Co-Director of U.S. Right to Know. The panel was moderated by Dr. Tracey Woodruff, Professor and Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and Co-Director of the UCSF Environmental Health Initiative, which has supported the development of the Chemical Industry Documents library.

https://lecture.ucsf.edu/ets/Play/342d5d84275441b2b97aa9f641d0dca51d

One Planet: The Poison Papers reveal chemical industry secrets in the US

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On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet series, we’ll have a conversation with Dr. Jonathan Latham, the director of the Poison Papers, a vast trove of chemical industry and regulatory agency documents and correspondence stretching back to the 1920s.

The papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press.

http://www.kalw.org/post/one-planet-poison-papers-reveal-chemical-industry-secrets-us#stream/0

New ‘Poison Papers’ Leak: EPA Knew About Many Dangerous Toxins, But Kept Quiet

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A new leak in the series of documents known as the “poison papers,” which were provided by whistleblower William Sanjour, show that unless regulatory bodies such as the EPA have real political backing, they will not act in the public interest. We speak to Jonathan Latham of the Bioscience Resource Project.

Watch the full interview which aired on the Real News Network on September 10, 2018:

https://therealnews.com/stories/new-poison-papers-leak-epa-knew-about-many-dangerous-toxins-but-kept-quiet

 

Environmentally-Caused Disease Crisis? Pesticide Damage to DNA Found ‘Programmed’ Into Future Generations

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The EPA, chemical companies like Monsanto (now Bayer) and mainstream news media are ignoring research indicating pesticides (including the herbicides atrazine and glyphosate, the fungicide vinclozolin and many more) cause heritable disease by introducing epigenetic changes to DNA.

“A chemical (glyphosate) that didn’t come onto the scene until the 1970s has now managed to find its way into every single pregnant woman in the U.S, except seven percent of them. We thought that should be news. But in the current paradigm, which is definitely pro-business, the only thing companies have to prove is that it doesn’t kill you if you drink it or take a big dose of it.”

He [Winchester] sees a potentially catastrophic outcome resulting from the epigenetic damage caused by pesticides.

Read the full story by Ken Roseboro, published on EcoWatch, August 16 2018 at: https://www.ecowatch.com/generational-harm-of-pesticides-2596453994.html