The Poison Papers

Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

Articles and News

Pesticide Studies Won E.P.A.’s Trust, Until Trump’s Team Scorned ‘Secret Science’

Posted by on

For years, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have been studying the effects of pesticides on California farm workers and their children. Partly funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, findings from this important epidemiology research have been used to argue for restrictions on toxins such as insecticides.

The research has found links between pesticides sprayed on fruit and vegetable crops and “respiratory complications, developmental disorders and lower I.Q.s among children of farm workers.”

According to the article:
“.. weeks after Donald J. Trump was elected president, CropLife America, the main agrochemical trade group, petitioned the E.P.A. to “halt regulatory decisions that are highly influenced and/or determined by the results of epidemiological studies” unless universities were forced to share more of their data.”

The article, published in the New York Times on August 24, 2018 was written by Danny Hakim and Eric Lipton.

Read the full article at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/business/epa-pesticides-studies-epidemiology.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Worse Than Lead? Special Investigation: The chemical industry strikes again, shifting from lead to flame retardants that also sicken and kill.

Posted by on

“Today, thanks in part to the efforts of a single Virginia family, as many as 97 percent of Americans have toxic flame retardants in their blood. Deeply poisonous, and linked to cancer, genetic damage, and behavioral and learning difficulties, the prevalence of flame retardants, here and around the world, owes to the fact that these chemicals have been placed in many of the objects of daily life—in our homes, automobiles, and workplaces, even in our beds.”

As Jamie Lincoln Kitman illustrates in his new investigative piece for The Nation, flame retardants are yet another Chemical Industry example of reckless disregard  for human suffering and environmental damage. In this case, key perpetrators are the Gottwalds, the most powerful shareholders of the Albemarle chemical company. The Gottwalds chose the same methods favored by all manufacturers of unnecessary and harmful products, from tobacco to lead to pesticides to GMOs:

“..these manufacturers mounted aggressive scare campaigns to create a perceived need for their products: They crafted regulations and lobbied legislatures to adopt them; attacked scientific findings they didn’t like; ridiculed public-health advocates; spun journalists; and bought political access with millions of dollars in campaign contributions.”

Of course, despite their toxicity and pervasiveness, flame retardants are just the tip of an enormous poison-laced iceberg,

“A shocking fact: The EPA maintains a database of some 85,000 chemicals that have been manufactured or processed in the United States, but it has subjected less than 300 of these to rigorous testing under the Toxic Substances Control Act and has banned only five (including PCBs.)”

Read the full story at: “Worse Than Lead? Special Investigation: The chemical industry strikes again, shifting from lead to flame retardants that also sicken and kill,” by Jamie Lincoln Kitman. Published by The Nation on August 15, 2018.

“Poison Papers” and Major Monsanto Document Release Exposes Toxicity and Collusion

Posted by on

Published in The Maui Independent on August 2, 2017 by Jon Wood house and Jonathan Greenberg

Historic Disclosures Prove That Safety of FDA and EPA-Approved Chemicals Were Based on Tobacco Industry-like Collusion Promoting Demonstrably Faked Science.

More than 100,000 pages of documents exposing how the chemical industry and government regulators knew about the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products, yet worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press, were made publicly available last week through a remarkable project called the Poison Papers.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  explained, “Monsanto has been spinning its lethal yarn to everybody for years and suborning various perjuries from regulators and scientists who have all been lying in concert to American farmers, landscapers and consumers. These new revelations are commiserate with the documents that brought down big tobacco.”

Read the full article at: https://mauiindependent.org/poison-papers-major-monsanto-document-release-exposes-toxicity-collusion/

Toxic Secrets: Professor ‘bragged about burying bad science’ on 3M chemicals

Posted by on

To the outside world, Professor Giesy was a renowned and independent university academic.

“But privately, he characterised himself as part of the 3M team,” alleged the State of Minnesota.

“Despite spending most of his career as a professor at public universities, Professor Giesy has a net worth of approximately $20 million. This massive wealth results at least in part from his long-term involvement with 3M for the purpose of suppressing independent scientific research on PFAS.” Read more.