The Poison Papers

Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

Articles and News

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

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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

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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.

In-Depth Interview: Dr. Jonathan Latham Exposes the Game EPA Plays with Industries it Regulates

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Based on the newly-released Poison Papers, Dr. Jonathan Latham of Independent Science News slams the EPA and its predecessors. Latham is also executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, which has released a huge trove of documents from industries and regulators, the Poison Papers.  Visit Independent Science News here.

We open with a discussion of recent moves by Trump’s EPA under Scott Pruitt, which just announced very narrow enforcement of 2016’s updates of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.  Latham is dismissive, saying the EPA “already had its agenda for not doing anything”, and that EPA “has never done its job”.

This leads to his description of the Poison Papers, which date to 1920 and show that pattern of weak regulation, unchanged by the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.  We walk through searches for “Agent Orange” and “glyphosate”, and he comments on the range of documents in the collection.

Latham offers a sweeping indictment of EPA and regulation of toxic chemicals in general, describing a game where the industries are always outraged at “over-reach” and EPA enables the industries while appearing to regulate them.  He sees little difference between Democrats who champion science as the basis of regulation and Republicans who promote corporate profits over sensible regulation.

In-Depth Interview: Dr. Jonathan Latham Exposes the Game EPA Plays with Industries it Regulates