The Poison Papers

Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

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“POISON PAPERS” SNAPSHOT: HOJO TRANSCRIPT ILLUSTRATES EPA COLLUSION WITH CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

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Published in Independent Science News and Exposed by CMD on July 27th, 2017:

‘Poison Papers’ Snapshot: HOJO Transcript Illustrates EPA Collusion With Chemical Industry by Rebekah Wilce of the Center for Media and Democracy.

This is the first story based on The Poison Papers, the 20,000 document trove whose publication on DocumentCloud was co-organised by Independent Science News and the Center for Media and Democracy.

The story recounts a secret 1978 meeting between senior figures at EPA and chemical industry representatives. The purpose of that meeting was to cover up and delay a reckoning with a major chemical safety testing fraud perpetrated by Industrial Bio-Test (IBT).

“Dr. Arthur Pallotta, Consultant to the Special Pesticide Review Division in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, stated that “there were few [IBT] studies that did not have discrepancies, errors and omissions” (p. 27). Elsewhere in the transcript, EPA accepted that over 80 percent of the test results from IBT were invalid (p. 123).”

In the meeting EPA agrees to ignore or accept defective and fraudulent safety data to buy time for the industry to repeat studies. However, many defective studies were never repeated. Thus, even today chemicals are on the market, including household names, for which IBT studies are still cited as evidence of their safety — when EPA could and should have rejected all IBT studies as fraudulent.

Read the full story at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/poison-papers-snapshot-hojo-transcript-illustrates-epa-collusion-with-chemical-industry/

or

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/26/poison-papers-exposes-epa-collusion-with-chemical-industry/

100,000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for Decades — Until Now

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The Poison Papers became news today with the publication of Sharon Lerner’s interview with Carol Van Strum in The Intercept.

Depicts Carol Van Strum’s long history of collecting and working with crucial documents exposing human and environmental health hazards. This excellent article nevertheless only skims the surface of some of the important documents contained in the Poison Papers collection.

“Along the way, she amassed disturbing evidence about the dangers of industrial chemicals — and the practices of the companies that make them. Two documents, for instance, detailed experiments that Dow contracted a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to conduct on prisoners in the 1960s to show the effects of TCDD, a particularly toxic contaminant found in 2,4,5-T. Another document, from 1985, showed that Monsanto had sold a chemical that was tainted with TCDD to the makers of Lysol, who, apparently unaware of its toxicity, used it as an ingredient in their disinfectant spray for 23 years. Yet another, from 1990, detailed the EPA policy of allowing the use of hazardous waste as inert ingredients in pesticides and other products under certain circumstances.”

To read the full article “100, 000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for Decades — Until Now” by Sharon Lerner in The Intercept (July 26, 2017) go to: https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/chemical-industry-herbicide-poison-papers/

Reuters vs. UN Cancer Agency: Are Corporate Ties Influencing Science Coverage?

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Stacy Malkan on the steady attacks on IARC for its calling glyphosate a “possible carcinogen”.

“One key weapon in industry’s arsenal has been the reporting of Kate Kelland, a veteran Reuters reporter based in London.

With two industry-fed scoops and a special report, reinforced by her regular beat reporting, Kelland has aimed a torrent of critical reporting at the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), portraying the group and its scientists as out of touch and unethical, and leveling accusations about conflicts of interest and suppressed information in their decision-making.”

Original article posted here:

Reuters vs. UN Cancer Agency: Are Corporate Ties Influencing Science Coverage?

Monsanto Drops Bombshell on Cancer Scientist

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Monsanto Co. and friends this week dropped a bombshell on opponents who are seeking to prove that the company’s beloved Roundup herbicide causes cancer. They accuse Roundup opponents, via a Reuters article, of concealing information as they all worked together assessing the herbicide glyphosate for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Authored by Reuters’ reporter Kate Kelland, who has a history of cozy relations with a group partly funded by agrichemical company interests, the piece accused a top epidemiologist from the U.S. National Cancer Institute of failing to share “important” scientific data with other scientists as they all worked together assessing the herbicide glyphosate for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

The target of this accusation is Aaron Blair who led the IARC analysis and it was shared on media around the globe. The Reuters story has many flaws, however, including that its main “independent” source someone who is a paid consultant of Monsanto.

Original article posted here

https://www.ecowatch.com/reuters-glyphosate-cancer-2444376172.html