The Poison Papers

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Jonathan Latham, PhD

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

Long before Scott Pruitt, EPA colluded with industry

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Published in Salon Magazine, 19th May, 2018.

“the evidence is overwhelming that permethrin has a marked tumor-inducing or carcinogenic activity which is expressed in many different forms.” Adrian Gross Senior EPA Scientist

This article by Jonathan Latham, director of the Project, focuses on the pesticide permethrin and how EPA accepted fraudulent research to allow it on the market. It asks the question, why would they do that?

Long before Scott Pruitt, EPA colluded with industry.

How an Oregon activist’s barn produced the ‘Poison Papers’ that aids in a lawsuit against Monsanto

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St. Louis Public Radio has published a new article about The Poison Papers and Carol Van Strum. Van Strum is an activist who collected the documents during her past 40 years involved in lawsuits against chemical companies and the federal government.

“It began in the early 1970s, when Van Strum’s family saw an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle and moved to a farm in the Siuslaw National Forest.

Soon after, she said, they were sprayed by a helicopter with 2,4,5-T — a component of Agent Orange — that was meant to treat a timber crop on nearby public land.

She banded together with neighbors, sued and won an injunction to stop the spraying.”

The hope is that the newly digitized Poison Papers will aid in current efforts to protect the public from toxic exposure.

“Bill Sherman, assistant attorney general for the state of Washington, said he was reviewing the new documents and expected they would be involved in the state’s lawsuit against Monsanto.

‘They confirm that Monsanto was aware of the harms that their PCBs were causing and continued to sell them without telling the public or their customers,” Sherman said of the documents.’”

Read the full article, “How an Oregon activist’s barn produced the ‘Poison Papers’ that aids in a lawsuit against Monsanto” on St. Louis Public Radio (August 24, 2017) at: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/how-oregon-activists-barn-produced-poison-papers-aids-lawsuit-against-monsanto#stream/0

Republicans Rush to Monsanto’s Aid Touting Industry-Biased Reuters Report

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In their latest attempt to shield Monsanto from accountability, House Republicans have seized upon the flawed and biased reporting of a Reuters journalist whose work has emerged as a key lobbying tool for the embattled agrichemical company as it faces lawsuits, regulatory threats and a wave of awful press coverage about allegations of improper influence over research.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/republicans-rush-monsantos-aid-industry-biased-reuters-report