The Poison Papers

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Agent Orange

Vietnam demands Monsanto pays compensation for Agent Orange victims

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“Toxic defoliant has been linked to birth defects, cancers and other deadly diseases from which millions suffer to this day.”

“Vietnam has demanded Monsanto pay compensation to the victims of Agent Orange, which the company supplied to the US military during the Vietnam War.

It came in response to the firm being ordered to pay $289m (£226m) to a school groundsman who claims his use of its Roundup weedkiller contributed to his terminal cancer.”

Read the full story, written by Samuel Osborn and published in The Independent on 25 August 2018, at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/vietnam-agent-orange-monsanto-victims-compensation-a8508271.html

We hope the lawyers for the Vietnamese victims will read and utilize the data in The Poison Papers — they will find ample evidence that the companies knew of the extreme toxicity of the dioxins in their products long before the US Military sprayed agent orange in Vietnam.

 

Years Before Vietnam, the Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins

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Published Tuesday, Nov 14th, in Independent Science News, the English translation of  “Years Before Vietnam, the Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins” was first published in German in BuzzFeed by Petra Sorge.

Synopsis: Decades before the herbicide 2,4,5-T was pulled from the US market for containing dioxins, the global chemical giants Dow, BASF, Monsanto, and others, had extensive discussions amongst themselves of whether to sell dioxin-contaminated chemicals. These discussions ranged from chemical analysis of each other’s products to comments on their safety and whether to inform governments that their products contained contaminants of “extraordinary danger”. The internal discussions reported in this article are now available to the public for the first time thanks to The Poison Papers Project.

“In any event, on 19 December 1964 Boehringer Ingelheim, in response to a request from Dow, described their experiences with dioxin.

Boehringer wrote: ‘Until now we have disclosed the content of this report to no one outside of our company, as we attach a special value thereto, because the extraordinary danger of tetrachlorobenzodioxin is not generally known’.”

Original ISN English translation posted here:

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/years-before-vietnam-the-chemical-industry-knew-about-dioxins/

Original German BuzzFeed article posted here:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/petrasorge/diese-dokumente-zeigen-wie-basf-bayer-co-gefahrliche-stoffe?bffbdenews&utm_term=.fwDv3Pqpb#.qy6Z240Mw

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