The Poison Papers

Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States

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‘Poison Papers’ Reveal Chemical Industry Secrets

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ClassAction.com interviewed Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), about the “Poison Papers” and why CMD and the Bioscience Resource Project joined together to get the documents online and available to the public. Graves also discusses some of the issues documented in the Poison Papers and their relevance today.

“And there’s an array of documents from studies that show harms by a number of chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins, and more. What we’re left with is a situation in which many of these chemicals remain on the market, are in products that are being used by consumers and by government agencies, and continue to pose a risk to human health and to the health of our ecosystem.”

Original article posted here

“‘Poison Papers’ Reveal Chemical Industry Secrets” published on ClassAction.com on September 6, 2017 can be found at https://www.classaction.com/news/chemical-industry-poison-papers/

 

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