Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States
Watch the full interview which aired on the Real News Network on September 10, 2018:
The EPA, chemical companies like Monsanto (now Bayer) and mainstream news media are ignoring research indicating pesticides (including the herbicides atrazine and glyphosate, the fungicide vinclozolin and many more) cause heritable disease by introducing epigenetic changes to DNA.
“A chemical (glyphosate) that didn’t come onto the scene until the 1970s has now managed to find its way into every single pregnant woman in the U.S, except seven percent of them. We thought that should be news. But in the current paradigm, which is definitely pro-business, the only thing companies have to prove is that it doesn’t kill you if you drink it or take a big dose of it.”
He [Winchester] sees a potentially catastrophic outcome resulting from the epigenetic damage caused by pesticides.
Read the full story by Ken Roseboro, published on EcoWatch, August 16 2018 at: https://www.ecowatch.com/generational-harm-of-pesticides-2596453994.html
September 13, 2018, the UCSF Environmental Health Initiative, in collaboration with the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and the UCSF Industry Documents Library, will host a day-long series on the science and stories contained within three new collections of chemical industry documents being added to the library. The goal is to expand public awareness about the contents of the collections and their vast potential in informing scientific research, public policy, and decision-making.
Lecture:
“Failing for Forty Years: What the Poison Papers Tell Us About the EPA and How to Reform It”
Thursday September 13 from 10:00am-11:00am
Location:
Byers Auditorium
UCSF Mission Bay Campus
600 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94143
United States
Jonathan Latham, Director of the Bioscience Resource Project and donor of the Poison Papers to the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents library. Dr. Latham will talk about the importance of the 20,000-document collection and how they expose problems with both the internal culture of the EPA and its legal framework that are often fraught with industry influences that prevent precautionary decision-making, even when the science clearly points to danger.
Brunch to follow in Genentech Hall Atrium from 11-12.
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Panel Discussion:
“Unsealing the Science: What the Public can Learn from Internal Chemical Industry Documents,”
– 533 Parnassus Avenue
Cole Hall Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94143
United States
A panel discussion with the donors of three new UCSF chemical industry documents collections – the Glyphosate and Agrochemical Collection (Gary Ruskin, US Right to Know), the Poison Papers (Jonathan Latham, Bioscience Resource Project), and the Benzene Collection (Raphael Metzger, principal of the Metzger Law Group) will explore what the documents mean for public health and the perils they faced in making these documents public. Professor Stanton Glantz, who began the library with the first collection of internal tobacco industry documents, will introduce the panel and explain how the documents have been used to inform litigation, documentaries, and public policy decisions. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Tracey Woodruff, Professor and Director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and Co-Director of the UCSF Environmental Health Initiative, which has supported the development of the Chemical Industry Documents library.
Panel discussion from 3:30-5:30 at Cole Hall Auditorium.
To attend, please click here to reserve your free ticket.
For years, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have been studying the effects of pesticides on California farm workers and their children. Partly funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, findings from this important epidemiology research have been used to argue for restrictions on toxins such as insecticides.
The research has found links between pesticides sprayed on fruit and vegetable crops and “respiratory complications, developmental disorders and lower I.Q.s among children of farm workers.”
According to the article:
“.. weeks after Donald J. Trump was elected president, CropLife America, the main agrochemical trade group, petitioned the E.P.A. to “halt regulatory decisions that are highly influenced and/or determined by the results of epidemiological studies” unless universities were forced to share more of their data.”
The article, published in the New York Times on August 24, 2018 was written by Danny Hakim and Eric Lipton.
“Today, thanks in part to the efforts of a single Virginia family, as many as 97 percent of Americans have toxic flame retardants in their blood. Deeply poisonous, and linked to cancer, genetic damage, and behavioral and learning difficulties, the prevalence of flame retardants, here and around the world, owes to the fact that these chemicals have been placed in many of the objects of daily life—in our homes, automobiles, and workplaces, even in our beds.”
As Jamie Lincoln Kitman illustrates in his new investigative piece for The Nation, flame retardants are yet another Chemical Industry example of reckless disregard for human suffering and environmental damage. In this case, key perpetrators are the Gottwalds, the most powerful shareholders of the Albemarle chemical company. The Gottwalds chose the same methods favored by all manufacturers of unnecessary and harmful products, from tobacco to lead to pesticides to GMOs:
“..these manufacturers mounted aggressive scare campaigns to create a perceived need for their products: They crafted regulations and lobbied legislatures to adopt them; attacked scientific findings they didn’t like; ridiculed public-health advocates; spun journalists; and bought political access with millions of dollars in campaign contributions.”
Of course, despite their toxicity and pervasiveness, flame retardants are just the tip of an enormous poison-laced iceberg,
“A shocking fact: The EPA maintains a database of some 85,000 chemicals that have been manufactured or processed in the United States, but it has subjected less than 300 of these to rigorous testing under the Toxic Substances Control Act and has banned only five (including PCBs.)”
Read the full story at: “Worse Than Lead? Special Investigation: The chemical industry strikes again, shifting from lead to flame retardants that also sicken and kill,” by Jamie Lincoln Kitman. Published by The Nation on August 15, 2018.