Documenting the history of pesticide hazards in the United States
The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy launched “The Poison Papers Project” which reveals decades of collusion between industry and regulators over toxic pesticides and other hazardous chemicals. In this segment of The Organic View from August 2017, Dr. Latham talks to host, June Stoyer about this massive cover-up and how it began.
Listen to the interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBEf1WH31HQ
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.”
“‘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/
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/