U.S. EPA reverses policy on ‘major sources’ of pollution

After 23 years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is withdrawing the portion of the Clean Air Act designed to reduce air emissions of mercury, lead, benzene, and arsenic. This move from President Trump’s EPA is a departure from the “once-in always-in” policy established in 1995 and is the latest in a long line of attempts to revoke federal EPA regulations. The petroleum and other fossil fuel industries, utility companies, and chemical manufacturers stand to benefit from the ability to reclassify major sources of air pollution as “area” pollution. More than 4.6 million people worldwide die from airborne pollution yearly and dismantling one of the policies designed to curb it is unsustainable, unhealthy, and shows the U.S. as a country unwilling to put aside petty squabbles and focus on urgent global issues.

Recommended: Great Pacific Garbage Patch Now Twice the Size of Texas

Lower Standards

The EPA and Republicans in Congress like the leaders on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), asserts that this relaxing of the Clean Air Act will be a good thing. According to Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, “It will reduce regulatory burden for industries and the states, while continuing to ensure stringent and effective controls on hazardous air pollutants…”

Recommended: The Last Male Northern White Rhino Has Died

This policy affects stationary sources of air pollutants, which are divided into two different categories, major sources and area sources. Major sources release either 10 million tons of any listed toxic air pollutant or 25 tons per year of a mixture of air pollutants. Any other sources of air pollutants is an area source. The biggest issue of contention is the 1995 “once-in always-in” policy that permanently classifies a pollutant generator as a major source (and subject to the increased scrutiny and regulation that come with that) if it is still emitting a certain level of toxins at an assigned date. Now, those major sources that are below the threshold of pollution are no longer subject to the maximum achievable control technology.

Recommended: Ocean Plastic To Triple Within A Decade

So It Goes

This is not the first effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to recently relax regulations. The Trump administration has targeted over 67 environmental laws, more than half of which have been overturned or are in the process of being rolled back. Most of the reasons for these changes have been economic or bureaucratic. Ironically, the environment doesn’t seem to be high on the list of priorities.

Sources:

 

 



EPA Is Allowing Use of Unapproved Pesticides – New Study

A report released by the Center for Biological Diversity reveals that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows the use of unapproved pesticides in the case of an emergency. The term emergency is defined in the dictionary as an unforeseen combination of circumstances. Looking at the instances of emergency approval from the EPA though, it’s clear the agency does not see it the same way. This loophole allows farmers to use deliberately unapproved or untested pesticides often without a public review or comment process, deliberating bypassing environmental and safety concerns.

It’s disgusting to see the EPA’s broken pesticide program bending over backward to appease the pesticide industry. These exemptions put people and wildlife at tremendous risk because they allow poisons to be applied in ways that would otherwise be illegal.” – Stephanie Parent, a senior attorney in the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program

The report particularly highlights sulfoxaflor, a pesticide that was banned for killing bees while still being approved for 78 emergency approvals over the past six years and affecting more than 17.5 million acres of farmland. This pesticide had actually been approved for spraying on cotton, but that approval was canceled by a judge in 2015. That reversal didn’t stop sulfoxaflor from being sprayed on cotton and bee-favorite sorghum through the emergency approval program. The EPA has yet to examine the effect this program has had on pollinators, though that isn’t anything we didn’t know.

One of the conditions for the approval of an emergency pesticide petition is “loss of pesticide,” wither through insects developing resistance or regulatory agencies canceling the pesticide. This is also known as the EPA doing its job. Yet the agency is more than willing to undermine its previous decisions and credibility. When will we be left with the bill for these shortcuts…or has it already arrived.

Recommended Reading:
Sources:


Trump’s EPA Says Glyphosate Not Carcinogenic To People

The Environmental Protection Agency released a draft assessment report this week that concludes glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, contradicting findings from both the World Health Organization and the State of California. The EPA is not the only organization to oppose the link between glyphosate and cancer, agricultural giant Monsanto being the most vocal critic of the WHO’s findings. The president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, Gordon Stoner, was pleased the EPA panel “confirms exactly what we’re saying: that agencies across the world say glyphosate is safe and the IARC report is a flawed analysis…”

Related: Dicamba – The Herbicide Monsanto is Promoting to Replace Roundup’s Glyphosate 

The wheat industry is particularly invested in this assessment, as they are among the farm groups who have joined with Monsanto to sue the State of California. As a part of its Proposition 65 initiative, California will be labeling all glyphosate products as cancer-causing by July of 2018. The lawsuit is an attempt to halt a measure guaranteed to negatively impact several industries like farming and gardening.

Business as Usual

If you’re a group currently suing a government agency claiming that your product does not cause cancer, it must be a relief to hear another government agency conclude that it probably doesn’t. For Monsanto, there wasn’t really a question. Since the release of glyphosate in 1974, upper-level management at the EPA has ignored or reversed studies that found issues with the herbicide. Monsanto emails recently released in regards to a different court case confirm that EPA employee Jess Rowland deliberately squashed an investigation into glyphosate around the same time that the WHO released its findings.

Related: Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

Monsanto is currently in the middle of a merger with German company Bayer AG, which will give them an unprecedented amount of control over the food supply. But they don’t even really need it. The necessary United States government agencies have been trained to put Monsanto first, even to the point of doing the company’s dirty work for them. Rather than issuing press releases with new studies or data reviews concerning glyphosate, the EPA has only now begun monitoring glyphosate in food. The USDA and the CDC don’t even bother. The new “findings” from the EPA are unlikely to change that anytime soon.

Related Reading:
Sources:


EPA Relies on Industry Studies to Give Glyphosate New Green Light

Glyphosate is tthe most widely used pesticide in the world, and is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup. On the 18th of December the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a controversial analysis that relies heavily on industry studies to conclude that glyphosate poses no real risks to humans. The EPA  ignored the agency’s own guidelines for assessing cancer risks. The report also contradicts the 2015 World Health Organization analysis showing glyphosate as a probable carcinogen.

Related: Glyphosate Drenched Crops

The only way the EPA could conclude that glyphosate poses no significant risks to human health was to analyze industry studies and ignore its own guidelines when estimating cancer risk. The EPA’s biased assessment falls short of the most basic standards of independent research and fails to give Americans an accurate picture of the risks posed by glyphosate use.” – Nathan Donley, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Related: Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

A federal advisory panel of independent scientists unanimously found earlier this year that in assessing glyphosate the pesticides office at the EPA failed to follow its own guidelines for determining whether a chemical can cause cancer. In the final draft released today, the EPA stated that the guidelines “… are intended as a guidance only …” and do not necessarily have to be followed.

Related: Dicamba – The Herbicide Monsanto is Promoting to Replace Roundup’s Glyphosate

Source:


PCBs, Roundup, and Dicamba – Monsanto’s Current Problems

They say bad news comes in threes, and biotech giant Monsanto can certainly attest to the truth of that statement right now. Their newest product line, XtendiMax (better known as dicamba), made it to market without proper volatility testing. This refers to the product’s tendency to vaporize and travel. Subsequently, dicamba is drifting, causing major damage to neighboring crops, and currently banned in one U.S. state. There have also been two separate instances of newly released documents confirming that Monsanto knew two of their products, PCBs (from 1935 and 1977) and glyphosate, are harmful and continued to defend and sell them in spite of that.

For years, Monsanto has presented unsafe products as safe with little to no repercussion. Yet it is still on track to further dominate the food supply due to the company’s merger with Bayer. So why are the agencies charged with regulating food and environmental safety ok with Monsanto’s market control in the face of their shady practices?

Recommended: Lyme Disease – Holistic Protocol to Completely Rebuild the Immune System

Past Indiscretions with PCBs

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were banned pretty much everywhere in 1979 after being linked to cancer and environmental degradation. PCBs began manufacture in 1935, and the first evidence of their toxicity appeared in 1937, after three workers who handled the chemicals died from acute liver damage. Serious health and environmental concerns continue to be reported to this day, even though the largest manufacturer of these, Monsanto, halted their production in 1977.

Monsanto is currently being sued by the state of Washington and eight cities for PCB contamination. Recently released documents have confirmed that Monsanto was aware of the effect of PCBs as early as 1969, eight years before they stopped selling them. A 1969 pollution abatement plan from the company acknowledged the product’s risks, stating “…“The evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence in the environment is beyond questioning.” In another letter from a Monsanto manager in 1975, the company knew that “There is a potential real effect to humans – including death…”

In Monsanto’s own words, PCBs are dangerous in more ways than one. Yet they made money and Monsanto is first and foremost a business. But this wouldn’t be the only instance of company records showing corporate profits trump health, safety, and environmental concerns.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

Present Problems with Roundup

More court documents exposing Monsanto’s behind the scenes manipulations were released by attorneys pursuing claims against the company in regards to the link between Roundup and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Attorneys from the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman released more than 700 pages of internal documents, detailing Monsanto’s behind the scenes activities. Numerous emails, texts, and other documents confirm that employees at Monsanto ghostwrote and manipulated scientific studies and expert panel discussions, failed to disclose conflicts of interest, discredited multiple negative glyphosate studies, and colluded with the Environmental Protection Agency. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) labeled glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans in 2015, but it’s clear from the recently released documents that Monsanto has known this since before 2008.

These documents also make Monsanto’s strategy for avoiding regulation clear: government collusion. Many of the documents released are communications with high ranking individuals at the Environmental Protection Agency, imploring them to delay scientific reviews of glyphosate multiple times. Monsanto’s has a clear modus operandi once they learn their products cause human harm – muddy the scientific waters, defend it furiously, and make as much money as possible. Their experience with PCBs was a learning experience. The lesson? Get the agencies regulating you to do the dirty work.

Related: Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods

Future Uncertainty with Dicamba

The Environmental Protection Agency approved Monsanto’s newest version of dicamba, XtendiMax, in November of 2016. Poised to replace glyphosate now that many weeds are developing resistance to that product, many farmers instead experienced serious crop loss after illegal versions of it used prior to that release drifted onto their fields from neighboring farms. With the product officially released, Monsanto is now facing a class actions lawsuits from farmers reporting severe losses for the second year in a row.

Testimony from researchers, regulators, and a company employee indicate that Monsanto used its influence to bring the product to market without all of the proper tests, including a proper volatility test. In fact, testing contracts for the product explicitly forbade it. Yet the EPA approved the product without it.

Arkansas was the only state to ask for additional testing. Monsanto denied that request. Arkansas has now banned dicamba, and other states are now assessing damage from the herbicide for the second year in a row. This damage occurs when dicamba drifted to other, non-modified crops, the exact scenario further testing could have predicted. A class action lawsuit is pending.

Is It Too Late?

Monsanto wields incredible influence with government agencies, scientists, and researchers. This allows the company to continually deny and create confusion around health and environmental damages that their products are actually causing. And it’s scary. What chance do we have when those charged with upholding regulations created to protect the public are on the Monsanto Christmas card list?

It took nearly a decade from when Monsanto privately acknowledged the damage PCBs were causing for regulatory agencies to do something about it. The new formulation of dicamba, XtendiMax, has been on the market for less than a year and has been banned in both Arkansas and Missouri. The times are changing.

Recommended Reading:
Sources:


Monsanto Might Be in Big Trouble

Monsanto is currently embroiled in a lawsuit from farmers claiming that glyphosate caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, contradicting the EPA’s finding that the chemical is “…not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” On Tuesday, documents from the case were unsealed, including an internal email exchange at Monsanto that implies they wrote portions of EPA studies on the herbicide. According to one email, “…we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak…” Another email specifically mentions portions of studies that would be ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, as opposed to regulatory agencies.

Suspect Everyone

Federal judge Vince Chhabria, who is based in Northern California and is overseeing the litigation against the company, has indicated that, “My reaction is when you consider the relevance of the EPA’s reports, and you consider their relevance to this litigation, it seems appropriate to take Jess Rowland’s deposition…” Previous documents released in the case included a letter from a long-time EPA employee, alleging that Rowland and other colleagues played “political, conniving games with the science to favor the registrants.” Other emails directly from Rowland indicated that he would quash another assessment of glyphosate from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, among other things. Rowland’s testimony will be key for the plaintiff, as his time as the chair of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee coincides with the release of the EPA memo that disputes the World Health Organization’s classification of glyphosate as probably carcinogenic. A subpoena will likely be necessary to interview Rowland, as he has declined a previous, voluntary request.

The EPA is also concerned about their standing in this lawsuit. Raven M. Norris, the attorney representing them this case,  stated, “The agency has legitimate concerns about being pulled into private litigation…They want to be able to maintain their impartiality.” If the already released documents are any indication, impartiality is already off the table. They are left fighting for plausible deniability.

Monsanto has maintained its defense of glyphosate, and Bill Heydens, one of the alleged ghostwriters, has given sworn testimony about his original emails, claiming, “It was things like editing relatively minor things, editing for formatting, just for clarity, really just for overall readability to make it easier for people to read in a more organized fashion…”. Rowland will hopefully provide the other side of that conversation, but it is likely his testimony will protect the company.

A Vulnerable Position for the Agricultural Giant

Complaints and studies against Monsanto and glyphosate have been piling up for quite some time now. While the WHO has reclassified the chemical after extensive research, the U.S. regulators have lagged behind with a different script. The EPA may be able to claim that they were unaware of this manipulation, though plaintiff attorneys have suggested that the EPA “may be unaware of Monsanto’s deceptive authorship practices.” But there really isn’t a good position here. If Rowland implicates Monsanto and saves the EPA, Monsanto’s $66 million dollar merger with Bayer might be in jeopardy. If Rowland follows the money (history indicates probably) or martyrs himself, the EPA looks incompetent. For the rest of us, we’ll get a better picture of who is pulling the strings when this case is decided.

Recommended Reading:
Sources:


The FDA Announces They Will Now Test For Glyphosates

Glyphosate, the extra secret ingredient in the majority of our food supply, will now have a harder time going incognito. After the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a criticism of the FDA and the USDA’s current herbicide monitoring practices, the FDA, the highest food safety administration in the land, announced they have finally developed a “streamlined method” designed for testing foods like corn and soy for glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most popular herbicide, Roundup.

Roundup use has been on the rise since its introduction in 1974, and the amount of glyphosate residue considered “safe” has ballooned by a factor of 17. The EPA allows fifty times more glyphosate to be sprayed on corn now than they allowed in 1995. Continued claims that Roundup is safe, though it was recently labeled a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and claims that residue levels are of no concern, though the FDA wasn’t even testing glyphosate residue levels on crops, has further tarnished the reputations of the EPA, the USDA, and the FDA. 

Reasons or Excuses?

It’s kind of crazy that the FDA, the organization tasked with monitoring herbicides, has not been testing for the world’s most used herbicide. It’s like getting an STD test at a clinic and not testing for syphilis. The FDA cites the cost of testing as the reason for excluding glyphosate from their testing. Adding glyphosate testing to six of the FDA’s facilities has an estimated cost of 5 million. Monsanto makes 5 billion dollars a year in revenue from glyphosate while also supplying the FDA with some of the highest ranking individuals working there. Is it too far of a stretch to wonder if neglecting to test for Roundup residue was really an issue of cost?  Or was it an excuse to allow one of the largest corporations to keep selling massive amounts of a substance increasingly recognized as detrimental to human health?

Living in the Now

The study by the WHO that identified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” has been a game changer. It’s possible we wouldn’t know about the lack of reliable glyphosate testing without that study, as the GAO report criticizing the FDA’s lax practices was actually released in 2014. While that timeline definitely fits, there are also other factors prompting this announcement from the FDA.

Independent testing companies like Abraxis and MIcrobe have seen an uptick in requests for glyphosate testing after the WHO study was published. Small companies, advocate groups, and doctors are among the customers asking for this information more than ever before. Test requests at some labs have increased from a few a year to a few a week, indicating that food transparency is a rising interest. Test results showed glyphosate residues in a variety of products from honey to soy sauce to infant formula.

Keep the Ball Rolling

Here’s the good news: public pressure can produce results. We still don’t know the extent to which herbicides like glyphosate can affect our health,  but we’ll never know without proper study of all available information. The push for food transparency is on its way to making a big difference in our health and our quality of life.

Related Articles:
Sources: