Justice Pesticides highlights the return of Chlordane in imported food

From 1948 to 1988 chlordane, manufactured by the agrochemical company Velsicol, was used in the United States as a pesticide on agricultural crops, lawns, gardens, and homes. In 1988, its Environmental Protection Agency banned all uses of Chlordane.

Justice Pesticides aims to record all the legal cases that question pesticides in order to establish a legal and scientific database that will strengthen legal actions. It reported that on October 13, 2022, the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Velsicol for the environmental damage caused by one of its products, chlordane.

EPA surveys an monitors lake trout. Lake Michigan trout have the highest levels of chlordane, followed by Lake Ontario, with average levels in Lakes Superior, Huron, and Erie fish.

The District’s natural resources, including its waterways, are still contaminated today by the chlordane used by Velsicol until its ban in 1988

Decades before the ban, Velsicol knew that chlordane was a persistent toxin that could leach into waterways, disperse into the environment and threaten human health. Indeed, in the early 1970s, Velsicol’s internal studies confirmed that the chemical causes cancer.

Rather than stopping sales and sharing this information with the public or regulators, Velsicol engaged in a campaign of misinformation and deception to continue selling its chlordane products.

According to the district’s attorney general, Karl A. Racine “With today’s lawsuit, we are going after Velsicol which – for decades – made dollar after dollar of profit while poisoning DC residents with dangerous chemicals that they knew caused severe health problems, including cancer.”

The persistence of chlordane in rivers and streams costs the District tens of millions of dollars each year. Through this complaint, they are now seeking damages to bring the health and environmental situation under control.

Today, Chlordane can still be manufactured legally in the United States, but may only be sold to and used by foreign countries:

“The circle comes back on itself when foreign food products are imported into the US, e.g., 42,000 pounds of Honduran beef arrived with chlordane residues 8 times the US limits and was sold before authorities were alerted” (PUBMED).

0

Action against damaging herbicides and pesticides: August 2021

A Godstone reader has drawn attention to an admirable organisation, Justice Pesticides, which gathers information about pesticide-related legal disputes around the world in order to establish a legal and scientific database to help victims of these toxic products to obtain legal redress.

On August 1^st

We posted its report that the Court of Justice of the European Union has found sufficient evidence regarding the harmful effects of three insecticides: clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid, to apply the precautionary principle. It decided that the European Commission is therefore entitled to impose its ban on these products.

On the 2^nd

A Cambridge reader forwarded news of a newly uncovered confidential U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which found “suggestive evidence” linking glyphosate to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (as did a 2019 Mutation Research Review paper) a determination that goes against the agency’s long-held public regulatory stance that glyphosate is not a carcinogen.

On the 15^th,

Dr Rosemary Mason (retired anaesthetist) wrote to Minette Batters President of the NFU, the Deputy President and Vice President about glyphosate.

She drew attention to a new book by her US colleague, Stephanie Seneff, PhD Senior Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology: ”Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment”.

Dr Seneff says: “Glyphosate’s mechanism of toxicity is unique and diabolical. It is a slow killer, slowly robbing you of your good health over time, until you finally succumb to incapacitating or life-threatening disease.”

Dr Mason points out that a Monsanto scientist claims that glyphosate is excreted unchanged from the body but as long ago as 1988, Ridley & Mirly found bioaccumulation of 14 C labelled glyphosate in bone, marrow, blood and glands (including thyroid, testes and ovaries) and major organs (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, spleen and stomach).

A French group protest about the damage done to insects, reptiles, human and other life forms

Bayer-Monsanto also faces a host of legal actions (Reuters reported a total of 8000 in 2018) and cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction.

On the 17^th

Farms not Factories published news of direct campaign action by a Canadian NGO, Stop the Spray. They believe that people have the right to know where the herbicide is being sprayed.

The Ministry of Environment has maps showing where this herbicide is used and James Steidle, their rally organiser, asked them to provide the maps. “They’ve provided them in the past but not this year.”

He pointed out that the Canadian Forests Minister can end glyphosate with the stroke of a pen:” She has the authority delegated to her to sign a piece of paper that says ‘glyphosate spray in banned’ She could do that without the legislature.”

o

Roundup glyphosate: risk of cancer to ‘exposed’ agricultural workers and gardeners

A huge mistake? The European Commission will formalise on 12 December Monday’s decision by member states to renew for five years the licence for the herbicide glyphosate.

Weasel words in the FT last week:

“Although the World Health Organization last year said the herbicide was “probably carcinogenic”, the latest joint assessment by UN agencies concludes there is no risk to humans from exposure through the diet” – implying that evidence shows that the use of the herbicide is risk free.

In May last year, the UN agencies said:

“The overall weight of evidence indicates that administration of glyphosate and its formulation products at doses as high as 2000 mg/kg body weight by the oral route, the route most relevant to human dietary exposure, was not associated with genotoxic effects in an overwhelming majority of studies conducted in mammals, a model considered to be appropriate for assessing genotoxic risks to humans. The meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to be genotoxic at anticipated dietary exposures” (emphasis added).

Dr Christopher Connolly, a reader in neurobiology at the University of Dundee, said in an article in the Science Media Centre journal: “The evidence on the risk to human health from glyphosate is highly controversial, making it difficult for politicians to make a sound science-based decision. It is alarming that it is so ubiquitous that it is found commonly in human urine. We must make the next five years count, so that an evidence-based decision may be made at the end of this period.

Prof. David Coggon, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Southampton, said:

“IARC classified glyphosate as probably having the potential to cause cancer in humans. This was based on evidence of carcinogenicity in animals and suggestions of an association with lymphoma in exposed people (mainly agricultural workers, landscapers, nursery workers and home gardeners).

Cancer incidence among glyphosate-exposed pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study (2005)

Summary:

We evaluated associations between glyphosate exposure and cancer incidence in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a prospective cohort study of 57,311 licensed pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina. There was a suggested association with multiple myeloma incidence (a type of bone marrow cancer) that should be followed up as more cases occur in the AHS. Given the widespread use of glyphosate, future analyses of the AHS will allow further examination of long-term health effects, including less common cancers.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in March 2015 said that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans” (PDF), adding “The evidence in humans is from studies of exposures, mostly agricultural, in the USA, Canada, and Sweden published since 2001”.

The latest news was reported by CNN in May this year, opening with story of Christine Sheppard

For 12 years, she had no idea what might have caused her non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — until the IARC reported that glyphosate, the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, is probably carcinogenic. Roundup is the herbicide she sprayed on her coffee farm in Hawaii for five years.

That report spurred hundreds of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients to sue Monsanto. Timothy Litzenburg’s law firm represents more than 500 of them. He said most of the patients didn’t know about a possible link between Roundup and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma until the report came out.

Other companies also sell products containing glyphosate, why target Monsanto?

Litzenburg points out that Monsanto invented Roundup, they held the patent for many years, they are the EPA registrant for glyphosate, and they continue to dominate the market, adding:

“We are not alleging that our clients got cancer from glyphosate alone. We are suing because our clients got cancer from Roundup. … Roundup contains animal fats and other ingredients that increase the carcinogenicity of the glyphosate.”

Though UN agencies concluded that as yet no risk to humans from exposure through diet has been found, studies find that workers and gardeners using Roundup risk contracting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma (a type of bone marrow cancer) – surely sufficient reason to withdraw the herbicide from use.

Media reports, including by EUobserver and Dutch magazine OneWorld, have shown that Efsa conclusions on the safety of glyphosate were partially based on scientific evidence provided by Monsanto, Roundup’s manufacturer. On 19 October, also the European Parliament expressed doubts over the scientific evaluations of glyphosate carried out by the European agencies.

Despite these findings, the European Commission will formalise on 12 December a decision by member states to renew the licence for the herbicide glyphosate for five years: https://euobserver.com/environment/140065.

Will Brexit give people in this country the opportunity to denounce the use of this and other dangerous substances and technologies and bring about beneficial change?

 

 

 

m

 

 

Hawaiian parents and environmentalists campaign against use of harmful sprays

In 2015 an American Academy of Pediatrics’ report, Pesticide Exposure in Children, found “an association between pesticides and adverse birth outcomes, including physical birth defects”. Local schools had been evacuated twice and children sent to hospital because of pesticide drift.

Years earlier, whilst in America, a friend of the writer, who was in good health at the time, developed emphysema and died prematurely after being exposed to spray drift.

Carla Nelson, a pediatrician, pointed out that doctors need prior disclosure of sprayings: “It’s hard to treat a child when you don’t know which chemical he’s been exposed to.” Read her Guardian coverage here.

In the state legislature in Honolulu, Senator Josh Green, who then chaired the health committee, made his fourth attempt to curb pesticide and herbicide spraying, but ruefully commented that most heads of the agriculture committee have had “a closer relationship with the agro-chemical companies than with the environmental groups”.

A year later, Time magazine reported that there was growing evidence of glyphosate’s potentially dangerous health effects. It was judged a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization last year but despite this, on the Hawaiian island of Maui and elsewhere, sprayers simply sprayed and moved on; no one monitored the observance of the safety directions of their own product.

Hawaii environmentalists have used a little-known law, FIFRA, short for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which requires sprayers to follow the safety instructions on the product’s label down to the letter.

For products containing the herbicide glyphosate, that means keeping people away from the area where the product has been used for four hours after applications for agriculture, or until the product dries when sprayed for non-agricultural purposes. That can be difficult in places like long stretches of roads and highways where extended monitoring to keep people away from recently sprayed areas is virtually impossible.

Parents began to circulate photographs of government employees spraying Round Up, the primary commercial product containing glyphosate. Footage showed authorities spraying on highways, roads and near schools without any visible effort to keep people away.

Finally the uncertainty raised by activists over the labelling issue convinced Stephen Rodgers, who oversees pesticide application on Maui’s state highways to switch to organic pesticides. His department no longer purchases Roundup and will stop using the product entirely – but only when the existing supply has been used.

Significant exposure to glyphosate in farm workers has been linked to increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer. Nature magazine, which is sceptical of the impact on human health, at least reports a study showing a link between glyphosate and cancer in mice. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), ruled last year that the pesticide is a “probable human carcinogen.”

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-educated pediatrician and epidemiologist, Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, says, “For a long time glyphosate was viewed as an innocuous herbicide. A lot of things have changed”.

His colleague, Chuck Benbrook, an adjunct professor at Washington State University’s crops and soil science department, said “There is growing evidence that glyphosate is geno-toxic and has adverse effects on cells in a number of different ways. It’s time to pull back … on uses of glyphosate that we know are leading to significant human exposures while the science gets sorted out.”

–

Part 2: studies which conclude that glyphosate does not cause harm.

 

 

 

Crunch time: will fears of legal action by Monsanto sway the final vote on licensing glyphosate – a ‘probable’ carcinogen?

The FT reports that leading EU member states on Monday refused to extend a licence for glyphosate, the world’s most common herbicide. If there is no decision by the end of the month, glyphosate will lose its licence, raising the prospect of legal action by the industry.

The commission had intended to try to relicense glyphosate for 15 years, but the latest proposal was for a licence of only 12 to 18 months, while more research is conducted. This option has been rejected as Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Austria and Portugal and Luxembourg all abstained, meaning the necessary qualified majority could not be reached. Malta voted against.

Bart Staes, a Belgian MEP from the Green Party, warned the commission not to approve glyphosate unilaterally through a so-called “appeals committee”: “Such a move would raise major democratic concerns about the EU’s decision-making process”. More handsomely, the Guardian adds more from Staes:

“We applaud those EU governments who are sticking to their guns and refusing to authorise this controversial toxic herbicide. There are clear concerns about the health risks with glyphosate, both as regards it being a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor. Moreover, glyphosate’s devastating impact on biodiversity should have already led to its ban”.

Glyphosate is the basis for Monsanto’s topselling weedkiller RoundUp, described in its annual report as “a sustainable source” of cash and profit. Last year more than 80% of Monsanto’s sales were in the Americas and under 13% in Europe.

Last month a report from the WHO and the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation concluded that the chemical was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk” through diet, but the WHO’s cancer agency last year had concluded that the product was “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

Prime movers in opposing the use of glyphosate are Sweden, the Netherlands and France – and over 1.5 million EU citizens who petitioned the parliament to ban it.

The German Social democrat environment minister Barbara Hendricks welcomed the decision in Brussels, saying: “Many member states would like the question of cancer risks to be clarified before glyphosate can again be spread on our fields.” But Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc, which wants the chemical to remain in use, is frustrated. Peter Liese, a CDU member of the European Parliament, said Berlin must battle for the continued use of glyphosate, albeit under “strict conditions”.

The glyphosate task force, a consortium of companies including Monsanto, complained: “It is clear that certain member states are no longer basing their positions on scientific evidence, which is meant to be the guiding principle of the process”.

US officials said that they are “extremely concerned” about the EU’s action and accuse Brussels of failing to rely on “sound science”. EU officials respond that their “precautionary principle” of regulation in cases of doubt offers greater public protection.

 

 

 

Monsanto asks the WHO, and California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, not to list glyphosate as a carcinogen

Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s branded Roundup line of herbicides, as well as hundreds of other products, but many scientific studies have raised questions about the health impacts of glyphosate and consumer and medical groups have expressed worries about glyphosate residues in food.

In October, Carey Gillam reported for Reuters that California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has been accepting public comments about its intention to list glyphosate as a cause of cancer.

Roughly 8,000 comments were filed regarding the state action, according to officials, including those from Monsanto. Several farming, public health and environmental groups sent a letter to OEHHA supporting the listing, and said that rising use of glyphosate presents a danger to people and animals.

The OEHHA gave notice in September that it intended to list glyphosate under proposition 65, a state initiative enacted in 1986 to inform residents about cancer-causing chemicals. State officials said the action is required after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research committee in March classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

As we reported in March, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported Monsanto’s call for the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency to retract a report published in the journal Lancet Oncology by researchers for WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

The WHO’s research unit, however, said it had reviewed many scientific studies, including two out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the United States before making its classification.

Since the WHO classification, the New York-based mass-tort firm of Weitz & Luxenberg, and other firms representing U.S. farm workers, have filed lawsuits against Monsanto, accusing the company of knowing of the dangers of glyphosate for decades. Monsanto has said the claims are without merit

Monsanto has now urged California not to list herbicide glyphosate as carcinogenic.

It added, in its formal comment, that California’s actions could be considered illegal because they are not considering valid scientific evidence.

–

Asbestos update

The World Health Organisation estimates that there are up to 30,000 disease cases caused by asbestos each year in the EU, mostly due to exposure many years ago.

The website of the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group gives the news that last year, Canada’s Minister of Industry, Christian Paradis, who had been a staunch supporter of the revival of the Thetford Asbestos Mine in his constituency, announced that Canada will provide $50m to provide jobs in other industries, ending reliance on asbestos production.

This week, MEP Phillip Bennion has sent news of a resolution passed by the European Parliament, calling for an EU strategy to deal with asbestos problems, which, despite an EU-wide ban, s still found as a roofing or insulation material in many farm and industrial buildings, water pipe lagging, older trains and ships.

He notes that the amended report’s proposals include a public registry of buildings containing asbestos in all EU member states and moves to ensure that workers who remove it are fully qualified and trained, adding:

“After extensive negotiations and amendments, we now have a practical blueprint for action without imposing huge costs on farmers or businesses with buildings in use which contain asbestos. The material is very dangerous if disturbed but can be safely managed in situ with the right training and best practice, which the report now specifies.

“The proposals concentrate on public sector buildings like schools and hospitals, sound risk management and the need to phase in asbestos removal during the refurbishment cycle of buildings and roofing materials.

“MEPs are also calling for better support from the European Commission to national authorities, some of which have struggled with the tough safety requirements of asbestos management and removal. The EU can help ensure best practice in safety training for workers either maintaining structures which contain asbestos or removing it, to make sure the risk is as minimal as possible.”

It is disappointing to note that the report on this carcinogen is not binding EU law, but Phillip Bennion believes that it sends a strong signal to the Commission and national governments that EU law should press for tough but practical safety requirements.