Toxic Chemicals News Articles
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on the toxic chemicals that we're exposed to in our food, household products, environment, and more. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
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The Environmental Protection Agency just hid data that mapped out the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities, after chemical industry lobbyists demanded that the Trump administration take down the public records. The webpage was quietly shut down late Friday ... stripping away what advocates say was critical information on the secretive chemical plants at highest risk of disaster across the United States. The data was made public last year through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Risk Management Program, which oversees the country’s highest-risk chemical facilities. These chemical plants deal with dangerous, volatile chemicals — like those used to make pesticides, fertilizers, and plastics — and are responsible for dozens of chemical disasters every year. The communities near these chemical facilities suffer high rates of pollution and harmful chemical exposure. There are nearly 12,000 Risk Management Program facilities across the country. For decades, it was difficult to find public data on where the high-risk facilities were located, not to mention information on the plants’ safety records and the chemicals they were processing. But the chemical lobby fiercely opposed making the data public — and has been fighting for the EPA to take it down. After President Donald Trump’s victory in November, chemical companies donated generously to his inauguration fund.
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Pesticide company efforts to push through laws that could block litigation against them is igniting battles in several US farm states. Laws have been introduced in at least eight states so far and drafts are circulating in more than 20 states, backed by a deluge of advertising supporting the measures. The fight is particularly fierce now in Iowa, where opponents call the pesticide-backed proposed law the “Cancer Gag Act”, due to high levels of cancer in Iowa that many fear are linked to the state’s large agricultural use of pesticides. Iowa has the second-highest rate of new cancer cases in the United States and the fastest growing rate. The bill would bar people from suing pesticide manufacturers for failing to warn them of health risks, as long as the product labels are approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Opponents say the legislation will rob farmers and others who use pesticides from holding companies accountable in court if their pesticide products cause disease or injury. “We’re very worried. Our farmers feel that if they have injuries or illnesses due to their use of a pesticide they should have access to the courts,” said [Iowa Farmers Union president] Aaron Lehman. The actions in the states come alongside a simultaneous push for changes in federal law that would in effect shield companies from lawsuits brought by people claiming they developed cancers or other diseases due to their use of pesticides.
Note: Thousands of farmers and everyday people have filed lawsuits against major corporations for failing to warn consumers about the health risks associated with these chemicals. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.
Research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states, and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance, product-liability and consumer-protection laws. It comes as cities such as Baltimore have begun to file claims against plastic manufacturers, but the authors write that existing cases “are likely only the beginning, as more states and municipalities grapple with the challenges of accumulating plastic waste and microplastics contamination.” Taxpayers foot the bill to clean plastic pollution from streets and waterways, and research shows people could ingest the equivalent of one credit card’s worth of plastic per week. From 1950 to 2000, global plastic production soared from 2m tons to 234m tons annually. And over the next 20 years, production more than doubled to 460m tons in 2019. As the public grew concerned about plastic pollution, the industry responded with “sophisticated marketing campaigns” to shift blame from producers to consumers – for instance, by popularizing the term litterbug. Plastic has clogged sewer grates, leading to increased flooding. It has also exposed populations to microplastics. The report outlines different legal theories that could help governments pursue accountability. Nuisance could account for the harms themselves ... and consumer-protection law could be used to combat deceitful marketing practices.
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The Los Angeles County coastline is renowned for its stunning views and famous beaches. But move into deeper waters and another legacy comes into view: industrial waste dumped on a scale we’re just beginning to understand. Using a deep-sea robot, UC Santa Barbara scientists discovered an eerie graveyard of leaking barrels in 2020, spread out on the seafloor near Santa Catalina Island. DDT, a powerful pesticide that was banned 50 years ago, was found in high concentrations near the barrels, leading scientists to suspect they were full of it. (Scientists later discovered that companies didn’t even bother putting DDT in barrels — they dumped it directly into the sea.) The barrels may actually contain low-level radioactive waste. “From the 1940s through the 1960s, it was not uncommon for local hospitals, labs and other industrial operations to dispose barrels of tritium, carbon-14 and other low-level radioactive waste at sea,” [Rosanna Xia] reported. That was a key finding in a new study. Researchers found clues while reviewing hundreds of pages of records, which indicated that a company tasked with pouring the DDT waste off the L.A. coast had also dumped low-level radioactive waste. The radioactive waste sitting down there is unequivocally terrible, but the “concerning concentrations” of DDT in the deep ocean are worse. Researchers have found high levels of DDT across an area of seafloor larger than the entire city of San Francisco.
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A new peer-reviewed Danish study finds that a mother’s exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” during early pregnancy can lead to lower sperm count and quality later in her child’s life. PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are known to disrupt hormones and fetal development, and future “reproductive capacity” is largely defined as testicles develop in utero during the first trimester of a pregnancy, said study co-author Sandra Søgaard Tøttenborg. PFAS are a class of about 12,000 chemicals typically used to make thousands of products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in humans and the environment and do not naturally break down. A growing body of evidence links them to serious health problems such as cancer, birth defects, liver disease, kidney disease and decreased immunity. The study ... examined semen characteristics and reproductive hormones in 864 young Danish men born to women who provided blood samples during their pregnancies’ first trimesters between 1996 and 2002. Mothers with higher levels of exposure more frequently raised adult men with lower sperm counts, as well as elevated immotile sperm levels, meaning their sperm did not swim. This exposure also increased the amount of non-progressive sperm – sperm that do not swim straight or swim in circles. Both issues can lead to infertility. The ubiquitous chemicals are estimated to be in 98% of Americans’ blood.
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Microplastic pollution has been discovered lodged deep in the lungs of living people for the first time. The particles were found in almost all the samples analysed. The scientists said microplastic pollution was now ubiquitous across the planet, making human exposure unavoidable and meaning “there is an increasing concern regarding the hazards” to health. Samples were taken from tissue removed from 13 patients undergoing surgery and microplastics were found in 11 cases. The most common particles were polypropylene, used in plastic packaging and pipes, and PET, used in bottles. Two previous studies had found microplastics at similarly high rates in lung tissue taken during autopsies. People were already known to breathe in the tiny particles, as well as consuming them via food and water. Workers exposed to high levels of microplastics are also known to have developed disease. Microplastics were detected in human blood for the first time in March, showing the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as yet unknown. But researchers are concerned as microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of early deaths a year. The research, which has been accepted for publication by the journal Science of the Total Environment, used samples of healthy lung tissue.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has withheld information from the public since January 2019 about the dangers posed by more than 1,200 chemicals. By law, companies must give the EPA any evidence they possess that a chemical presents “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” Until recently, the agency had been making these reports — known as 8(e) reports, for the section of the Toxic Substances Control Act that requires them — available to the public. But since 2019, the EPA has only posted one of the reports to its public website. During this time, chemical companies have continued to submit the critical studies to the agency, according to two EPA staff members with knowledge of the matter. Since January 2019, the EPA has received at least 1,240 reports documenting the risk of chemicals’ serious harms, including eye corrosion, damage to the brain and nervous system, chronic toxicity to honeybees, and cancer in both people and animals. PFAS compounds are among the chemical subjects of these notifications. Not only has the agency kept all but one of these reports from the public, but it has also made them difficult for EPA staff to access, according to the two agency scientists, who are choosing to remain anonymous. The substantial risk reports have not been uploaded to the databases used most often by risk assessors searching for information about chemicals. They have been entered only into an internal database that is difficult to access and search.
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Children exposed to relatively high levels of PCBs in the womb may have an increased risk of developing autism, a new study suggests. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are man-made chemicals once used in a wide range of products, from electrical appliances to fluorescent lighting. Use of these chemicals was banned in the 1970s because of concerns about their health effects. But since they do not easily break down, PCBs still linger in the environment - and in people. In the new study, researchers found that when pregnant women had relatively high levels of certain PCBs in their blood, their children were about 80 percent more likely to be diagnosed with autism versus other kids. Those children also had a roughly twofold higher risk of intellectual disabilities unrelated to autism. "Autism is a complex condition with many different causes, and those causes vary among individuals," said Kristen Lyall, lead researcher on the study. Experts believe that for children to develop autism, they have to have a genetic susceptibility and be exposed to certain environmental factors during critical periods of early brain development. Researchers are still trying to figure out what those environmental factors are. But some suspects include prenatal exposure to poor nutrition, certain infections, heavy air pollution and pesticides, according to the non-profit Autism Speaks. The new findings suggest that PCBs could be another one of the "puzzle pieces," said Lyall.
Note: Monsanto and other chemical manufacturers spent decades dumping PCBs in low-income areas. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health.
As part of an ongoing effort to exploit medical intelligence, the National Security Agency teamed up with the military-focused Defense Intelligence Agency to extract medical SIGINT from the intercepted communications of nonprofit groups starting in the early 2000s, a top-secret document shows. Medical intelligence can include information about disease outbreaks; the ability of a foreign regime to respond to chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks; the capabilities of overseas drugs companies; advances in medical technology; medical research, and the medical response capabilities of various governments, according to the document and others like it, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. One of the more prominent examples of focused medical spying came in 2010, when the agency crafted a plan to stow tracking devices with medical supplies bound for an ill Osama bin Laden in order to locate the terrorist leader. One article from August 2003 identifies an NSA project to keep an eye on the evolution of biotechnology in various countries. Can we ... determine the specific features that would distinguish a Bio Warfare Program from a benign civilian pharmaceutical production effort? the author wrote, identifying a suspect Iranian [biological warfare] facility as a target for inspection. Medical intelligence gathering has continued since then, according to the so-called black budget proposed for the 2013 fiscal year, published in February 2012.
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For decades, some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strums barn. The ... structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others. As of today, those documents and others ... will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers. The library contains more than 200,000 pages of information and lays out a 40-year history of deceit and collusion involving the chemical industry and the regulatory agencies that were supposed to be protecting human health and the environment, said Peter von Stackelberg, a journalist who along with the Center for Media and Democracy and the Bioscience Resource Project helped put the collection online. Van Strum didnt set out to be the repository for the peoples pushback against the chemical industry. But [in 1974] she realized the Forest Service was spraying her area with an herbicide called 2,4,5-T. The chemicals hurt people and animals. Residents ... filed a suit that led to a temporary ban on 2,4,5-T in their area in 1977 and, ultimately, to a total stop to the use of the chemical in 1983. For Van Strum, the suit was also the beginning of lifetime of battling the chemical industry. We didnt think of ourselves as environmentalists, that wasnt even a word back then, Van Strum said. We just didnt want to be poisoned.
Note: The herbicide 2,4,5-T is a main ingredient of Agent Orange. As recently as 2012, Monsanto, a manufacturer of Agent Orange, agreed to pay $93 million to settle claims of this poison's pollution of a US town. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health.
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