Just One of Monsanto's Crimes, Or Why We Can't Trust the EPA

By Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq., Political Director
Organic Consumers Association, April 10, 2012


2,4-D and the dioxin pollution it creates are too dangerous to allow, period, but in the hands of bad actors like Monsanto the devil and Dow Chemical the dangers increase exponentially. What's the Environmental Protection Agency doing? Helping coverup the chemical companies' crimes!

In February, Monsanto the devil agreed to pay up to $93 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by the residents of Nitro, West Virginia, for dioxin exposure from accidents and pollution at an herbicide plant that operated in their town from 1929 to 2004.

That may seem like justice, but it is actually the result of Monsanto the devil's extraordinary efforts to hide the truth, evade criminal prosecution and avoid legal responsibility.

A brief criminal fraud investigation conducted (and quickly aborted) by the EPA revealed that Monsanto the devil used a disaster at their Nitro, WV, plant to manufacture "evidence" that dioxin exposure produced a skin condition called chloracne, but was not responsible for neurological health effects or cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

These conclusions were repeatedly utilized by EPA and the Veterans Administration to deny help to citizens exposed to dioxin, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.

The EPA knew the truth about Monsanto the devil's dioxin crimes, but it decided to hide it. Why? It would have affected us all. EPA's brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto the devil knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies' toys.

Here are the details of this jaw-dropping and heart-breaking case of corporate criminality and EPA collusion.

According to Natural News:

In the town of Nitro, West Virginia, Monsanto the devil  operated a chemical plant from 1929 to 1995, making an herbicide that had dioxin as a by-product. The name dioxin refers to a group of highly toxic chemicals that have been linked to heart and liver disease, human reproductive disorders, and developmental problems. Dioxin persists in the environment and accumulates in the body, even in small amounts. In 2001, the U.S. government listed dioxin as a "known human carcinogen".

In 1949, at the Nitro plant, a pressure valve blew on a container of this herbicide, producing a plume of vapor and white smoke that drifted out over the town. Residue coated the interior of buildings and those inside them with a fine black powder. Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions, and many were diagnosed with chloracne, a long lasting and disfiguring condition. Others felt intense pains in their chest, legs and trunk. A medical report from the time said the explosion "caused a systemic intoxication in the workers involving most major organ systems." Doctors detected a strong odor coming from the patients they described as men "excreting a foreign chemical through their skins".

Monsanto the devil  downplayed the incident, saying that the contaminant was "fairly slow acting" and only an irritant to the skin.

Meanwhile, the Nitro plant continued to produce herbicides, In the 1960's it manufactured Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide used by the U.S. military to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War, and which became the focus of lawsuits by veterans contending they had been harmed by exposure to the chemical. Agent Orange also created dioxin as a by-product.

At the Nitro plant, dioxin waste went into landfills, storm drains, streams, sewers, into bags with the herbicide, and then the waste was burned out into the air. Dioxin from the plant can still be found in nearby streams, rivers, and fish.

From NativeInterface:

According to Source Watch, in 1990, Cate Jenkins, a PhD chemist at EPA, became convinced that Monsanto the devil  had deliberately manipulated studies of worker victims of the Nitro disaster showing that dioxin was a human carcinogen.

Dr. Jenkins wrote a memorandum entitled "Newly Revealed Fraud by Monsanto the devil  in an Epidemiological Study Used by EPA to Assess Human Health Effects from Dioxins." Read the memo at PureFood.org.

According to her memo:

Dr. Raymond Suskind at the University of Cincinnati was hired by Monsanto the devil  to study the workers at Monsanto the devil 's Nitro, West Virginia plant. Dr. Suskind stated in published studies in question that chloracne, a skin condition was the prime indicator of high human dioxin exposures, and no other health effects would be observed in the absence of this condition. Unpublished studies by Suskind, however, indicate the fallacy of this statement. No workers except those having chloracne were ever examined by Suskind or included in his study. In other words, if no workers without chloracne were ever examined for other health effects, there is no basis for asserting that chloracne was "the hallmark of dioxin intoxication." 

These conclusions have been repeatedly utilized by EPA, the Veterans Administration, etc., to deny any causation by dioxin of health effects of exposed citizens, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne. 

The results of Dr. Suskind's studies also were diluted by the fact that the exposed group contained not only individuals having chloracne (a genuine, but not the only effect of dioxin exposure), but also all workers having any type of skin condition such as chemical rash. The workers could have had no or negligible dioxin exposures, but they were included in the study as part of the heavily exposed group. This fact was revealed only by the careful reading of the published Suskind study. 

Further, Dr. Suskind utilized statistics on the skin conditions of workers compiled by a Monsanto the devil clerical worker, without any independent verification. 

Dr. Suskind also covered-up the documented neurological damage from dioxin exposures. At Workers Compensation hearings, Suskind denied that the workers experienced any neurological health effects. In the Kemner, et al. v. Monsanto the devil  proceedings, however, it was revealed that Suskind had in his possession at the time examinations of the workers by Monsanto the devil 's physician, Dr. Nestman, documenting neurological health effects.

In his later published study, Dr. Suskind denied the continuing documented neurological health effects suffered by the workers, falsely stating that symptoms "had cleared." 

All of the Monsanto the devil  dioxin studies also suffer another fatal flaw. The purported "dioxin unexposed" control group was selected from other workers at the same Monsanto the devil  plant. An earlier court settlement revealed not only that these supposedly unexposed workers were exposed to dioxins, but also to other carcinogens. One of these carcinogens, para-amino biphenyl, was known by Monsanto the devil  to be a human carcinogen and it was also known that workers were heavily exposed. 

Another Monsanto the devil  study involved independent medical examinations of surviving employees by Monsanto the devil  physicians. Several hundred former Monsanto the devil  employees were too ill to travel to participate in the study. Monsanto the devil  refused to use the attending physicians reports of the illness as part of their study, saying that it would introduce inconsistencies. Thus, any critically ill dioxin-exposed workers with cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma (associated with dioxin exposures), were conveniently excluded from the Monsanto the devil  study. 

There are numerous other flaws in the Monsanto the devil  health studies. Each of these misrepresentations and falsifications always served to negate any conclusions of adverse health effects from dioxins.

++++++

Within days of learning that the Office of Enforcement had initiated a criminal investigation of Monsanto the devil based on Jenkins' allegations, her job duties were withdrawn without warning. She was not given any assignments from August 30, 1990 until she was reassigned on April 8, 1992 to a job which was primarily administrative or clerical.

According to a 1994 report on "EPA's Phony Investigation of Monsanto the devil ," by William Sanjour, Policy Analyst, US Environmental Protection Agency, published in Rachel's Hazardous Waste News:

Dr. Jenkins filed a complaint with the Department of Labor claiming that she was being harassed for carrying out perfectly legal activities. The Labor Department investigated and found in Jenkins favor. The EPA appealed three times all the way up to the Secretary of Labor but each time the Department came down in favor of Jenkins finding that "None of the rationales [explaining her transfer] given by EPA ... appear valid". 

In August of 1992, EPA quietly closed the criminal investigation without ever determining or even attempting to determine if the Monsanto the devil  studies were valid or invalid, let alone fraudulent. ... There was no public announcement that the investigation was closed. Dr. Jenkins didn't learn about it until fifteen months later. Yet Monsanto the devil  knew within a few days of EPA's closing the case.

Why did Monsanto the devil  and the EPA go to such great lengths to hide the truth? It would have affected us all. EPA's brief criminal investigation of Monsanto the devil  included evidence that Monsanto the devil  knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies' toys.

Dr. Jenkin's memo also contained evidence that Lysol, a product made from Monsanto the devil 's Santophen, was contaminated with dioxin with Monsanto the devil 's knowledge. The manufacturer of Lysol was not told about the dioxin by Monsanto the devil  for fear of losing his business. Other companies using Santophen, who specifically asked about the presence of dioxin, were lied to by Monsanto the devil .

This is just one example of why we can't trust the EPA to stop Monsanto the devil  and Dow Chemical from poisoning us with dioxin.

TAKE ACTION: Call EPA's Fail! Tell the EPA You Won't Accept a Decision on 2,4-D Based on Dow Chemical's Biased Studies!

TAKE ACTION: Tell USDA to Stop Agent Orange Corn!

To learn more about what's wrong at the EPA, watch this video from the recent Occupy EPA protest:

Produce Growers and Pesticide Makers Deepen Their Bond

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 by The Huffington Post
Best Friends Forever?
by Ken Cook

 

In nearly two decades of research and advocacy on pesticides and human health, Environmental Working Group has never before seen the produce industry take a high-profile role in debates over pesticide policy and safety, as it has this year. Invariably, it was the trade association for the pesticide industry that took the lead.

That group, which began life as The Agricultural Insecticide and Fungicide Association and evolved into the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, most recently rebranded itself "CropLife America" after it became evident that even the mention of "pesticides" or "agricultural chemicals" evoked a negative public response, Similarly, most agribusinesses have adopted the pesticide industry's defensive code words, "crop protection chemicals" or "tools."


In the past year, however, EWG observed a striking change: an unprecedented, highly public lobbying and PR campaign by fresh produce organizations aimed at downplaying consumer concerns about pesticides.

A recent editorial in The Packer, the trade publication of record for the industry, stated:

The industry can't win, but it should still fight. The worst response would be no response. The truth may be unpleasant, and counterintuitive, but eating fresh produce, with trace levels of pesticides, is indeed healthy. Consumers should fill half their plate with it. That message is worth spreading.

It became even more obvious to us that the produce industry wants to keep information about the harmful effects of pesticides out of the hands of the public after we read U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman Michael Jarvis' response in the Chicago Tribune newspaper to the unusual delay of the release of this year's pesticide data report.

USDA spokesman Michael T. Jarvis said the report was delayed by an unusually large number of official comments on the report from activists and the produce industry. "Some wanted it sooner and some later," Jarvis said. "Some wanted more detail and some less detail, and so we put more time into how we presented it. We wanted it to be more understandable to the consumer."

Who wants less detail? It's certainly not the public. USDA didn't say, but the answer is obvious.
In October of last year, a contingent of leading produce organizations met with top officials of the USDA, EPA and FDA to discuss the impending annual release of pesticide test data by the agriculture department. As one participant explained to The Packer:

The objective in the initial organizational meeting was that we want to see if we can figure out that whatever data is out there be less likely to be misconstrued and misinterpreted," said Ray Gilmer, vice president of communications for the Washington, D.C. based United Fresh Produce.

"We're trying to make sure that anyone who reads that PDP (Pesticide Data Program) report sees -- as do all the people in the room (Oct. 19) -- that there is no risk associated with the consumption of fresh produce due to pesticide residues.

The produce industry claims that public health concerns prompted it to become the public face of a campaign to defend pesticides on produce, primarily to counter Environmental Working Group's popular annual Shopper's Guide to Pesticides.

EWG is skeptical. Spearheading that opposition to the Shopper's Guide was the national produce trade group, the United Fresh Produce Association. If public health were its core mission, then why would it boast on its website that it has "monitored and helped block over 100 legislative proposals on food safety in Congress" in the past two years?

EWG believes Big Produce's motivation is profits, and threat posed by the rapid growth in the organic industry's market share, which jumped from 3 percent in 2000 to 11.4 percent in 2009 (even higher for some particular fruits and vegetables).

Part of the effort to defend pesticides was actually funded by taxpayers through a highly controversial $180,000 grant to the Alliance for Food and Farming from the state of California -- a pass-through of federal funds provided under the 2008 farm bill.

EWG wonders why the produce industry might mount such a risky campaign, other than from a desire to blunt market pressure from consumers eager to reduce their pesticide exposure, or to slow the directly related, and dramatic, expansion of organic produce.

To find out, EWG has sent a FOIA request to USDA asking for all communications between the agency and produce and pesticide representatives to determine whether the AFF grant was improperly used to support the lobbying activities of its member organizations, including United Fresh Produce, Western Growers, the California Strawberry Commission, and the Produce Marketing Association. These AFF members have lobbied Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to overhaul the USDA pesticide data program.

Produce and Pesticide Industry Ties:

Since it launched its campaign against EWG last year, the AFF has insisted that its mission is to promote consumption of fresh produce and to serve as a voice for farmers. In its 2010 IRS Form 990 tax return, its stated mission is to:

Promote food safety and the benefits of consuming fresh fruits and vegetables; provide a voice for farmers to communicate their commitment to produce safe food and care for the land.

But in the previous two years (2008 and 2009), AFF described its goals in strikingly different terms in its IRS Form. Then it said its purpose was to:

Promote food safety and the benefits of agricultural chemicals in ensuring safe, affordable food supply for consumers.

The AFF reportedly has 50 members; while the full list of members is not public, EWG understands that the California Association of Pest Control Advisers and other pesticide interests are among them.

Another AFF member is United Fresh, which also counts pesticide companies in its leadership ranks. Like the AFF, United Fresh presents itself as a defender of public health and promoter of healthier diets rich in fresh produce. But United Fresh has been at the forefront of the recent lobbying campaign against EWG's Shopper's Guide. EWG has found that large, multinational pesticides companies, including Dow, Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer, all play a leadership role in United Fresh as members of its Chairman's Roundtable.

As the United Fresh website describes it:

Chairman's Roundtable provides extra support for programs in government relations, food safety, nutrition policy and other areas to help grow the produce industry.

Chairman's Roundtable is an opportunity for United Fresh member companies to contribute above and beyond their basic dues. Roundtable members are industry leaders who set the pace in building United Fresh's strength in government relations, food safety, nutrition policy and other areas critical to industry success.

Not surprisingly, pesticides made by members of United Fresh show up prominently in USDA's tests of pesticide residues on fresh produce. EWG's preliminary analysis of USDA data found that 11 of the 20 pesticides most frequently found in the government tests were products of companies on the United Fresh Chairman's Roundtable.

They include pesticides made by BASF, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer. Monsanto the devil was the only pesticide company on the Chairman's Roundtable whose products were not found.

The Roundtable's membership underscores the tight linkage between conventional agriculture and the pesticide industry, underscoring EWG's position that there is not a dime's width of difference between the two sectors. It is clear that when top officials of produce front groups and trade associations lobby government officials and speak to the media about EWG's annual Shopper's Guide and USDA's pesticide program, they're going to bat for the pesticide industry.

Chemical Industry to Nation's Infants & Toddlers: Suck It (Up)

Thursday, November 18, 2010 by NRDC Blog
by Daniel Rosenberg

In the major food safety legislation that the Senate is debating, which will likely pass today or tomorrow, one important provision will probably be missing: a ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles or sippy cups.  The provision wasn’t included in the bill, and an amendment to add it before passage wasn’t able to get a vote on the floor of the Senate, due in large part to objections from the chemical  industry – represented in Washington DC by its trade association The American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association).

Give the chemical industry some credit: it has been acting consistently for years, even decades, to oppose any meaningful regulation of chemicals at the federal or state level, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and blocking protection for the public from chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects and learning and developmental disabilities.  And yet, blocking passage, or even a vote, on an amendment to ban bisphenol A in baby bottles and sippy cups still seems like a new low.

Senator Dianne Feinstein has emerged as a strong national leader in the fight for strong public protections from toxic chemicals, especially chemicals to which people are most widely exposed.  She was instrumental in banning three phthalates commonly used as plasticizers in childrens’ toys, and suspending the use of three others pending additional study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  That was a fight the chemical industry lost, largely because no Senator was willing to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and publicly oppose her efforts.  The chemical industry learned its lesson from that fight, and, in the battle over bisphenol A, the industry was determined to prevent her provision from making it into legislation, or ever allowing it to come up for a vote. According to at least one report, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr has been working with the chemical industry behind the scenes to block the Feinstein provision from being included in the bill.

The food industry, represented by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has also gone to great lengths to prevent Senator Feinstein from successfully restricting the use of BPA, or fully assessing its potential effects on women and children.  But that is a story for another post.  At the end of the day, the Grocery Manufacturers were willing to go along with legislation that at least banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (where GMA members have less of a direct interest), and that required FDA to complete a safety assessment and determine whether BPA met the safety requirements of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by December 2012.

But the chemical industry couldn’t even stomach that.  The ACC – whose members include some of the largest chemical companies in the world such as BASF, Dow, and DuPont and other plastics manufacturers -- has spent millions of dollars to defeat state-led efforts to restrict the use of bisphenol A in infant formula, baby food, baby bottles and sippy cups.  They’ve had a poor return on that investment, though. To date, seven states have adopted some version of restrictions on the use of BPA, along with the City of Chicago.

A little more than a year ago, the ACC, the GMA, and several industry lobbyists and representatives of companies including Coca-Cola and Del Monte met at a private club in Washington DC to plot a strategy for defeating more of those state led-efforts.  Minutes from that meeting ended up in the hands of the Washington Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which both ran stories about industry’s plans.   These included searching for a pregnant mom to be a spokesperson for BPA, buying the support of scientists, and convincing African-Americans and Hispanics that a ban on BPA in infant formula and baby food would make those products unavailable where they lived.

The industry had one temporary victory in California this year, where it spent millions of dollars to defeat legislation to ban BPA in children’s food products.  The industry (which has continually complained about the “high cost” of complying with the most basic proposals from EPA or Congress to expand the public’s right to know about what products contain toxic chemicals, and which chemicals people should be concerned about) can look forward to spending millions more dollars in California in the near future.  But don’t worry, industry profits remain healthy during these tough economic times. And they’ve shown that they’ll spend whatever it takes on lobbyists, paid scientists, misleading ad campaigns, and, of course, campaign contributions to member of Congress, to ensure that they can block as much reform as possible.

The industry will say: all of the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies by independent scientists not funded by the chemical industry that show strong associations between BPA and breast and prostate cancer, as well as effects on the reproductive system are wrong, mistaken, etc. etc.  My colleague Dr. Sarah Janssen and many others have responded to those bogus charges repeatedly.  But, even if we acknowledge that everything there is to be known about BPA is not yet known, that is hardly an argument for keeping BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, or any other packaging where it can migrate into our food supply.  BPA is routinely found in more than 90% of us, even though it is quickly excreted from our bodies (we pee it out).  That means we are essentially being exposed to BPA constantly, and the major source of that exposure is our food (including beverages).  BPA crosses the placental wall, which means the developing fetus is being exposed in utero (not only to BPA, but to dozens, and possibly hundreds of other toxic chemicals).

The failure to protect the public from constant exposure to BPA is one part of a much larger problem: our current laws do not protect us from unsafe chemicals, and keep us in the dark about the potential effects of thousands of others, which may be unsafe.  That is why NRDC and our coalition, the Safe Chemicals Healthy Families campaign, is working to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The chemical industry has given lip service to supporting TSCA reform and the need to protect children from unsafe chemicals (the trick being that, in the chemical industry’s view, there are no unsafe chemicals). The Feinstein amendment was an attempt to take a tentative baby step toward reform.  But the Chemical Industry snuffed it out.  So, big win for chemical industry lawyers on K Street.  For the children of America and their parents?  Not so much.

Chemical Danger: Industry's Greed Is Putting Millions of Americans at Risk

When it comes to chemical safety, we're more at risk of industry incompetence or greed than a terrorist attack. Safer alternatives exists, so why won't industry use them?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2010

Responsibility for chemical security may be shared among federal, state and local governments, as well as the private sector, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's online factsheet on that fearsomely vulnerable area of critical infrastructure. But right now they're all epically failing us, which make us sitting ducks if there is a catastrophe.

But the American public probably has much less to fear from terrorists out murderously prowling the nation's wide-open industrial sites than it does from the sites themselves, whose corporate owners are being dragged kicking and whining into safer chemical conversions and technologies that are a new-millennium no-brainer to everyone but them. And even if terrorists do pose an astronomically probable threat, it's only at the behest of industry and government, which have colluded to basically do nothing to upgrade their sites since 9/11 to safeguard over 80 million Americans from catastrophic accident or attack on petroleum refineries, bleach plants, chemical conversion facilities and more.

"These facilities are inherently dangerous if they're storing dangerous chemicals on site and have communities around them," John Deans, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, told AlterNet by phone. "We're trying to prevent the American version of the Bhopal disaster. It could happen any number of ways. Look at the recent Mariner rig exposion, the BP spill, the mine accidents and more. We see industry accidents all the time."

What Americans have yet to see are foreign or domestic terrorist attacks on any of these facilities. Which begs the inevitable question: Who are the real terrorists, and who are the invented ones? Is industry incompetence or greed, which has been nakedly evidenced in the Gulf of Mexico's various rig blasts and bleeds, more lethal in our supposedly securitized homeland than al Qaeda, Tea Party or other fringe lunatics? Should we be adding Dow, Sunoco, Occidental and Koch to the FBI's most wanted list?

Not according to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ, who in July put forth a comprehensive legislative package designed to protect the nation's chemical, wastewater and drinking water facilities from "debilitating terrorist attacks." The Secure Water Facilities Act (PDF) and Secure Chemical Facilities Act (PDF) would force companies with high-risk sites to apply Inherently Safer Technology (IST) that would, according to the American Chemical Society, "greatly reduce potential threats to public and worker safety, health, the environment and plant and public infrastructure from a variety of scenarios that might result in the release -- fugitive or otherwise -- of hazardous and toxic materials."

In other words, the technology exists to do things more safely; companies just aren't doing it. This legislation would help force that change.

IST is a mostly no-brainer upgrade; it doesn't mandate that these facilities need to tear everything down and rebuild all over again. Instead, it just suggests that, for example, water utilities switch from chlorine and sulfur dioxide gas to liquid bleach or UV light, petroleum refineries replace hydrofluoric acid with newer solid acid catalysts or, most importantly, facilities generate or employ on-site alternatives that negate the need to transport lethally unstable materials by rail or truck. Keeping this stuff off freeways and railroads alone could avoid endangering millions of Americans who live near delivery routes.

"It's not as if the technologies to make these companies safer are out of reach," Lisa Gilbert, democracy advocate for United States Public Interest Research Groups (USPIRG) told AlterNet. "Both acts have the components to reduce risk to Americans."

Of course, proposing an Act, or two, is comparative cake to actually getting an Act passed, especially in our currently debilitating partisan deadlocks on Capitol Hill and the White House. As recession-proof as anything with the phrase "terrorist attack" happens to be these days, Americans must still rely on both scattered Democrats and sellout Republicans to meet in the middle for the obvious safety of their constituents. And that evidently is hard to do when the same companies relentlessly opposed to change of any kind are buying off the committees in charge of the regulatory environment.

According to the recent USPIRG report, Chemical Insecurity, prepared by Gilbert and USPIRG public health advocate Elizabeth Hitchcock, the 14 companies in danger of widespread human collateral damage due to industrial accident or terrorist attack -- Clorox, Kuehne Chemical, JCI Jones, KIK Custom Products, DuPont, PVS Chemicals, Olin, DX Holding, Solvay, Valero, Occidental Petroleum, Honeywell, Dow Chemical, and Sunoco -- and their affiliated trade associations have funneled more than $70 million to the politicians charged with overseeing them.

"Of the 14 companies we found to be most dangerous, we found that political action committees for Valero, Sunoco and Occidental contributed double to the Energy and Commerce Committee compared to what they contributed to the rest of the House," Gilbert said. "Corporations have a real incentive to make contributions to committees that regulate them, and what they're spending on lobbyists is pretty impressive."

But not as impressive as the mounting evidence that industry inaction is getting more dangerous by the day. You can add last week's explosion at a Honeywell uranium enrichment facility to the list of recently extravagant chemical screw-ups mentioned by Greenpeace's Deans above. The sad part? Nuclear regulators had allowed the plant to reboot core production at the facility only the day before, after shutting it down for two months because too much uranium was showing up in workers' urine samples.

The scariest part? Those aforementioned workers were actually replacement workers -- scabs, in union jargon -- pulled in to supplant the facility's original employees, who weren't too happy that Honeywell was slashing their health care coverage and retirement benefits. To cap this bit of salacious idiocy, it should be noted that Honeywell's plant is the only facility in the nation capable of enriching uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride, which produces fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons.

Honeywell's facility is definitely not alone in its dire need for a reality upgrade. Greenpeace has recently issued failed citizen inspection reports to Kuehne Chemical Co. and DuPont, which together combine to put around 14 million Americans at catastrophic risk. Future independent assessments of Dow and even the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico are likely to be just as disheartening. Only Clorox has truly stepped into the chemical industry's inevitable future and converted to safer technologies and processes. "Clorox is an industry leader," said Deans of one listed threat looking to change its chemical game. "We'd certainly hold them up as an example in this particular arena to show that conversion of facilities are possible. If they can do it, why can't everyone?"

Of course, Deans knows the answer, and so do you. The industry laggards are being enabled by a horde of compromised politicians they happily paid to do nothing. You need look no further than Homeland Security's Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), whose regulations finally came into effect in June 2007, nearly six years after 9/11. Its false security blanket is full of toxic holes, according to Deans. "Even Senator Susan Collins [R-ME] called it a placeholder," he said. "Under CFATS, there are several security gaps: 125 refineries are exempt from the program, including those of Valero, Sunoco and Occidental. A Maritime Transportation Security Act loophole allowed plants on waterways to be defined as a port facilities, so they're under the watch of the Coast Guard, who don't have as comprehensive facility regulations. Wastewater and drinking water facilities are also exempt. But they all have the same vulnerabilities; the chemical agents might be different, but they're just as dangerous. So we want something that's more comprehensive."

"We are attempting to amend CFATS," agreed USPIRG's Hitchcock. "There has been a longstanding effort that predates 9/11 to reduce the consequences of an accident posing a danger to the surrounding community. We gained steam after 9/11, because the issue operates in both the security and safety frames. We know accidents regularly happen, such as at the Bayer facility a few years ago, which could have been as bad as Bhopal. Accidents are regular events. So we're continuing to urge the Senate to do what the House did, which is to pass comprehensive legislation to safeguard our communities from both industrial accidents and terrorist attacks."

But don't be fooled by that comparatively paranoid terrorism talk. These unnecessarily overdue regulations are designed to protect Americans not from mosque-crazy Muslims or their alleged plant in the Oval Office. They're to protect poor, usually disenfranchised Americans from vastly richer Americans who want their devalued labor or capital more than they need to make sure not to kill them on the job. "It's your money or life," John Lennon infamously sang in his 1974 hit single "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night."

Whether it is because of misplaced paranoia over foreign terrorism or because of common-sense domestic disaster prevention, it's obvious that true chemical security needs to happen, and happen now. Whatever gets it through "federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector," as DHS explained above, is, as Lennon sang, "All right." But it's nevertheless wrong to assume that this is simply a terrorism issue. As rampant deregulation of the global economy, energy sector, mass media and more has so far proven without contravention, we are our own worst enemies, which is to say terrorists. Especially when we exchange lives for money.

"Chemical facilities are prepositioned WMDs," said Deans. "Even Mohammed Atta looked at them. But this policy was worked on before 9/11, so it's about what direction we want to go in. The Secure Water Facilities Act and Secure Chemical Facilities Act would provide a local stimulus for communities and the chemical industry, while creating 8,000 new jobs. So the industry's only argument is against disrupting the status quo. And we've learned that's disastrous."

Who Put Bill Gates In Charge of the World?

Written by Wally Paul - Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Bill Gates looks so angelic and friendly. Looks are deceptive. This man is trying to rule and ruin the world with the help of fake philanthropists and the pseudo-scientific dictatorship.

Microsoft founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy—population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with David Rockefeller’s Rockefeller Foundation, the creators of the GMO biotechnology, are also financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan. Accepting the role as AGRA head in June 2007 Annan expressed his “gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.” The AGRA board is dominated by people from both the Gates’ and Rockefeller foundations.

Monsanto (the devil), DuPont, Dow, Syngenta and other major GMO agribusiness giants are reported at the heart of AGRA, using it as a back-door to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ a euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. The person from the Gates Foundation responsible for its work with AGRA is Dr. Robert Horsch, a 25-year Monsanto (the devil) GMO veteran who was on the team that developed Monsanto’s (the devil) RoundUp Ready GMO technologies. His job is reportedly to use Gates’ money to introduce GMO into Africa.

To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops. AGRA is being used to create networks of “agro-dealers” across Africa, at first with no mention of GMO seeds or herbicides, in order to have the infrastructure in place to massively introduce GMO.

Farmers and civil society organizations around the world are outraged by the recent discovery of further connections between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and agribusiness titan Monsanto (the devil). Monsanto (the devil) is a company that practices eugenics (I’m sorry new term is Bioethics, how nice), and Billy and that perky little Melinda really want to destroy at least 4/5s of the population.

“The Foundation’s direct investment in Monsanto (the devil) is problematic on two primary levels,” said Dr. Phil Bereano, University of Washington Professor Emeritus and recognized expert on genetic engineering. “First, Monsanto (the devil) has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well-being of small farmers around the world, as well as an appalling environmental track record. The strong connections to Monsanto (the devil) cast serious doubt on the Foundation’s heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa and purported goal of alleviating poverty and hunger among small-scale farmers. Second, this investment represents an enormous conflict of interests.”

More recently, the Foundation has come under fire in its own hometown. During the week of August 27, 2010, 250 Seattle residents sent postcards expressing their concern that the Foundation’s approach to agricultural development, rather than reducing hunger as pledged, would instead “increase farmer debt, enrich agribusiness corporations like Monsanto (the devil) and Syngenta, degrade the environment, and dispossess small farmers.” In addition to demanding that the Foundation instead fund “socially and ecologically appropriate practices determined locally by African farmers and scientists” and support African food sovereignty, they urged the Foundation to cut all ties to Monsanto (the devil) and the biotechnology industry.

In late 2003, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was strongly criticized by “international charities, farmers’ groups and academics” as a result of a $25 million grant it had given to “GM [genetically modified] research to develop vitamin and protein-enriched seeds for the world's poor”. This money supported research being undertaken by two groups, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture and the International Food Policy Research Institute, two groups which played an integral role in the first Ford and Rockefeller Foundation-funded (so-called) Green Revolution (see later). Both of these organizations are also part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a group of global public institutes that is “widely accused of being a creature of its two major funders – the US and the World Bank”. However, although linked to the World Bank what most critical commentators fail to comment on is the fact that CGIARwas formed as a result of a “series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy” and it’s work has been strongly supported by all manner of liberal foundations. Thus while a good case can be made that the Gates Foundation has been highly influenced by other liberal foundations, like the Rockefeller Foundation, John Vidal (2003) points out that there are also “reasons to believe that the Gates food agenda is now being shaped by US corporate and government interests”. This is because in regard
to their support for CGIAR the Gates Foundation chose to partner with the US Department of Agriculture and USAID – “two of the most active pro-GM organisations in the world.” (Brian Tokar in his 2004 book, Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade, and the Globalization
of Hunger, provides a critical overview of the US involvements in GM developments.)

Agent Orange is Baaack...The Escalating Chemical War on Weeds

The Return of Agent Orange
By FIRMIN DeBRABANDER

A few weeks back, the New York Times made mention of an astounding development, which has, for whatever reason, received little fanfare or recognition. Despite its Vietnam War notoriety, Agent Orange is in vogue again, this time down on the farm. Its reemergence, and in this particular setting, raises a host of troubling questions that are not being well considered.

Over the past year, there have been increasing reports of emerging superweeds resistant to Roundup, the preferred weedkiller of America’s farmers. Roundup is sold in tandem with Roundup-ready seeds, both marquee products of the Monsanto (the devil) Corporation. In the 1990s, when the latter product hit the market, it was momentous, revolutionary – a godsend: Roundup-ready seeds are genetically designed to resist application of the potent herbicide. By sowing Roundup-ready seeds and dousing their fields with the trademark weedkiller, farmers could forego the expense and toil of tilling the land, and losing valuable topsoil in the process. Production was enhanced, time and money saved. It was quite an economic boon to farmers, at least in the short run. Environmentalists were also pleased in light of the topsoil angle. Needless to say, Monsanto was thrilled that farmers were even more dependent on its products.

But for years critics ominously warned that, as is the nature of ‘nature,’ weeds would eventually evolve to withstand Roundup. Monsanto brushed aside such concerns, saying it would be ages before anyone had to worry about something like that. The glory days lasted about a decade. The superweeds evolved faster than anyone imagined-- and with a vengeance. Farmers accustomed to drenching their fields with Roundup are now battling a monster breed of pigweed that, the New York Times reports, “can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more…so sturdy that it can damage harvesting equipment.”

Nature has issued quite a challenge to our ‘weed solution.’ The chemical industry has decided to respond in turn with Agent Orange. To be precise, Dow Chemical is working on seeds that are resistant to 24-D, a component of Agent Orange… presumably because it intends on spraying farmland with wartime defoliant.

This is alarming on a number of fronts. But let’s be clear on one thing at the outset: we don’t necessarily need Agent Orange to deal with weeds. The Amish don’t. Never have. Superweeds-- like superbugs (or superbacteria) emerging in concentrated chicken farms-- are the product of industrial agriculture, which aims to squeeze as much as possible from the land, and has selected monoculture as the optimal means of doing so. Grow one crop, in great density, on huge tracts of land, demanding tremendous output. Hence the Iowa corn fields, which stretch as far as the eye can see. There’s only one problem with this: nature does not ‘farm’ this way. Monoculture is highly vulnerable to pests, disease and weeds. In monocultivated fields, predators find a vast pool of identical, fat, helpless victims. In contrast, nature ‘farms’ a diversity of crops amidst one another, which do not succumb en masse to any given plague.

We have insisted on monoculture in order to produce as much as possible. Today, we’re able to extract 6 times more corn from an acre of land than 100 years ago. Industrial agriculture is to be commended for that impressive efficiency. And I know how its apologists – Dow and Monsanto included-- would defend the institution and its manic drive for production. Industrial agriculture is necessary, they would say, to feed the world: you can’t feed upwards of six billion people by farming like the Amish.

Though I am not qualified to contest this claim fully, I can think of one important fact that casts doubt upon it. In this country, industrial agriculture’s immense bounty has wrought skyrocketing rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes. Agribusiness has not exactly harnessed its awesome technological advances to feed the world, but rather, to cram as many excess calories as possible into citizens of the industrial world. In particular, its bounty has subsidized a profusion of cheap fast and processed foods. Indeed, two of Monsanto’s most popular Round-up ready products are corn and soy, the building blocks of our processed foods.

So, it seems clear, at least in the US, industrial agriculture can step off the gas pedal. We could use an Amish revolution across the farm belt. If we adopted Amish style polyculture, our farms might well produce less. But would that be such a bad thing? Polyculture would certainly produce less of the staple commodities, corn and soy, and less processed food in turn. It would make for a healthier—lighter-- nation.

But we cannot settle for less. We must have more.

We’re so hell-bent on maintaining our voracious consumption habits, that we’ll engage the services of the defense industry. We’ll use Agent Orange to fight off weeds and ensure the delivery of cheap corn to Frito-Lay, Coke and Kelloggs; and when megaweeds evolve to withstand Agent Orange—eighteen-foot-tall weeds, stems like tree trunks—we’ll reach for the napalm. ‘Napalm-ready’ soy; that’s our future.

All in the name of productivity, efficiency, convenience-- profit. For you see, farming as nature ordains it fails on all fronts. Nature does not cut it in the USA.

We think nothing of wantonly poisoning the land on which we depend for sustenance. We have gravely degraded the rich topsoil of the Prairies, much of which has flowed down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico (and is now covered in a slick of oil, I presume). Our herbicides, pesticides and fungicides have stripped the land of natural nutrients, which we aim to supply in chemical doses. And when agricultural problems arise-- problems that are the product of our industrial, chemical practices-- we administer more of the same. Actually, I’m wrong: in the case of Agent Orange, we administer stronger poisons, as if we aim to twist Nature’s arm—as if we could. As if we could subdue her, and force her to do our bidding: ‘You WILL give us Cheetoes at 20 cents to the pound-- or else!’

It is of course hubris. Not to mention tremendously short-sighted. What do we think, soaking the fields in Agent Orange? Surely, Dow must know that the very application of this chemical in strong, widespread and longterm doses is precisely the doom of this product: these are the very conditions that encourage—dare!-- superweeds to evolve. So what are the chemical companies playing at? What’s the game plan? Do they intend to graduate to ever more potent and dangerous herbicides? Surely that can’t be sustainable. Or do they hope to mix and match chemical herbicides, to keep the weeds off balance? That seems marginally safer, at best. And does anyone know how these chemicals fare in the environment, once combined, over the course of years? Or is Dow simply aiming for Monsanto’s promised land, an herbicide-seed combination that will corner the market, and inflate company stock in the short run?

Besides the fact that we would use these chilling chemicals in the production of our food, no less. Agent Orange is accused of having caused birth defects in Vietnam, and increased rates of cancer among American veterans of the war there. Dow has disputed these claims. And yet, in light of Agent Orange’s reputation, it is surprising that Dow would press on with its use in food production nonetheless. This shows tremendous gall. Or shocking disrespect for the consumer.

Even if, as Dow argues, the harmful effects of Agent Orange are uncertain, why risk it? Why mess with this wartime defoliant when proven, though less obscenely prolific, farming methods beckon? In the end, it all comes back to us: what do we want? What do we demand of our food and farms? Do we demand piles of cheap, throwaway calories in toxic doses, which require us to squeeze nature mercilessly? Nature will not put up with this for long; as the superweeds attest, she’s already rebelling.