Joseph
by BN Frank
Earlier this year, a judge denied Bayer-Monsanto the ability to avoid legal liability in Cancer cases news report in the future. This may be the reason why the company may stop selling the product Residential use. Regarding the toxic ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, it was recently revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may have been aware of a possible link between it and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. for years.
From sustained pulse:
Internal EPA report links glyphosate to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Newly Converted Confidential report of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) It found “suggestive evidence” linking glyphosate to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a decision that goes against the agency’s long-standing general regulatory position that glyphosate is not a carcinogen.
Why would an agency tasked with protecting public health and the environment go against its science and allow a potential carcinogen like glyphosate to remain in use? According to Intercept journalist Sharon Lerner, agrochemical industry giants such as Monsanto (acquired by Bayer AG in 2018) have successfully “deceived, intimidated and persuaded” the EPA to base chemical regulations on inaccurate science that supports the industry at the expense of public health .
Lerner Report The industry’s influence on the science that the EPA relies on to set safe exposure levels to chemicals like glyphosate is one of many tools Monsanto and other agricultural companies use to “increase and maintain product use even when they harm health and the environment.”
Lerner’s article includes a 2016 internal EPA report that justifies what attorneys for plaintiffs suing Monsanto on behalf of Roundup cancer victims said years ago about Monsanto’s scientific manipulation and the EPA being a hacked agency.
In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a review on glyphosate, listing it as a probable human carcinogen. The IARC report led to thousands of people across the United States filing lawsuits against Monsanto claiming that exposure to Roundup caused them to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
As part of the litigation, a number of US law firms were able to obtain internal company reports, emails, text messages and other memos, which include communications with or around EPA officials. The documents, now known worldwide as the Monsanto Papers, allowed the public to see first-hand how EPA employees boasted Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Glyphosate review. The agency has based its organizational decisions on Roundup Almost exclusively informed of Monsanto; and that the agency mysteriously changed the classification of glyphosate cancer in 1991 from “suggestive evidence” of the possibility of cancer to “no proof“It is a carcinogen, a label that persists to this day.
Monsanto’s lawyers have argued since the lawsuit began that the EPA has repeatedly approved the use of glyphosate, concluding each time that it is unlikely to be a carcinogen to humans. But the internal EPA report cited in Lerner’s report provides stark evidence that the agency was covering up science showing glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential.
What does the EPA’s internal report say about glyphosate?
In the summer of 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) analyzed seven epidemiological studies on the relationship between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The internal “confidential” report concluded that four of the high-quality studies “all reported an elevated risk of NHL associated with glyphosate exposure even after controlling for other pesticide exposures.” The report also concluded that the studies reviewed “provide suggestive evidence for the carcinogenic potential between glyphosate exposure and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
The internal report never saw the light of day. Instead, Lerner notes:
“[EPA] Reports issued in 2016 and 2017 which clearly based on the previous document – many sections have identical wording – but came to the opposite conclusion: that glyphosate ‘is not a probable carcinogen’.
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In 2019, just days before a California jury decided to rule on a case involving a husband and wife who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after spraying Roundup around their properties for years, an initial EPA report on glyphosate declared once again that glyphosate is not a probable carcinogen. The timing of the initial report was something that the plaintiffs’ lawyers noted: Why was the initial report issued only days before the end of the trial?
In his closing statement in the case of Pilliod et al. against Monsanto., Monsanto’s attorney, Tarek Ismail, scoffed at the plaintiffs’ claim that the EPA is an agency that has been taken over by the industry:
“Today I heard Mr. Wisner (the Pilliods co-principal advisor) asking you to completely disregard the findings of the EPA. He told you they were engaged in – what does he call it? Regulatory arrest? 40 years of EPA review by the agency’s professional scientists, He wants you to ignore.”
Ismail had good reason to downplay the claim of organizational takeover to the jury. In her report, Lerner interviewed more than a dozen former employees of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), who described the agency as “unable to cope with intense pressure from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year.” .and hiring many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency.”
The jury must have wondered, at the very least, whether the EPA was a hijacked agency. Only a few days later, the jury A 2.055 billion dollars judgment In favor of Mr. and Mrs. Billiod, one of three rulings against Monsanto between 2018 and 2019. The grand jury rulings totaling $2.424 billion paved the way for $10.9 billion settlement With several leading law firms in Roundup litigation.
Although its scientists found a link between glyphosate and cancer in human studies in the 2016 internal report (and the IARC report a year ago), the EPA re-registered glyphosate in 2020 for another 15 years. According to Lerner, the EPA allows glyphosate to be used because “there is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate plays a role in any human diseases” and that “there are no human health risks of concern when glyphosate is used under the current label.”
But consumer advocates like Gina Reed, a senior analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believe the 2016 internal report shows a pattern of the EPA favoring the industry over safety. “They only used the parts of the meta-analysis that fit the conclusion they wanted to support,” said Reed Lerner of the EPA report. Read added that the agency’s suppression of the internal report’s conclusion shows that “it is clear that more firewalls are needed to prevent political interference in science.”
The 2016 internal report could influence the resumption of the 65 supply of glyphosate
An internal EPA report could have an impact in the case of the National Wheat Growers Association, et al. v. Becerra, which will decide whether a Proposition 65 warning can be added to glyphosate products.
California Prop 65 (Prop 65), also known as the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Toxic Substances Enforcement Act of 1986, prohibits companies from exposing people to chemicals in the state. Bracket List 65 without providing “clear and reasonable” warnings. Chemicals are added to the Exhibit 65 list based on a country’s assessment of current scientific information and in situations where the Environmental Protection Agency and the International Agency for Research on Cancer determine that the substance is carcinogenic to humans. While the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as a “probably carcinogenic” to humans, the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer.
In 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California decided that the state could not seek Prop 65 cancer warnings for glyphosate. According to the court, such warnings violate the First Amendment because the EPA found there was insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate causes cancer.
Last year, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed an appeal to challenge the decision. Now, with the new internal report contradicting the EPA’s public findings — which the court used as a basis for not seeking a proposition 65 glyphosate warning — the appeal can pull the rug out from under the assertion that there is no evidence that glyphosate is a carcinogen.
The influence of industry has weakened the regulation of pesticides
Lerner says the industry’s impact on the EPA has “weaker and, in some cases, halted serious pesticide regulation in the United States and left the country’s population exposed to levels of hazardous chemicals unsustainable in many other countries.”
Charles Benbrook, the agricultural economist who served as an expert witness during the Monsanto lawsuit, agrees with Lerner:
“The regulatory affairs departments of these companies are actually competing against each other and sometimes bragging that they have been able to hold a highly hazardous pesticide on the market for longer than some other companies that have thrown the towel prematurely.”
If anything, Lerner’s article and the issues it raises reinforce the power that litigation must raise public awareness and bring about real and lasting change. “We’ve always felt that the evidence supporting everything we’ve said from day one – that Monsanto tampered with science, that they took over agencies, that they intimidate scientists who dared question the safety of Roundup – will continue to grow,” said Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman. R. Brent Wisner, who served as co-chair trial counsel in two of the three Roundup trials. “It’s bittersweet that it took all these years for these facts to emerge, but any progress that is being made in the name of protecting people’s health – however incremental – is something we will always fight for.”
