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atrazine
A Shadowy Campaign Is Targeting Pesticide Opponents. I'm One of Them.
While it may be creepy to read an industry-funded dossier on you online, it pales in comparison to what other pesticide industry critics have faced.
Oct 29, 2024
As I head back from Cali, Colombia after attending the Convention on Biological Diversity this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the attempts by countless advocates around the world to take on one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity collapse: toxic pesticides. Reducing the use of pesticides is one of the key ways we can help beneficial insect species rebound, protect vital pollinators, ensure thriving aquatic ecosystems, and much more—all while protecting human health.
With all that we know about the benefits to biodiversity of reducing pesticides, why haven’t we made more progress in tackling these toxic substances? The latest clue came to us last month thanks to an investigation by Lighthouse Reports, which revealed that the Trump administration had used taxpayer dollars to fund a pesticide industry PR operation targeting advocates, journalists, scientists, and UN officials around the world calling for pesticide reforms.
The investigation exposed the details of a private online social network, funded by U.S. government dollars, with detailed profiles of more than 500 people—a kind of Wikipedia-meets-doxxing of pesticide opponents. It showed how the network was activated to block a conference on pesticide reform in East Africa, among other actions.
My interest in the leaked private network is also personal: I’m one of those profiled, attacked for working on numerous reports, articles, and education campaigns on pesticides. In my dossier, I’m described among other things as collaborating on a campaign alleging pesticide companies “use ‘tobacco PR’ tactics to hide health and environmental risk.” Guilty as charged. While it may be creepy to read an industry-funded dossier on you online, it pales in comparison to what other pesticide industry critics have faced.
When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.
There’s Dr. Tyrone Hayes, the esteemed UC Berkeley professor, who has persevered through a yearslong campaign to destroy his reputation by the pesticide company Syngenta whose herbicide atrazine Hayes’s exacting research has linked to endocrine disruption in frogs. There’s journalist Carey Gillam who faced a Monsanto-funded public relations onslaught for raising substantive questions about the safety of the company’s banner herbicide product, Roundup. There’s Gary Hooser, former Hawaii State Senator and Kauaʻi County Councilmember who weathered a barrage of industry attacks for his advocacy for common sense pesticide reform—a barrage so effective he lost his seat in office. The list goes on.
Why develop elaborate attacks on journalists and scientists raising serious concerns about your products? It’s simple: When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.
This latest exposé does not surprise me, of course, nor many colleagues who are also listed in this private online network. I’ve been tracking industry disinformation and its attacks on those working to raise the alarm about the environmental and human health impacts of pesticides for decades: this is what companies do. They try to defame, marginalize, and silence scientists, journalists, and community advocates who raise concerns about the health harms of their products.
Growing up, I saw this up close. My father, the toxicologist and epidemiologist Marc Lappé, was a professor of medical ethics and a frequent expert witness in legal cases where chemicals were a concern. He died at age 62 of brain cancer. By the time he passed away, I had heard countless tales of his legal wranglings in depositions and on the stand. Cases where he served as an expert witness for lawsuits on behalf of people harmed by exposure to dangerous chemicals, lawsuits against some of the biggest chemical companies in the world.
Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it.
The defense attorney’s strategy with my father was always the same: undermine his expertise, rattle his equanimity so juries would trust well-paid lawyers, not my dad. There was the time they quoted an excerpt of one of his journal articles to make it sound like he was contradicting himself, which backfired when he asked the lawyer to read for the jury the rest of the paragraph, putting the words in context and solidifying his point. The worst story was from a trial not long after my stepmother died in a tragic accident, leaving behind my three younger half-siblings. As my dad walked to the stand, one of the defense lawyers said under his breath, “Marc, how was Mother’s Day at your house this year?” Slime indeed.
But while they have the slime, we have the science: We know that many of the pesticides now ubiquitous in industrial agriculture are linked to serious health concerns, from ADHD to infertility, Parkinson’s, depression, a swath of cancers, and more. The insecticide chlorpyrifos is so toxic there are no determined safe levels for children or infants. Paraquat, linked to Parkinson’s, is so acutely deadly a teaspoon of the stuff can kill you—something its largest producer, Syngenta, has known for decades. And, 2,4-D, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War to wipe out forest cover in that country has been linked to birth defects among children there—and in the United States—even decades after the war.
The threat for biodiversity is severe, too. A 2019 comprehensive review of more than 70 studies around the world powerfully tied widespread pesticide use to insect declines worldwide. And, as reported in the Pesticide Atlas (I edited the U.S. edition), despite these known risks, pesticide use is increasing in many regions in the world. In South America, pesticide use went up 484 percent from 1990 to 2017. In Brazil, alone, pesticide sales have shot up nearly 1000% between 1998 and 2008
Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it. As I land in Colombia, where tens of thousands are gathered to envision a world conducive to thriving biodiversity, I hope this reporting will remind policymakers to rely on science, not spin.
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Conservationists Push EPA to Add 1,000+ Pollutants to 'Outdated' List of Toxic Chemicals
"It's stupefying that the last time the EPA updated its toxic pollutant list, the 8-track was considered an advanced technology and Gerald Ford was president," said one group.
Jul 31, 2023
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's official documentation, no toxic pollutants have emerged in the United States in nearly five decades—and two advocacy groups on Monday demanded that the agency add more than 1,000 chemicals to its list to bring the inventory up to date.
Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a formal legal petition with a list of industrial and commercial pollutants—many of which have been outlawed in other countries—that they want the EPA to formally acknowledge as toxic.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—also known as forever chemicals because they break down very slowly and have been found in human breastmilk, the summit of Mount Everest, and 97% of U.S. blood samples in one study—are among the substances that have been left off the EPA's inventory so far, even as they have gained wide recognition as a public health threat in recent years.
The EPA currently recognizes PFAS as "nonconventional," but not as toxic, "resulting in no regulation under water quality-based permitting," according to the groups.
Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at CBD, accused the EPA of "acting like we're frozen in the '70s."
"It's stupefying that the last time the EPA updated its toxic pollutant list, the 8-track was considered an advanced technology and Gerald Ford was president," said Connor. "Our world has changed dramatically over the past 50 years... The agency has turned its back on the deluge of new, dangerously toxic pollutants that have poisoned our waterways and permeated our lives."
The groups noted that a number of pollutants on their list of more than 1,000 omissions have been banned in other countries.
More than 35 governments including the European Union have outlawed the herbicide atrazine, which is linked to an increased risk of cancer and reproductive issues and has been found to "chemically castrate male frogs" at concentrations currently allowed in U.S. drinking water.
Despite the risks it carries, atrazine is the second-most used weed killer in the country.
"Where has the EPA been for the last half-century?" asked Nina Bell, executive director of NWEA.
In a statement, Bell called on the agency to "grant our petition and launch itself firmly into the science of the 21st century."
"For nearly 50 years, EPA has been ignoring the growing mountain of science about the more than 1,000 unregulated toxic chemicals contaminating our rivers and drinking water, at a tremendous cost to human health and the environment," said Bell. "The American people count on EPA to keep our drinking water clean, remedy environmental injustice, and protect fish and marine mammals from toxic pollution, but the agency has betrayed that public trust."
The EPA's toxic pollutant list was created in 1976 as the result of litigation. It was incorporated into the Clean Water Act the following year, and Congress ordered the agency to update the list over time as new data about toxins became available.
"Congress has repeatedly exhorted EPA and the states to move swiftly to improve and carry out regulatory programs to keep toxic pollutants out of the nation's waters," wrote the two groups to the agency. "Instead, EPA's program has become obsolete, languishing for decades and in many instances without any improvements."
Adding toxins to the list "is an essential first step to enable EPA to meet its statutory duties to update and adopt new requirements to control the discharge of these pollutants," they added.
Other toxins that have not been added to the list include nonylphenols, which are endocrine disruptors and have been banned by the E.U. while being "virtually unregulated" in the U.S., and manganese, which is found in coal mine runoff and has been detected in high concentrations in low-income communities, particularly in Appalachia. Manganese is linked to impacts on memory, motor skills, and intellectual development.
The groups asked the EPA to establish a system for accepting proposed changes to the list every three year and to identify pollutants that are not susceptible to treatment and can pass into drinking water, including many named by CBD and NWEA in their petition.
They wrote that the petition gives the EPA an opportunity to update its toxic pollutant list and priority pollutant list, "to develop rules to ensure that the lists do not become outdated again in the future, and to bring the pretreatment program into the 21st century."
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