cancer

May 28, 2024

US regulator accused of “egregious” misconduct in PFAS testing of pesticides

By Carey Gillam

Documents obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the agency may have presented false information to the public about testing for harmful contaminants in pesticides, according to allegations being made by a watchdog group and a former EPA research fellow.

The claims come almost a year to the day after the EPA issued a May 2023 press release that stated the agency found no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in testing of samples of certain insecticide products. The press release contradicted a published study by the former EPA researcher that had reported finding PFAS in the same pesticide products.

PFAS contamination is a hot topic in environmental and public health circles because certain types of PFAS are known to be very hazardous for human health, and world governments and public health advocates are pushing to sharply limit exposure to these types of chemicals. Accurate testing for PFAS contamination is key to regulating exposure, making the accuracy and transparency of EPA testing a critical issue.

The allegations that the EPA incorrectly reported some PFAS test results were made Tuesday by the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), led by former EPA employees.

PEER Director of Scientific Policy Kyla Bennett said that the organization obtained pesticide product testing data from the EPA through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The documents they received back from the EPA showed the agency had indeed found PFAS in the tested products, directly contradicting the press release the agency had issued.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Bennett. “You don’t get to just ignore the stuff that doesn’t support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies.”

Joining in the allegations is environmental toxicologist Steven Lasee, who authored the 2022 study that the EPA challenged. Lasee is a consultant for state and federal government agencies on PFAS contamination projects and participated as a research fellow for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development from February 2021 to February 2023.

May 16, 2024

New hope for long-polluted communities, but skepticism of Superfund success remains

By Barbara Reina and Carey Gillam

Jackie Medcalf was a teenager when she moved with her family to a small farm near the San Jacinto River in Harris County, Texas. It felt like a good life, playing in the river and “eating off the land,” as Medcalf describes it.

But the animals quickly grew ill, as did Medcalf, suffering a range of health problems. Her father developed multiple myeloma at the age of 51. Tests of the family’s well water would later reveal contamination with several toxic metals. Testing of the eggs collected from the family’s chickens also found an array of heavy metals. The family was not alone, as others in the area reported similar problems.

There was little doubt about the source of the contamination: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated the San Jacinto River Waste Pits as a Superfund site due to dumping in the 1960s of waste from a paper mill containing carcinogens and other types of toxins. The site has been on the EPA’s “National Priorities List” for cleanup since 2008. But 14 years later, those efforts have yet to be completed.

“For decades my fellow community members have unknowingly recreated around dioxin laden pits,” said Medcalf, now a 37-year-oldmother and the founder of a nonprofit that advocates for the cleanup of area’s contamination. “How many more decades must pass before this disaster is remedied?”

The suffering of the Medcalf family is but one story among far too many that are emblematic of the struggles behind America’s Superfund program, which aims to clean up sites around the country contaminated with a range of dangerous industrial toxins.

In February, the Biden administration said it was earmarking more than $1 billion to help clean up those long-standing hazardous waste sites that are jeopardizing the health of communities around the country. The money is to go to new and continuing projects, and is part of roughly $3.5 billion allocated in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for work at Superfund sites.

May 13, 2024

Corrupt politics, not science, power the US EPA

By Evaggelos Vallianatos

When I started my job in the Office of Pesticide Programs at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979, many things quickly surprised and disappointed me – a pattern that persisted through my 25-year career there.

The first thing that astonished me was the scandal that came to light with the giant Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT). People would whisper in the corridors about fake lab studies. They would wonder aloud about the safety of our food. IBT was the country’s largest testing lab for drugs and pesticides, conducting toxicology studies for companies such as Monsanto until investigators discovered widespread fraudulent manipulation of test data. The US Department of Justice successfully prosecuted multiple IBT officials for fraud, and has caught others who similarly engaged in fraud to ensure approvals for risky products.

I learned the IBT story from Adrian Gross, a colleague in the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs. (Gross died in 1992.) We spent hours talking about the science and political corruption that often accompany the regulation of pesticides. Gross would speak of “cut-and-paste” science, in which studies the EPA relied on included passages simply copied from materials developed by the companies seeking approval to sell their risky products.

Over the time I worked at the EPA, I became convinced that the agency was serving industry much more than the public. My attempts to discuss concerns with supervisors made no difference, save for intensifying hostility toward me.

May 7, 2024

An Iowa farm county seeks answers amid cancer rates 50% higher than national average

By Keith Schneider

EMMETSBURG, IOWA –Raised in rural Iowa, 71-year-old Maureen Reeves Horsley once considered her tiny hometown in the northwest part of the state to be a blessed space. She recalls a time when the streams here ran clean and the lake water was clear.

The family farm where Horsley grew up was one of more than 1,200 farms in Palo Alto County in 1970. In her memory, the county’s 13,000 residents enjoyed a thriving agricultural-based economy and close-knit neighbors. Cows grazed in verdant pastures. And seemingly endless acres of corn marched to the horizon.

“We had good crops, corn and soybeans,” Horsley said of her family’s farm along the West Fork of the Des Moines River. “You could make it on a small amount of farmland. You felt safe. It was a good life.”

Two generations later Emmetsburg and Palo Alto County have been radically transformed into a place where many residents worry that the farms that have sustained their livelihoods are also the source of the health problems that have plagued so many families.

Horsley, a certified nurse practitioner who still lives in the county, is among many Iowa residents who ask whether the farms that make up the lifeblood of Iowa’s economy have become a source of disease and death due to the toxic chemicals and other pollutants indelibly linked to modern agricultural practices.

“We drank the water on our farm,” Horsley said in an interview. “My sister had breast cancer. She was only 27 when she died. She grew up here. My other sister had uterine cancer. As a nurse practitioner I’m aware of five people now with pancreatic cancer. I know 20 people who have other cancers or died of cancer here. Look at the obituaries in our newspaper. Everybody is aware this is going on.”

raul-gonzalez-escobar-ZpIskW1Tuvc-unsplash

April 18, 2024

Healthy or high risk? New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies

By Carey Gillam

Several types of fruits and vegetables generally considered to be healthy can contain levels of pesticide residues potentially unsafe for consumption, according to an analysis conducted by Consumer Reports (CR) released on Thursday.

The report, which is based on seven years of data gathered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of its annual pesticide residue reporting program, concluded that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories included in the analysis carried residue levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers of those foods.

Those high-risk foods included bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries, according to CR. The group found that some green beans even had residues of an insecticide called acephate, which has been banned for use on green beans by US regulators since 2011. In one sample from 2022, levels of methamidophos (a breakdown product of acephate), were more
than 100 times the level CR scientists consider safe. In another sample, acephate levels were 7 times higher than CR considers safe.

Overall, out of the nearly 30,000 total fruit and vegetable samples for which CR examined data, about 8% percent were deemed to have residues at “high risk or very high risk”. Imported produce was more likely to carry high levels of pesticide residues than domestically supplied foods, the report said, noting that residue levels can vary widely from sample to sample.

The results “raise red flags,” according to CR. The report advises that children and pregnant women should consume less than a serving a day of high-risk fruits and vegetables, and less than half a serving per day of “very high-risk ones.”

“People need to be concerned because we see that the more data we gather on pesticides, the more we realize the levels that we previously thought to be safe turn out not to be,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at CR who was recently appointed to a USDA food safety advisory committee.

The organization said the “good news” is that the data showed residues in most of the foods sampled, including 16 of 25 fruit categories and 21 of 34 vegetable types, presented “little to worry about.” Nearly all organic samples showed no concerning levels of pesticide residues.

The report suggests consumers “try snap peas instead of green beans, cantaloupe in place of watermelon, cabbage or dark green lettuces for kale, and the occasional sweet potato instead of a white one.”

April 17, 2024

EPA called to address “long-ignored health crisis” in Iowa drinking water

By Carey Gillam

US regulators must take immediate action to address a “long-ignored health crisis” stemming from dangerously contaminated drinking water in Iowa, according to a legal petition filed by environmental and health advocacy groups this week.

The Iowa Environmental Council (IEC) and 12 other organizations are calling for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a series of steps to reduce harmful nitrate pollution found in water supplies in Northeast Iowa.

The petition highlights the fact that for many years, nitrate concentrations found in thousands of private wells and some public water sources have exceeded the federal limit of 10 milligrams per liter for drinking water.

State agencies have documented the contamination, but have “failed to do what is needed to correct the pervasive threat to human health,” the petition states.

“For decades, Northeast Iowa residents have been exposed to dangerous levels of nitrate contaminated water,” Food & Water Watch attorney Dani Replogle said in a press release. “As the state reckons with high cancer levels and ongoing pollution regulation rollbacks, federal action is needed to safeguard the right to clean water. EPA must exercise emergency authority to hold polluters accountable and deliver safe drinking water in Iowa.”

Food & Water Watch is among the groups joining IEC in its petition. Others include the Environmental Working Group, the Center for Food Safety, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, and several state organizations.

All signs indicate that “dangerous contamination levels will continue or worsen, absent EPA action,” the petition states.

Farm operations are largely to blame for the contamination, both from the runoff of fertilizer applied to fields of corn and other crops, and the runoff of liquified manure generated by large livestock operations that is also often spread on farm fields. The runoff carries nitrates and phosphorus into surface and groundwaters, and ultimately drinking water.

Iowa is one of the nation’s largest farm states for crops and livestock, and Northeast Iowa is particularly vulnerable to farm pollutants because of its “karst” terrain, which features porous limestone that allows surface pollutants to more quickly move into groundwater. All of the drinking water in the karst region of northeast Iowa depends on groundwater aquifers.

Despite these facts, only a small fraction of private wells are tested regularly for nitrates, which are known to cause health problems at high levels, especially for infants. Cancer is a specific concern with nitrate exposure. Still, more than 1,200 wells in the 12-county karst region tested above the federal threshold for safety from 2016 to 2023, the petition states.

April 15, 2024

“It’s getting worse” – US failing to stem tide of harmful farm pollutants

By Keith Schneider

VENICE, LA. Kindra Arnesen is a 46-year-old commercial fishing boat operator who has spent most of her life among the pelicans and bayous of southern Louisiana, near the juncture where the 2,350-mile-long Mississippi River ends at the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark Porter is a 62-year-old farmer who lives in north-central Iowa where he spends part of his day working as an environmental specialist for the state and the other part raising corn and soybeans on hundreds of acres that his family has owned for over a century.

Though they’ve never met, and live 1,100 miles apart, Arnesen and Porter share a troubling kinship – both of their communities are tied to a deepening water pollution crisis that is fouling the environment and putting public health in peril across multiple US states.

Arnesen’s home lies near an oxygen-depleted expanse of the northern Gulf known as the “dead zone,” where dying algae blooms triggered by contaminants flowing out of the Mississippi River choke off oxygen, suffocating shrimp and other marine life.

Porter’s farm is positioned at the center of the Upper Mississippi River Basin where streams and other surface waters saturated with farm wastes flood into the big river, and contaminated groundwater permeates drinking water wells. Cancer incidence in Iowa is among the nation’s highest, and is rising.

The culprit at the center of it all is a colossal tide of fertilizer and animal manure that runs off fields in Iowa and other farm states to find its way into the Mississippi River. The same agricultural pollution problems are plaguing other iconic US waterways, including Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie.

US farmers use more fertilizer and spread more manure than in most other countries, accounting for roughly 10% of global fertilizer use, behind China and India. But while the nutrients contained in animal manure and fertilizer are known to nourish crop growth, the resulting nitrogen and phosphorous that end up in waterways are known to create severe health problems for people.

A grand government plan to address the problem has cost taxpayers billions of dollars with minimal results so far, and nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the Mississippi River Basin.

The reasons for the persistent pollution problem are multi-fold, including strong industry opposition to regulations to control the farm contaminants, and a perverse system in which some government programs incentivize farming practices that add to the pollution even as other government programs try to induce farmers to reduce the pollution.

“You’re talking about systemic dysfunction,” said Matt Liebman, professor emeritus of agronomy and sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University.

April 10, 2024

“A huge victory for public health”: EPA set limits on PFAS toxins in drinking water

By Shannon Kelleher

US regulators on Wednesday put in place the nation’s first legally enforceable limits for levels of six toxic PFAS chemicals in drinking water, saying the moves should prevent thousands of deaths and reduce serious illnesses in people across the country.

The rule is designed to reduce exposure to these per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – also called “forever chemicals” – for about 100 million people nationwide, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Exposure to PFAS has been linked to “deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children, the EPA said.

“Today we can celebrate a huge victory for public health in this country,” Rob Bilott, a lawyer who has become famous for his work against PFAS, said in a statement. Bilott has spent decades pushing for PFAS regulations and to hold PFAS manufacturers accountable for releasing the dangerous chemicals into the marketplace.

“It should never have taken this long to address such serious threats to public health and our environment,” Bilott said, noting that he first alerted the EPA to the presence of PFAS in US drinking water more than twenty-three years ago.

The new rule sets a limit of four parts per trillion (ppt) for two types of PFAS – perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), which are both known to be particularly hazardous.

The EPA acknowledged that there is “no level of exposure to these contaminants without risk of health impacts, including certain cancers,” and said it was setting a “non-enforceable health-based goal,” at zero for PFOA and PFOS.

April 9, 2024

In “crucial step”, EPA finalizes rule to reduce cancerous chemical plant emissions

By Carey Gillam

More than 200 US chemical plants face new requirements that should slash toxic air pollution and reduce cancer risks for hundreds of thousands of people living near the facilities, officials said on Tuesday.

The action formalizes a hotly debated proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cut out over 6,000 tons of toxic air pollution annually. The agency is taking specific aim at emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO), which is used in the production of many products and for sterilization of medical equipment, and chloroprene, used to make synthetic rubber.

Most of the impact would be seen in plants in Texas and Louisiana, as well as in the Ohio River Valley, in communities that have become notorious for high rates of cancer. People living near a chloroprene plant in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, face a cancer risk 50 times higher than the national average, for instance. The community has been dubbed “Cancer Alley.”

“This final rule delivers on EPA’s commitment to protecting public health for all, especially communities historically overburdened by pollution,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a press conference.

An EPA analysis shows that once the final rule is implemented, “no one will again face elevated cancer risks from EtO or chloroprene emissions from the equipment and processes covered by this rule,” Regan said. He said agency actions would cut the cancer risk for people living near the plants by 96%.

The move is part of a “government-wide commitment to ending cancer as we know it,” he said.

April 1, 2024

Mexico delays planned April 1 glyphosate ban

By Carey Gillam and Johnathan Hettinger

After standing firm for more than three years on plans to enact a ban on the weed killer glyphosate starting today, Mexican officials said they were delaying the ban.

Mexico is currently embroiled in a trade dispute with the United States over its unwillingness to accept genetically modified (GM) corn, typically altered to tolerate being sprayed with glyphosate and to manufacture toxins that repel pests, and Mexican officials have repeatedly stated that they consider both GM corn and glyphosate as threats to the health of the Mexican population as well as to the health of the environment.

But in a surprising reversal, less than a week before the ban was to kick in on April 1, government officials announced that glyphosate use could continue until other options for weed control are found. The move came amid reported heavy lobbying from powerful global agrochemical companies and pressure from US trade officials. Similarly, in 2019, Thailand backed down from a planned glyphosate ban after pressure from US officials and industry actors.

Fernando Bejarano, of the Pesticide Action Network in Mexico, said that the move comes after pressure from industry and US officials.