Dow’s pesticide Dursban was banned for home use, but continues to be sprayed on our food despite horrific health threats.

Shocking Health Effects of Commonly Used Pesticide: Brain Problems, Sexual Deformities and Paralysis
Dow’s pesticide Dursban was banned for home use, but continues to be sprayed on our food despite horrific health threats.

Endocrine disruptors, synthetic chemicals that mimic and interfere with natural hormones, lurk everywhere from canned foods and microwave popcorn bags to cosmetics and carpet-cleaning solutions. The chemicals, which include pesticides, fire retardants and plastics, are in thermal store receipts, antibacterial detergents and toothpaste (like Colgate’s Total with triclosan) and the plastic BPA which Washington state banned in baby bottles. Endocrine disruptors are linked to breast cancer, infertility, low sperm counts, genital deformities, early puberty and diabetes in humans and alarming mutations in wildlife. They are also suspected in the epidemic of behavior and learning problems in children which has coincided, many say, with wide endocrine disruptor use.

Like Big Pharma, Big Chem holds tremendous sway at the FDA, which gave the endocrine disruptor BPA a pass in March, citing “serious questions“about the applicability of damning animal studies to humans. But in April, research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presented new evidence of the ability of endocrine disruptors–in this case the pesticide, chlorpyrifos–to harm developing fetuses. Janette Sherman, a pesticide expert and toxicologist, has studied the effects of chlorpyrifos (found in Dow’s pesticide Dursban) for many years and spoke with AlterNet about what her research has revealed.

Martha Rosenberg: Published studies, including your own, signaled safety problems with Dursban years ago. The EPA’s own data found eight out of 10 adults and nine of 10 children had “measurable concentrations.” Dow paid a $2 million penalty for hiding Dursban’s risks from 1995 and 2003 in New York. But the pesticide was not banned for residential use until 2000, and after it was banned, people were allowed to use remaining quantities. Why did the cases that you and others uncovered seem to have little effect?

Janette Sherman: Dow attorneys took my deposition for four eight-hour days in the mid-1990s and I supplied over 10,000 pages of medical records, depositions, EPA documents, patent information and toxicology studies on which I based my opinion. Even though genetic analyses were conducted for the paper and genetic causes for the defects were ruled out–siblings who were not exposed to chlorpyrifos, for example, were normal–Dow termed the cases genetic and was able to stop most, if not all, chlorpyrifos birth-defect suits.

Dow has almost unlimited money and personnel to fight families and small-town attorneys and they send multiple personnel to the EPA to argue their side. There is also no penalty for withholding information.

MR: Dow claimed there was insufficient proof of chlorpyrifos exposure.

JS: Yes and one of the ironies, that I have cited in several papers, is that monitoring data for pesticide levels, either at the time of application or at the time of birth, is simply not done. People have no records and no way of collecting records of pesticides they have been exposed to.

MR: Lorsban, the agricultural version of Dursban, is still widely in use in crops like apples, corn, soybeans, wheat, nuts, grapes, citrus and other fruit and vegetables. Virginia Rauh, the author of the recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper cautioned pregnant women to seek organic produce to avoid chlorpyrifos.

JS: I believe farm workers and pregnant women are at risk and obviously, a pesticide that is used widely in crops will also get in the drinking water. I don’t know how widespread chlorpyrifos use is overseas and in poor countries but the same risks apply.
Related articles

Shocking Health Effects of Commonly Used Pesticide: Brain Problems, Sexual Deformities and Paralysis (alternet.org)
Martha Rosenberg – Shocking Health Effects of Commonly Used Pesticide: Brain Problems, Sexual Deformities and Paralysis (prn.fm)
US scientist: ‘Many routes of exposure’ to endocrine disruptors (Interview) (euractiv.com)
Pesticide Exposure in Utero Linked to Brain Concerns – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Health threats from endocrine disruptors: A scientific and regulatory challenge (libraryeuroparl.wordpress.com)
Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
The Battle Over Your Endocrine System (motherjones.com)

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Mysterious fatal crash offers rare look at U.S. commando presence in Mali

By Craig Whitlock, Monday, July 9, 2:04 AM

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

Sen. Mitch McConnell eulogizes Capt. Daniel H. Utley, 33, who was killed in Mali on April 20, 2012. (via C-SPAN)

What the men were doing in Mali is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.

U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.

In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.

But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”
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Monsanto Kicks Off Campaign To Prevent Genetically Modified Food Labeling

The Monsanto-funded StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com (featuring articles such as “How California’s GMO Labeling Law Could Limit Your Food Choices and Hurt the Poor”) provides a sample of what will be rolled out as Californians mull a referendum requiring the labeling of GMO foods. Via BlackListed News:

In February, Vermont contemplated the Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The proposed bill prohibits GMO food producers from using keywords like “natural,” “naturally made,” “naturally grown,” and “all natural” to describe GMO ingredients and products. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that nearly 20 states were considering similar programs. Public surveys show a whopping 90 percent of the U.S. in favor of such practices.

In theory, this should make California’s GMO labeling initiative, which would require all foods within the state made with GM ingredients to carry a label stating so, a shoo-in. But let’s not get so hasty.

Leaders in the disinformation campaign launched against the labeling initiative cry out that it would be—like the infamous Proposition 65, “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986”—a way for bounty-hunting trial lawyers to file suits against even natural food companies for supposedly selling products containing undisclosed GMOs. Of course, GMO’s ally StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com receives funding from the Council for Biotechnology Information. It should be no surprise that the likes of Monsanto and Dow count themselves members of the said organization.

More Efficient than Prop 65

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UK Toxic dumping along the Ivory Coast

The report reveals a number of toxic dumping incidents.

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