I apologize in advance for the length of this, for those of you for
whom that's a problem. In scanning this week's PANUPS Resource
Pointer, I ran across this:
*Unreasonable Risk: The Politics of Pesticides, 1998.* The Center for
Public Integrity. Examines the ways in which U.S. policy and
discourse are skewed in favor of the pesticide industry. Focuses on
diazinon, 2,4-D and other lawn chemicals; chlorpyrifos; and methyl
bromide. Includes listings of pesticide industry donations to
political campaigns. 74 pp. Available on-line. For cost and ordering
information, contact the Center for Public Integrity, 1634 I St., NW,
Suite 902, Washington DC 20006; phone (202) 783- 3900; fax (202)
783-3906; email contact@publicintegrity.org; website
http://www.publicintegrity.org.
So decided to check it out. I've known about CPI for some time; they
have a reputation for doing nonpartisan investigative reports on how
power and representation in our democracy follow the physics of
money and influence. I was intrigued to see they'd done a study on
the pesticide industry. After my surfing, I thought some of you might
also appreciate the statement CPI's chair made, upon the release of
the report. It follows. The report itself is available on-line in
.PDF format. Interesting perspective.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/unreasonable_risk.pdf
peace
misha
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STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEWIS
CHAIRMAN AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY JUNE 30, 1998
Good morning. The Center for Public Integrity is a nonpartisan,
nonprofit research organization that aims to investigate and
illuminate ethics-related issues that affect this nation. The
organization was founded in 1990 by a group of Americans who were
concerned about these issues, and it has a Board of Directors and
Advisory Board of distinguished Americans. The Center is supported by
contributions from foundations and individuals, as well as by earned
revenue from news organizations and the sale of our publications. The
report we are discussing today was supported by a grant from the Pew
Charitable Trusts.
The Center publishes investigative studies that serve as vital
reference materials for journalists, academicians, and policy makers
alike. The purpose of the Center is to bring important, otherwise
inaccessible information to the attention to the American people. The
study we are discussing this morning and other related data -- in
addition to specific information about our contributors -- is
available on our Internet Web site, at www.publicintegrity.org.
Since its inception, the Center has produced more than 30
investigative reports about public service and ethics-related issues.
Today we release Unreasonable Risk: The Politics of Pesticides, which
was researched, written, and edited by roughly 20 people at the
Center. In putting together this investigative report, we conducted
more than 100 interviews and also analyzed thousands of pages of data
from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive
Politics, a wide variety of records from the Environmental Protection
Agency, lobbying and financial disclosure reports filed with the
Senate and House, and transcripts of scores of congressional
hearings. This is the third of four "Congress and the People" studies
we will release in 1998, capped by a major investigative, hardcover
book about Congress.
Before getting to our findings, let me emphasize that The Center for
Public Integrity does not take formal positions on legislative
matters, and we certainly have no "agenda" when it comes to
public-policy issues related to pesticides. As with nearly all of our
past reports released since 1990, our interest is straightforward --
namely, examining the decision-making processes of government and
whether or not they have been distorted in any way.
A little more than a year ago, the Center for Public Integrity, in
collaboration with two prize-winning environmental journalists, made
news across the nation with the publication of Toxic Deception: How
the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and
Endangers Your Health. In that book, we examined four chemicals that
are in widespread use in the United States: atrazine and alachlor,
two leading agricultural pesticides; formaldehyde, the preservative;
and perchloroethylene, the dry-cleaning solvent. We concluded that the
Environmental Protection Agency -- which is supposed to protect
American consumers, farmers, and workers from toxic chemicals -- had
failed in that job, though we pointed out how often Congress has
shared responsibility for the delay and inaction.
When it comes to regulating dangerous chemicals, why is it that
federal government officials and Capitol Hill lawmakers have seemed
for so many years as if they're swimming in quicksand, with about as
much success? That's the question we set out to answer in Toxic
Deception.
In this, our third "Congress and the People" study, we have asked the
same question with respect to a different set of highly toxic
chemicals: diazinon, 2,4-D, and other chemicals that millions of
Americans regularly apply, or have applied, to their lawns;
chlorpyrifos, one of the most common chemical weapons in the
exterminator's arsenal and a common ingredient in many products you
can buy at your neighborhood garden center or hardware store; and
methyl bromide, a pesticide and fumigant that is hazardous to both
humans and the ozone layer.
It is, of course, the role of our federal government -- Congress, the
EPA, and, to a lesser extent, the Food and Drug Administration -- to
protect us from potentially lethal products. Congress, however,
clearly plays the most powerful role because of its oversight
responsibility over the EPA, the FDA, and the pesticide industry. It
can subpoena records and witnesses for public hearings on whatever
subject it chooses, promulgate new laws, and withhold or increase the
taxpayer dollars given to these federal regulatory agencies. It has
the power, in other words, to set the public's agenda. To do its job
most objectively and independently, of course, Congress should be
unfettered and not beholden to any economic interest affected by its
decisions.
Unfortunately, as we show in this study, that has not been the case.
Time and time again, Congress has put the economic interests of the
pesticide industry ahead of the safety of the American public. From
1988 to 1995, for example, more than 65 bills were introduced in
Congress to tighten pesticide regulations. Not one of them passed.
Meanwhile, 151 tariff suspension bills were introduced between 1987
and 1998. These measures, which eliminate the import duties paid on
chemicals used in the manufacture of various pesticides, save
chemical companies millions of dollars a year. The Center has
compiled a list of these industry bills, their Congressional
sponsors, the pesticide ingredients named in the bills, and some of
the companies that stood to benefit.
More than forty Members of Congress have gone to bat for the chemical
industry by introducing such legislation; the most generous have been
Sen. William Roth (R-DE) who introduced 19 bills, Rep. Mike Castle
(R-DE) with 12, and former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), who also
introduced 12.
Two years ago, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act, which
replaced the Delaney Clause -- which stated, simply, that no
processed food could contain an additive that "induces cancer in man
or animal" -- with a new way of evaluating the risks that pesticides
and other toxic chemicals pose to humans and to the environment. Now,
with the Environmental Protection Agency proceeding under the terms
of that law, the nation's pesticide industry has decided that the
time is right to wage war on the 1996 law.
In our study, we look at the pesticide industry's all-out drive to
prevent the EPA from doing the job that Congress asked it to do. It
has enlisted trade associations representing tobacco companies,
breweries, farmers, and supermarkets, and others, under the umbrella
of the Food Chain Coalition. Though most Americans have probably
never heard of the Food Chain Coalition, it is the Godzilla of such
ad hoc organizations in Washington.
We found that the members of the Food Chain Coalition and the
companies they represent have poured at least $84.7 million into
congressional campaigns since 1987. Some Capitol Hill lawmakers with
key roles overseeing the regulation of pesticides have taken hundreds
of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from these
interests. When will the chits be called in? They are being called in
right now.
The pesticide industry is so powerful that, with the intervention of
two powerful Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill, it has enlisted the
Vice President of the United States in its war against the EPA.
Our study also looks at lawn chemicals and an allied organization
that represents the manufacturers of these chemicals. As some of you
may know, Monsanto Corporation, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company,
Dow AgroSciences, and 32 other manufacturers of pesticides for home
and garden use have banded together for lobbying purposes in an
organization that calls itself Responsible Industry for a Sound
Environment. What you may not know is that RISE and its member firms
spent more than $15 million in 1996 to employ 219 Washington
lobbyists, including 24 former House staff members, 22 former Senate
staff members, ten former Executive Branch officials, nine former
White House aides, four former Representatives, and three former
Senators.
How deep are the industry's pockets? Since forming an ad hoc group
called Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data, Dow
AgroSciences, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, and other manufacturers of
2,4-D-the nation's most widely used lawn chemical-have spent at least
$34 million on studies and surveys to present to the EPA. Donald
Page, the executive director of the task force, told us that
reregistration of 2,4-D "is in the bag."
Either Mr. Page is in fact the Amazing Kreskin or something's
desperately wrong in Washington. We suspect that the latter is true.
Where in all of this are the interests of the ordinary American
represented. The answer, for the most part, is nowhere. In our study
we tell the stories of many ordinary Americans, including that of
Joshua Herb, who came into the world a healthy, happy baby but is now
a ten-year-old paraplegic confined to his home with 24-hour nursing
care, an oxygen system to breathe, and health-care bills of about
$30,000 a month. As an infant, Joshua was exposed to Dursban, a
particularly potent pesticide. His parents sued Dow Chemical Company,
the parent company of Dow-Elanco (now Dow AgroSciences), which made
Dursban, and won an out-of-court settlement. Vicki Herb, Joshua's
mother, told the Center that chemical manufacturers have what she
called "totally separate concerns." . . . "They're not looking out
for health concerns," she told us, "they're looking out for their own
monetary concerns."
That may help to explain why, in 1995, the EPA discovered that for
ten years DowElanco had been hiding from federal regulators no fewer
than 302 lawsuits and other claims for money damages alleging Dursban
poisoning. The EPA's response was to fine DowElanco $876,000 -- an
amount that the EPA attorney handling the case told reporters at the
time was "relatively insignificant to a company as large as
DowElanco."
Among the cases DowElanco sought to keep secret was one from
Charleston, West Virginia, involving an infant named Joshua Herb.
Would there be more aggressive congressional oversight or new
legislation to protect Americans from pesticides if Congress were not
so dependent on the pesticide industry for campaign money and other
forms of political largesse? Would Members of Congress be more
objective in their oversight responsibilities if they had not
received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from the
industry or if their former colleagues and staff had not doubled or
tripled their annual salaries as chemical-industry lobbyists, knocking
on lawmakers' doors every day? Would Members of Congress be less
sympathetic to the economic, cost-benefit rationales propounded by
the industry as an excuse not to remove dangerous products from the
market if they weren't taking large sums of campaign cash from them?
Logic and common sense can only answer these questions in the
affirmative.
When it comes to pesticides, in fact, the agenda in Congress today
seems to be set by the industry. As a result, today, when it comes to
basic issues of health and safety pertaining to people who use or
otherwise come into contact with pesticides-and that's nearly all of
us-Congress is more responsive to a single, special interest than it
is to the broad public good.
That is the disturbing message that flows from virtually every page
of the report we release today.
[staff credits snipped]
Source:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/unreasonable_statement.html
END
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
Center for Integrated Ag Systems
UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
http://www.wisc.edu/cias/
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Dennis: Anarcho-syndicalism is a way of *preserving* freedom!
His Wife: Oh, Dennis, *forget* about freedom! We 'aven't got enough mud!
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