I would suggest that those opposed to the Trump Administration's methods are fighting in the wrong court.
If the evidence is as sound as they claim, and I believe that it is, then criminal charges would seem to be in order. At the very least, the California equivalent of reckless endangerment. Perhaps assault or even attempted murder?
If I were to randomly fire a gun, would it be a successful defense that I wasn't aiming at anyone? And besides, guns don't kill or injure people unless you intend to shoot someone? Of course not. Everyone knows that they are inherently dangerous. And there seems little doubt that these companies know that their chemicals are similarly dangerous.
5
So totally disturbing but consistent with two of this administration’s, and sadly the Republican party’s, positions. Essentially, they dismiss any science that eats into corporate profits and are especially dismissive if the victims are migrant workers of color. You do have to question the motives for getting information about study participants. No doubt those names will be scrubbed for their immigration status, with the “illegal” names sent on to INS and Jeff Sessions for a little of that zero tolerance treatment.
5
I've read the referenced IQ study as I am familiar with IQ research and research paradigms & stats. This isn't to argue either side, but there are significant issues with the IQ paper and while the results are interesting, they aren't conclusive. Some issues:
1) Authors estimated exposure to pesticides during pregnancy. An estimate as a predictor is problematic and should be followed up with more precise measures.
2) I believe the Chamacos study took blood samples to test for levels of toxins in the mothers. A correlation between toxin levels and IQ would be more convincing.
3) IQ at age 7, while predictive of adult IQ, is hardly perfect. A longer range study is needed.
4) IQ is an imperfect measure -- the confidence interval is about 5 pts either way & may be larger for lower IQ scores. The cited study found a movement of roughly a max of 1 of half an SD for 3 SD's in estimated exposure.
5) The study doesn't suggest any reason why IQ would be affected.
But the biggest objection to the study is the paper itself. It is poorly written and deliberately obscure for those not in the field -- like most scientific papers. So studies that influence policy should be closely reviewed and the authors questioned.
Finally -studies of smoking-cancer shouldn't justify every epidemiological study. Whether someone smoked or not, how long, etc. were easily measured categories. Studies using estimates and tests with < perfect reliability aren't the same level.
3
"...For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother..."
4
Does it take a boycott before agribusiness wakes up and works out what role consumers play in their nasty little schemes that hurt their own workers? Central Valley interests have a short memory.
3
Yet more of Trump's and the GOP vision of America's future; air we can't breathe, water we can't drink, food that poisons us, a workplace that is hazardous to us...
6
To the GOP and Big Ag you are just collateral damage to their profits.
3
Obviously, all study participants should understand risks before they participate.
That said, science is not secret, except to the Trump trolls who chose to believe it is.
4
The bottom line is that the USA uses way too many chemicals to farm.
11
@Wayne Patari, Sir, I wish I could like this 100 times.
4
Dear NYT, please, please, please continue this human/environmental contamination reporting....delve into the research and reasoning on which the European countries based their bans on the agro chemicals. Additionally, over the years, there have been sound data collections done by a number of US universities showing the effects of adverse chemicals on humans and animals in the US and other countries where the chemicals are dumped.
9
How will FOX and Hannity report this?
3
@Chris They won't. And that is why he still has a base. They simply do not know what is going on beyond their own tiny little circle.
5
We cannot cut into corporate profits! Science research that affects profits cannot be allowed. Only a few migrant workers will be harmed so why worry.
4
These big chem corporations are in the business of making poisons, of course they claim it's all safe....not so, it is poison and that is their stop & trade.
6
So studying the effects of pesticides on humans may be biased but studies on lab animals are not? The Trump administration is theater of the absurd.
8
The fact that trump and his goons want to kill science and even children and others directly exposed to dangerous and untested chemicals (less than 1% of all man-made chemicals have even been tested) should be adequate reason and proof of murder, treason, and criminality and therefore impeachment and jail. How can we possibly let these grifters get away with .....murder?
Money above human values and life; money before everything else. Maximizing short term profits that benefit a few is killing our people and the earth. This must end, and soon. The FACT that major corporations and elite monied interest control trump and the Rs in Congress should be enough to vote 100% for anyone with a "D" in front of their name in November. For the sake of your children, their future and the natural world, begging all citizens to vote and vote "D" in the coming election. How anyone with a brain and soul can stick with trump and this clearly corrupt pack of hyenas with him is astonishing.
5
Call me confused. The democrats claim to be the "party of science" (snort). Yet they are dead set against demanding that EPA studies/experiments be reproducible or at least verifiable.
What are the democrats hiding?
1
The pesticide manufacturers make money if their products are used.
If people get sick and die from their use that is irrelevant.
Since Trump wants the manufacturers to make as much money as possible his EPA must attack and supress any studies that demonstrate toxicity of pesticides.
Compare to efforts from tobacco industry to supress studies on smoking on cancer/heart disease.
Compare also to efforts of gun manufacturers to forbid studies by CDC on gun safety measures and gun deaths.
2
"Backed by agrochemical companies, the current administration and Congress are moving to curb the role of human health studies in regulation"
So the EPA is only interested in the effects of the chemicals on the agriculture? Do they misunderstand the "culture" part of the word in "agriculture?
1
Interesting how much less "anti-science" critics become when dealing solely with industry-supported and even industry-run research. But even then, they're willing to sell any form of doubt that allows special-interest non-science to prevail.
Since the DDT years, from Rachel Carson to 21st century independent scientists, many have alerted voters and legislators to the heavy preponderance and skew of industry-managed research (and notably similar to the current state of pharmaceutical research). The dis-interestedness of pesticide studies continues to be highly questionable, but for corporate interests the most effective weapon has turned out to be raising questions about all science -- whatever it takes.
If there are 20 industry-run studies and two independently run, they're willing to tolerate vague criticism about the 20 as long as the 2 are also discredited. "Secret" as a negative replacement for "independent" is one more way truth is being discredited and discarded. In Trump's team we see the worst success of "selling doubt" at the tragic trashing of the common good.
8
We are the world leader in obesity. There are 22 to 32 countries that are healthier than we are. Alzheimer's in increasing. Diabetes now has moved from adults to children. Childhood cancer was unknown years ago. Lyme is a epidemic. And on and on.
In short we really are being poisoned by our own government.
Those that disagree should read the process that was used to approve aspartame.
8
If EPA is going to exclude anonymized evidence, Congress should invert the EPA's mandate by making chemicals guilty until proven innocent: impose a health effects surcharge on the sale of any chemical that has not been proven safe through epidemiological studies that meet this new higher standard, including the ones that have been grandfathered in to date. The surcharge goes into a fund that pays for cancer therapy. To avoid severe economic disruption, phase in the surcharge over 25 years.
9
Forks in the road you didn’t know were there are imagined and followed by this Administration. And the fork Trump and complicit Republicans take is ALWAYS against humanity. These spurious capricious and inevitably evil decisions—not the latest cough from Cohen or dotted I from Mueller—are what America should be talking about.
3
Facts cited in this article heighten the importance of the Supreme Court and its oversight as to what scientific evidence is admissible in claims made by injured parties. Ever since the 1993 ruling of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical, Inc, and the cascade of other cases in its wake, expert witness testimony has been limited to the extreme, essentially isolating anecdotal evidence from being used. For instance, someone who has conducted research showing combinations of certain chemicals cause harm to a fetus through exposure might not be able to give testimony to this because the study is an anecdotal one, not one where living fetuses are directly exposed and studied (which would be both illegal and immoral). It's a win-win for the corporations because disease and conditions potentially associated with exposure, ranging from cancer to inflammation, are treated by the same industries that cause harm.
2
Regardless of federal government action or inaction, eventually the corruption in industry comes to light and industry pays. Unfortunately, those who have suffered because of that corruption have already paid.
2
@Mark Dziewit It's not just the farm workers and their children who suffer from industry pollution. Across the board, across the country, our citizens are absorbing many damaging chemicals and suffering health consequences....as mentioned in another reply....Multiple Sclerosis, cancers, decreased male sperm, fertility, developmental abnormalities, and cognitive impairment. The known science for these issues is not 'secret' but it is 'hidden' and denied by agro chemical corporations.
3
Is the GOP anti-science from fear that science-based policies might negatively impact corporate profits, or because science might discredit their creationist biblical beliefs? YES.
13
Capitalists think that profits are worth a few dead bodies, a few chronic diseases, a few learning disabilities, and at the same time they wonder why young people are becoming more anti-capitalist and more pro-socialist. If they’re not smart enough to see the nexus there, then perhaps we shouldn’t be basing our notion of what is good for human beings and society on their opinions.
13
I actually am a frequent critic of epidemiological studies. Regulatory lawyers and often even the researchers doing the studies do not fully understand the uncertainties that remain.
But EPA's proposed disregard and defunding of such studies is just wrong at many levels. There is nothing sinister or "secret science" about keeping the individual identiies associated with health records confidential.
Also, rat studies in controlled environments do eliminate some types of statistical uncertainty, but create many others: Even special rat strains remain different from humans; exposure time at most months in experiments, but can be decades in human experience; and the uncontrolled and unpredicted interactions outside the lab better reflect actual human exposure.
17
Throwing out epidemiological research me of the opposition that Semmelweis faced when he used what are now seen as some of the first epidemiological studies in the 1840s to show that patients treated physicians whom did not wash their hands after performing autopsies had a much higher death rate than nurses who did not perform autopsies.
He was ridiculed and his studies were ignored until Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur made progress with antiseptics and vaccines.
How many tens of thousands of women died in the 40 years between Semmelweis and Lister? How many farmworkers and members of their family will die from this attack on epidemiology?
10
50 yrs ago - I was using a wide variety of Pesticides and Herbicides subsequently banned by blinkered one sided studies.
What was missed in such studies was any form of balance.
The harm of the pesticide versus the danger that the pest represents to us. Would you rather die from a virus delivered by the mosquito vector or prefer some side effects from the chemicals used to control them.
Am over 3 score year and ten and the chemicals did not kill me - not even the highly residual organo chlorines, particularly DDT - that saved so many millions of lives.
3
@RPrior
DDT may not have killed you, but it was destroying many species of birds and reptiles. A real silent spring is not just "too bad", it is the precursor to the next mass extinction.
2
What will they do with their wealth when the Earth is dead?
12
@Blue in Green Space Force!
Wicked postscript: may we test these products on the current EPA officials? If not, why not? Just asking.
19
First the growers on the central coast can't get the farm workers because of the fear factor. Now the "experts" in the Trump administration want to role back the evidence that the old reliable insect and herbicides harm us.
Thank goodness we don't rely on whale oil lamps these days, or I don't know where we'd be: sliding down the cellar door or splashing in the rain barrel, I guess.
2
The depths of this pesticide issue are difficult to fathom, as testing requirements have been inadequate almost from the get-go in 1948 and are 70 years on, completely antiquated. If you only require tests of active ingredient(s), and ignore so-called "inert" ingredients including surfactants in formulations, there is no clear idea of what the complete formula actually consists of, or of its toxic effects. Its the blind leading the blind, years of US govt agency approvals are therefore useless for assessing potential dangers. Worse, interesting toxicology reports coming out of France are showing varying amounts of heavy metal contamination in all herbicide and fungicide formulations tested from worldwide samples. So 1) since when do toxic heavy metals ever degrade? 2) who's measuring airborne particulates around sprayed areas, as these particles can easily reach the lungs and enter the bloodstream; and 3) who will be around to do massive soil remediation when entire generations of growers and pickers slowly and gradually become ill, sucking funds right out of US healthcare and social services? Three simple questions nobody inside DC appears to care about, silence ensures job security during troubling times, doubt all these people are asleep at the wheel and unconscious!!
7
This administration’s attitude towards anything scientific is not just ignorant. The blissful adherence to religious belief, or free-market capitalism, dwarfs any acceptance of pragmatism.
Follow the $. This president just wants everyone (at least everyone he cares about) to be rich. That is Mission One.
13
It is time that the new candidates running for congress make clear where they stand on issues like the EPA, USDA, FDA and global warming
9
Here is the horror: Chlorpirifos is sold to anybody in Ghana: farmers who cannot read or speak English, people who don't bother to read labels anyway, farmers and gardeners who spray this stuff on vegetables and ornamental plants without wearing any protective clothing, respirators, eye shields, or neoprene gloves, who slosh this stuff on their bare feet and hands, inhale it, and go home wearing the shorts and T shirts that they wore while working with this poison. I have banned all organophosphate pesticides from my garden, and instead use neem oil, insecticidal soap, diatomaceous earth, and companion planting of citronella grass to control insect pests.
10
We need to test these substances on republicans- by force if necessary.
Actually by force would be the preferred method to administer.
7
I do not understand the privacy issue on either side.
Is there not a way in which personal data can be electronically obscured/filtered for data reviewing individuals.
Likewise, could not "confidential industrial" trials be reviewed by a "blind" by agreed scientific rules and a blind computer analysis. Even mixing multiple company data - by a "blind" computer program? Rules of good analytics should be relatively uniform.
6
This sort of behavior is, at some level, the norm for the current administration. But the pattern is much older: https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/ . Another example in today's NYTs talks about turning back regulations on coal emissions, in spite of strong evidence showing modern increases in black lung: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-cluster-black-lung-cas... .
I hope the states can block some of the damage being done by current EPA administrators, at least until the voters have a chance to render a decision on all the things this administration is doing to adversely affect the public's health.
5
The real secret science is the studies that industry hides behind the veil of “confidential business information” when registering s pesticide.
14
The industry representatives and their families should all volunteer to be non-confidential test subjects in a definitive evaluation of the poisons they are so eager to foist on the public. They have no compunction about adding to the misery of agricultural workers and their families . Hey, some of them might be “illegal”. Trump “base”, it’s your cue to cheer.
The dystopian nightmare continues.
23
Welcome to trumpworld, where up is down, bad is good and science has no place in our society. How are we ever going to recover from this nightmare?
20
There's a reason why drug companies are required to test on humans in clinical trails, and not depend on animal studies to show their products are safe and effective: rats are not people.
Clearly, pesticides cannot be tested on humans (that they once were is just one of the startling facts in this article). So how can we know if a product harms people? The only way is through epidemiological studies.
Blocking these studies through a specious argument about "transparency" is par for the course in the new EPA.
Google Nancy B. Beck. She is pure evil, totally in the pocket of the chemical industry. People will sicken and some will die on her watch. Shame on her.
15
@Elizabeth A
One of the difficulties in performing the epidemiological studies, and drawing conclusions from them, is that the researchers do not do blood tests on the participants to determine if there are any children who have exposure, and the degree to which, when the children have exposure, whether there is variability in the levels of exposure.
1
Obama's EPA regulations are a big reason why our economy was doing so poorly. Trump has saved us from the little tyrant.
3
@Patrick McCord Please show evidence, and if so, please show that the cost to the economy was larger than the benefit to public health.
33
@Patrick McCord. This is the kind of evidence-free statement that EPA now makes. The Enlightenment was more than 200 years ago - it's about time we recognized it.
31
@Patrick McCord - By "our economy was doing so poorly" do you mean the economic expansion that started in 2010 and is still going, the drop in unemployment rates, also since then, or do you mean the fact that the increase in wealth flowing to the 1% slowed during the Obama Administration - in part because Obamacare greatly lessened risk of medical bankruptcies and let people leave dead-end jobs they'd been holding just for the insurance?
34
Trump is in office because predatory Capital adores oligarchic license—and thus adores the Red state base's low-literacy vulnerability to predatory campaign marketing.
Love those new tax breaks going to the new plutocracy that thereby affords more-massive marketing manipulation of malleable voters for the upcoming election.
12
Monsanto and Bayer merged earlier this year. Monsanto created Agent Orange, and Bayer trademarked the name ‘Heroin’.
Welcome to capitalism.
12
Do the deplorable people that implement these policies have children?
16
Dow and Monsanto pay good money for their lies, er, science. They really care.
5
The Republicans want to steal our Social Security and Medicare, force us to pay their taxes, undermine our children's educations, choke us with pollution and poison our food. But they will send us plenty of opioids so we don't notice.
16
@WeHadAllBetterPayAttentionNow
You would be hard pressed to point to any time Republicans stole any Medicare or Social Security funds. Democrats pull out the "throw grandma off a cliff" threat from Republicans whenever they have no rational argument against Republican proposals.
Try applying facts to your fears. It was Democrats who, without a single Republican vote removed $0.8 trillion in federal funding of Medicare and doubled the interest rate on federal student loans. Students are now paying higher interest and seniors are paying higher Medicare premiums. Not one Republican vote to steal Social Security or Medicare, all Democrat votes.
@ebmem—Paul Ryan is a Republican who wanted to privatize Social Security in 2004-05. Just imagine if he had succeeded, how many people would have lost half their retirement when the recession began in 2008-09.
The Trump Administration, which seem to have been purchased wholesale by the corporate interests, will be seen in the future as being the dark times for science.
It is terrible that we are de-evolving to a time where poisons and pollution was seen as progress and positive.
What's next, putting lead back in gasoline and telling us 4 out 5 doctors smoke Camels?
17
This is just the latest assault on regulations and safeguarding the health of Americans. If something has profit attached to it, consider any other consideration moot. Rome is burning while Nero fiddles. VOTE!
12
Once again Republicans prove they're really not pro-life.
55
This is equally as criminal as the method that was used for Trump to win the election. It will take decades to repair the damage done by this administration.
7
One only has to wonder how fast these chemicals would be banned if neighborhoods with million dollars houses were being sprayed from the air on a daily basis. But then again, people eating these sprayed vegetables in these neighborhoods can not fool themselves. Just go and have your blood levels checked and you will find out there is no hiding from these chemicals. The Dow Chemicals and the Monsantos of the world should be ashamed of themselves. Eat organically and keep yourselves safer and the earth !
5
Yet another example of trump’s and the GOP’s relentless agenda to harm everyone.
Read the book Tomatoland. It spells out what picking tomatoes does to people in Immokalee, FL.
Deadly.
12
Don't worry> We will kick this guy back to New York and get responsible government for the people into Washington. These reckless , greed driven policies are not sustainable in an educated, civilized society.
4
@Rathbone Starkey "These reckless , greed driven policies are not sustainable in an educated, civilized society. " I agree, but where do we find such an enlightened paradise? Not in this MAGA morass we find ourselves in now. No place in the world is safe from what Trump's EPA is unleashing on the planet.
1
Just as the world needs help...along comes 45 and his corporate cronies.Your administration thinks nothing about killing people, and wildlife, and the environment slowly. SHAME on you.
10
Eat and grow organic food, the life you save may be your own (and that of your children, farm workers and their children too)!
13
I wish we could spray Trump, Pruit and the other heads of the EPA and their families with these ‘safe’ chemicals.
40
@BR
You really wouldn't want to do that. It would provide conclusive evidence that the chemicals are safe.
2
Justify Pesticides ?? Are these people in "our" Government nuts ??
According to Government, its terrific to frack "natural gas", and let it permanently poison the USA's ground water. It is equally "terrific" to burn more Coal, and poison the air. And now, we get this.
Well then, let them eat a Salinas Valley "strawberry" - so large and blemish free - AND packed full of methol bromide - a known, heavy duty carcinogen . Let them drink water from the tap in Flint, Michigan.
Without clean air and clean water, we are all dead. This also applies to the food we eat. Our food needs to be healthy, and not laced with chemicals.
Monsanto can lobby all it wants (and, it will), but the maker of the Viet Nam War's "agent orange" said it was harmless to humans. It is not. Ask a Veteran. Likewise, Monsanto's "Roundup" is nothing I would use on my land. The birds are the first thing you'll see missing.
While "our" leaders dine at Mar A Lago with booze and bottled water - the reality is that these broken EPA rules will ruin our children, AND our Planet.
Think about it, and Vote in the next election.
25
@W.Wolfe
Just because you believe that DDT caused thinning of the egg shells of eagles doesn't make it true.
@ebmem Where exactly does @W.Wolfe state this?
@ebmem
Of course DDT interferes with the calcium deposition on eggs. If you can't find the (easily accessible) research, start here: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/103/Suppl%207/ehp.95103s716...
Why don't we test these chemicals in key industry executives, their families, children and grandchildren. If they are convinced of their safety they should not have any concerns.
54
I’ve been worried about this sort of thing since Trump took office. How can we trust the EPA and even the CDC? I hope this country recovers from our government’s trip into a world of alternative facts
29
The scientists are fighting back to have their voices heard. The American Association for the Advancement of Science advocates for evidence based scientific research as it relates to policy. They have unfortunately been excluded from panels and various government agencies. The AAAS sent a letter in December 2017 requesting that government agencies base decisions, policies and regulations on the best scientific evidence. Clearly that has been ignored but don’t blame scientists or the government agencies they work within such as the CDC, NASA, NIH, or the few who might remain at the EPA. Their hands have been tied.
21
@DawnI understand and I sympathize. It must be incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to be a scientist, particularly one closely tied to government agencies, right now.
Since I don't eat regular oatmeal I thought I was safe eating scotch cut or steel cut oats. After reading the list of specific oat products, even 2 brands of scotch cut oats were found with high levels of contamination! Hard to be safe from the indiscriminate and widespread use of poisonous pesticides. It is buyer beware time.
10
All research done at any public university - should be publicly available. The names of the subjects do not have to be public. It's really pretty simple. Monsanto - among others - puts millions of dollars into university research. Monsanto thinks it's paying for the rights to the results of public research. They spend a lot of money and have been demanding proprietary rights for long enough that they will not give it up easily. Quit privatizing publicly funded research.
18
Sigh.
First off, FERPA. It's not that hard to crunch the data with a big computer and figure out exactly who got studied.
Second off, the people attacking these studies are the same people who'd attack taxpayer funding of the studies.
8
@Robert
Sigh. It is pretty easy to cull data not supporting a thesis as bad data and manipulate results. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Personal data can be suppressed to safeguard privacy. Which is laughable anyway, because Google and Amazon.com know more about your personal data than would be revealed if someone found out that you had at one time participated in a health study.
This article neatly exemplifies the battle-line between large corporations that provide ingestible commodities (food, alcohol, tobacco, other drugs) and the American public which consumes their products: Caveat Emptor. The public must protect itself and it is the job of the federal government (EPA, CDC, FDA, NIAAA-NIDA, ATF, others) to provide that protection, along with state government and local jurisdictions. There is no question that long-range epidemiological studies (research on the impact or effects of a health-related variable on the health status of a designated population group) are critical tools for all federal agencies required by Congress (that is, by our elected representatives) to protect our health and safety. It is scary and almost beyond belief to read about the eagerness of a Trump cabinet appointee to aid efforts by large corporations to thwart these protections. We must be concerned that Pruitt's corruption of his public mandate (and continuation by his successor) is the tip of a giant iceberg. We must recapture our government; speak out and vote.
37
Yet another reason why capitalism needs to be regulated
7
@FDW
A problem with allowing the federal government to regulate based on the results of epidemiological studies is that researchers can made the studies explain anything they want.
@
Capitalism without regulation is just a game of Monopoly; we are getting closer to having the "one big winner" claim everything.
If atrazine is banned in the EU, that tells us something. When someone complained that metabolic byproducts from my anti-depressant (found in waste and flushed down the toilet) would contaminate waterways I started researching water pollution and found atrazine was actually a much more common contaminant. Rather than tell patients not take meds they and the doctors find helpful, we can ban atrazine. Epidemiology is science and if atrazine has been linked to leukemia and Parkinson's then we should just ban the atrazine and as for the byproducts of pharmaceuticals- we can also research how to remove that waste water during the treatment process. The problem is that the Pruitt and now Wheeler E.P.A. doesn't care about science, just profit and industry. As an alternative to atrazine, there are biological methods of pest control: beneficial insects who eat other bugs, insect eating birds, bats, frogs and plenty of other predators. I trust the epidemiologists over the formerly Pruitt, now Wheeler E.P.A.
14
@Letitia Jeavons
The EU bans GMO crops because they do not want to pay American companies for seeds and are prepared to impose higher consumer prices on their residents as an indirect tariff to favor their crony interests. the refuse to import GMO products from third world countries because it would compete with domestic crony interests. There decision is not based on science but to favor domestic businesses. That's their right, but it not science unless you count political science.
Pollution from prescription drugs including antidepressants and oral contraceptives could be addressed by improving water treatment processes, and are much more likely to have adverse health effects than pesticides.
But the drug industry has no interest in exploring whether the steady supply of dilute drugs is the cause of increasing autism, and there is no interest in the wealthy leftist donor class to do anything that might imperil their wealth. While NYC continues to dump a million gallons of raw sewage into the waterways every year, it would seem silly to suggest that the secondary effluent they dump should have trace amounts of prescription drugs removed.
You researched the effects of your personal pollution on the waterways. You decided it was inconvenient or expensive to address the problem you were creating, so want someone else to address an unrelated problem. Self serving? You justify it by contending someone else is creating a different problem.
@ebmem I am not suggesting dumping raw sewage. We up grade our sewer capacity so that sewage overflow doesn't happen. You sound ableist to call me self serving by suggesting patients just stop taking meds.
The series of representations and obfuscations must be viewed in the context of what is known to all serious scientists about how the creation of virucidal anti-entropic light links viral latency to biophysically constrained microRNA biogenesis and healthy longevity.
Simply put, the insecticides do not cause cancer. They facilitate the virus-driven replication that causes cancer.
The patent for "RNA-Guided Human Genome Engineering" shows that the facts about viruses are also known to corporate executives who could make no money at all on naturally occurring RNA interference. That's why it was patented and referred to as a "billion dollar baby" in therapy.
1
@James Kohl
All serious scientists are well aware that the linear no threshold model used by the EPA to evaluate risk and assign health benefits to regulations has zero scientific basis.
Relegating our future generations to undrinkable sludge, unbreathable air, and very little in the way of food to eat, sure seems like the work of enemy combatants and a true threat to national security.
14
@Bill
Please ask NYC to stop dumping billions of gallons of secondary treated sewage effluent into the waterways, which is causing the acidification of the Long Island Sound. And also to stop dumping a million gallons per year of raw sewage, which creates an immediate health hazard of high coliform counts.
Yah gotta love the concerns of Democrats about long term hypothetical issues like pesticide use, which has the immediate benefit of providing affordable, abundant food supplies and a miniscule possibility of future harm, while ignoring the immediate consequences as well as long term known consequences of their own sins.
Why has the EPA allowed NYC, along with all other old blue cities, to massively pollute, while seeking out hypothetical risks to regulate? Could it be that when they regulate businesses, the cost is spread out to all consumers, even when there is no valid cost/benefit? Alternatively, when Democrat strongholds are allowed to pollute with impunity, correction would require voters in blue strongholds to pay higher user fees?
Just last week I found out that Roundup has poisoned oat crops grown by Quaker Oats.
6
@SCZ Actually glyphosate has poisoned just about everything you eat.
2
@Joe
And yet, despite it being in general use for 45 years, there has been no increase in cancer, despite an aging population.
@ebmem as the life expectancy of Americans decline. Hmmm.
Studies "linked pesticides sprayed on fruit and vegetable crops with respiratory complications, developmental disorders and lower I.Q.s among children of farm workers." So not only do farmworkers pick our fruit and vegetables for very little money, their children face major medical problems. Wow, no wonder Americans aren't CLAMORING to fill these jobs, not matter what the Trump administration says.
29
When glyphosate was first submitted to the EPA for approval, the data from industry suggested that it caused cancer. The EPA let the industry go back and provide new evidence.
That evidence was pure fraud -- fake science and manipulated results by private labs that were paid by industry for the results they wanted.
People went to jail for that fraud, but the approval for glyphosate was not changed.
Corruption in industry is given, which is why we need honest, competent government to protect our interests. Industry has corrupted the GOP to ensure that government does not protect our health, only industry profits.
Human rights vs capital rights: That's what politics is about. People are losing.
71
As a sociologist I am a big fan of epidemiological studies. I am not ambivalent about the notion "secret science". There can be no such thing. Of course we go to great lengths to protect the identity of participants and research subjects, that is a false alarm, but there can be no such thing as "secret" science because to be science it must be subject to replication or dis-confirmation. We need to know how samples were constructed, what was measured, what instruments were employed, and so on. It is interesting that the chemical industry would wield this as a club when their closest relative, the pharmaceutical industry, conducts science in secret on every R1 university in the nation. In the document signed at every PhD defense in my former university, Arizona State, there is a check box to "embargo" publication to protect future patent rights usually shared by the university and the drug companies funding grad students and research projects. In other words, findings are not subject to review; they cannot be considered "scientific" without serious attempts to dis-confirm them. Perhaps you'll remember the infamous The Fleischmann–Pons experiment back in the 1980's that was supposed to demonstrate "cold Fusion." The process was actually patented by Stanley Pons at the University of Utah, before scientists all over the planet failed to reproduce the results. That is how science actually works.
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@Eric Margolis
Agree with you on "secret" studies. The chemical industry is right to insist on transparency and you are wrong to blame them for practices in pharma.
@Eric Margolis
What is your explanation of the fact that a tiny minority of epidemiological studies in the area of sociology are reproducible? The proportion of studies in sociology that replicate earlier studies is substantially below 15%. Could it be that you, like most sociologists, are not actually scientists, are unfamiliar with the principles of experimental design, and choose to quantify subjective variables with an eye toward a predetermined result?
The Trump-GOP Environmental Pollution Agency is interested in protecting corporations, not people.
"In a mid-July assessment of atrazine, a widely used weed killer long banned in Europe, the EPA reviewed and dismissed 12 recent epidemiological studies linking the herbicide to such ailments as childhood leukemia and Parkinson’s disease. It echoed the conclusions of research funded by Syngenta, atrazine’s manufacturer, finding the chemical unlikely to cause cancer."
"Drop dead, America !"
GOP 2018
November 6 2018
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@Socrates "Drop dead, America !" Indeed. Trump is compared to a mafia boss (with a lot of underling capos) except for the violence. Are we so sure about that latter qualifier?
If I'm reading this article right, the EPA in the pre-Trump era, found some chemical compounds to be dangerous and did not find that others were, based in part on studies of the epidemiological kind not being convincing, particularly when contradicted by clinical studies, even while some scientists were advocates for "epi."
The article's exposition, however, seems to tangle this up with controversy over privacy of subjects in studies and with the Trump era overall.
It would be useful if the Times could print something that focuses more concretely on reasons why epidemiological studies might not be convincing.
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@Joe Ryan
There were several compounds that had been under study for over ten years that the EPA did not have enough evidence to support stepped up regulation because they'd have been challenged legally. So they were rushed out a during the dying days of the Obama administration.
This is similar, for example, to the increased CAFE standards that were scheduled to be released this year. Obama issued unfeasible standards, tougher than Hillary would have been willing to issue in 2018 just to make trouble for the Trump administration.
When the EPA issues regulations, they always talk about how much cleaner the environment will be compared to current standards. As Trump is issuing standards, they are represented as increasing pollution.
Isn't the reason we study these impacts specifically because of their effects on humans.......
Just another example of putting people last in this administration.
Trump feels that the chemical companies right to pollute with toxic chemicals (to humans) is more important than an individuals right to be healthy.
At least Trump is consistent, this parallels his ideas on individual healthcare, bare bones risky policies with all the benefits going to the corporations, not the people.
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this article is largely misleading. The main issue in not the use of epidemiological studies, in additional to experimental animal studies, but the continuing disagreement -- which began in the Obama era -- about the ability to assess the validity and reliability of epidemiological data. This is a crude club at this point, and it has been used earlier by industry in attempts to discredit major studies on air pollution, second hand cigarette smoke, and lead toxicity.
There are different motivations amout stakeholders in the "transparency" debate, but this should not be confused with a refusal to utilize research on human subjects, but rather the conditions under which this research will be admissable.
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@Ellen Silbergeld
IMO, it is worthwhile to continue with epidemiological research, and to come up with data and statistical methods that will allow raw data to be stripped of personally identifiable data, so that the data can be made available to other researchers. The current process allows the original researchers to create the illusion that they own the data: that it is proprietary property.
Much validity is granted to peer reviewed research, but it is a mystery as to how reviewers are able to evaluate research without access to the data and statistical analysis. [This is a big element in why 80% of peer reviewed research cannot be reproduced.]
The reviewer gets an article in which the researchers say they had "x" number of subjects who were followed for "y" period of time. The reviewers have no idea how many data points were purged from the database and for what reasons, which has a big impact on the validity of the conclusions.
A fundamental flaw of the process used by the EPA is their no threshold linear model for toxins. [They have some subjects who were exposed to a toxin at a certain level who demonstrated adverse affects. The EPA assumes that a subject who has an exposure at one one millionth of the certain level experience adverse effects despite the fact that there is no science to support their assumption.
This article discredits industry requests for increased transparency from epidemiological studies as attempts to expose identities of participants. It argues against increased disclosure by epidemiologists as dangerous to the privacy of subjects. This is wrong. Ways to protect privacy are available and transparency in science is everything. Without it, there can be no credibility. Demand transparency from chemical makers AND from their opponents!
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The FDA accepts clinical trial data that do not publicly disclose the identities of participants. If they required such disclosure it would be practically impossible to study treatments for stigmatized illnesses,
Why should the standard for the EPA differ from that of the FDA? Even more lives are at risk.
What’s more, Scott Pruitt claiming the purpose of the change is transparency takes irony to new heights. The man is a paragon of malign opacity.
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@Barry Fogel
There is no reason why the data cannot be released to other researchers after having been stripped of identifying markers.
80% of scientific experiments that have been peer reviewed cannot be reproduced. Basing public policy on secret data that has a 20% probability of representing truth is absurd.
The scientifically ignorant believe that regulations to reduce pollution are believe they are beneficial to the people.
When the EPA used a no threshold linear model, with no scientific basis, and calculates a health benefit, the health benefit calculation is meaningless.
Mercury is a toxin that exists at ambient levels in the environment. Back in the 1970's, coal fired plants were putting so much into the atmosphere, that pregnant women and children were advised not to consume tuna and other big fish more than once or twice a month. [Hg in the atmosphere accumulated in the food chain.]
Environmental regulation and emission controls reduced the amount of Hg contributed by 99%, with some plants contributing zero or immeasurably small amounts, and with a few small plants that were rarely operated except to maintain grid stability and meet peak demand producing 5% of the 1970's level.
Obama's regulations were to reduce Hg pollution from 1% to 0.1% were blocked by SCOTUS.
China is dumping more Hg into the atmosphere than the US at its peak. Expect new advisories against consuming big ocean fish.