In conflict with the EPA’s own research/findings, Dow Chemical company is urging the Trump Administration to disregard government studies suggesting the harmful effects of widely-used pesticides.
Dow, along with two other producers of organophsophates, urged members of Trump’s cabinets “to set aside” the EPA’s conclusions that the pesticides chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion are “likely to adversely effect” 1,778 of the total 1,835 endangered plants/animals analyzed.
The chemical companies’ urgency is underscored by Dow’s $1 million check written for Trump’s inaugural proceedings, suggesting a cozy relationship. The fact that Dow’s chairman and CEO, Andrew Liveris, leads a manufacturing working group for the White House does not help this public image, either.
According to Dow, the “scientific basis was not reliable” in the EPA’s studies, adding:
Dow AgroSciences is committed to the production and marketing of products that will help American farmers feed the world, and do so with full respect for human health and the environment, including endangered and threatened species. These letters, and the detailed scientific analyses that support them, demonstrate that commitment.
FMC Corp., the seller of another pesticide called malathion, also supported ignoring the EPA findings, saying it would give time for the “best available” scientific evidence to be gathered.
However, detractors are not convinced.
“You can’t just take an endangered fish out of the wild, take it to the lab and then expose it to enough pesticides until it dies to get that sort of data,” said Brett Hartl of the Center for Biological Diversity, “It’s wrong morally, and it’s illegal.”
Federal scientists studying the effects of the three pesticides have written over 10,000 pages indicating these chemicals pose a direct risk to nearly all of the endangered species analyzed.
As a result, the data has brought regulators quite close to prompting a new slate of regulations that could spell trouble for Dow and other chemical companies.
Unsurprisingly, organophosphorus was originally a Nazi concoction used as a chemical weapon. Today, companies like Dow Chemical spray chlorpyrifos on a variety of crops—as they’ve been doing since the 1960’s.
According to a University of California, Berkeley study, 87% of umbilical-cord blood samples taken from babies tested positive for chlorpyrifos.
Sources:
USA Today
LA Times
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