Shell and Dow Hid Cancer-Causing ‘Garbage’ in Pesticide, Contaminating Drinking Water for Millions in California

waterMonica Amarelo – For decades, Shell and Dow hid a highly potent cancer-causing chemical in two widely used pesticides, contaminating drinking water for millions of people in California and beyond, according to lawsuits detailed in a new report from EWG.

The chemical 1,2,3-trichloropropane, or TCP, was formerly an unwanted and ineffective byproduct in Dow’s Telone and Shell’s D-D pesticides. Internal documents uncovered in lawsuits filed by communities in California’s San Joaquin Valley show that the companies saved millions of dollars a year by not properly disposing of TCP, a chemical a Dow scientist once called  “garbage,” as hazardous waste.

Shell stopped making D-D in 1984 and Dow later took TCP out of Telone, but not before it contaminated the tap water supplies of 94 California utility districts serving 8 million people.

An Environmental Protection Agency testing program found TCP in tap water supplies for about 4 million people in 13 other states between 2013 and 2015, but the chemical is unregulated at the federal level and in every state except Hawaii.

Regulators in California will meet next week to decide whether to set a legal limit for TCP in tap water. Shell and Dow have paid multi-million dollar settlements to some communities to pay for filtering TCP out of water supplies, but dozens more cases are pending.

Continue reading

Record US Farmers Switching to Non-GMO Crops in 2015

“Non-GMO is More Profitable.”

NonGMO-CornTestSiteThis is the rising sentiment among farmers of the US as a confluence of factors urges them to become pro-organic. From falling GMO grain prices to a rising tide of public distrust of genetically modified ingredients, failing GMO traits, higher GMO seed prices, and the premium prices that people willingly pay for quality food over toxic junk, the conventional farmer is changing his tune when it comes to Big Ag practices.

Even if profit is the cornerstone on which this change is based, it is still telling. After all, experts project over $35 billion in sales for organic, non-GMO foods in 2015, and as GMO corn, soy and other GM grain prices rise, along with the costs to grow them (associated with more pesticide and herbicide use to control super weeds, for example) farmers are looking past the GMO propaganda which promised higher yields and more cash for farmers who grew their poison crops.

This phenomenon is explained clearly in  “The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science” (full text available for download here) published in The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food.

Gilbert Hostetler, president of Illinois-based Prairie Hybrids commented: Continue reading

Making Chemical Giants Happy At Our Expense

Nation Of Change | May 9 2012

DowThanks to the blessings of nature and good farmers, you and I can enjoy such scrumptious delights as fresh corn-on-the-cob, popcorn and many other variations of this truly great grain. And now, thanks to Dow Chemical and federal regulators, we can look forward to “Agent Orange Corn.” The chemical giant is in line to gain approval for putting a genetically altered corn seed on the market that will produce corn plants that won’t die when doused with high levels of 2,4-D.

This potent pesticide was an ingredient in Dow’s notorious Agent Orange defoliant, which did such extensive and horrific damage to soldiers and civilians in the Vietnam War. However, the corporation and the feds claim that 2,4-D was not the deadliest ingredient of the killer defoliant and has not yet been proven to cause cancer in humans, so they’re pressing ahead to let this corporate-constructed seed be planted across America.

Dow now sells 2,4-D to help kill various weeds, but the herbicide is so strong that it also kills nature’s own version of corn plants. Thus, Dow’s genetic engineers went into the corporate lab and manufactured a new corn that’s immune to the weed-killer. This would let the chemical maker profit from selling the patented seed, plus enjoying a huge increase in sales of its 2,4-D herbicide. How happy for Dow! Not so happy, though, for consumers worried about the untested long-term health consequences of the altered corn and the carcinogenic possibilities of ingesting more 2,4- D. Also, when sprayed, this herbicide can vaporize and spread for miles, killing crops that are not immune, poisoning the surrounding environment, and endangering the health of farmers and townspeople throughout the area.

Dow is hardly alone in pursuing its happiness at the expense of others. Indeed, rather than finding ways to cooperate with the natural world, America’s agribusiness giants generally reach for the quick, high-tech fix in a futile effort to overpower nature.

Their attitude is that if brute force isn’t working, they’re probably not using enough of it. Monsanto, for example, has banked a fortune by selling a corn seed that it genetically manipulated to produce corn plants that won’t die when sprayed with a toxic weed-killer called “Roundup.” Not coincidentally, Monsanto also happens to be the maker of Roundup, so it has profited from the seed and from the surge in Roundup sales that the seed generated.

Continue reading